Latest / The Paul Barron Crypto Show / XRP Joins Roblox!! Futureverse CEO INTERVIEW with Aaron McDonald

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XRP Joins Roblox!! Futureverse CEO INTERVIEW with Aaron McDonald · The Paul Barron Crypto Show

0:06
Let's dive into a project analysis today. And now this is one I think
0:09
you guys are going to like because it's talking about XARP, what's happening within
0:13
the root network. You'll probably know who this is, but you guys are
0:16
gonna love it. My name is Baulbara. Welcome back in the tech path.
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Let's get started a little bit with a clip. I want to kind
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of play this one first to get kind of set the tone for our interview
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today. Take a look. I've known you for I don't know seven years
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now, and back then y'all didn't have that loud of voice. It sure
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feels like you do now. So what about an XRP ETF. You were
0:39
speaking at the Consensus twenty twenty four conference just a week ago and you said
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inevitable. Don't you think that Gensler and company might just say not that one?
0:49
No way. I think it's a hard argument with them to win.
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I mean, can they make life difficult? They've made life difficult for a
0:54
lot of people, then they've lost in court. I think people also forget
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that it wasn't that long ago before the CC got involved, that XRP was
1:02
the second most valuable digital asset now as before the sec kind of anointed eth,
1:07
it's become something that people can also buy, whether they use the Ripple
1:11
blockchain, right Craig, XRP is extremely fast on a per transaction basis and
1:15
extremely inexpensive. People talk about gas fees and transaction costs of some other tokens
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you charge whoever is moving the money correct point zero zero zero zero one of
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XRP, which stands around fifty one cents or something right now. But here's
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my question, XRP ETF when I think we're going to see it, I
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think you'll probably be twenty twenty five next year. You guys suddenly have a
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voice. You're the kitten that roared in a way. I like that,
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the roaring kitty out there, no pun intended. But if you look back
1:48
at our coverage on what's been happening within the XRP ecosystem, we've got a
1:53
pretty extensive playlist that you guys can go over to our website. We just
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put out this one here on Ready Verse with XRP. Go in check out
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that playlist. There's a lot there to kind of digest and it will kind
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of set up today's interview. All right, So let me introduce our guest
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today, and of course that is the co founder of Future Verse, Aaron
2:10
McDonald. Great to have you, Eric, Yeah, man, it's awesome
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to be on here, like really great to see the coverage you've been putting
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out about us, and excited to have a conversation one on one with you
2:22
Today'd go a bit deeper. Yeah, well, I mean, let's get
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into a little bit. Some people may not be fully aware of Future Verse.
2:28
We've done several videos on you guys and kind of pieced together what we
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think is the strategy. I want to give our viewers and listeners a chance
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to really kind of connect with you guys. How big is the project team?
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Give me a little bit of insight to what you guys look like as
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a company. Yeah. So, Future of Us was formed at the beginning
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of last year as a roll up of eleven different technology and IP companies.
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We had been incubating a bunch of those company since early twenty sixteen, so
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been in this kind of Web three space for quite a while now. Future
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Verse kind of brought together expertise across you know, protocols, artificial intelligence,
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content creation to create one vertically integrated media tech company. There's about two hundred
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and fifty people working across sixteen countries around the world to solve probably one of
3:28
the hardest challenges in the open metaverse, which is kind of given meaning to
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digital ownership for content assets. Right. Well, I think you guys have
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been able to make some fairly big inroads. We'll talk about some of the
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partnerships and where you're going. I want to also kind of connect the dots
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here in some of the tokens, because a lot of people that follow our
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channel they're always kind of interested in, well, what tokens are associated with
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this? Of course root, of course we've talked about before, Asto,
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Silo, all those the XRPL explain a little bit more around the utility for
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some of those types of tokens. Those three bits are kind of the network
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layer for interrupt perability, and then we've got the data layer for things like
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your assets and your social graph and your communications. And then we've got the
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intelligence layer. And so those are the three bits that make up kind of
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the protocols within future versus stack. So the network layer, you've got route
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rooters. A network token is designed to power the root network to provide the
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security guarantees for proof of stake on the network, and it's the connective tissue
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for interrupterability of content rich applications and assets and experiences silos a layer to network
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that sits on top of that. That's all about data and oracles. So
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it's about how do we maintain and incentivize a network of infrastructure to provide storage,
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messaging, notifications, those kinds of things that applications can store data on
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top of. And we can provide the ability for users to take the things
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they love with them into these different experiences, whether that's their friends group or
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whether it's a piece of content. And then we've got artificial intelligence. It's
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a big part of what future Verse has. We have one of the best
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research teams in the world in generative AI, and we have several granted patents
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and over thirty pending patents in this domain of the intersection of kind of web
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three gaming and artificial intelligence, and so ASTO powers the artificial intelligence economy inside
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on top of those two other layers. Right, So that's very comprehensive in
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terms of being able to kind of set up an infrastructure and a network like
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what you guys are doing there with future Verse, So kudos on that.
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You look at the virality of how projects take off. You know, right
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now we're at the beginning of some pretty interesting things that are happening over on
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on Chain summer with Base, lots of projects rolling out, getting Quest in
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there, et cetera. Future Verse Quest could also kind of pair up with
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against that which one do you feel has that viral moment waiting to happen?
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What are your thoughts there? Yeah, I mean we launched quests almost a
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year ago now as a way to enable our community to connect with the things
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we were building and help us kind of test those things out and drive activity
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that would create network value. And we've seen a lot of platforms start to
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pick up on the meme of quests since then. You know, what we
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see in Web three is the same group of people like mulling around, you
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know, jumping from one hot thing to the next. And what we're trying
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to do with Quest is provide a way for us to expand the circle of
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users. But Quest is also a platform that other people can build on,
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and so we're building with some of the largest brands and ips in the world
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to create their versions of Quest for their audiences, and I think that's where
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that viral moment will really start to make an impact because they already have people
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who love them, who love the things they're doing, and we're now providing
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this infrastructure layer with the Route network and the Quest platform to enable them to
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create new digital experiences for their consumers. We'll talk about some partnerships. I
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want to kind of get a framework of where you are, because you guys
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have a lot going on. I want to connect the dots for everybody.
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One of the things though, that is happening this month is trade Verse launching.
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They're doing their public beta right here on June thirtieth, So they're excited,
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you know, giving Root network community the marketplace they deserve. So this
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is going to be kind of the I guess the Magic Eat and I guess
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similar in comparison, So that's going to open up. That's going to open
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up a lot of opportunities also around potential brand partnerships. Can you talk about
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some of the brand partnerships that you guys have engaged that are public knowledge,
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just so everybody that maybe not is fully aware of what you guys are doing
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to talk to trade Verse like really excited to see that to come to market.
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And I was doing a tally up yesterday and the thing that's got me
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really excited is, you know, Root networks about six months old now and
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we've got over fifty teams building projects on the Root network already and growing significantly.
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So it's such an awesome moment to see the community getting behind this and
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that really is the thing that makes the difference in the end, and there's
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a huge amount of momentum on that and what we're trying to do is pour
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gasoline on that by igniting it with these big partnerships. So you know,
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we've split the world into you know, five territories of content that that we
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think matter for onboarding users. We've got mass media, music, consumer goods,
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celebrity and culture and sports, and so you can see across each one
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of those domains, we've already announced some of the largest brands as partners in
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the world. You know, you think of the mass media space, working
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with the really player one I P and and Warner Brothers to roll that out.
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In the sports domain, you've we've seen the launch of FIFA. We
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have another dozen large global sports brands that we're bringing to market over the next
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few months, and we've got you know, the Rebok Impact launch with with
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Authentic Brands Group, which is one of the largest owners of peril brands in
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the world. We have the upcoming launch of gen Now generative music AI platform
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in partnership with a large number of of publishers and labels around the world.
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So we've got this huge kind of momentum building behind all of the technology that
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Future Versu has been putting together over the last year. In terms of those
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partnerships, you know, you look at Mythos or Lamina one. Now we're
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talking about two different you know, interoperable blockchains that are writing out there.
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What does that look like for you guys in terms of interruptability, I mean,
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I think we're kind of we've always been like interrupt maxis I guess,
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And you know, we want to create the standards that enable people to build
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content in an interoperable way, truly interoperable way, and we want to be
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able to help developers to connect to that content in a way that's like seamless
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for them to do. So if you think about, you know, what
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the Lamana guys are doing, They've got they're doing some some interesting things,
11:00
but we're already talking to them about how we can share standards, you know,
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and make sure that we're both you know, building this to this greater
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picture. And so you can already kind of see that coming together. We
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you know, we recently updated the future pass smart wallet to support natives signing
11:18
from the zomb wallet and and transactions natively on XRPL. We already supported the
11:30
Ethereum network. We have another a bunch of networks coming on board which will
11:35
will add to the interconnectivity we can provide for users who have assets all over
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Web three into these games, applications and experiences. I was looking at this
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tweet right here, you guys had put out, you know, the revealing
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of the kind of the user experience. This was a good one because guests
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who got to chime in at mister Tim Sweety himself, So you can somebody's
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attention here. What is the possibility of us seeing something that would be interoperable
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with Fortnite. Yeah, we're having some some really good conversations with the team
12:09
over there about how we can work together. And I don't I don't want
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to say more than that right now, but I think everyone can see where
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that that the eventual state of this stuff is interoperability, and they're trying to
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figure out their own path on how to get there. You know, some
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people have different incentives to us. You know, they've got existing businesses or
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business models that they want to deliver, deliver value to shareholders on you know,
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where we're trying to disrupt a little bit. I guess the way that
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consumers interact with technology and own content assets and so, but I think generally,
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you know that there's a there's an overall acknowledgment that this is inevitable,
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and it's just about making sure that we plot the right path to get there.
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The you know, the same conversations happening with other teams and big metaverse
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plot properties, and we can see this kind of general willingness for openness and
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interrupterability to come about. We think once consumers see the power of open because
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of interupterability, they won't want anything else, you know. And so we're
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moving from this state where I can own a dog that lives in my neighbor's
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garage two which is not much use to me. I compete it and I
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can look at it every now and then if he lets me to true ownership
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which is enabled by interoperability. Yeah, for sure. What about size and
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scope of audience because you look at the potential of what we've seen, you
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know, just good example would be educ chaos. The capacity of being able
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to handle that kind of scale or do you guys feel like you're there?
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Yeah, I mean, the scale question comes up a lot, and it's
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I think largely a mean. We have the view that the the metaverse exists,
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which is that the connection of interoperable applications, games, experiences. When
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you look at the metaverse as being the Internet, then there isn't a capacity
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issue and what people should be doing is striving for interoperability rather than striving for
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shoving as many people into the same domain as possible. Okay, you think
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about it in your everyday life, like how many times do you actually want
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to be surrounded by ten thousand or one hundred thousand people in a space you
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don't like. There may be a few times you want to go to a
14:33
rock concert or something like that and feel the vibe or a sporting event for
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example, and sit in the crowd in a big stadium, But if that
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was your everyday life, it would be a nightmare all right, So I
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like that answer. I mean, because you're right, you should scale based
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on capacity and the game framework. You know, it should be relevant,
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it shouldn't just be scaled a scale. So I would agree with that.
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Let's talk about AI creator tools a little bit, you know, just in
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general, tapping into the ability of what AI might play into Web three gaming.
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What are you seeing out there within the web three community, because I
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mean, we see a lot of promises but not in a lot of height,
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but not a lot of real Okay, so where do you guys stand?
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And I think probably the biggest problem that happened when the metaverse meme kicked
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off a few years ago was, like I said, it was intuitive to
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everyone that that's how the Internet should be, but actually where we ended up
15:28
was there wasn't enough people to build it. And what AIGC does is it
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breaks that barrier down. It's the world building tool for creating immersive Internet experiences.
15:39
Just like we had wics come across or square space come across and make
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it easy to make websites. This technology is that kind of enabling technology for
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the immersive Internet. And so we're deep in it. You we have twenty
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or so PhDs, researchers building real stuff. These are unique generative models.
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They're not forking someone else's stuff, And not just on the generative technology side
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of things, but also kind of how do you create the interoperable data layer
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for information that feeds these models and do that in a way that is,
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you know, use a friendly privacy centric and user data own centric. I
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could see medical, military, all sorts of applications. Yeah, especially if
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you've cracked the code inside the capacity of game, you know, play,
16:30
being able to translate that out any kind of bot on that. Yeah,
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good and bad outcomes possible with that, So we have to be careful about
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how we approach it, but it is going to be an enormous opportunity for
16:45
us to create better outcomes for humanity and improve productivity. Is a really interesting
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meta which is that we're kind of running out of data to train these models
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on. I think we're getting to kind of a plateau of the data available
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to train some of these large models. There is the possibility that you can
17:03
create new world models inside of these simulated game environments, and that those those
17:11
world models can then provide additional kinds of data that aren't available to AIS now
17:15
to create to create advancement in the learning, and so there could be this
17:19
kind of meta where gaming actually feeds the next generation of AIS because it catch
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it could be a whole new layer of simulations. Wow, that's fascinating.
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Man. You guys got a lot going on down there. Yeah, that's
17:34
that's good. I want to I want to go into a clip. We're
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going to play a clip for you. This is Arkanvas talking a little bit
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more around the Adida's Rebuk scenario that's playing obviously that you guys have an angle
17:47
here with Reebok, and we'll play something here in a second, but do
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want to play this clip for you. Take a look. You're working with
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some real world brands today, but that's precisely what we're doing with Adidas.
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They actually to build a revenue line associated to gaming. Those clothes have been
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bought well over a million times, but of course the marginal cost per item
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is zero. We're using AI to help create those items and bring that production
18:15
costs down. So what you find is that ten percent of the items you
18:19
create will sell ten times better than the rest. So when you give away
18:23
free branded items, they go really fast. So what you tend to try
18:29
and do is build some kind of challenge, some kind of events, some
18:33
kind of activation they can earn loyalty points. Will be connecting those reward points
18:38
to an off platform reward website where you'll then be able to use them to
18:42
redeem their reward points earned for discounts on real world product. And that's where
18:48
I think NFTs were going, and that's what I think we're seeing inside of
18:51
these immersive worlds. All right. So obviously Adidas moving quickly some of the
18:56
things that are happening there. You go, VR forty six coming in already
19:00
starting to play in the things like Sandbox, et cetera. Uh, you
19:04
guys, I know, are announcing something we're gonna I think we're gonna cut
19:07
a clip here in a second. And yeah, and related to that,
19:11
let's do that real quick. What did I just watch? And tell me
19:30
a little about what it is. Yeah, just a little teaser and I'm
19:32
not going to go too much into it, but you can start to see
19:33
how we're connecting the content in worlds and experiences that we've been building to these
19:40
larger platforms, and people will kind of be familiar with some of the stuff
19:42
that's in that in that clip, but showing how we're not just thinking about
19:47
the applications that we're building, but also how we create these relationships for people
19:52
to take the things they love where they want to go, and some of
19:57
those places, you know, are the traditional platforms. So lots more to
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come out on that in the coming kind of weeks and months about how we're
20:06
kind of enabling that interoperability with these existing platforms. But I think it's a
20:10
key part of you know, onboarding people into the space is giving them the
20:14
choice. What do you think is the possibility of us seeing something like say
20:18
a Rebok token that could start to be utilized, especially as a utility factor
20:25
going forward. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I think there's
20:29
a few things there. Like digital fashion, I think is an already well
20:33
established global category. It's a really important category to be in. We think
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the Rebok Impact experience is the best example of how you can connect a brand
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to generative content and onboard users into Web three without them even knowing that that's
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happening, and so enabling those users to do that inside of Instagram with they
21:00
already are shaer memories they love turn those into their own very own one of
21:04
one shoes and then take those shoes into popular gaming environments or some of the
21:11
open metaphors stuff that we're building. I think that's kind of a world leading
21:15
example of how you can bring this technology to market. And also part of
21:18
that loop is that kind of how does that translate to a physical sale.
21:23
So the next stage in terms of tokenizing customer attention or loyalty, we're having
21:30
that conversation already with brands all around the world. We built a specific piece
21:36
of technology that enables them to do that called Centripey, and they can connect
21:41
you know, tokenized value to real world transactions and value using that platform.
21:45
And I think that physical to digital retail experience is only going to get more
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and more prevalent. Even you know, in the last week you might have
21:56
noticed that Ika launched a store inside a roeblot and so kind of showing some
22:02
of the stuff they're on. I Q. Yeah, And I think the
22:06
most important thing, and that is that eventually all valuable will be value will
22:11
be digital assets. You know, like that that cat is out of the
22:15
bag, that's not going back in the box. It's going like this and
22:21
everything. It will consume everything in terms of digital value and digital property over
22:26
time. So will there be you know, token for this or that or
22:30
whatever. One hundred percent there will, because everything will be a token.
22:33
Different brands are taking that at different points, but it's inevitable. And what
22:37
we're trying to do is solve you know, now open money's being sold for.
22:41
How do you solve for open content? How do you solve for open
22:44
intelligence? How do you solve for open open data? You know, those
22:48
are the three next challenges that there's lots of work going on for, but
22:52
we haven't quite got there yet. One of the things we watch here quite
22:56
a bit obviously is VR. What that will look like. We continue to
23:02
kind of see evolution and there's some connection happening right now. You look at
23:06
what Meta has been able to do. They're getting ready to announce another release
23:10
of maybe a dumbed down version of The Quest three, which will make it
23:12
even more available. So how does that play into kind of the future of
23:18
what you guys are doing there with Ready Verse. Yeah, I think VR
23:22
is going to be increasingly important. I mean, obviously, the really player
23:26
one IP is sitting in a world of advanced VIA and so that's you know,
23:30
very top of mind for us. We're going to keep going down that
23:33
path, I think, and so you know that there is no doubt that
23:37
this will be an accelerating trend over time. Jim Vibe, of course was
23:41
one of the big releases. Most likely we're going to see that become maybe
23:45
the first web three you know, interaction within VR out there. We did
23:49
a whole video on it, so you guys can kind of check it out.
23:53
So I'm looking at that, and then I think also outside of that,
23:56
when you look at just fitness, because that's a huge market. You
24:00
know, obviously it's tied to much what has already been very successful. Then
24:06
you move into kind of the next layer of entertainment, and that is movies,
24:11
and you know Blumhouse good example, Blumhouse Games now starting to intersect the
24:15
two movies games ips going both ways, both from a game to a movie
24:19
and a movie too. Game. What are your thoughts on how this plays
24:23
into the future of what you guys are doing. Where I think the future
24:27
is that they're the same experience. You know, you could imagine a world
24:32
where you're watching a movie on a streaming platform and you can click into that
24:38
scene because the movie itself was made in a game engine. We know,
24:42
we're in discussions with every major studio you know in the world, and these
24:49
are hot topics of discovery. This kind of yeah, immersive entertainment or borderless
24:56
entertainment, where where you're not kind of creating these distinct anymore, but you've
25:00
got this series of interconnected experiences that keep reinforcing the brand, the IP,
25:07
the consumer engagement over time. There's two ways to approach user adoption. One
25:12
is to generate something new that people love and grow an audience out of that,
25:19
and two is to take something people already know and love and enable that
25:25
with new technology. We're doing both. You know, we have really great,
25:29
strong first party IP that is native to this kind of new new type
25:33
of community building, and we're working with IP that you know, people love
25:38
already. You guys are definitely in the right place at the right time.
25:42
Last question I had for you before we go into maybe the future here on
25:45
what you guys are going to be doing is the potential of just onboarding.
25:52
You know, you look at I'll just stay for existence or example. You
25:56
know what we do here within our crypto PIP, which is our research team,
26:00
we're always trying to do certain things. Getting into root network was a
26:03
very difficult process. Uh, there's a lot you have to do to go
26:07
through to just to get the root token. How and when do you think
26:11
that will change so that we'll see more access into say root network as a
26:17
whole. What are your what are your I think if you want to,
26:22
yeah, I think they've got to think about the world and segments. You
26:25
know, someone who wants to get the token and trade the token and play
26:27
that game, they're like a pro user exactly. There's a little bit more
26:33
involved in that process than say an end user who's using an experience. Shara's
26:40
grandmother created a wallet minted in NFT, used our AI tools inside of Instagram
26:47
without even knowing the root network exists exactly. And that is where we're actually
26:51
at now. From adoption point of view. You can come in and build
26:56
and create experiences where consumers can use the root network without realizing there are and
27:00
that's really been our mission. You know, the pros are always going to
27:04
have a little bit more because they're deep in it, and they're doing things
27:08
on the cutting edge, and they're trying to play a different kind of economic
27:11
game. All of those things are a little bit more complicated, but your
27:15
everyday user is using the stuff without knowing, right all right. So last
27:18
point and that is what can you tell us that maybe coming down the road
27:23
for future Versus and the team there, the next six months is action packed,
27:29
full of the launch of those experiences and going out and reaching these new
27:33
markets. And so we've got a whole bunch of partners to announce, both
27:37
on the IP side, you know, the studio side, on the tech
27:41
technology side, and experiences that go along that that kind of tap into these
27:48
large global audiences. So really exciting time for us over the next you know,
27:52
six to twelve months. Well, I mean, Tommy's right, and
27:56
you've got APEX coming up this summer, so that's going to be interesting.
28:00
So well, I can't wait to see some of the releases that you guys
28:03
are doing, So this will be a good one. Yeah, head along
28:06
to APIX and Marco our Cto will be speaking up there, so catch catches
28:11
presentation if you're interested in what we're doing. Eron. It's been great having
28:15
you on the show. Thank you so much for stopping in. We appreciate
28:18
it. No, likewise, thanks Paul, you bet all right, So
28:21
you guys are tuned in maybe on the podcast side of things, you know,
28:23
and you enjoyed that because I think this really gets into the core of
28:26
what Web three technology is doing, and that is changing the future. This
28:30
is a good example of some of the breakdowns that we do. So make
28:33
sure and subscribe to the channel, whether you're here on the podcast side or
28:37
get over here to the YouTube channel. This is the place to catch all
28:41
the visual entertainment that usually happens on these kinds of episodes. Follow me on
28:45
AX just at Paul Baron. We'll catch you next time right here on tech Path