Justin Banon on decentralized commerce and the future of Web3

0:00i'm ashen addison from blockwest capital for investmentpitch media and today on the cryptocoin show we have back with us justin bannon the ceo of boson protocol justin welcome back to the show and thank you for taking the time today thanks ashton great to be back likewise uh there's been humongous updates in the metaphors decentralized commerce uh which your team is pioneering some great

0:25solutions moving us into the next version of you know what what will be the amazon of web 3 and how will we do commerce in the digital metaverse i'm excited to hear uh not just what your team's been up to since our last conversation but um your prospects on you know what decentralized commerce will look like when everyone in the world is starting to use it

0:47so let's just start off a conversation from those who haven't seen the former videos and aren't familiar with boson on what is your team working on primarily and driving into the blockchain and commerce space and then we'll dive into all of the updates sure so boson is what we call a decentralized protocol it's a piece of software that runs on a blockchain and sits between a

1:11buyer and a seller enabling the sale of physical things without intermediaries and without having to trust the seller so if you imagine the role that amazon and ebay and alibaba perform within the market okay here's the seller i don't trust that seller how do i get the physical item get paid handle disputes uh bozon does that with just code um and so in in doing that it sort of

1:37you know transforms how we do commerce um and also so i mean the process is that you know a seller will make an offer for an item as they might on ebay or you know amazon and then if the buyer likes what they see the buyer will commit some funds and that those funds will get locked up within our smart contract and the buyer will receive what we call a redeemable nft

2:03so that's like an nft it's like a voucher or a coupon um that is a claim then on that physical item but what the protocol does is ensures that either the buyer will get the physical item or they get their money that's like one of the first jobs of the protocol but of course now that you've got this physical item represented as an nft you can do all the things you can do

2:26with that nft all the things that you can do with any other entity so sure you can redeem it for the physical item and that's pretty straightforward but you can also hold it so imagine if that is a rare sneaker or a rare case of whiskey or you know a special birkin bag that's like an asset you can hold you can trade it so you can go and you know there's a secondary market on you

2:53know open c or you know however you want to want to kind of flip that because maybe you've acquired that because you're a special loyalty you know or customer of of of the brand and now you can go and flip that for a profit for example you can transfer it so you know we've got kind of christmas christmas holiday season coming up we're doing a huge amount with brands where

3:19they're going to be these tokenized products now you've got a nephew who's really nice there's particular sneakers you know the size you can go and buy these sneakers as a redeemable nft and send it to him at the other side of the world and so yeah i mean it the the the properties of commerce are you know kind of a bit like g5 but uh with physical items

3:43very cool and looking back at web 2 boom you know amazon was one of the if not the biggest company to come out of web 2 really revolutionizing commerce and when we look at decentralization you know how can we improve what's already so good you know people so many people rely on amazon for getting things fast or getting things cheap and of course you are relying on a

4:08centralized party to provide those services but but many do when i look at a lot of startups in web3 you know often the founders are looking at you know how can we make something not just marginally better but 10x better how do you see boson and decentralized commerce as a whole you know improving drastically from the commerce that we see in web 2.

4:35well we're looking at what we kind of call a phase change a complete transformation of how we do commerce so if you think you know when i was doing like my my you know early in my life when i was sort of doing my first sort of exams at school and stuff if i needed to find out i needed the answer to some questions i used to have to kind of get the bus to the library go

4:58and click through and and and put a book and ah there i find out what you know um now everyone just kind of googles there it is download a file and exchanges and so you know you've got with the internet that the vast majority of the world's information stored online in the common format that can be retrieved immediately happens to be retrieved mostly using a

5:23protocol called tcpip for data transfer um well commerce is still in that kind of library state really right lots of products in shops lots of products in siloed marketplaces and i have to kind of go and do searches and retrieve and what happens if all the world's physical assets and products and services are all tokenized into a common standard where

5:47you can just search them and then you can just go and do that exchange just using software software that's not taking 25 30 percent software that's taking point five percent baked in forever right like it's like a file transfer that is a profound economic change and that's the reason why is on project goal has been given world economic forum technology pioneer status

6:13for our potential to transform commerce globally um we're also doing a whole load of research with uh people like professor jason potts who's like the number one blockchain economics professor um what we're doing research on because yeah i mean this fundamentally changes uh the kind of commerce economy um incredible and you mentioned at the beginning about you

6:41know redeeming physical items and being able to transfer them to someone in another country however i'm also seeing a major trend in digital items that remain in the digital space inside of the metaverse and all the different metaverses that are popping up i've seen with boson protocol a lot of partnerships come out with different companies working on you know different

7:03items in the metaverse and i'm curious on uh what how you see that balance between you know the commerce that we see in real life digitizing that and decentralizing that and then the commerce that's actually happening in the metaverse and sort of staying digital well i mean because we are using nfts as these kind of redeemable vouchers

7:29it means they can sit there they're just web3 native so you know and they're digitally native so they are you know kind of set just alongside other nfts and can be paired with other nfgs and bundled so it's completely trivial to sell that you know to set a physical item in the metaphors is trivial when it's already represented as an nft um so we're seeing a lot of um i mean the

7:57metaverse is the high growth area where you know it's this next great interface we we you know we see the web you know we saw the first web the social web the mobile web and now it's just kind of pretty immersive web um but it's certainly not where the vast majority of the current demand is i mean it's high growth but we're seeing 10 20 30 x times demand for

8:24um selling physical things as nfgs from a website so you know where we've got brands from mainstream brands and platforms all the way to like digital marketplaces and nft projects saying we want to use boson protocol to tokenize physical things and sell them on our website or sell them on you know the bozon protocol is launching version 2 in

8:52october and we've got like nearly 50 brands 50 projects lined up to um integrate and to create their own storefronts decentralized store funds directly on bozo that's great to hear um and i was going to ask you about the next version coming out but i'm still more curious on uh exactly where you see the industry right now you

9:20know i a lot of people that are in blockchain still aren't really familiar uh with being in the metaverse for more than a very short period of time but i do know there's a lot of collectors and you know with the rise of nfts uh in the last two years you know in the art space and other collectors spaces people that aren't weren't originally in blockchain

9:41or finance are now starting to get a hold of this technology and use it but from what i understand it's a lot more on the uh on the on the seller's side like you're having a lot of partnerships pop up with different companies creating digital collectibles or digital fashion or digital products um but i'm curious on is there a demand that's matching that of people actually

10:04buying these things yeah so i mean look the whole nfg space has sort of had a you know a boom in a bust and it you know it's highly volatile and cyclical and part of that is because it's been pretty it's so it's been so small right they reckon there's like 30 000 nfg collectors right and so you know and all you know and it's all kind of related to crypto and

10:29you know it's okay but what happened what happened last year with facebook meta and all of these brands suddenly realizing wow this is the next big thing is that they all applied for and got signed off massive metaverse commerce projects right so now all of the mainstream brands i mean when we're talking to them i've been doing this you know a couple of

10:50years like you know i can remember talking to crypto vcs and two three years ago and they were like well i had to try and explain and convince them that decentralized commerce would be a thing now we've got global multinationals that we're partnering with and you know i'm doing a masterclass like 800 executives one of the biggest multinational um fmcg companies i'm do it next week and

11:20it's not convince us that decentralized and web 3 commerce is a thing it's what are the opportunities how do we get involved how can we do it so we we're not at the stage where you know like okay the core web 3d community yeah nft is up and down but this thing is going mainstream now all the major brands want in all the major brands see as you know it's like mobile right maybe some of

11:48them were moved slowly on mobile and social or they got left behind they're not going to do that on metaphors so mainstream is coming in so i just think you know the demand from 30 000 buyers versus the demand from all of these kind of like main street is just totally totally different now what this does mean is that

12:14bridges to mainstream are vitally important so we're working with a lot of amazing partners to extend the capabilities of boson so that for example um you know the corboson protocol v2 is a fully decentralized web 3 protocol and anyone can pick it up use it and sell things in a fully decentralized way but most brands cannot use a website

12:41project model so we are partnering with other organizations that have built bridges to boson so here's an interface that makes it more familiar for a brand they don't have to handle private keys and it abstracts and it just you know it looks and feels more familiar it plugs into some of these legacy ecommerce systems and enables them to sell at scale right so

13:03really important um bridges that have been built on that seller side and then also partnering with a whole host of organizations that are building stuff on the buyer side so and this kind of goes different ways one way is ah we're a major brand we want to sell luxury watches as redeemable nfgs but none of our users can use a wallet okay well you need to they need to be

13:28able to buy with credit cards they need to be able to hold you know you nearly need a custodial wallet so they're not holding private keys all of that sort of stuff is is is also you know um being assembled and then but then also kind of even more web three stuff like uh i mean with version one of the protocol because we knew we were building v2 that was a complete rebuild

13:53we kind of held back a bit from plugging into every world we were just plugged into decentral but now with v2 i mean that's the core protocol build um we're plugging into you know yeah again decentraland sandbox crypto box or something in space and in fact we've also built a bridge that means any nft in any nft um kind of compatible environment we can just plug in so you

14:21know it's like um building these bridges and and connectors of like mass adoption is is is like the second part of having completely redesigned the core i'm looking forward to to seeing that version two coming out and i will leave a link to to the platform so people can follow along for those updates now justin moving forward you know we saw the explosion of nfts and a great uh

14:49addition to the blockchain world from you know outside industries of artists and collectors sort of understanding this technology through the digital art part of nfts with the growth of decentralized commerce what do you see as the upcoming narratives for you know what kind of assets or what kind of nfts in what industries are going to be the next to

15:13fully realize that this is the future and these are the type of assets that they're going to be buying sure so i mean as i mentioned there are a couple of these things that you can do with you know with boson that you know quite special and so you know being able to transfer is one right so buying things that you want to gift to other people you want to i mean

15:38bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are very closely aligned to you know workers that want to transfer money home across border or likewise you can now with with boson protocol you can sort of gift um to you know transfer physical assets to people like you would a cryptocurrency so that's like kind of one and we're seeing a lot of that with as i said with

16:04this kind of whole kind of christmas period coming up but then also things that you know if you want to hold things so expensive sneakers expensive handbags i mean this is where it starts um all of the you know what what boson does is it's opening up a constellation of asset classes that and and plugging them into d5 right so you know all of those you know whether

16:30it's sneakers you know figurines special all of these collectibles everything that has that kind of collectible and putting it into a you know this is kind of a common database um and then also things that are kind of tradable uh and flippable and you know where you know creating almost like commodities markets for all of these different products that's where we're seeing sort

16:54of masses of demand but i mean so give you some specific examples um like you've got a small whiskey distillery in tasmania for example right and it takes 12 years for that whiskey to mature it's a really good use case so to tokenize that as nfts and then people can hold maybe someone holds it for five years and then they sell that and then some of that and then you know this

17:21thing is like a bond that matures after 12 it goes on perfect for that um you know luxury fashion um people have got used to spending thousands and thousands of dollars on digital wearables design and digital wearables people kind of expect if you're going to buy the expensive like watch in the metaverse that you get it in real life as well and so this tethering

17:44between you know pretty soon all luxury items your if you buy the digital you get the physical you buy the physical you get the digital i mean you think about it yourself ashton if you were going to buy a really expensive watch and you had the choice is it digital or physical i mean if you're existing in the metaverse a lot it's great to have a really cool watch that yeah wow someone

18:05can inspect the nft and it's like wow this is like he's actually got the physical as well and you know you know yeah so these are the categories that are sort of that are sort of leading um yeah very cool i'm looking forward to i feel like the growth of the metaverses themselves as well will sort of fuel the decentralized commerce you know as more people get

18:28into the metaverses uh they're gonna there's gonna be more demand for for items uh and for commerce and and then it will also fuel real world of people understanding hey i want a version of that digital um to prove ownership digitally that i that i have this at my house and people that are in the digital world can see that you own it in real life sort of vice

18:47versa yeah yeah i mean absolutely i mean the growth of these metabolism and then kind of like metaverse native commerce is you know because of course you can't slap a standard like product you know like e-commerce flow onto a metaverse but that's a kind of you know it's it's it's a bit like in the early days of the web when like travel agents would would

19:14have a website that said ah if you'd like to book your travel come into the high street and we'll you know book an appointment and we're coming you know that's like v1 now there are no travel agents in the high street right and and and likewise you know if you're in this environment why would you bounce out to a website you should be buying and then you're able to transfer you

19:37know it's a it's a kind of in a completely web-three-native way and so you know that those are the opportunities that brands are really seeing and and that customers um really enjoy well it's a super fascinating space justin and i i can just imagine that the market size you know just looking at what amazon is like right now and expanding that to likely even bigger than that so the

20:02potential for this is huge uh i'm looking forward to seeing this next version of boson that's coming out for the viewers that want to just learn more about decentralized commerce and and these updates and check out boson v1 and v2 what is the best way to learn more and to follow along with your team's updates so we've just launched a new website um which is uh the same url buzz on

20:26protocol.io um and twitter i mean there is just we're releasing i i it's gonna be like four or five announcing four or five partnerships a week as of next week so and twitter has got all the other activities as well approach on protocol um and then you know you can also find our discord and telegram channels um at those locations as well so yeah just just just just follow us and

20:53um you know we welcome all new boson awards sounds great justin i'll leave those links below as well all the best on boson v2 coming out very soon and thank you for helping grow decentralized commerce in into the future of us buying and selling and holding things i'm really excited for for what's to come so let's definitely follow up in the near future

21:17we'd love to and thanks for having me ashley