Alex Russman of Enjin on the blockchain gaming industry

0:01i'm ashton addison from event chain for investmentpitch media and fintech news network and today on blockchain interviews we have alex russman the director of business development for engine alex welcome to the show and thanks for taking the time to be here thanks for inviting me on actually you're very welcome i'd love to kick off our interview by starting with a better explanation of

0:20what is the engine platform what does the platform focus on and how is it really growing the blockchain and gaming community definitely well engine as a company is maybe fairly old within the blockchain space the company was found in 2009. uh in 2017 um our founders very much as part of the video games industry became fascinated by blockchain technology and taking those attributes

0:43of proven scarcity ownership authenticity um and provenance and applying that to virtual goods uh specifically game items um and so since then we've been developing a platform to enable initially game developers but now anyone to leverage blockchain assets into their projects so on the one hand we have the engine platform which is a suite of tools and

1:05services allowing um blockchain assets to be incorporated into your project and then on the other hand we have this suite of integrated products the engine wallets the engine marketplace the engine blockchain explorer allowing users everyone to come along and interact with these assets and these assets sit on the ethereum blockchain so the engine platform this

1:24products a way to interact with ethereum-based assets and the ethereum blockchain um and we launched this platform to the public at the beginning of the year uh the wallets and the some of the projects um predated that while it was launched in 2018 at the start of the year um but this platform was launched um having been in development with more than 30 developer teams

1:44who have been providing us feedback meaning it's very much battle tests and stress tests at launch and we're continuing to take on board feedback and continuing to deliver improvements very cool alex yeah engine has quite a few different things going on which is which is great and i want to touch on a little bit on each one and this notion that gaming and the marketplaces

2:05inside of gaming being so large you know to people that aren't involved in the gaming industry uh it's it's the numbers are actually astronomical and a lot of people don't really understand you know where is the money flowing around and why is this so popular so in terms of the engine marketplace what are the main kinds of you know assets or what are these gaming assets

2:23that are being traded around and why has it become so popular well certainly on the engine marketplace we see a lot of trade in your blockchain game items from the engine adopter projects and you know these are your complete range of different items we see uh blueprints being traded these are basically kind of recipes for creating certain items within the game and then those items

2:44you've created um there's licensing rights you've used to issue items they can then be traded on marketplaces and then you also have more uh standard cosmetics or just collectibles a very nice feature of the engine platform is you can create assets on ethereum and program into them these transfer fees so actually for the first time digital creators benefit from these items being

3:06traded on third-party marketplaces whether that's the engine marketplace or another marketplace like openc every change of ownership requires a transfer feedback to the digital creator so as a result we see game developers actually creating scenarios where they're encouraging trading and they're seeing their own revenue from transfer fees so you can go on to

3:26the nginx marketplace and look at assets being traded see the transfer fees and see that revenue not just being exchanged between holders of assets but going back to the digital creators so on the one hand huge amount of volume in game items um blockchain game items in the engine marketplace but also a lot of trade in collectibles and we um we've run collectibles campaigns for

3:47companies like finance us and finance global actually over new year of this year and we did a special different set of new year's collectibles to finance and i think over the period of one month there was one thousand dollars of the volume done uh because people were just trying to collect a full set of these buyers collectibles and the most expensive one was traded for over five

4:07thousand dollars because it's provably scarce and it was the rarest one uh more recently we did some nft collectibles for acoin and coin market cap are creating their first nft collectibles with us at the moment so a really exciting time and obviously a lot of hype around nfts people love getting their hands on these assets you'll be able to prove that ownership

4:25improve the scarcity um so it's a fantastic time to be uh handling digital goods right now yeah it sounds really exciting and so there's blockchain gaming assets for in-game then the notion of collectibles and non-fungible tokens seems like it can expand to almost any kind of digital art or digital asset or anything it is the market that engine is targeting

4:49just a marketplace that allows them to trade any type of assets and is it fairly competitive and growing quickly like at this stage i think in terms of the in terms of the nft space that we're targeting it's really anyone who wants to take advantage of their virtual goods being created as blockchain assets those proven attributes that i've already mentioned so on the one hand you

5:11definitely have collectibles we're seeing a lot of people you use the engine platform to issue collectibles and these these assets you have to remember they don't just end up you're in the engine wallet or the engine marketplace they're flooding all across the the rails of ethereum uh ending up in different wallets and different marketplaces um and so collectibles obviously a big

5:31area uh the gaming assets another large area we've seen huge amount of growth and interest and activity and blockchain games and it's kind of a mixture of collectibles but also the utility within virtual spaces but also engine as a company has been pulled into the enterprise realm and one of the really exciting projects we have um involves assets which you know aren't

5:52created to be traded and you're speculated on and we have a client when microsoft we run um a pro we help them run a program called azure heroes and this is where microsoft issues achievements and badges they they have cartoon badges on them so they're badgers with badges for members of that azure community for being an a diversity leader or a mentor and these

6:18are developers who have never come across blockchain before but they receive an asset and they see they can view it in their wallet they can view it on the blockchain explorer see that they have ownership of that see that it's really scarce see that it's come from microsoft kind of recognizing their achievements and they have huge value for for that person and and so that's a

6:36really exciting space to be in that's super exciting and especially partnering with microsoft and being able to create those different gaming assets and i guess i want to touch more on the engine platform itself being able to create games as well as gaming assets having those developer tools traditionally when blockchain coding was first coming out you know

6:57people had to learn proprietary languages and it was sort of hard for developers to jump in into developing cool things on the blockchain what does it look like on engine's platform is it really developer friendly and do they need to understand the intricacies of blockchain to be able to create these gaming assets really easily well on the one hand we

7:16have the developer tools and the engine platform api so game developers you know some of whom have been working on their game projects for multiple years and they've recently come across blockchain and they see a fit for their game and they set up an account on the engine platform if you're if you're not working on a project you can create an account

7:34and start creating your own nfts your own blockchain assets actually nfds and fundable tokens um in a very nice typeform style interface so creating the assets is very simple first step in terms of integrating with your project yes we do all the heavy lifting or the android platform does all the heavy lifting in terms of smart contract creation and blockchain code and then we have

7:56um we have a set of sdks um and other software development kits to make it very easy for um projects to interact with engine api um but actually we see most uh projects using the graphql querying language to do very intricate um integrations and interactions with the ethereum blockchains through the engine platform um and that's really great to see i mean the

8:18one of the classic stories i tell is uh one of the lead developers on the game actually project lead for the six dragons sadas he came across engine he fell down the the rabbit hole and um you started playing around that platform and within 48 hours he had a working integration with the six dragons doing live in craft enchanting crafting of items in the game

8:39really amazing economies what's going on there incredible project definitely check that one out um in terms of on the one hand you have the developer tools on the other hand you have partly our documentation but also the kind of the knowledge base of the engine team and the engine adopter community this is now your more than 40 developer teams who have knowledge of working with the

9:01engine platform and building a blockchain i think that's the other side it's not just about saying to game developers hey it's really easy to create your game items as blockchain assets it's about getting them to think in terms of you know real digital scarcity and real ownership and you know what people who interact these assets now expect of projects and

9:20virtual worlds which are integrating blockchain items and that's where your engine and the engine community provides a huge value add because it's not just saying hey these tools make it easy but we can you know help brainstorm with you you can bounce ideas off us ask us questions because it is it's a big space it's a big rabbit hole to pull down and

9:38we're there to help projects use blockchain assets in a way that best benefits them and best benefits their community and users definitely and it seems like there's so much potential because it seems so early on even though it's being so popular once you expand that marketplace into global into what's it what it will become it seems like we're really in the early early stages

9:59and with the nfts and the gaming assets that you can create you know part of storing your nfts is you can also use the engine wallet and the secure wallet to store those but you can also just store cryptocurrencies and other assets it seems like the engine wallet is really expanded much even beyond the gaming industry itself uh can you talk about is

10:20the engine wallet really just used for all around storage of everything including nfts but also just if you just have some bitcoin and you want to store it there yes definitely well actually it was rather the reverse in fact so the engine wallet was the first product we launched in uh back in january 2018 um and it was launched as a cryptocurrency wallet and we kept on

10:40adding features um obviously the long term or medium term aim was to support um nfts in the wallet but we uh very very very strong um one of the best uh one of the worlds i'd definitely say one of the world's best uh cryptocurrency wallets um we were actually one of the first wallets to have an integrated exchange feature as well we aggregated four different decentralized exchanges

11:03so you can trade um or you can swap your tokens within the wallet and yes you can now store your nfts um and fundable tokens created using the erc 1155 standard um on ethereum development of which was led by our cto vtec actually um and the wallet just keeps on getting richer and richer in terms of features so we have a dac browser so you can interact with all your web3 apps

11:26but it also integrates perfectly with the obviously the explorer that powers it but also the engine marketplace so it's a matter of you're looking at your asset within the wallet and with a press the button you can lift you can list it on the nginx marketplace if you see an item you like on the nginx marketplace you scan a qr code and you pay and receive the asset and so

11:46it's it's a fantastic experience but it is one which we have taken a lot of feedback on and observed a lot of behavior and we feel we can make it a lot more convenient it's already a great experience we keep on adding more features but we feel we can make it much more convenient as a way to introduce people into the blockchain world so as a kind of sneak um upcoming development we're

12:07going to have an overhaul of the wallet and make it a lot more usable for everyone right from people who are deep into blockchain and blockchain games through to enterprise users and everyday users and it should be the go to wallets we feel and obviously blockchain gaming is a great way to get people introduced to blockchain assets and we want the blockchain well

12:27it's the engine wallet to be the great way to introduce people to the blockchain world and ecosystems that's great well i'm looking forward to that update and i have used the engine wallet myself and i know that it is great but whenever there's updates it's always exciting as well and you know part of the engine wallet is storing the engine coin and i know i don't want to

12:48go through this without at least mentioning the engine coin and how it's used within the ecosystem and how it really provides value to the engine platform and if you could touch on that that would be great yes well every every uh item created through the engine platform whether it's a fungible token or a non-fungible token is created with an amount of engine locked into it and

13:10there's no maximum interest we have you know we have some blockchain assets uh which exists on the ethereum blockchain with more than a million engine coin locked inside um but there is a minimum based on kind of economies of scale and how much you're you're producing uh so if you're creating one magic sword you require you to have 10 engine locked inside that but if you're creating 10

13:29000 and each one might only need 100th of an engine coin um and the idea here is that you when you hold the asset you can choose to destroy or melt it at any time and take out that engine coin so all of your assets have real world value um and we see people minting assets with more engine coin inside them uh for the various region reasons perhaps your prestige or perhaps because

13:53they're funding for doing a crowdfund for a game and they want to show that you're putting real value in their items and rewarding early participants um and it's kind of similar to you can buy an iphone which has a small amount of gold in the components or you buy you know a gold a gold encased um diamond studded iphone as well um so the community says your melt is

14:16murder so generally the value of the acid is much more than the engine locked inside but there's that real world value there and it's the backing for all the items created through the engine platform that's really interesting i didn't i didn't know that um and you mentioned earlier in the interview about partnering with enterprises and enterprise solutions and

14:33i'm also just curious on you know how engine is going to become one of the main gaming leaders and you know become one of the biggest or partner of some of the biggest gaming companies in the world what what kind of enterprise uh partnerships and you know pathways are you taking to help grow the platform as well well on the one hand there's relationships with

14:53all the gaming development teams we're working with so it's very much an ongoing process where we've learned that the best direction to innovate is in the direction but you know the demand of our clients and partners pulls us and so the platform is was able to be launched as battle tests and stress testers as it was because of the partnerships we have

15:11with various game studios and partners um and we're continuing to work them to understand where their pain points are and so delivering the sdks that they require uh to be able to build effectively with as little friction as possible we're all about kind of removing the friction there and then the enterprise side has been invaluable for understanding

15:29you know what kind of interfaces that are needed to hand over um these projects once they're built to kind of business as usual teams so for microsoft we've been creating a lot of enterprise dashboards involving team management and permissions and this is really about being able to hand something over to your existing team member or community without them worrying that

15:50they're going to click that button that destroys a project permanently immutability is is quite as scary um is it's quite a serious proposition for someone who's told look if you do something wrong it's it's gone forever and i think that's again you part of the the knowledge that we're building here by working with a range of partners but it's about

16:09taking blockchain to that next level it's about putting in the hands of as many people as possible and it is about removing friction and increasing education and removing that fear for interacting with the technology and and so in terms of to kind of return to your question this is about being able to go to bigger partners and bigger projects and say

16:26look these tools are ready for you these are interfaces you can interact with and we're going to be there to support you um but you know you're going to be able to do this yourself and that's the important part that's great to know and we are running out of time alex but uh so you are looking for more enterprise partners potentially are you also looking for just more

16:46gamers or developers or just more wallet users and how can they find out um and get involved with the community definitely in terms of game developers you know actually everyone should jump onto engine.io our website check out the powered by engine page you know explore the games who are using engine you many of them already live so download the wallets

17:06if you haven't already definitely download the wallet uh like i said even more exciting features coming and you jump into the engine games you know these are you some of the most entrepreneurial and innovative people you know i speak to because they they have their own projects they're doing incredible things within the gaming space anyway um but they are using blockchain in ways

17:24that we could not have foreseen and their community is then interacting in these virtual worlds that they could not foresee and it's just an incredibly exciting space to be part of and engine wallet is your virtual backpack your virtual companion uh to you see yourself through these virtual worlds if you're an enterprise and you want uh and you handle virtual

17:42goods you should probably consider doing something uh making doing some blockchain assets turning them into blockchain assets improved and scarcity authenticity provenance ownership really exciting um really exciting sort of use cases open up there so come talk to us and the final part would be the one aspect of the engine platform we haven't spoken about is our upcoming scaling

18:03solution affinity and so this is about you know even further moving those kind of key issues of friction around uh speed and the transfer cost with infinity people will be able to receive and send blockchain assets instantly with no cryptocurrency required and it's going to open up a huge amount of adoption there and so it's an incredibly exciting time

18:23so come speak to us um everyone i always love talking about technology as you might have uh guessed um but yes uh come speak to us we're doing a lot of cool stuff and we definitely have a use case for you definitely that's very exciting and i i didn't hear about the scaling part but i'm looking forward to diving into that i will leave the links to engines

18:42platform and all the social links in the description box below i appreciate you taking the time to come on alex all the best with engine moving forward and let's follow up in the near future fantastic thank you very much you