CheddaToken builds a community driven crypto project

0:01I'm Ashton Addison from the Cryptocoin Show and today on Blockchain Interviews, we have Stu, co-founder of Chedda Token. Stu, welcome to the show and thanks for taking the time. >> Yeah, thanks. Really appreciate it. I'm glad to be here. >> Yeah, excited to dive into the community that your team has been building out with Cheddar Token. Uh I know there's

0:20quite an interesting backstory. I would love to start out with just sort of a high level on, you know, what is Chedda and the Chedda token and then we can dive into everything. >> Yeah. No, that sounds great. Yeah, just from a from a high level, it's a a community token. Um, we are trying to build out uh you know, kind of bridge the the real life and digital life. Uh

0:43there's always been a focus on um you know, really the digital side for for tokens and and crypto in general. And um we want to kind of bridge that that gap between doing things in real life and and digital life. And so we have um we've had gettogethers, we call them gettogethers where we'll have meetings and everyone kind of gets together. We'll have some food, music events, you

1:04know, kind of a big hangout. Um additionally, you know, we would like to get people involved with, you know, going to sports games, concerts. Um >> just all sorts of of things like that to really, >> you know, put some faces to the crypto world that you're you're trading with. It's not just totally anonymous all the time. Um, of course it is crypto still,

1:27so you've got that option if you want it. But, um, we've we've built out a uh a space in the metaverse as well. So, you know, >> we could do digital, you know, quoteunquote digital real life stuff. But, um, that's the that's really the goal there is, bridging the the real world and the digital world with us. >> Yeah. No, I love that because I feel like there's a lot of people, especially

1:49ones who haven't really got involved in digital assets yet, that they really need some kind of connection to figure it out. And uh, you know, just it's like paper money you can hold in your hand. Crypto, even though it's on your mobile wallet in your phone, maybe, it's still like there's this disconnect. Um, and I've spoken at crypto meetups and clubs

2:10for years, and it's just so much extra value to have like a community that of like-minded people that you can talk about uh, digital assets with. >> So, we've definitely seen that as well. Yeah. With with their existing community, a lot of them this is their first time at getting into anything crypto and just being able to have that connection, you know, builds out a

2:29little bit more trustworthiness. >> Very cool. and what inspired this and started this in in your journey in in blockchain and then and how you and the team actually started Chedda. >> Yeah, so I just it's a little bit of a backstory here. This this goes all the way back to man 2021 and we've got uh Boon here is another co-founder of ours as well and and she'll she'll pipe in

2:54I'm sure occasionally here but going back all the way in 2021 uh original group launched it um and it it went viral pretty quickly. Uh couple of NBA players jumped on promoting it. Um, and I think the market cap ran up to about $2 billion just real fast. >> Um, it had it it was back in the time when a lot of uh uh staking

3:22um was going on and so we had a a staking contract that was built out by a third party developer. Um, they wound up rugging and and pulling a lot of the funding out of that. Um, so that obviously crashed the token. Um, a lot of the community stuck around. um to kind of repair what was done. Um the the people that came on to repair it then also went and rugged. And so at

3:51that time Boon >> Yeah, that was fun. That was so much fun back then. >> That time Boon and I were just uh community members. We had, you know, bought in with our own money and um we're just, you know, we hadn't been involved in the development. Um we we went ahead and took over things. Um and this we started this process maybe two years ago. It's been such a long

4:17time now. Um we we raised a little bit of funding and we actually went in and um to completely sever from the old guard, we rewrote a new contract uh and we're calling it, you know, Chedda V2. Um we did a little bit of a a silent you know ghost launch uh earlier this year and we had a claim process. So if you add the original Chedda, you know, we big things we really wanted, you know,

4:45coming from the community ourselves, we wanted to make sure the community was made right as possible. And so, um, we held a claim when we we initially launched, if you held, you know, the first version of Cheddar still at a certain date, we took a snapshot on the blockchain, you had the right to claim one to one old token for new new token, and that was that was it. Um, so

5:06everyone who wanted to claim a new token in the new token, they were able to do so, make them whole. Um, and then, uh, we were able to now be where we're at with V2. So, it's a completely clean contract, totally severed from uh everyone else and and and allows us now to go down the path of really hammering in what was we all thought be one's purpose and what we saw as the

5:35vision and uh continuing that legacy. So, >> without the rugs and without the bad actors. >> Yeah. >> And that was an absolutely free claim too for everyone to get. It wasn't um it was pretty well thought out, you know, that anybody that went through all of the pain up until then and they stuck around, that was basically call it a a reward for, you know, going through I

6:02call it trauma bonding. You know, we all kind of trauma bonded as a community. And there was we had an old Discord and everyone was very involved in there. We all talked to each other all the time. um you know and also utilizing a lot of people's knowledge and and base and ideas to get this relaunch going. But one of the biggest things was trying to

6:26be um which you don't ever really see in this sector is very fair to to the people that really did get hurt. So it was almost the long and short of of like the peasants storming the castle, right? And they take over the project. So, it's not just, you know, myself and Stu. It's a huge community of people that just kind of got together and decided to

6:51just, you know, >> relaunch and keep going with with um a lot of the utility that that we had before. >> Yeah. >> So, >> truly was wallet holders. Truly truly wallet holders. That's it. >> Yeah. I I've I've se I've seen around, you know, in the distance like these what they call CTO's or community takeovers or truly decentralized community- based projects. Um, but I

7:19actually haven't spoken to any in-depth and and there's always a backstory to that. You know, how did the community take over and how is it sort of staying decentralized? Um, so it's really fascinating to hear the story. Well, one of the things that Stu left off is it wasn't just um one situation or two situations. There was actually three situations.

7:42So, so, okay, I'm using the word situation, aka rug. I mean, we literally were triple rugged. Triple three times and all of these people just kind of stuck together. And I think one reason they stuck together is that during the the original launch and everything, all of us had met in person. Like you could put a face to Boon, >> you could put a face to Stew, you could

8:10put a face to a million, you know, >> four or 500 people that were in this group, you know. Um, we would have these gettogethers in person. They were big parties, too. You know, there was a at a at a brewery and another one at a bar and restaurant and people are out partying and hanging out and talking to each other about crypto or talking about each other in real life. And

8:33>> you just got to know these people. And the the one thing that kind of just drew Stu and I in to to really step up and and do this is number one, both of us had, >> you know, a decent background in crypto. And I always say I understand just enough to be dangerous, you know, like I can read blockchain. I know where things are going. Um, Stu understands a lot of

8:57the analytics and the technical side of it. and we have another person on our team and uh you know it it's it's been a a big journey but when you meet people it it's another level of emotion too where you just want to do the right thing you know and you want to help and you want to and then you know of course you're pissed off too you know you're angry and you all kind of get together

9:22and and and bond and when I stood around at these parties and I saw people in their cheddar hats and their cheddar shirts and their Chedata necklaces and high-fing and all the guys are broing out and you know there's women there and and then they've got their children there and and everybody is just there. It's just another level of familiarity that you know makes you kind of come

9:47together. So that's a little bit of that you know story is how we kind of just sort of dove in. >> Yeah. No, sounds like a good time. Um, and Stu, with all of that adversarial actions that happened and now rewriting into V2, where, you know, where does it stand in the security and the strength and ensuring that everything goes uphill in a good way from here?

10:14>> Yeah. And so I I I think the big thing is um, you know, we didn't change from a tokconomic standpoint, we didn't change too much uh, on the contract. Um the the big thing that we did add in is the ability to move everything over into a dow at a at a point. Um we we are in the process of putting that all together. Um Boon's had a really good vision on that.

10:41I kind of agree with her, but it's one of those things where with it with it being really pretty nent in our our relaunch and trying to get the t the token off the ground, um you can't just throw these things into a Dow and expect it to to to go, you know, take off on its own. And so, um Boon and myself and others on the team kind of see ourselves as a shepherd to get it into the to the

11:05Dow. Um that's the ultimate goal is is get it into the DAO. Then we can have the really community-based uh token that all decisions get made through the community. You know, we'll have a a mechanism for, you know, submitting proposals, voting on proposals. Um you know, Boon was talking about the social aspect of getting together. you can vote on gettogethers and stuff, but

11:32you know, we also would like to have um spots for people to get in, go network. You know, you're all in a business together or you're in the same industry and you want to go network people in that industry. We have a a connection for that. um uh build out platforms and stuff like that for people to get together. Uh uh not just from a you know party social

11:53aspect, but also from a a networking um you know spreading knowledge you know helping people not just become more knowledgeable about Cheddin but crypto in general or any other subject people want to talk about. Mhm. Definitely. And with regards to the DAO and I'm curious when you have these inerson meetups and especially if there's newer entrance into crypto

12:17getting involved, is there an advantage to having it on uh this blockchain versus that blockchain and the token and making it easy for newer entrance to adopt? Yeah, you know, we that's that's funny you ask that because Moon can tell you about it too, but we we we flip-flopped back and forth when we were relaunching V2 whether or not they >> on Ethereum. We looked at arbit arbitum

12:42arbitum um Salana base you know a couple of other >> chains out there and um the original is written on Ethereum we went ahead and just stayed with Ethereum um the the security you know make it's an ERC20 token the security backing of it uh it's hard to beat the amount of devs that are working on Ethereum if if we needed to uh ever update anything or change

13:09something we to find a dev to help us out on Ethereum really easily. Um, additionally, all the work that the Ethereum Foundation has done in updating the the network lately, you know, when when it first launched, people were making trades on Uniswap and every trade cost you $150. So, you know, it was so expensive just to do any sort of transaction. >> Now, it's just a couple of cents. It's

13:32it's made it much more affordable. Um I and for us that was the big thing was the affordability of making a trade. I would say most of our people on the first one you got some large whales that come in and buy you know thousands of dollars of tokens at a time. A lot of people are buying a hundred bucks at a time, $10, you know, $50. >> And if you have to pay $150 to make a

13:58trade to buy $50 worth of tokens, it's like it doesn't really make much sense. And >> so >> we we looked at all the other chains when we were launching V2 to decide if you know something made more sense and at the end of the day with the the advancements that Ethereum's made, we we stuck around with Ethereum. >> Yeah, I think that's a smart choice. Um

14:17all of those options are the ones that I would be thinking of as well for top viable options and it seems like some of these layer twos are get getting a lot of traction. Uh but the the costs on Ethereum and just the network effect, it's the biggest of of them all and the costs are pretty low at the moment. >> So let's hope it stays that way. And you

14:38know, I think there's always the ability to to pivot into layer twos on Ethereum without having to redo everything >> uh like you would if you went to Salana or something. So >> yeah, and the other thing too is you know we mentioned before a lot of the people uh who are in it now were firsttime crypto people and so making as simple to onboard them as possible was

14:59really big. Some of the layer twos have, you know, confusing bridges that people would have to, you know, go buy Ethereum or some other ERC20 token to, you know, USDC or, you know, stable coin, then bridge it and swap it and then go buy and it's just like, let's keep it as simple as possible. you can go use your Coinbase wallet, connect up to Uniswap

15:22and buy some Chedda. You know, it's >> Yeah, that was a that was a huge thing, you know, that um a lot of the people that were originally in Chedda, they had never even had Bitcoin or Ethereum, let alone, you know, h having to onboard people. I remember back in the day, hey, you have to do A, B, C, and D. And then, you know, they're like, oh my god, you

15:43know, the gas is as much as what I'm buying. So, you know, when when those um levels came down, it just made sense to us to to keep it familiar to people. I if that makes sense. I'm a huge fan of of quite a few projects out there that we could have launched on and and I would say I we probably took about 10 months of of just diving in and interviewing developers and looking at

16:09teams and and you know, only to circle right back to to where we started. And it it I think what it did was it just confirmed the fact that that that's where we should be and that's where we're going to relaunch and and that's exactly what we did. And we found that during the claim uh process um we had a really good development team build that contract and and do the um the

16:33onboarding on the front end and it was very very seamless for people. So that was super important that you know we understood that a lot of people had a basic knowledge and we didn't want to make it even more difficult over what had already happened before. So that that was one of the huge decision factors. >> Yeah. Usually the first choice is the best and uh I've and especially right

16:59now because Ethereum is being picked up by major institutions and uh they're buying billions and the ecosystem seems like it's continuing to grow although it already has the largest network effect. So >> that's great. And Stu, you mentioned back in the day in the original launch, there was also like a staking mechanism that you know it went south in the end,

17:21but I think that actually adds an interesting value to the ecosystem. Is there any kind of uh token utility or interactions that can happen within the token besides just holding it in the ecosystem right now? >> No. you know, and that is something we did we went back and forth a lot on is like, do we bring back staking? Um, you know, I think part of the reason that it

17:45ran so hard so fast on the original one is it was a limited liquidity pool uh on unis swap and so >> um the staking mechanisms obviously brought around as a way to help out liquidity and stuff like that and >> um we haven't implemented not to say that we won't ever um >> I I think we need to get a little bit further building out the community stuff before we do anything like that again.

18:11Um, it would be uh the the the bright side is the the the dev team. Um, it's a a group called Rockinblock that we've worked with to build out the new contract. They're total professionals. They're awesome. They they helped us really well. Um, we could go back to them at any time and and say, "Hey, let's let's get a staking contract put together so we can improve liquidity."

18:34But, um, I don't think we're there yet. Um, it's not something we're we're we're exploring at the moment. Um, but it's always on the back of our mind. For sure. >> For sure. That's good to know. And in terms >> I feel like I'm just going to pop on subject real quick. Sorry about that. >> I think one of the biggest optics with us too is that I wanted people to

18:55realize, >> you know, when we relaunched, it wasn't just to pump the token. You know, we wanted some stability. >> And that's where we are now. like you know we we ran pretty hard pretty quick on that relaunch too >> because we have so many people that you know they were excited they were ready for this but we wanted to give it a little bit of stability we didn't want

19:17to go out and >> just start onboarding you know NBA guys or or or MMA guys or anything like that in the beginning just kind of give it some stability let everybody regroup listen to them too with their ideas and everything on on on our roadmap, you know, onto the DAO, right? So, with with that, it also to me gave the optic that the new foundation this is built on is

19:46not there to just pump and dump. You know, we're here, we're building, we're working on things in the background. One of the biggest things to me was two of the biggest things was working with Rock and Block who are complete professionals. you know they are complete professionals and also you know getting on with crowd create those were two huge accomplishments for for a token

20:11like this so >> that's all I wanted to pop in about >> good and um wi with the road map the entrance of a DAO and also you mentioned Stu about inerson meetings digital meetings um and then the discord which seems like it's pretty active so what's the >> activity level like you know how often are you guys actually doing these kinds of meetups or like working in the

20:36Discord? >> Yeah, we haven't actually had a get together yet since we've done the V2 launch. Um I know we've been >> Boon's been talking about getting one going. Um >> it's been since it has been a relatively small group, you know, it's large to me and Boon, but comparatively to the whole crypto world, it's a relatively small group that's been there. Uh now it's

20:58been a little bit geographically uh isolated to maybe like the west coast. Um so we haven't had we've had I don't know over the life when it was going and blowing we had two or three of them uh out out in uh the West Coast area and then um but that's been about it. We we would love to get it to grow with the community so that we could do you know maybe once a quarter um

21:24something like that uh at different cities around the US. you know, >> obviously we're going to have to take into account, you know, where the demographics are most. You know, you can't have a a party for one out in >> the middle of nowhere. But, um, >> uh, that was also one of the big pushes though for us to get some metaverse >> space available is now we can, you know,

21:47maybe reach out and have a game night or movie night or something. uh or you know once we get to our DAO establishment we could have board meetings in the the metaverse um you know where we can go ahead and still have a space for people to get together and interact socially um you may not be you know quote unquote face to face but you could still you

22:09know connect with your fellow community members and stuff like that. >> Definitely. Yeah. Well, it sounds like you guys need to plan a big party for this V2. Um, you know, >> I know we've we've been tossing around like Vegas and stuff and having a big big blowout party there and so maybe maybe that's still on the road map here here soon, but we've got to get those

22:28details together. >> Definitely. So, is the best place to follow along with the updates for the events and the DAO and everything is mainly in Discord? >> Yeah, that that would be our most active uh piece of social media. Um, we do have Twitter or I guess X. Um, we've got an Instagram, but uh most of our uh just and Boon and I usually pop in a couple

22:55times a day, you know, we're we're around in in Discord and so if you ever want to reach out and talk to us, that's the best way to get to us. Um, >> I'd say >> that sounds great. And, uh, you mentioned the DAO on the road map. Um is there any more details on that or any other things that you wanted to mention in terms of uh upcoming stuff? >> Um you know really it's the the Dow is

23:20again you know kind of like I said before with like the uh you know the technology and the the idea behind the actual token. Nothing too groundbreaking. It's it's going to be you know essentially a a board that's elected by the community. Um you can you can propose you know you can put in proposals um we can then put it up for a vote by the community and and there'll

23:45be a there'll be a mechanism for um uh how you vote you know the number you know it's not just a it's not going to be just a onetoone you know someone can come in and buy a billion tokens >> and they they then control essentially the Dow there'll be a a quadratic mechanism to the number of tokens you have or being able a vote. Um, keep it as, you know, we really want to keep it

24:08democratic as possible. >> Um, that's that still has a little bit of work and development to to get built out. I'd say we're gosh 8 to 12 months out before having that really in place. >> Um, outside of that, you know, we we've got um some NFT assets that we want to launch out as well. Um, I think this is a really interesting part because, uh,

24:36and and Ben and I talk about this all the time too, but like we've seen NFT market is, you know, compared to, you know, 3, four years ago when it was really going off, >> it's not as strong of a market anymore. You know, people don't want to just have buy a PFP profile picture anymore and just be a digital asset. Um going in with the theme of Chedda being, you

24:59know, bridging the gap between digital and real life, you want to have, you know, swag associated with NFT, but um it also gets you, you know, access to VIP >> parties or, you know, stuff like that. It's not just a here's a piece of art, you know, it's a actual connection to real world stuff. Well, yeah, we have a lot of people that are in the community that are I hate to

25:26use the word well-connected, but but they are, you know, and so if you want to get, you know, we would send uh we do a giveaway and wallet holders would be VIPs at an MMA fight or an NBA game and that was literally a phone call to someone in the community, you know, and >> the difference is is we knew them. I like I have their cell number, you know,

25:50it's not just me contacting someone on Discord. And even better yet, all of those people have reached back out. They were in the claim process and they're like, "Let us know what we need to do to help out. We're here." You know, so coming up with with all the incentivized um uh uh items and things like that are are where it's at, you know, and and people do they they love that. So when

26:18we would do a giveaway, it was always a big deal, you know, and you know, we do these token necklaces, you know, and everyone just goes bananas over them, you know, and they're fun and everybody has one and you get a chain and you get a chain and you get a chain and, you know, so associating that NFT with some of the giveaways and the tangible, you know, you're you're making things more

26:41tangible also in life and and in the virtual world and digital world. So, uh, making that crossover, that was always a lot of fun and we're definitely deeply involved in in integrating all of that into those NFTts. >> Yeah, that sounds really interesting. I definitely think uh NFT collection or a few uh and and mixing in real world value in it as well uh would would

27:06benefit Chedda token. So, I'll be looking forward to checking that out. Um, I I can leave the link for the Discord and the other socials, the platform in the show notes below as well. >> Yep, that'd be great. >> Awesome, guys. I really appreciate you taking the time. Uh, wishing you guys all the best on everything in the community. Uh, looking forward to seeing

27:26some real world events or metaverse events pop up, NFT collection, DAO, everything else that you guys are working on and wishing you all the best and would love to follow up again in the near future. >> Yeah, sounds great. We look forward to giving you some updates as we uh knock them out.