Cirus Foundation lets users earn crypto from web browsing

0:00I'm Ashton Addison from Block West capital for investment pitch media and the crypto Coin Show and today on blockchain interviews we have Daniel Bland co-founder of Cirrus Foundation uh back once again Daniel thank you so much for taking the time today well Ashton uh thank you so much for having us and uh really happy to be here you're very welcome I'm excited to have

0:21Sears back you know recently we spoke with the other co-founder Michael luku it sounds like 2022 has been a productive year for Cirrus despite all of the the craziness that happened all the news in cryptocurrency I feel like you know it was a builder's year and uh all these projects that have a long-term Vision really put their heads down and and we're working on you know building

0:43for the future so I'm excited to hear your insights on on what what happened throughout there and also the projections for 2023 I would love to kick off our conversation with just a little bit from those who aren't familiar with Sears foundation on what Cirrus is all about um how you guys are bringing Innovations into web3 and then we'll dive into all

1:01those details well fantastic that's a great intro and uh Steris was founded to solve a problem we believe the internet as it's currently constructed is broken and we believe that if you surf the Internet instead of the oligarchies making billions of dollars that the owner of the data should be paid for the data so

1:32our entire ethos is predicated on that own your data and own your assets and that has never been more pertinent than what we've seen happen in 2022 so yeah so it's not complicated it's uh you know very very simple we just want to properly distribute the wealth that's been generated in the internet days to

2:00the actual people that own that data great intro and you know there's two important parts of that there's owning your own data and owning your own digital assets as well which is especially important in cryptocurrency I feel like people think about the assets part uh because you know they have some of their Assets in for example FTX and it gets hacked and all of a sudden

2:23you've lost a lot of money right and people are starting to smarten up and realize self-custody and being able to own your own assets is a huge value but I think people don't understand the importance as much as personal data which is very important as well and there's been a lot of hacks and exploits where people's personal information is in almost all of the social medias and

2:45as you mentioned at the beginning the internet's sort of broken almost every of these large companies have all been hacked and their personal information of all the customers have been taken but you don't really see you know in instant reaction from those users because they don't really know what's happening with their data behind you know the the walled Gardens but I feel like it's just

3:04as important of an issue as owning your own you know cryptocurrencies and making sure that they don't get lost as your personal information because I feel like you know more so uh each year people are using products in web 2 where they're they're free and they're like oh it's free you know it must just be because they like us but really they're you know

3:26their value is their personal information and somehow it's being sold off or siphoned away somehow and I feel like that's like an important issue that needs to be solved with web3 yeah you know it's really really gratifying to see this movement of web free uh which is all about controlling your data uh and and managing your assets online uh you know we've been

3:51working on this uh behind the scenes for a few years uh we were web free before there was web three uh the essence of web3 if we you know in the first you know look at the definition the first thing it says is control your data okay okay cool and and why is that important and and it really it goes to the evolution from web 2 to web3 and in web

4:192 let's be clear web 2 had to happen before there could be a web three uh web 2 the oligarchies to their credit spent hundreds of billions of dollars building the internet building the infrastructure that was all done on their back and that was all done on their uh cost and the reality is that most of the web 2

4:47oligarchies started their business without an understanding of how to monetize it you'll never see in Facebook you'll never see in Google's business plan where their initial Dex said we're going to sell online advertising that came after the fact and and they certainly uh took it and ran with it they did really good with it uh you know back when uh the internet was first coming out we

5:14looked at it said well how how's this going to make sense and we thought of a micro payment strategy so that you'd launch a Wall Street Journal and every you know you go on there and you pay half a cent or two cents was really the foundation of what crypto became and of course at that time there wasn't the technology it didn't develop so they said okay well that's not going to

5:36happen and so then somebody and it was really Adventure capital guy said hey you guys are getting a lot of users uh you know these advertisers could really you know migrate to online advertising and it turned into to this huge huge trillion dollar industry that is online advertising and it's much more effective we we don't have to go through the mechanics of how and why it's more

5:59effective but just think about it uh if you can Target people that are looking at a specific product uh online researching it well then if I'm an Advertiser and I advertise you to buy that you're interested because you're looking to buy it as opposed to some sort of broadcast email where you may or may not be looking for for that particular uh product so so web3 is is

6:26therefore the the sake of web 2 uh being broken but web2 did good web2 was fine uh web 2 created a lot of wealth and and as an entrepreneur you have to embrace that and accept that and applaud that nothing wrong with those guys figuring out how to make a bunch of money from our perspective it's the next Evolution as an entrepreneur where is our opportunity as an entrepreneur our

6:53opportunity isn't to compete with Facebook or meta or Google we have to do something different well what's different if we look at it from an entrepreneurial standpoint what we see that's broken is that the owners of the data aren't being paid they're aren't being compensated and that's a flaw blockchain and all the technology that's that's been developed now allows us to

7:15do that so you know people look at web 2 and are are looking at it in a negative way I don't look at it that way I look at web 2 as God bless them for building this beautiful infrastructure that allows us now the next step which is okay you guys had a good run you had a good 20-year run of taking our data monetizing it filling your buckets with cash God Bless but now it's time that we

7:40turn that around and that's really that's what Sirius is all about and frankly that is the real use case today for web 3. if we have to break it down and what's the future of web3 well cool let's start with the fundamental of web3 which is let's take that data that you right now you own but you don't control uh you're in fact every website that you uh go on

8:09they ask your permission to monetize your data so it's not like they're taking it and stealing it they're getting your permission to do it so fine cool that's all good so now let's take it one step further the next step is let's take that and figure out how to pay you for it as opposed to just uh getting access to websites that's a great Point Daniel and yeah

8:34over this 20-year run you know you can look at the revenues from from Facebook and Google and yeah they've done a great job generating billions in Revenue but I think you know as you mentioned there you you do go to these sites and it says something about cookies and it says okay and you're like I'll just click it you don't really know right why you're

8:52clicking but it's actually like authorizing them to to track you to make money from that right and I think that's definitely the next step is like where you know if we're if you're gonna sell advertise advertisements catered to us and we're going to give you our information for that then maybe we should be getting a cut from it yeah it's so basic to me

9:13um that when we looked at it we said why you know it's crazy no one's doing this when we were first doing this and putting this all together uh there was no one doing this the now no web3 and and data okay great that's absolutely what should happen and and so when you talk decentralization uh so there's an evolution from 2.0 to 3.0 where you first have to be centralized to then

9:39understand how you become decentralized and so decentralization in our case is competition competing for the platform of users that are on service and go to different platforms it'll be a competition that's true decentralization from a centralized construct that eventually we all get to decentralization but it's going to be a long time before we get true

10:00decentralization but as long as we have centralized organizations that understand that and support that and embrace that and understand that we have to pay the owners the data along the way then it becomes a much more smooth transition to true and pure decentralization which will be years from now and with you know this example of having advertisements and and being

10:26able to monetize from your own personal information for for the use case of you know receiving advertisements is that the main use case at least what Cirrus is working with I feel like you know obviously monetizing your personal data could work across the web for many different use cases that's right and and so the first thing you look at is what's currently there

10:47and so what's currently there is works great uh the the broken part is not that it doesn't work the broken part is that the money is not being distributed fairly so we're just from our standpoint looking in and say let's let's understand being a conventional Big Data company and then just taking that revenue and giving it to the owners of the data so so when we talk about sort

11:12of the the foundation that's at the fundamental when we talk about web 3 and let's really get into web 3 from a crypto perspective web 3 from a crypto perspective is this D5 play is how do we leverage what we're actually monetizing today and make that more valuable and that's really what Cirrus Foundation the ecosystem that we're very excited about it's not just the ability to pay you for

11:35your data that's cool but the next layer is let's get you into the serious ecosystem with some D5 products and allow you to leverage that and start increasing uh that earn uh in a variety of different ways and this is where we get into financial literacy that I think frankly is lacking in society the the financial illiteracy is rampant uh so these rails allow us to start the

12:02process of teaching financial literacy at a very early age uh if you're 15 years old and surf the Internet you can earn money and you can get in the system and you can learn defy and what that means in terms of leveraging uh the amount of money that you're earning uh through your internet insights which now you don't understand your earning you are you're just not

12:24getting the you're not being paid for it but someone is getting paid for it believe me your insights are being monetized and for people to think that you're not worth something online you are worth a lot online and um so the other aspects of what web3 brings to the table Beyond defy and Beyond a crypto overlay that has to be discovered and this is the frustration that a lot

12:47of people have with web3 you know it's always a fad or it's just a nobody has a concrete use case yet for web3 well I submit to you that the concrete fundamental use case for web3 is being paid for your data because that's real right that's now that's not something that has to be discovered or developed that's today and what's great about Innovation is let's take the fundamental

13:11and then build from that fundamental and that's really what we're excited about it serious Foundation is to come up with these different apps and these D5 products that that we will allow people to experiment with and and and and increase their their value yeah that's a great Point Daniel about people younger people that are you know they're already using the web for

13:34everything and all of their searches and choices are being documented through through the web now it's just about you know being able to monetize or being able to get some value out of you know the value that these companies are capturing from them and you know I feel like it it's a lot it's going to be a lot easier with web3 than it was in the past where you had to

13:56start up your own Corporation and and you know start building a company to make a big business plan to start making some money I feel like there's it's a lot simpler than that and I feel like uh if you mentioned there with D5 and leveraging this it all starts with like a wallet just on the browser you could just have a wallet where all of a sudden you're able to get a little bit and then

14:16from there you can get a lot more well that's right and and again we don't have to reinvent the wheel we just have to redistribute the wealth the wealth is there the the the the money is there we just have to make sure that the owners are getting that money uh and then we say okay so now we remit in in a stable coin for example okay now let's take that let's let's show you how coming

14:38into this serious ecosystem or any of the crypto ecosystems and and leveraging that that value that has been created into uh these D5 products that uh will Define uh the true uh essence of web3 uh in the future the the cool part is that we don't know what is going to be the thing that resonates uh in in true web 3 until it's developed until it's

15:05innovated and that's that's the great thing about Innovation if we go back to when the internet first began you you did not know what was going to be the the winning uh Solutions it was all to be discovered it's search is great now we all understand that but that's not that was not necessarily the case when it first began it was like okay is this going to be cool well turned out to be

15:26very cool uh so those are the things that uh is is in our future with web3 and that's the exciting part about uh in my opinion uh what web3 represents is the future definitely and I know on that advertising use case you know I've seen some companies try to you know get a little bit of monetization for you know say there's Avid Shoppers they're always

15:48on Amazon they're always buying stuff and like they're pretty valuable uh when it comes to capturing information but sometimes you know they they don't equate the value that they think they're worth to the value that they're actually getting in the wallet maybe say they're getting a couple dollars a month or even less um is there ways that you foresee as

16:10Sears grows out to be able to you know Max it maximize that monetization of like I want to focus on my personal information and try to monetize from it as much as I can yeah you know right now uh industry standard the average consumer to the Big Data world is we're about nine dollars per month uh so you have a family of three or four

16:36um you know that's uh that's a number right that's a that's a several hundred dollars uh and that is almost in an adversarial relationship the advertisers and the and the and the uh the consuming public kind of have this love-hate relationship with advertisers and and so if we go down that next level and and understand that we're now from a big data perspective and from the serious

17:01perspective we're actually your agent working as a partnership with you and with the advertisers what happens is that the information becomes much more granular and much more valuable to the advertisers and ultimately than to the user and to the owner of the data so that's the the cool part is that we believe we can expand dramatically on that nine dollars a month uh in in over

17:24a period of time and understanding that new markets going to be developed with this idea that the advertisers are working closely with the the consumer who's willing to give more information not less and more information is more valuable and why would I give more information well if you think about advertising number one we have to understand advertising is never going away

17:47in a capital Society that's just not going to happen so if you know people say well you can block ads well think about no ads How would how would the the Commerce operate with no ads so we understand that advertising is going to be there so if we understand that then if I'm a consumer I want to have relevant ads uh in that I am pitched right so if we have how do we

18:13get more relevant ads well the the Big Data companies have to know more about you and and that's a scary part unless you're part of the equation if you're part of the equation if you're part of the monetization model say well okay yeah I I know I'm being monetized anyway so if I just take one more step and now understand I'll be paid for that now I can get into this idea of how much

18:33information I want to share and again Cirrus allows you the opportunity to share as little or as or as much as you want so you can not share a lot that's fine you'll get paid less or you can share more and you paid more and and when you literally understand and the the the economics of that it becomes pretty exciting that there's some real opportunity and then we take that again

18:53we take that core fundamental value and then we leverage that into the service ecosystem where you can now start investing and start doing different things in with our platform that allows you to grow that into a substantial return potentially I mean this is all this is all the you know this is this is the potential of what we're representing no that's very exciting and you know

19:19going back to the beginning I was speaking about you know I I listened to the the year-end review for for for Sirius and you know a lot of the blog chain companies that just heads down building hard throughout all of 2022 and despite whatever is happening on this exchange or that we understand that now this is a big picture and I think you know the advertisers in the 2000s

19:40understood that you know we're not just going to build this for the next two years you know Google ads has been running for for 20 plus years and it will be the same with web 3 advertising as well so I want to bring it up to the present and the future in the next steps for 2023 I know your team's been building a lot maybe you can talk about you know sort of where you guys are at

20:00and what are the next steps for getting this monetization into the hands of the users that want to use it yeah great question and uh you're right 2022 for Cirrus was all about build was all about how do we build this engine how do we uh build this this front-facing uh interface uh and we spent a lot of time on that a lot of

20:27resources on that and mid mid-year the decision was made to to Really uh be bold and go after sort of that ultimate uh prize from the user experience and user interface which has this beautiful elegant product uh that nobody else has seen uh in this space everybody that you know we looked at the competition and

20:54and that basically are wallets right if you look at the end of the day everything that we're doing bottom line is monetization so you have to have a wallet before you monetize that that's the that's the tool by which you are paid right so we looked at the competition and frankly we were unimpressed we said well there's no innovation here there's nothing that's

21:16that looks nice so um we engaged uh a very formidable Design Group out of Silicon Valley and in our opinion uh they have built something that is absolutely stunning uh and we're close to releasing that very soon and we're very excited about it we think that it'll be award-winning

21:44and blow people's socks off when they see it I'm not sure if you've seen it Ashton have you seen the no I haven't seen it yeah yeah so we're yeah I'll have to send you a a little sneak peek but it's it's stunning and that's important for us because at the end of the day um if you're not doing something that the user is feels good about then you're not

22:13really meeting the expectations and and so we want to exceed expectations in terms of the user interface um and and the the user experience uh and and we think we're going to transform the industry with with this product and uh so so building that product has taken a long time it's taken us longer than we we thought but as it turns out it was great because uh 22 had

22:36its issues with uh the market in general so it was great to be in build mode and uh yeah so we're we're excited about that and uh you know it's it's also opened up uh other other marketing opportunities not just on the data but the um owning your assets part of it and controlling your assets that's also a big piece of this and the self-custodial uh component that you talked about

23:02earlier is a is a major initiative that we're working on and and so we've been building that strategy and we'll be rolling that out here very soon in the in the new year very exciting I'm looking forward to it I'd love to get a sneak peek and would love to have that discussion you know on the show again when when it's released and and we can take a look at it to the

23:23general public um yeah and yeah we'll definitely get you the early early look at it and and we want you to review it uh and and then talk about it and you know this is the cool part is we're going to get these uh groups to take a look and and tell us what they think and uh you know we've been doing it ourselves internally with with groups and obviously uh uh you know

23:46different teams but uh you know we're we're convinced this is going to be a game changer in the marketplace now it's very exciting Daniel and I think it's it's a great uh application for you know people that are just everyone's browsing the web you know a very small percentage of people browsing the web are deeply involved with cryptocurrencies and trading and that

24:07kind of stuff but almost everybody is is browsing the web to some extent um and they all have their data being tracked so you know I feel like that emphasis on the user interface and uh just the user experience uh being like having that bridge from web 2 where it doesn't really change your experience you're still browsing the web like you normally would but you're getting the

24:30benefits of web3 and that data monetization without really having to understand you know blockchain 101 read the books and things because it does matter it's working for you already in the background that's the key and and we want to have that seamless we wanted to have that completely uh so seamless that it is no different than what you're doing today

24:52the only difference is is there's a little thing on your phone or on on your uh browser that says hey you earn this much money today um and wow what's wrong with that and and you know from a crypto perspective it's like okay uh you know we remit and stable coin okay that's nice so but here's an opportunity to take that and leverage that into a D5 product into the

25:15into the ecosystem of of the Cirrus world if you will and that's really you know that's kind of the the essence and that's the what we need in the industry uh in the in the crypto industry in at large is true use cases and true utility and and and really um having a reason to be there as opposed to just saying while we're here

25:43so why you know what do you actually do uh and a lot of projects have a problem answering that question uh you know ours is a pretty simple answer you know ours is well uh we're going to show you that there's real money that you're not getting in when you're on the internet that you should be getting and now uh you can leverage that into some some real cool D5 products that will uh

26:08increase that amount into a substantial amount potentially amazing well thank you so much Daniel for your insights into this and I'm excited to see the launch of it um I would love for some place uh where the viewers can follow along you know leading up to the launch of it and prior to doing a video after it's launched where's the best place for people to

26:30learn more about this and follow along for that launch yeah cirrusfoundation.com is our website and we're going to be updating the website here very soon that will uh give people the opportunity to see what we're about with the with the launch of of the product and uh we're very excited about that and and again uh thank you so much for taking the time and we'll get you uh

26:53the early look here and uh you've been a great uh supporter of Cirrus we really appreciate your support thank you so much Daniel I'll leave those links in the description box below looking forward to the launch in our next discussion and let's just follow up in the near future thanks Ashton thank you sir