Tim Dierckxsens on the evolution of NFTs

0:01I'm Ashton Addison from Block West capital for investment pitch media and today on the cryptocoin show we have Tim dierksen's CEO and co-founder of venlee Tim welcome to the show and thank you for taking the time thanks for having me Ashlyn very welcome except to dive into your insights into the nft space how we can get people onboarded that aren't already crypto

0:23Natives and involved in web3 and lowering those technical barriers to entry for mainstream adoption of and tokenized Technology I would love to kick off our conversation with just a high level on what you and your team have built at ventley so far and then we'll dive into all the details yeah that's actually our bed and better right to make it easy for businesses and

0:47end users to embrace those three Technologies so with carried out building wallet Solutions nft tools and our Marketplace Solutions as well and uh with our tools it's really going into the extra mile so that no developer or no end user needs to deal with the difficulty of the blockchain technology themselves great and have you been following the nft space

1:15and the evolution of it so far I feel like we're very early on you know it sort of started with cryptokitties and these digital profile pictures and now expanded into a fine art industry it's also expanding into you know memberships and I feel like it can really add value to all of these other different industries that are outside of web3 and in non-technical Industries as well

1:36where do you sort of see nft sitting right now it's still very early days right if we look at the bands coming in they understand the value of using nfts for IP for licensing for royalty payouts but we also see it as a vehicle for fan engagement we've been developing communities and creating uh token Gates contents so that we can give exclusive

2:03passes towards those wheel plans we also perceive it as a good entry level for a physical items that are maybe more branded for um uh exclusive content and what do you see as sort of the main barriers to why more companies haven't already uh you know adopted this technology and why it's not growing

2:30faster is it to do with the wallets and getting people onboarded and how is your team helping with that I do think um for a long time we've put um the card before divorce and it's all about nft technology it's followed by blockchain technology where um with certainly we've always said the use cases around blockchain is what interests us and the technology is a the

2:56greatest vehicle for value-based transactions and nft is another tool that can simplify that so um our aim is really to enable the businesses to use the technology in the right way and where we take up the security and the ease of use so that in the end doesn't matter if you're exaby or um

3:22I would then call it a mainstream user can use the technology as at hand and it seems nfts are growing out to a lot of different blockchain ecosystems and if you are getting an nft from you know a large company that started to get onboarded into this technology and then you realize it goes into a specific wallet on a specific blockchain it can

3:50get really confusing when there's 10 different blockchains and they're not always cross-compatible with each other and you know all the technical stuff starts getting in the way how does your team deal with that good question actually um on our side we have a blockchain agnostic approach so that in the end our wall technology can Embrace multiple chains and Link it to the steam account

4:17so if you log in with Google Twitter Facebook or email you have your account and then you can have wallets on any chain that we've already integrated and then if you go for example to the marketplace setting or you look into the different law Solutions you have like a dashboard where all of them are aggregated mm-hmm nice and with this nft Marketplace what

4:42sort of the main focus with with the ventley marketplace right now and what's being sold there and what your team uh had as a vision when they initially created the marketplace it's um another problem that we're solving for people that have integrated our first technology using the wallets when we started out back in 2018 we onboarded for example clients such as

5:09the sandbox with the sandbox we were becoming their main value driver for onboarding new users non-cryptal or Tech side users towards the sandbox and they were all getting a blockchain wallet but openc for example as a Marketplace that was the only one that existed at the time um they only added mask as the wallet that was able to interact

5:37with that Marketplace it took them quite a long time to integrate a family as a solution eventually they did but by the time since we have to throw the problem for the client and because you're blocking agnostic as a scope it made sense for us to also provide that Marketplace infrastructure so that businesses would not be limited of uh just a single party

6:06mm-hmm yeah I think it's healthy to have multiple marketplaces where you can buy and sell things and speculate on them as well but also because we're early in nfts I feel like if people are buying and selling nfts to try to make a profit the network effect and the amount of liquidity with you know nfts that aren't super popular like some board ape it can

6:34be tough do you see the struggle in growing an nft Marketplace into like a specific Niche where you get a certain kind of collections or traders that are working on the marketplace to help that or do you go for like the general approach where anybody can post any kind of nft and find other ways to build a network effect to make it increase liquidity

7:01I particularly we would in the long term have the best of both worlds but if you're talking about coaching Market strategy I think we then have to look at the gaming companies and the brands that they're creating collections in the e-commerce space because those two verticals are our go to market and it does need to be a little bit the two because we've positioned our Marketplace

7:27to also be for the peer-to-peer secondary Marketplace and it really connects well with another product that you've recently launched at the Shopify a Shopify app so we have two apps for Shopify now one for Avalanche and one for um polygon and this is then a no code solution to create your own NFC contract uh as a brand or as an influencer uh so

7:56that you can then bring nfts into your own branded store on the platform that you may have today wow very cool and why do you see Shopify as sort of that main uh place where you can you know it's it's funny how sort of a lot of web 3 solutions they also need to still integrate web2 but why do you see that as sort of the Main Avenue to help drive you know the nft

8:26interactions and that community well um office today 2.7 million merchants it is fully integrated in Facebook it's fully integrated in uh Instagram and YouTube so social selling that is already very big in web 2 that power is immediately going to go into effect with one of three and

8:53in this case it is again bringing the power of utilizing the tree the right way into the platforms that have already proven their track record of being an amazing platform so why would we even reinvent the wheel of uh creating a platform from scratch well these backgrounds are doing amazing today definitely yeah and that's a great point you know Shopify is pretty huge and

9:23there are also a lot of other nft wallets or just cryptocurrency wallets that are now integrating nfts and sort of acting as competition as well how do you differentiate and bring a competitive Advantage uh with such an abundance of options of where you can store your nfts uh by providing different types of options so quite a lot of businesses that need wallets they might even be

9:51using something in the back end as a well provider um we don't see that as competition it's just using a different product where we can enable them to grow um with the stopify app it is then where we can connect um the use of selling nfts with um owning or maintaining that in the wallet and then also promoting that further on a secondary Marketplace

10:17whether it's family or openc or another Marketplace our goal is really to enable web 3 to be utilized and to ensure that we can make this amazing technology finally be used in in the appropriate way I agree and Tim you and I both know that nfts aren't just a fad and they will be around in the long term but we are early

10:45days however we've seen the nft run up in the craze last year and you know the volumes on the nft marketplaces drop significantly you know more than 90 percent when people weren't speculating when when the cryptocurrency prices were dropping um where do you see nfts right now at the end of 2022 and where they're going to be in in 2023 and do you think that there will be a

11:13huge uptick in them despite how the cryptocurrency market moves uh yes um I always look back and use the Gardner height cycle for things like this you have the hype you have the crash you have the character of the solution and then if you see the real use cases coming up so um I do think uh nfts will grow in the long term and that more effective use

11:44cases and utility behind it will be leveraged and I heard from a few players about this or the the evolution of nfts and nfts 2.0 as I've heard of it sort of like web 3.0 but uh from moving beyond just profile pictures or you know an access card for a membership like a board a yacht club or something like that where do you sort of see you know

12:12five years down the road the main use case is for for nfts and sort of the industries that you wouldn't traditionally think uh are tech savvy or involved in web3 be one of those great utilities for nft technology well we also see in a piece being used as a certificate right so to build prominence um if you're looking at the companies that want to prove

12:37um carbon Footprints and nft creating this as a proof of record is also one of the use cases that we see that is coming up in in the market if we have to really bet on different types of Industries um it's also where the business models is somewhat shifting do I see it possible that an nft would be the proof of ownership of a buyer

13:05condo eventually it could be but then you're also going to see the entire evolution of um getting an ownership and paying it back to a bond or the asset rather than to a title of a person and I'm not and I don't think we're going to be there anytime soon yeah I feel like there's a lot of uh of sort of more early adopter Industries like gaming as you mentioned I think

13:32will be huge because you know there's the inherent value for people that are playing those games when every item becomes an nft and then you're able to actually extract value from the games you know which previously wasn't really possible without gray markets or third-party markets where you can actually sell off your items individually or collectively and and the

13:55gaming Market is huge and of course they're already tech savvy as well um with venlee moving into 2023 and I'm guessing the gaming Trend will continue as well uh in in the more integration because not a lot of companies have actually integrated nfts into the games but I feel like that will be one of the early adopters um is that something that Bentley is

14:19focusing on in attracting those kinds of people onto the wallet uh uh yes we are focusing on providing more um technology and solutions so that the game developer can start integrating um not just friendly but nft tools and blockchain capabilities inside the game um by enabling it to be integrated

14:48through the game endogens in other words um everything that bendy has been has produced to date it's great for um developer that knows how to integrate our apis but if you're a game developer you're still developing in a different way than a traditional software developer so we need to embrace how they actually develop their games and make sure that our tools can

15:16cater to their needs as well very cool and what is the best way for people to just use the wallet is it on their phone or on the desktop we are bringing a mobile wallet soon but it's not a planned for 2022. So currently it is available on desktop but we've built it in such a way that is mobile or friendly so I regularly use it

15:44on mobile as well very cool and what's the best way for people to follow along with updates for evently and you know check out the marketplace and the nfts best way uh would be a Twitter LinkedIn or Discord sounds great I can leave those links in the description box below as well Tim for the users to get direct access to to ventley and the communities I appreciate

16:11you coming on and your insights into the nft industry all the best with Van Lee moving forward and let's follow up in the near future thanks action pleasure for me to be here