(upbeat music)
>> Welcome back everyone,
this is CUBE's coverage here in Monaco.
I'm John Furrier your host of theCUBE.
Monaco Crypto Summit presented by DigitalBits.
Media partners, Cointelegraph and theCUBE.
A lot of great stuff going on here,
DigitalBits and the ecosystem around the world
has come together to talk about the next generation
NFT environments, Metaverse. Blockchain,
all the innovations going up and down the stack
of the decentralized world
that will be soon a reality for everybody.
We have great guest, David Lucatch here
who's the co-founder Aftermath Islands Metaverse,
which I got a little sneak preview of,
but David thanks for joining me.
>> Thanks, John.
Great to be here.
>> We had dinner the other night at Nobu.
It's great to know you,
get to know your background. >> Thank you. Stellar pedigree.
You've run public companies.
You've been involved in tech media across the board
and this is a shift we've seen like we've never before.
Perfect storm, technology change, cultural change,
business model transformation, all around decentralization,
crypto, token, economics,
decentralized applications, Metaverse.
I mean, come on.
>> And digital identity.
>> Digital identity, which you're involved in.
Take us through, what are you working on?
Take a minute to explain what you're working on
and then we'll get into it.
>> So Aftermath Islands is really a combination
of three things.
Digital identity, the ability to prove who you are
because we think the internet,
and I think everyone would agree, the internet's broken.
Nefarious actors, bad actors can be anywhere,
hacks, fakes, bots.
So by being able to prove that you're a real person,
not necessarily verifying your identity,
but prove that you're a person can add a lot of benefits
to everyone in the ecosystem.
Second thing is we combine that
with avatars NFTs and credentials
because I'd like to represent myself
as a little more buff than I am and maybe a little taller.
And then the third thing is we put it in a Unreal Engine.
So real realistic, photorealistic game engine metaverse
that requires no downloading.
It's all pixel streaming, just like you'd stream Netflix.
You can stream the game.
>> I want to ask 'cause I know it's a hard problem,
'cause I've asked a lot of people the same question.
The Unreal Engine is really powerful
and the imagery is amazing like gaming.
We all know what it looked like.
It's hard.
If not everyone's getting it right,
what makes it so special?
How are you guys cracking the code?
>> Well, I think it's our experience.
We've worked for major entertainment companies,
major technology companies, major sports companies.
So just to use your word
because want to be humbled about this,
but we do have a great pedigree.
We've also got brought great people to the table.
So having a platform isn't enough.
We've got great creators and we've got great storytellers.
So we've got the Nicieza brothers.
Mariano is illustrator
and former special projects editor at Marvel.
And his brother, Fabian is our storyteller
who's the co-creator of Deadpool.
So we've got great people.
And with Unreal Engine 5
we've really taken it from the ground up.
We've looked at it and we've really combined it
with new GPU cloud serving and pixel streaming.
So that the individual that's involved, engaged
immersed is now really playing it
without having to download a graphics package.
>> Yeah, and also you dropped some names there
and some brands. I know there's a lot more.
At dinner we talked a lot about them.
You know all the top creators.
And again, I love the creator culture.
That's kind of new buzzword that's been around,
but ultimately it's artists building stuff.
Application developers in the software world,
movies and film, art, art and code is kind of coming together.
It's the same kind of thing. >> Exactly.
Media and coding, it's like the same mindset.
Creative, crazy good. >> Exactly.
>> Smart in a good way.
In the blockchain, it's harder because you've got
all this underlying infrastructure
and stuff to provision and build
often created, say, oh man, it's like doing chores.
It's like, I just want to build cool stuff.
I don't want to get in the weeds of all the tech.
This is like whoever cracks the code
can unleash that heavy lifting.
So the artists can feel good
about kicking ass, taking names.
>> Well, I'm being a little sly here
because we've sort of broken it into three areas
and we've used blockchain to bookend the platform.
So we still think that gaming in the interactive platform
has to have centralization.
It has to have decision making.
We have a great community between Twitter
and Discord we have over 30,000 people
and we have organizations that have already
spawned themselves up or spun up
to manage our land ownership
and some of our guilds for some of our professions.
But at the same time, they're allowing us to make decisions
based on what the community wants.
I've heard recently, I don't want to say it's a horror story,
but it's been difficult that consensus based models
for development have to get consensus
and not everybody agrees.
You still need a leadership.
You still need a captain on a ship
to make sure that (indistinct).
>> The dictatorships aren't work going to well.
Linux tried that and they'd worked for a while
but when they moved over to,
we're going to make some decisions, have an opinion,
whether centralization is faster,
consensus systems can be diverse and time consuming.
>> Well, they can be political as well.
It can be, so at the front end we've got digital identity
and that's all blockchain based.
And at the back end, we have over 20 services
including DIDs and DIDComm,
which is decentralized identifier communication.
And all our services are blockchain based,
but in the middle connected to NFTs blockchain
and everything else and to our digital identity,
we have a game platform or open world platform
that is centralized built in Unreal Engines
so that we can make those decisions
that's put on individual development.
It's an architecture.
>> David: It is.
>> This is essentially an operating environment.
You can have the benefits of the decentralized,
own your data, own your identity
and then have the middle be the playground and built.
Now that has to get done faster
and you're constantly iterating.
>> Exactly. >> So you need to have that.
>> Exactly.
>> What are people saying about this?
To me I think that makes a lot of sense.
>> People are very intrigued.
We're getting a lot of traction.
First of all, Unreal Engine in the middle, brands love it
because it provides a realistic view of a brand.
Brands have spend hundreds of millions of dollars
building brand equity and they don't necessarily
want a cartoon representation of their brand.
So brands love it.
We showed a video here at the Monaco Crypto Summit
of videos available online on YouTube,
but we're showing realistic.
We can create realistic avatars.
So people are really excited about what we're doing.
>> David, I think one of the things
that I've had controversy statements in the past
that got all the purists, going back in 2018,
throwing tomatoes at me, but other halves like loving it.
'Cause at that time there was dogma
blockchain's got to be done.
It was slow and gas.
It wasn't that.
So why?
I can use a database.
Now we use the blockchain of smart contracts.
That's what you want to do. You want to have that locked in.
You want immutability.
So again, this opportunities to advance faster
and not have to get stuck in the dogma
but maybe get it back to it later.
>> I agree. >> Database is a great example.
>> Agreed. I think over time the community
will take over the entire platform.
But I think at the beginning you have to have, again,
you have to have a rudder on a ship to make it go somewhere.
>> It's called product market fit.
>> Exactly. >> You got to get to the market.
With the product, people like that's, I want that.
>> Exactly.
>> Unreal Engine is hard.
I want to know some of the people you worked with,
because I think what I like about what you're working on
is that you are, and I think the great poster child
in terms of the organization of a group of people
that are pros that want to do great work in a new world
with the kind of experience and tools that they had
in their old world, faster, cheaper, better, more control.
>> When we were there at Web1, we're there at Web2.
And now with Web3, we have the ability to fix
some of the things that we thought were wrong
with Web1 and 2 and move into the ownership economy.
And really for us, we've got a great team of people
around the world that we work with.
And we're starting to bring in larger organizations
to support us.
Our digital identity, we're really working with the backbone
at IBM and digital identity is very different
in blockchain than is crypto.
And we're working with great people in crypto now.
And we announced today that we're minting
our native token DUBS with DigitalBits.
So we're really excited about that.
>> John: Congratulations.
>> Yeah.
>> Let me ask you a question 'cause I love the fact
that you borrowed multiple ways of innovation.
Again, I admit you on that with shared experience there.
Different ride for different waves.
What have you learned and shared to folks
who are going to dip their toe
and get on their surfboard, so to speak?
I use the California metaphor
'cause we're both Californians.
What is Web3 wave like?
How's it different from 2?
What's the learnings?
Can you share experience, observation
anything around what you're doing now
so they can get insight into this wave?
>> Well, Web1 and Web2 were broken.
You could never go in,
I think we had this discussion.
You could never go into an electronic store
in the real world, write your information down
on a piece of paper and expect
that you'd walk out of the store with a purchase.
But we can type in information that is non-verified
until I could take my friend's credit card,
know where they live and use it.
By using digital identity at a front end,
we create one user, one account.
That user can have thousands of verifiable credentials
around them and hundreds of avatars.
So I think what we've really learned is the ability
to progress in a way that that really puts data back
in the hands of consumers
and makes them the owner of their identity.
By starting there, we have a world in front of us
that is valuable to marketers, valuable to brands,
and valuable to individuals.
And whether it's education,
whether it's government services, whether it's retail,
everything can be built on that simple premise
that I am myself.
>> It's interesting.
There's a concept in technology that we called presence.
You're present at an event.
You're present at a store.
You're present and some reality physically
and you have credentials around that presence contextually.
>> David: Exactly.
>> You're saying you can have one NFT,
one digital identity or identity
and have multiple identities that have context all stored.
>> All stored.
In an avatar. It's like changing your suit.
Hey, I'm going into the Apple store.
I'm now my Apple John.
>> And think of it this way.
Brands can now connect with you and give you promos,
give you product based on the information
that you're willing to share with them
about your real person,
and your avatar becomes your intermediary.
So your payment information stored
within your digital identity and your avatar,
not at the retail level. >> So this is the concept
we've been working on for a long time.
I think we were talking about in dinner,
but I want to bring this up for you to comment
and get a reaction too is that,
what you just said is true,
that means if I'm the user
and I have power to control my data,
the script flips now I'm brokering my data to the brand.
>> Exactly.
>> Not the other way around or some intermediary.
I'm in control.
>> Exactly.
>> And I could demand based on what
my contextual relevance is to the brand.
>> And the brand is willing to pay for that.
Because if you think about it today,
social media unfortunately is plagued
by fake accounts and issues.
And so brands are spending all this money
and they're getting slippage and breakage and that's spent.
If they know you're a real person,
they're more likely to want to give you an incentive
to engage with them 'cause it's a one-to-one transaction
that creates value.
>> That's a great point. You mentioned Twitter earlier.
Look at Elon Musk uncovered all the bots on Twitter.
And if they ever did it to Facebook,
I'm sure there's a ton of different accounts on Facebook,
but it's out there.
These walled gardens have nefarious, bad actors.
It's not the truth.
What's the truth?
Gaming has this right now.
It's like, you're anonymous.
You can go down or you got to go real name.
So you going to (indistinct).
>> We've got a hybrid.
You can do anonymously verified.
So because we use biometrics to verify
that you're a real person, so you can stay anonymous,
but we know you're a real person
'cause your biometrics belong to you.
>> Well, David, great to have you on theCUBE.
We got a great insight and experience.
Thanks for sharing.
>> Thank you, John.
What's next for you guys?
You want to put a plug in for what you're working on.
You're looking for people, funding, more action.
What are you guys doing right now?
>> Well, we've self-funded to date
and we're finally going to be releasing opportunities
for people to engage with us in tokenomics.
And that's why we're working with DigitalBits
but we're also looking for great people and great partners.
We're creating an interoperable open world
where we want to bring partners to the table.
So anyone who's interested reach out to us.
>> All right, David, thanks for coming on theCUBE.
All right. More coverage here on theCUBE.
We're all over this area.
Going back to 2018 when we brought theCUBE to all the events
have been covered on siliconangle.com since 2010
and watching this waves just get better.
The reality is here.
It's a metaverse world.
It is a decentralized world happening to everyone.
Monaco Crypto Summit here in Monaco.
Thanks for watching.
Be right back with more after the short break.
(gentle music)