Ep#91 Breaking down Web3, NFTs, and Blockchain

Host: Jon

Okay. So you're wondering about Web3 NFTs, cryptos, blockchains, and do not get me started on this whole metaverse stuff. Well, if you wanna know more information around Web3 S NFTs in this multipart series, joining me today is CEO and Founder of Web3LZ. How about you? Join me in welcoming to the show. Ola Adedoyin to the show. Ola. I butchered your last name once again, and we're just gonna roll with it, man. I completely apologize. It's Adedoyin, look, I got it. So Ola, thank you so much for joining me.

Guest: Ola

Uh, yeah, thanks for the, uh, warm and energetic intro. Um, and I'm glad to be here and, uh, glad to be with everyone. Hey everyone. Hey Jon, thank you.

Host: Jon

All right. So Ola, let's jump into it because me as a technical person, I'm still trying to grasp Web3 and NFTs and how they work and how they all come together. I wanna understand how about you educate the audience? What is Web3 and how does it correlate with an NFT?

Guest: Ola

Okay. We can jump right into it then. Uh, Jon, uh, well, I, I think the really the best place to start is with the blockchain, uh, and even more specifically the public blockchain, uh, I think people need to have a better understanding of what that is, uh, today it's conflated with crypto. You know, people think about the most famous of all blockchains, uh, which is Bitcoin and it's, oh, it's a cryptocurrency, uh, somewhat better definition of that. People will say it's a distributed ledger, um, again to store, uh, currency and, uh, currency, uh, holdings, uh, digital currency. Uh, it, it's more, it's important to understand that it's, uh, not only distributed ledger, it's actually a distributed compute platform. Uh, much like the cloud is a distributed generalized computing platform. The modern public blockchains put Bitcoin aside Bitcoin is just seems to be the one that people gravitate to, but the modern public blockchains, one of the most famous is Ethereum.

Guest: Ola

What they really are, is a distributed public cloud, um, uh, platform. So when you start with that, then you, we, we can get further into, well, the web is built on the public cloud platform that, that we understand and already know very well. Okay. Public cloud, AWS, Amazon, or, or private cloud or, or, or, or, uh, self-hosted, uh, infrastructure. Uh, we understand what's involved with that. Uh, let's say platform or paradigm, the normal web web one web two, whatever we might wanna call it, Web3 is simply, Hey, let's add on what these public blockchains have to offer and their distributed compute capabilities. So, so that's Web3, Web3 is looking at what we use web the web for and public clouds for. Let's augment that with public blockchain capabilities.

Host: Jon

When you say it's distributed, help me understand what do you mean by distributed? Because I think the web, I can go spit up my own whenever I think a web like, okay, here's my website. It's, it's spun up, I'm hosted on word WordPress or whatever it is, but you're saying this is distributed. Let me understand the correlation on how things come together. Because the biggest thing that folks are trying to understand is that it's not a tangible asset. Like you're not holding something in your hands and working with it. How is it distributed?

Guest: Ola

Great. Let's stick with that cloud infrastructure or cloud service analogy. Okay. Uh, so we understand, uh, our, our cloud, whether it's a public cloud like AWS or private cloud owned by different enterprises. We understand that to also be distributed, you know, in our mind, uh, AWS data centers are all over the world. And when we deploy services on them, they're distributed, you know, primary backup, different availability zones. Uh, so how is the blockchain different from that? Um, it's different in that, uh, in the case of, uh, public cloud, physically and geographically it's distributed, but economically and administratively its own by Amazon, you know, and Amazon, uh, or Google or Microsoft or any of these public cloud providers, they go to great lengths, uh, to make sure that your data within their cloud stays in your, um, within your control and secure. Uh, so this is not in question that, that, you know, data in Amazon is not secure or is not owned by the users.

Guest: Ola

However, it's also not debatable that ultimately the infrastructure is owned by Amazon, uh, or Google or, or Microsoft or whoever the cloud provider is. That's not a bad thing. However, uh, we also have in the blockchain case where, uh, similar compute infrastructure, compute services, storage, networking, actual compute is owned by any number of participants. And in fact, we say, um, uh, permissionless participants, you know, anyone can fire up their compute infrastructure, connected to the internet, connect to the blockchain and contribute, uh, compute resources to the blockchain as they either in private individual or private enterprise. And they get rewarded with coins or virtual currency, uh, in, in this case. Uh, but the key point is it's just another way for other people to come to the game. You know, so it's not, it doesn't take away from public clouds. It just says, Hey, there's another paradigm out here.

Guest: Ola

There's other opportunities that other types of participants can engage in public compute infrastructure. Okay. It also turns out that there are some use cases that are advantageous to that scenario, the same way in, in private cloud, there are many, or in public cloud, there are many use cases, depending on what services you are trying to leverage, you know, different types of data stores, different type of, uh, compute, uh, engines, you know, compute platforms, they all have different use cases. Similarly in the blockchain, there's certain use cases that lend themselves to that type of distributed public cloud infrastructure or public blockchain infrastructure ran by permissionless individuals. So that's what we mean by distributed. The nodes are ran by permissionless entities and they provide compute capabilities, storage, compute, networking to users

Host: Jon

Ola. Before I get, I, I gotta dive in the blockchain for a lot more of it, but wait, we were talking about Web3, how does Web3 and blockchain, how do they correlate? Why are we talking about two separate ones? How does one transfer to the other?

Guest: Ola

I think this might be a good segue to one of your earlier your first question about NFTs. You know, you said NFTs. I said, use cases, uh, and now maybe they'll come together a little bit. I said, Hey, you know, there's existing cloud infrastructure for current web use cases. And I said, Hey, there's new cloud infrastructure, specifically public blockchain for new use cases. And you asked about NFTs, and now you're asking about Web3. Let me talk about the use cases. You know, where, uh, from a user perspective, from a business perspective, from all of us perspective, not as, not as nerds or blockchain or infrastructure service providers from all of us perspective, what are those things? Um, so the, the, the key here from a user perspective, I like to think that again, it's often not talked about is a user interface paradigm that is called a digital wallet.

Guest: Ola

Uh, so I'm gonna introduce a new concept here before I get to NFTs. You know, the paradigm here is that if I have a digital wallet, I can store things in the blockchain. I can retrieve things in the blockchain. I can change things in the blockchain, you know, transfer things, transfer my data with a digital wallet. So this starts to get to, Hey, why do we even need something else? Other than the current web? The current web is great. Now, if we have a new paradigm that says, Hmm, what if Ola or Jon wants to be in control of some of their data? Not all their data. Some data is perfectly fine to run through normal cloud infrastructure and normal cloud use cases. But Ola feels that, you know, some data for some subset of applications, Ola wants to be in control. Ola does not particularly want to give it to anybody.

Guest: Ola

Not that Amazon is bad or Google or Facebook, uh, but Ola feels, Hey, you know, I would like to be in control. And I would like to store this data somewhere that doesn't belong to anyone that only I am in control of, well, that place where Ola can store this data is in the blockchain. And more specifically public blockchains like Ethereum. So, and the way Ola can do it is with digital wallets. That's the first thing to kind of understand again, when we use the word distributed and decentralized is another word that often comes up with Web3, it's decentralized because the data is in this blockchain, it's controlled by Ola with his digital wallet. Now NFTs <laugh> is just a specification of that data, right? In, in, in, in, in, um, in software, in, in systems design, uh, we have concepts like APIs. We have concepts like, um, object, uh, and class definitions.

Guest: Ola

You know, we say, Hey, you know, when we code things, we say this object represents an airplane ticket, represents an airline seats, represents bank account, you know, uh, so those are things that today, um, individuals create and those, those, those data abstractions create for themselves every time uniquely originally, well, uh, the, the blockchain paradigm states that, or, or rather people who came up with NFT said that, Hmm, well, there is a general set of, um, objects that people like to store and people like to transfer, and we do it the same way all the time. We do it in such a way that, Hmm, what are some of these properties of, of some kinds of data that we like to store in a specific way? You know, there's some data that we believe we collective academic programming, uh, you know, system design, uh, folks that it, we, we, we have the idea of ownership.

Guest: Ola

We say, Hey, if Jon has this, uh, airline ticket or this seat on the plane, well, Ola cannot have that seat on the plane. You know, there's a concept of, uh, uniqueness. There's a concept of things cannot be double spent if Jon gives the ticket to Ola. Well, you know, Jon cannot give it to Cindy. So, you know, when we take some of these rules around objects that we like to store in a, uh, persist in a database, and we, we, we, we, um, you know, we standardize that, uh, we've come up or, or, or, you know, uh, the, the NFT has come about as, Hey, it's a standard for defining things that can be transferred with each other, uh, transferred between people, uh, that cannot be double spent, you know, things that, uh, are, are unique so that as they get passed onto different people, there is a track of who has it.

Guest: Ola

Uh, Hey, if you copy it, whatever copy you make is a different thing. From the original instance, let's keep all that data. Let's keep all that properties of those objects and let's call them NFTs. And that NFT, the words stands for non fungible token, you know, it's, this is, um, this is a, a system term <laugh>, you know, it's just, how do we define objects that we can transfer from each other? Uh, and the, the word fungible. So we call those objects or, or it they're called tokens in, in this definition, but it's, it's not a magical MAs. It's not a mystical magical thing. It's just an object, a data, a piece of data, uh, that are called tokens. And they're called non fungible because, uh, fungibility it's, it's an economic or academic term that simply says, things are replaceable. A dollar is a fungible thing.

Guest: Ola

If you have a dollar and you gave me a dollar, it's the same as the same dollar that Cindy gave me a dollar, you know, dollars can be interchange. No one cares about your particular dollar versus my particular dollar. A dollar is a dollar, that's a fungible piece of data, uh, and versus a non fungible piece of data, um, is something that, Hey, if Jon gives me his ball, uh, that ball is different from Cindy's ball. Even if they look the same, they're, they're, they're similar colors, similar size, they're still two distinct things, and that's a non fungible piece of data. And that's what a non fungible token is.

Host: Jon

Well, you gave me so much information now, first of all, NFTs and explaining exactly what they are, is a lot of information and, and really valuable. I wanna jump back to the distributed blockchain. And I, I think some of the concerns, and primarily I actually, if I have these concerns and I'm sure others do, and we've talked about this before you actually doing this, is that one, the security around it, right? Take Amazon. They have their own blockchain type setup. But if you talk about just the public blockchain and you add your own node right. To this, and you're starting to have this data, I have this computer right here. It's part of the blockchain, right? What is it? I mean, the concern is one. I have other people's data sitting right here on my computer security, number one, like, can I access their data? Can I, can I get it? I mean, who's, where's the security model or the governance around having this sit at my house versus in Amazon, which I know I have a shared responsibility.

Guest: Ola

Great, great, great point. Uh, first it must be said, uh, I, I, I don't want to come across in any way as if there are no risks with any model of data storage or networking or cloud services, they are for sure. Um, now, however, answering the question about how it's, it's done and then also talking about some of the risks. Okay. Yeah. But starting with how it's done, um, the scenario you laid out, it's great. It's very visual. It's something that our folks can understand. Notice sitting in your house, it's owned by Jon, why can't Jon mess with it, however he wants to mess with it. Um, several points. One is the idea, and it's a very important idea called consensus mechanism. It means that all these people running these notes, including Jon, they can theoretically make the nodes, you know, corrupt them in some way, theoretically.

Guest: Ola

And there's a reason why that's even pragmatically, not very easy, but theoretically, you know, Jon could corrupt his node and corrupt the data there. However, that data is not yet considered the source of truth until there's a consensus with all the notes. Very important point. This consensus mechanism is at the center of all blockchains that, you know, literally no node is in control, uh, until everyone makes a consensus that, oh, Hey, this is the right thing that leads us to one of the risk, uh, theoretically and pragmatically <laugh> if 50, one of the modes of attack, uh, one of the vectors of attack for blockchains is the idea that if a majority percent of the node, and we say conversationally, we say 51%, that may vary depending on the specific implementation. But the idea is that if 51% of the nodes agree to publish the fake data, the wrong, the corrupted data, the same for version and format of, of the corrupted data, uh, yes, that blockchain will be corrupted and that blockchain will become the source of truth.

Guest: Ola

So that record will become the source of truth, uh, that that's where the consensus mechanism has its, its um, it's, uh, it's, it's, let's say gaps, you know, it's like, okay, Hey, this is, this is, this is a real risk of consensus mechanisms. However, <laugh>, you know, the, the, the mathematical and, uh, sort of calculated probability of that and, and pragmatic probability of that coordinating with 51% of the nodes to, to corrupt the data in the exact same way. This is where the strength comes in. So it's a weakness and a strength. The strength is that that is considered mathematically difficult. <laugh>, you know, let, I don't wanna use the word impossible, but it has not happened yet. You know, of all the Conover of all the issues of all the challenges of all the frankly, you know, scams and, and, and, uh, you know, problems.

Guest: Ola

It has not been an to, to date of, of the, um, blockchains that we're talking about. It has not been that 51% of the nodes conspired to corrupt the data in exactly the same way. Uh, so you know, that consensus mechanism is key. The question might be, how does that consensus mechanism work? You, you know, and that actually leads to a, a, a kind of topical, uh, subject that was in the news recently, which is the big merge of Ethereum that happened, uh, a week ago from when we were recording this and not even, uh, and that also leads to one of the concerns again, uh, because, uh, I'm not here to say blockchain is perfect or great for, for anything. It has its use cases. One of the concerns is sustainability and energy consumption, the consensus mechanism in some cases, and specifically most famously most well known in Bitcoin case.

Guest: Ola

Uh, the C consensus mechanism relies on something called proof of work. These nodes must do very complicated cryptographic calculations in order to earn the right to say their record is correct. So we talked about every node is doing this work, keeping this record, uh, but built into consensus mechanism is that, Hey, before your node, Jon, that you are running on your desk underneath your desk, there can store, uh, uh, a record on blockchain. It must do this very complicated cryptographic, uh, calculation that takes energy. That takes power. That is useless, power, useless energy use for no reason. Imagine you are storing a record of one plus one, it's a trivial thing. We don't need huge compute. We don't need huge power, but for that one, plus one to be written into the blockchain gigantic amount of energy needs to be expanded, uh, so that Jon can earn the right to store that one.

Guest: Ola

Plus one result in the blockchain. Now imagine thousands of Jon's doing that. And that's a lot of power. A lot of, um, E energy will waste quite frankly. Uh, and it's a deterrence because that's also where the, the, the consensus mechanism deters people from trying to falsify that state. You know, if you falsify one plus one and you don't have 51% consensus, you know, you, you you're just a rogue agent or you are not able to get 51%, but you try anyway. Um, the deterrent is that you'll do all these resources. You'll use so much energy. And, and we've talked about in Bitcoin or, or it's very well publicized, oh, Bitcoin uses the energy of a small country. So if you are trying to corrupt the database and you want 51% of the notes to do that, you need to use the, not the data, but the power you need to use the power of half of a small country.

Guest: Ola

You know, this is the deterrence. You, you cannot leverage that much power. And if you do, what do you get out of it? You know, so, so, um, that power is a problem. And, and that's how it's, it, it it's a factor, uh, and that's how the consensus consensus mechanism plays into it. Well, uh, the blockchain known as Ethereum, which is the second most popular one has joined a bunch of other blockchains. It's not unique in this to do a consensus mechanism. That's called proof of stake rather than proof of work. So in order to earn the right to store that data on the blockchain, again, we're using this sort of, um, trivial example of the data being the result of one plus one, in order to store that data on the blockchain, your node, Jon, uh, doesn't have to do all this proof of work.

Guest: Ola

But what it has to do is have proof of stake. That means proof of money. That means that Jon must put so much money in the case of, um, Ethereum. Uh, and I say money currency is a better word, uh, not to conflate different things, but you must put 32 Ethereums, uh, E more correctly into, uh, the blockchain as a stake. So if Jon tries to mess with the data and all the other node came up with a different answer, I E the correct answer. If Jon said one, plus one equals 2 million, uh, everybody else came back and said, well, it's actually two, Jon loses 32 E uh, of, of value and his ability to participate in the, in the consensus.

Host: Jon

So they're buying

Guest: Ola

To E of value is, is hundreds of thousands of dollars. Go ahead.

Host: Jon

Yeah. Yeah. So they're buying in to become a node. So they're, well, they're investing in to become a node and there's really no value. So actually, I didn't even know that part. There's no value for them to mess with the data because they're going to lose their initial investment and they can ultimately be kicked out as a node.

Guest: Ola

That's exactly right. Yep.

Host: Jon

Okay. All, that's very interesting on how it comes in, in the security behind it and the consensus. So now I have a little better understanding of how secure my data is. Even if I were to invest in it, to try to corrupt the data, I'm losing a lot of money I'm being kicked out and no longer gonna be at it. Plus the data's no longer actually is not accessible on this machine. Correct. I mean, I can't, oh, I get kicked out. What happens to the data that's sitting here on the computer right next to me.

Guest: Ola

Um, it it's, most importantly, it's not on the blockchain, you know, the consensus didn't happen. Right. So, yes, your corrupted note is sitting there, but more importantly, that note, that data is not on the blockchain for, for all other, uh, participants to access.

Host: Jon

All right. So one last question, has that data ever been, has it ever been corrupted? Has anybody ever done it? I have not heard of anything that somebody's taken a note and been able to access or corrupt the data,

Guest: Ola

Not with any major blockchain that either of us will be familiar with. Surely there's experimental and small and small scale, different things are happening. But if you think about, uh, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Aran, you know, any of these major blockchains, no, that, that has not been the case.

Host: Jon

Ola. I wanna switch gears and talk about Web3 landing zone in a moment, and really why you created it and the whole story behind it. But my first question before that is, do I just wake up one morning and say, Hmm, I'd like to do Web3. Like, how does somebody do it? Like, what do you do

Guest: Ola

Another great question, Jon? Uh, I love this discussion. Uh, I think, uh, it, it surely depends on your, your background, you know, what your interests are. Uh, I for, we can hypothesize for, uh, let's say someone with similar background to us, let's say, uh, solution architect, technical sales, engineering, or technical sales, maybe not necessarily engineering, uh, technical product management or program management folks with a little bit of a technical background. Um, how might they use Web3? You know, something that's interesting to them. Yeah. And I can think of a use case, uh, that, uh, will be a very great demonstration that I would love for folks to try themselves. Uh, and, and it starts with something that maybe, uh, resonates to all of us. I don't know. I'll even ask you first <laugh> as a first trial person, uh, whether this resonates with you, uh, we as technical professionals or professionals in general, I think we publish a lot of valuable contents. We share a lot of content, some of it either original, uh, or, uh, some of it, uh, we are adding value to others who have posted content, uh, and I'll use a simple platform like LinkedIn. We do this across many different platforms. Uh, however, just use LinkedIn as one. Uh, would you agree that, uh, technical managers, as I've described them do fit in this category where they publish valuable content or, or reshare add value to existing contents in LinkedIn?

Host: Jon

Oh yeah. All the time. I mean, I do it all the time. I obviously I'm not compensated for the stuff that I'm posted or I, you know, I'm hoping for the extra likes or extra followers on LinkedIn for the value of the time that I spend creating content posting content and hopefully engaging folks on LinkedIn is a lot of time and effort.

Guest: Ola

So that might be one entry point as Web3, which, which I'll I'll get into again, I'm trying to make it very concrete, not an abstract. Oh, Hey, your data is your data. Hey, everything's decentralized. Hey, um, uh, everything is distributed. Well, what does it mean to you? So, so let's take that use case, um, where you've got this content you publish on LinkedIn, uh, clearly you benefit from it, you know, professionally, uh, and so do others. And so does LinkedIn, can we add more value for that, uh, to that for you <laugh>, uh, for the consumers, can we, uh, align incentives a little bit better so that, uh, you're even able to publish even more quality content and users can also get more quality contents. Now, if, if that's interesting, uh, one place we might start, uh, with Web3 is looking at the capability for two things that, that it offers.

Guest: Ola

One is this idea of owning content. Uh, and, and another is this idea of let's say loyalty programs. <laugh>, uh, and they're actually, before we come back to Jon and Ola in this, our very specific use case that applies to all our audiences. I think let's zoom out a little bit to more larger scale players that are leveraging these two ideas that Web3 enables these idea of loyalty programs and this idea of content ownership. Uh, and let me start with content ownership. And let's look at the NBA. The NBA is super successful, uh, amazing platform across all channels. You can think of social media, um, internet, TV, streaming, NBA, right? Uh, with all that reach that they have, they found that they can still gain more from Web3. They can still add even more value to their customers using their content that they already have.

Guest: Ola

Uh, and they did that with a Web3 application called MBA top shots, uh, and not here to sort of evangelize NBA top shots, but to get the key points here, uh, and NBA top shots, uh, it allows their users to collect and trade what they call NBA moments and, and the moments are nothing but four second clips of actual events that happen, you know, actual moves, uh, actual points scored by different players in different games, uh, and understand the paradigm shift here. You know, the users, the, the, the users, NBA fans across the world, they're watching these games, you know, they, they, they, they stream 'em, they watch highlights on YouTube. They watch highlights on nba.com. Uh, they, they have profiles in nba.com that tailor those highlights to their favorite teams. So, you know, there's a wealth of content for them. However, there seems to be something valuable in this idea of owning content, uh, and NBA able to touch on that by encapsulating four second clips offering them as limited quantity collectibles.

Guest: Ola

Uh, they say, Hey, you know, this four seconds that harden did this thing will make a thousand of, of those four second moments. They, they call them moments <laugh> and, you know, if you're a harden fan, you can buy, uh, you can buy those, um, those, those collectibles. Uh, and so without getting into the mechanics of, of the offering, uh, it's I to say that they added a whole new re revenue stream, uh, and as of couple months ago, it was up to a billion dollar in sales, uh, and, and kind of loudly applauded, uh, by ad week by Forbes as a new era in basketball collectibles. Okay. Uh, so keep that in your mind that, okay. You know, we can monetize our content in ways that we cannot before NBA is a prime example.

Host: Jon

I, I, I didn't mean to cut you off. And I got a quick question, cuz I know there's another topic you wanna jump on, uh, for the loyalty program. I have a question for this NBA thing, right? And I'm not sure you're able to answer, but I wanna know your professional opinion. I've created a thousand of these moments. Okay. Streaming it. I can just capture it myself. And now I have the same moment live stream or replay, but what is the value of having this moment? Where do you, what do you do with it? Where do you hold it? Where do you post it? And the reason I'm asking is because I, I envision this as a poster at Harding signed, right? And it's on my wall. Now I have that in my house and I there's 10,000 of those out there in the world, but I've got this four second clip. Where am I PO, what am I doing with it? How am I showcasing? I got this.

Guest: Ola

It's a great analogy to the poster signed by your favorite basketball player. There's only so many of them that were actually made and that were actually signed. Anybody else could make a poster and anybody else could copy the signature, but there are only a finite number of those posters. And the thing with these moments is, yes, sure. You can record it. <laugh> but, uh, the, the ones that were actually published and minted and offered for sale by the NBA are on the record of the blockchain. You, you cannot change that fact. You can make as many copies as you like, but the actual fact of the records that were made by the NBA that stored on the blockchain and people who are interested in these artifacts, they can see that it's unambiguous to them. There's no, there's no, there's no way to confuse. Anybody's copy versus the actual copy that was on the blockchain.

Guest: Ola

And they can view, uh, the, the, the market history of each of these artifacts or moments that were made, they can view when they were first published. They can view who it was sold to and who it was sold to after that and how much it was sold for. Um, so the key, uh, sort of the, the linchpin to this is the blockchain. Uh, and, and that that's goes back to everything we talked about with consensus layer and how, uh, practically it is reliable and trust, trust, trust, full to, to this point, based on all those caveats within all those caveats that we talked about earlier,

Host: Jon

Although, what are we doing with this moment? Like, how do you, obviously, when I get a poster in my house, I wanna show it off. I'm not gonna file it away into some closet or anything. You know, I, I wanna show, man, this is really cool. How are you presenting this? Or how are you framing this? I mean, do you create your own website and put it on? Do, how do people see that you are an owner of this moment,

Guest: Ola

MBA when their particular program, uh, they have wonderful user experience that lets you view all these moments along with trivia, uh, along with, uh, certain, uh, status that the moments may come with, they may say, oh, if you've collected three of these moments, you know, you are a blah, blah blast status person. <laugh>, you know, uh, just like trading cards, right? If you got all the times such and such player was in the finals, then you know, all those cards are much more valuable as a group than any single one. So all those things, uh, the NBA has made a great experience for people to, to, to, to, to, to see, to experience everything. You just, you know, we, we just talked about, uh, but also crucially again, coming back to the blockchain is that if the NBA decided not to, if they decided, uh, that, Hey, you know, we're packing up our website, uh, based on the fact that your data, your assets are stored in the blockchain, you are able to also recreate you. You can share those seconds of clips on your website if, if you so choose to. Right. Uh, so you know that that's, that's how it's, it's, that's how the experience, uh, works today with the NBA and why it is valuable.

Host: Jon

Well, I know you got another example of a loyalty program. Last thing on the NBA say the NBA did say, you know what I'm done. We're not doing this. You have those moments. This is data. This is content. This is actually, you know, say it's a terabyte worth of data. That's all stored out on the blockchain. All this data is being stored everywhere else. Or like, I guess I envision this, moment's only a couple like megabytes, but imagine these are terabytes and terabytes of data.

Guest: Ola

Oh, you are so on it. Um, technically no, not, not the, the raw media is stored on the blockchain. Um, the record of your ownership is stored on the blockchain. And that again becomes the, the distinction between yeah, sure. Anybody can copy it. Yes. You know, but only one person owns it per the record. Uh, so, so no, uh, to, to be very clear and it's a very great, uh, distinction that all the data, especially the media is not on the blockchain. It is the record of who owns what particular asset that are on the blockchain.

Host: Jon

Gotcha. All right. That's good. Now, there was another example of a loyalty program that you were gonna talk about. Do you wanna jump into that? Because I, I definitely, I need to get to a Web3 landing zone and talk about what you're doing and how you're helping folks. So you can jump into the loyalty thing and then let's switch some gears.

Guest: Ola

Okay. Uh, just really briefly then UHS segueing, because, you know, I've talked a lot about this media and, and monetization of content. Uh, that's a very niche space, you know, not all companies at media companies and certainly don't have that kind of branding that kind of very valuable product. You know, there's a reason why, um, the, the, the product is valuable based on everything else that happens outside the blockchain, the games, the promotions, all the wonderful things that, uh, happens with, with the NBA. Now, that's not all companies. However, loyalty program is a company that, uh, is, is a concept that most companies can get behind <laugh>. Uh, and it's very well documented how it is a very successful, uh, channel, uh, for, for all businesses that not for all businesses, for, for businesses, for many businesses who implement them, you know, all major brands, more, more, more accurately, all major brands that implement loyalty programs, get tremendous lift.

Guest: Ola

One of the, uh, most, uh, sort of famous or most successful actually is Starbucks and their rewards program. And in star war Starbucks, uh, has 23 billion in revenue, 11 billion of that is tied to the rewards program. Uh, so there, there's all kinds of, uh, sort of social reasons, business reasons, psychological reasons why loyalty programs work. So we don't need to revisit that, but let's revisit why, uh, or what, what, what, what I think it's important about what three is Web3 makes it accessible to more businesses, you know, think about the infrastructure setup that's in revolved in setting up loyalty program, just coding in application code users, accounts points, POS you know, point of sale integrations. You know, that's a tremendous amount of, um, work <laugh> that it's awesome that it works for, you know, name a company, Starbucks being the biggest that I, uh, uh, that I can think of, you know, marry a target, Walmart, whatever.

Guest: Ola

Uh, now Web3 gives us a lot of the application primitives, uh, for us to build ourselves. Uh, it means user accounts, user storage, uh, marketplace for us to trade, uh, these, these points, which is, which opens up a whole new thing. That's not even possible in, in web web one web two loyalty programs, right? Your loyalty program with, with Starbucks is your loyalty program. Starbucks, you cannot trade with other, other Starbucks users let alone with Walmart users. So Web3 opens up the possibility for just more businesses to have those capabilities, you know, user accounts, user data storage controlled by the user. Another paradigm that Web3 lends itself to that the current web technologies don't lend itself to. So I've, I've said two things that the Web3 lend themselves to, or, or three rather the first one is that simply more businesses can access it.

Guest: Ola

They don't have to code all these basic infrastructure like user user accounts, user secure user data storage. That's the first paradigm in, in this sort of Web3 version of loyalty program. Uh, the second one is that it it's the users empowerment themselves. Uh, the users control that data. Another para that's something that is not really available in web two. The users store their data in the blockchain. They control it with their digital wallet concept. We started with earlier on, which I think we'll talk more about. So users control it later using their digital wallet, not the actual rewards program, uh, provider. And the third point is that users can trade their reward program, uh, with themselves. They say, we say permission, Leslie, you know, they don't have to do it with the rewards programs blessing if you will. So that's a user benefit that Web3 provides that we don't get in web two. So does that the loyalty program benefits that Web3 might, uh, be a great use case for,

Host: Jon

Yeah. So Ola help me understand if I'm on the right track and, and thinking about this. And I don't, I'm not sure if I am, but correct me. So I'm not sure even if Starbucks is doing this, but I'm gonna use them as the analogy, since you said marketplace and trading points, are you suggesting, or is this under the right thing? Is that here's Starbucks, I'm a new user to Starbucks. I, I'm not part of the loyalty thing, but I have my blockchain. Right. I have my data, I own my data. It says, yeah, I want to, I wanna become part of it. So you go to sign up and say, Hey, Starbucks, here's my information. I'm only allowing you to access X, Y, and Z. But I came in now, remember, I wasn't part of it, but I came in and on the marketplace, I got some, uh, of their Starbucks, their points from another user I purchased in my trade and whatever it is, and now I came in with like 400 points that I can go buy something. Am I on the right track? Is that like, you know, we're, we're back here trading, we're doing our thing. But then I say, you know what, I'm bringing my points to Starbucks. And now I want my caramel macchiato latte. And I wanna use my points that I've never been part of.

Guest: Ola

Yes. In, in short, that's exactly where this is going. This is exactly where this provides the capability for us to do that. Now, neither of us are talking specifically about Starbucks and their implementation. Uh, we, we do know, they just announced, uh, uh, entry into extending their loyalty program into, uh, Web3 just last week. And, and Chipotle did that also recently, both already very existing, uh, very successful existing loyalty programs. Uh, and, and when they do stuff, you know, they're not just a, Hey, you know, um, me too, let me get onto the latest fad. Uh, we're also, as it turns out, not at peak crypto anymore, in fact, we are maybe in crypto, winter is one of the words they say, uh, so, you know, they're not doing it, you know, just for the sake of it, you know, they're really trying to get value, uh, and believe they'll get value and provide value to their customers. And one of the ways they do that is, is exactly the scenario you just described.

Host: Jon

Nice. All right. Well, I'm glad I explain it in my terms, I guess, for folks that are listening. So Ola, let's talk about Web3 landing zone. What are you doing there and how are you helping folks?

Guest: Ola

Um, well, uh, I think, uh, it's, it's really a platform for me to give back a little bit. Uh, and, and what I mean by that is I've been lucky enough to be, to receive a lot of great advice and a lot of great guidance throughout my career that has kept me at the forefront of technology and economic trends over, over the years. And I feel Web3 is another, is, is one of those, uh, major important technological and economic, uh, waves, paradigms trends, if you will. Uh, so I'd like to help our technology managers be colleagues, community, uh, be a part of, of this, uh, new technology, new economic trend, uh, over the years, uh, I've built, um, uh, I've led teams in product engineering, program engineering in, in, in software engineering. Uh, I built a startup, uh, I, I built a consulting company and, and that led me back to, uh, eventually to AWS as a partner solution architect, helping build their partner, uh, business. And, and now, uh, I, I, I wanna do something different <laugh> and I think, uh, this Web3, uh, is a very important technology and hopefully, uh, I can help guide, uh, both businesses and then our colleagues, uh, uh, to, to, to take advantage of it, or, and certainly at least not to, <laugh> not to, um, let's say be harmed by it at, at, at, you know, both ways.

Host: Jon

Although I think you're the right person for the job. Talk to me about what an engagement looks like, uh, working with Web3 LZ, like, I mean, do I just reach out to him like, Hey, I wanna do some Web3, some NFTs and maybe some, you know, like, what does that look like from a perspective or how can somebody get started?

Guest: Ola

Very simply it's not complicated at all. It's simply, uh, consume all the wonderful free content that we produce at, uh, Web3 lz.com/guides, uh, subscribe, get our newsletter. Uh, and, and that's it, you know, we want to educate folks out there, uh, in the background, uh, we are working on getting exactly the content through these kinds of conversations. So, so please, if you're listening, uh, ask questions, send them to Jon's podcast, send them to me, we'll have all the contact information in the notes and at the end of the, uh, call, uh, uh, you know, so we want to just provide the education for folks to accelerate their business, accelerate their career, and certainly not be, be harmed, you know, uh, in, in, in process of, uh, Web3 being rolled out. Um, also I might add, uh, in, in terms of getting, uh, feedback from, from the community about what, what we're doing, what, what community's looking for.

Guest: Ola

Uh, I did a, a survey, uh, campaign, uh, reached out to 150 of, uh, technology managers across the spectrum, you know, throughout, uh, different segments, uh, consulting, cloud enterprise, different, uh, industries, media telco, uh, as a, as a small sample to see exactly what the community is feeling. And, and I thought I might get five to 10% response rate. You know, I think that's a pretty decent response rate when you do, uh, sort of direct mail out to folks. Uh, I've gotten 40% and counting, you know, folks are still responding as, as they catch up to their mail as they, they find time to, to respond to, to, to things. Uh, and, uh, that's been very encouraging, you know, I know the need is out there from technology management, uh, colleagues and community out there, uh, out of all those respondents, uh, I was able to interview, uh, majority of them. I'm constantly scheduling interviews with all of them, getting a lot of great insights about exactly where the gaps are, uh, gaps around things like all the wonderful questions that you've been asking. So, so this has been very helpful, and that's what I want folks to do. Go to Web3 ld.com and, and learn, grow, use the content, uh, and that that's how to, to engage with, with Web3 landing zone today.

Host: Jon

Oh, I think a lot of the gaps that are out there is education and understanding what Web3 is, what blockchain, how everything works together without being scared of the technology is educating them on the benefits of the technology and how to use it. I think you've done that throughout this entire conversation. I know we have a couple more videos that we're trying to do and, and put together. I know we actually even talked about doing a, um, Jon Myer podcast loyalty program. That might be something that's coming up in the future. I have to entice people that it sounds really interesting and something I might want to try and get my hands on and do I owe out we will work together on try and getting this set up because I I'm looking forward to it. I wanna see how it's done.

Guest: Ola

Awesome. Same here. Um, we didn't circle back. I'd like to just touch really briefly on technology managers, how they can use Web3 today, we zoomed out, we talked about loyalty programs at bit large. We talked about content monetization by the NBA. Now we come back to, well, what about us technology management and our content? How do we increase the value of it to us, to our readers, uh, and, and make it better <laugh>. And so, uh, definitely we, we can't get into all that in, in the second, in, in, in a few minutes. However, the key thing I would like folks to start on is to get a digital wallet so they can experience what it is for them to control their data on the blockchain and to share data on the blockchain. So, uh, I, I would like, uh, I dunno if I can say it now at this point in the conversation, but, uh, there is a guide, uh, that we published@webthreelz.com.

Guest: Ola

Uh, the URL URL will be, will be below in the show notes. Um, and it'll be a tutorial how to get a wallet, absolutely risk free, absolutely. Um, free <laugh>, you know, cash free. Uh, and once again, the, the, the, the, this, uh, these, these tools, if you wanna call it that the digital wallet and the blockchain, uh, they're not anything that, that I, or, or anyone benefits from, you know, this is not a tool or a resource that you're gonna pay money for, or you, you need to sort of, um, give up <laugh> anything. Uh, it it's just like having a browser, right? You can install a browser and you, you can choose to go to cnn.com or Jon Myer.com. Uh, so the first step, uh, for our audience members, uh, to be able to use Web3, and we'll talk hopefully a lot more about that on this podcast. They'll see a lot more about that on, on Web3 lz.com, but the first step is get a digital wallet, so you can access the public blockchains.

Host: Jon

So Ola, I know you said we're gonna have a link, I'll drop it in the description below. It's a tutorial on how to get a wallet. It's not tied to Web3 LZ. It's just a tutorial and walk through on that. That's really that, you know, Ola indicated it's free. It's not something you're gonna pay for, start getting used to it, familiar to it, and how it's set up. So Ola before we wrap things up. Is there anything you wanna leave the audience with?

Guest: Ola

Yeah, just remember, uh, that Web3 is not this mystical magical all income passing thing. That's gonna replace web two. It's a new tool. It's a new, uh, service that we can leverage. And a very important point is businesses don't have to retool. Don't have to throw away their existing, uh, platform ex existing business processes. And same for builders. You know, builders don't have to start at cryptography and blockchain, uh, solidity programming. Uh, there are primitives that we can build on, uh, without necessarily directly going under the hood and definitely check out Web3 LZ to understand all these points a little better, and very specifically to our, uh, technic manager community out there. Uh, we'll be sharing, I'll be sharing@webthreelz.com. How, and we we'll perhaps talk more about this on a podcast, how you can leverage Web3 LZ, uh, to improve, get more benefit out of your content, uh, and, and leverage Web3, generally, not, not necessarily Web3 LZ, but Web3, to get more benefit out of your content. So stay tuned and check out Web3LZ.com.

Host: Jon

Thank you so much for joining me. This was a pleasure. I really appreciate the information.

Guest: Ola

My pleasure. It's been great. Uh, you had, uh, very insightful questions. I'm very happy, uh, to, to share the time with you and with your audience members. Thank you, Jon. Thanks everyone. Yep.

Host: Jon

So everybody CEO and Founder of Web3LZ, Ola, Adedoyin. How do you like that? Ola? Did I

Guest: Ola

Get it? Excellent. You got it. 10 outta 10.

Host: Jon

Awesome.

Guest: Ola

It only took you 17 times.

Host: Jon

We won't show him the pre-recording at all. We're just gonna cut right to it. Where it was everybody. I've been your host. Don't forget to hit that light subscribe and notify, because guess what? We're outta here.