Welcome to Gradient Proof. This is Episode 3, part 1, topics discussed on this episode are Metaverse, NFT, Real Estate, Art, Digital Twins. With the rise of blockchains, crypto, and the metaverse, it won’t be long before digital currencies become the main medium of transactions. So today, we discuss the rising trend of NFTs, the metaverse, and why you will eventually be an NFT. As always we encourage you to drink with us, welcome to the Gradient.

In this Episode:
[00:57] Redemption Straight High-Rye Bourbon
[01:50] What is an NFT?
[06:51] The Metaverse
[15:13] Difference between Real Estate in the Metaverse and the Real World
[20:18] How Reproduction Affects Value
[22:25] How the NFT Market is Very Accessible
[27:07] NFT Additional Ownership Benefits
[31:56] Trustless Architecture
[35:34] Decentralization


Bios

Roy Peer is an architect turned entrepreneur. After working for award-winning architects, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, in New York City, he went on to start a virtual reality company, which later sold to a notable Hollywood director in 2018. Peer is the founder of PeerBasics, a data-driven products company that analyzes e-commerce sales data to drive its product launch decisions in multiple categories with multiple factory partners in Asia. Peer is the author of Simulation Arcade, a sci-fi novel that paints a possible future world when AI and brain chips are commonplace and details the way humanity meets its AI cocoon moment, and how to stop it.

Steven W Sorensen is the director, corporate finance at droppGroup / droppLabs, a web3 video & mixed reality shopatainment marketplace, co-founder of Fotin Media, and a board director of RocketStar, a small satellite launch company, and advisory board member of Stateline, a US made clothing company. Steven calls NYC home, lived in China for 7 years, and has an MA and M.Phil in English from The University of Hong Kong. He likes jazz piano and good whiskey.

Quotes:

What is NFT?
[01:50]
NFT is a validation system. If you were to go to a bank and you wanted to get a loan, there would be steps where you'd have to validate your credentials, your revenues, and your ability to pay it back. Part of that will be authenticating documents from government sources or your identification. The beauty of blockchain is a way to validate those different pieces.

[03:17]
NFTs are popularized, whether they are very low resolution to high-resolution images. These can be 2D or 3D volumetric type things. It mimics a classical art market, in which there's the buying and selling of these pieces of art. There's the assumption of a stored value within that art. And as with any art, it requires a provenance of ownership.

The Metaverse
[06:51]
The metaverse is not so much a technology as a moment. And at that moment, society has decided that its digital self has a greater value than its physical self.

[07:41]
We're moving more into a digital world. The physical world has less value in it. If you get hit by a car, you're very fragile. With the Metaverse, you can then disassociate that from having experiences. You will be able to plug yourself and then live in an exciting world. Everyone you're surrounded by is fit and beautiful. And you live in this world with no limits.

[11:36]
The missed opportunity is that in the real world and the physical world, to have an apartment building, you're stacking some configuration over itself because you physically can't have two apartments in the same place. But if everybody in the metaverse had the same home, it's technically in the same physical location or digital location. But as you walk through that door, that's like the access key that turns it into space.

Difference between Real Estate in the Metaverse and the Real World
[15:13]
There are still some inescapable similarities in “what does a maintenance fee type structure look like?” As time goes on, the types of things you're putting in your empty room will become increasingly complex from a cloud compute level, which means that you're going to have in a base case artwork that has higher and higher degrees of resolution to it. You're going to have more and more streaming and updating content.

How Reproduction Affects Value
[20:18]
Whenever we see new forms of art production, it always increases the value of the original. For example, photographic reproduction of the Mona Lisa became possible. It would be hard to argue the Mona Lisa would be the original Mona Lisa. It didn't become more valuable as opposed to less valuable. Many people might choose to spend a considerable amount of money in another direction, and the reproduction would be more than sufficient for their enjoyment of it.

How the NFT Market is Very Accessible
[22:25]
NFT market seems to open up an appreciation for art on a more democratic level. When we think of the art world, it's culturally and economically not something that seems to be readily available to everybody. Not everybody will get an invitation to that gallery opening, or not everybody will go to the auction house and bid for various reasons. But it's becoming increasingly easy for somebody to download an app, create their digital wallet, and then be off to the auction races.

NFT Additional Ownership Benefits
[27:07]
What might become even more interesting is exploring these other bits of utility. There are communities around NFT ownership that either structurally or otherwise provide additional benefits. If you go over to the Bored Ape website, you will see their roadmap for what they're rolling out for “Bored Ape Owners” in the future. They're looking to provide expanded utility, where that ownership almost functions as a social token, giving you access to additional things.

Trustless Architecture
[31:56]
When you purchase real estate, you have the question of title, the verification of ownership, that layers on additional fees and additional time. It creates the need for escrowing mechanisms where money needs to sit in an account somewhere before closing. What's interesting about that is it is trustless architecture, and it is positive because the ledger doesn't require intermediaries to validate the underlying proof of ownership. Transactions can go forward quite a bit more fluidly.

Decentralization
[35:34]
The beauty of decentralization is you take away the governing interest. Before Bitcoin, there was a group that wanted to make e-gold. They found out that to make something like that, it must be disconnected from a company, and it's got to be decentralized for it to work. If a company was more decentralized and you would disassociate that from a group of people and the issues with people, that would affect somebody from doing what's core to the actual task and decentralize it.

Mentions:
Purchase: The Diamond Age: A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+diamon+age
Referenced site: Meta www.meta.com
Keywords: #Metaverse #NFT #nftcommunity #digitalart #art #nftcollector #VirtualReality #RealEstate #DigitalTwins

Whiskey:
Redemption Straight High-Rye Bourbon https://www.redemptionwhiskey.com/whiskeys/high-rye-bourbon/

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Other Projects:
Buy Simulation Arcade in Paperback
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09QF3YPV4
Simulation Arcade Pre-Release NFT (comes with author-signed copy)
https://opensea.io/collection/author-release
RocketStar - Aerospike Engines & Small Satellite Launch Co.
https://rocketstar.nyc/
RocketStar - Aerospike Engines & Small Satellite Launch Co.
https://rocketstar.nyc/
Fotin Media https://fotinmedia.com/
droppLabs.io https://dropplabs.io/