EP 1: A journey along digital asset adoption

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You’re listening to the Data Center University Podcast, where we explore the dynamic world of data centres. Tune in to our podcast for the latest updates about what’s going on in the Belgian data centre industry. From web3 to sustainability, cooling methods to regulations, we’ve got you covered with the essentials.

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Our topic for today is the internet. The internet is in the middle of a big evolution and companies who hop on the bandwagon early can benefit greatly from the revolutionary technologies that it’s offering. We’re talking about web3, blockchains, NFT’s and other decentralised technologies to create a fair, democratic and privacy protected internet. We’ve all been hearing about it, but what is it really, and what can it mean for media businesses, especially the ones that are creating content?

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In this episode Yan Ketelers, blockchain expert and founder of web3 agency OG Studio, takes us on a journey along digital asset adoption, giving data ownership back to users, digital wallets, bragging rights, the future we’re heading towards and some of the promising innovations we’ve seen so far when it comes to this new way of interacting with the internet.If you’re working for a media company and want to get inspired by the possibilities of web3, we’ve got you covered. Discover how web3 is significantly changing how users and companies operate online.

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So let’s dive in. Og Studio, who we are is, we are founded end of last year and we are a studio, so an agency that focuses on consulting and development in Web3. We work for Belgium Brands. I think the biggest project that we have now is for the Belgium Football Association, where we’re going to redefine what is for them in Web3. Myself, I have 10 years experience in working for Tech and Scale Labs and five years of professional blockchain tech experience. Web1 is where we had one-way communication internet. Think of Wikipedia where you just browse and you can learn things on the internet. Then we had Web2, the Facebooks where you have user-generated content, where you can create your own content, upload content, think of YouTube as well. Now we have Web3. Thanks to blockchain, we have Web3 where we can say that we can have digital assets ownership so people can now finally own their digital identity, their digital assets, their digital creations, and so forth. So it is a huge shift now from renting digital assets to owning those digital assets. And that brings, just like Web2, new opportunities for businesses. Brands and users, they don’t own but rent their digital efforts and assets from dominant platform players such as Google, Meta, and Apple.

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Imagine that Facebook stops, all your pictures on Facebook are going to disappear because you rent it, or Facebook rent them back to you. But with Web3, it wouldn’t happen because you’re able to upload them, it’s decentralized. So if you switch platforms, you’re still owner of those pictures and you can easily switch platforms. So Web3 is trending. A lot of people are talking about metaverse, about NFTs. It’s also trending when we look at the digital asset adoption where we see more and more people having wallets. And a wallet is just like your KBC app wallet, but then for digital assets, so you have a wallet on the specific blockchains and on the wallets you can store those digital assets. And when we look at active wallets, it’s only going up. Now we’re in a bad market situation, but it’s not only for digital assets, but also for… I mean, you know it for all types of assets, commodities and stocks, etc, but still the number of are going up. And digital asset adoption is not new for the youngest generation. Fortnite is not on the blockchain, so it’s not Web3, but it gives you the idea that people are used for them.

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It’s normal to give value to a digital asset. And if we compare the digital asset adoption versus the internet adoption, we see the same trends back with the internet. So you have the early adopters that came in and now it’s going to go more into mass adoption. In the beginning, people were also saying, I don’t need to write an email to someone because I can write in a letter. Well, now everyone is making emails, of course. So this is going to be the same shift that we’re going to see with new applications on Web3. So when I say Web3, Web3 is… Yeah, let’s say it’s a lot of different things, but let’s say that Web3 is the new iteration of the internet that is made possible by blockchain. And all type of things when you hear about Metaverse, smart contracts, cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, Ethereum, NFTs, even DAOs, I’ll come back to that later, DeFi, those are all applications or stuff that has to do with Web 3. One thing I want to zoom in particularly is NFTs. That has been the biggest buzzword in 2021. And NFTs for many critics, they say an NFT is just a visual.

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Everybody can copy-paste that visual, but it’s not that visual. The most important thing to understand is behind an NFT there is a contract, linked to a contract address, linked to a blockchain where you can prove that you’re the owner of that asset. And by proving that you’re owner of the asset, you get functions and utility. Think of it’s me when you log in into a website and you can prove that you’re the person logging into your CABISA portal, then you prove that you’re the owner of your identity. With NFTs, you can do exactly the same, but not on government data, but on decentralized data like a blockchain. Now I’m going to be talking about how media businesses like you can stay relevant in this Web3 era. Web1 is a one-way communication, simple business model. Your consumers, they pay for what they’re watching. After that, Web2, user-generated content, platforms came into the business. You had new data, business models, you had advertisement incomes, you had a lot more things that you could do to your business. You had it free to watch. Your competitors were offering free to watch, so you had to do the same.

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You had to find new ways to make money. Well, it’s going to be slightly the same with Web3 now, where you’re going to reimagine your business models on Web3. Because remember, Web3, digital property rights added to the internet, so your users can be digital owners. People are sick of big platforms owning their data and privacy. And we have an increase in adoption of digital assets and wallets. So people are using Web3 or are buying digital assets, are having wallets that are active. And also important, you have more and more issues with GDPR regulation and cookie policy and the Apple and Google that can only give you part of your data. Those, now I can say it in a few years we are going to say the old school data advertisement business models will maybe not die, but they will definitely not be your biggest income streams anymore. So what Web3 will do is go from that Web2 closed data ecosystem to an ecosystem where users own their inventory. So businesses will need to build on top of that inventory. This means for us, OG Studio, it’s also in our name, the OG is not for the original gangster, but for the ownership generation.

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We believe in an ownership generation, and not only for the end users, but also for you to brand that you’re to be owner again of your data. And the ownership generation is a generation of internet users have digital ownership of their own identity, data, privacy, assets, and digital presence in general. So to explain what’s going to happen more concretely, Web2, again simplifying it, you have your value proposition is you’re consuming digital content and you get data and then you can do advertisement on that. But in Web3, it’s going to be different because not only you’re going to have consumers consuming that digital content, but you can give ownership back to your users where they’re going to have membership tokens, NFT, fungible tokens, where they can have a status, bragging rights. And bragging rights, it can look a bit silly, but everybody is happy when they can brag. Everybody drives a special car, wears a special watch, dresses to show their status. And it’s going to be the same in the digital world. World. Better than that is identity and belonging. That’s also everybody has its own identity in the physical world. You want to have that same identity in the digital world.

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Let’s say that you’re sporting, you play soccer, you wear a specific jersey of the team that you do sport. The same when you go sporting and you wear Nike outfit is because that’s part of your identity. The utility is going to be a big one. I’m going to show it with examples. And if not financial upside as well, people can resell and trade those NFTs. The bragging rights on Twitter is a really good example. Now on Twitter, if you see profile images in a hexagon, that means that those are NFTs, and that’s confirmed on the blockchain. So people can really brag that they own those super expensive A-pictures, but that’s many bragging rights, but also utility and communities, etc, But I’m not going to deep dive into that use case. Identity and belonging, imagine France, all fans of France, but if you can have a digital asset that shows in your wall where people can see that you are being a fan of France, that you watched one of the first episodes as one of the first persons, that gives you a really good identity. And bragging again, bragging right again. Utility, you could say that with a specific NFT of France that you, because you believe in France in the beginning, so you purchase that NFT.

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And then the utilities that you can co-decide with the community of early adopters what’s going to happen in France. So you can say you can vote on who’s going to marry who in France and what outcome it’s going to have for the rest of the world. That’s pretty cool as well. And you get access to special content. I’m always comparing it to soccer again where you could say that NFT holders of can see in the dressing room what the coaches say in a half time. That could be pretty cool as well. Then you have the financial upside. If you believe in something early and you can resell it later on with a utility, then you’re the one that co-funded it, but get rewarded at the end because the project got bigger. Now let’s see for brands, ownership generation also for you because you don’t own but rent the digital assets. Disney+, they get my data, but they have it through CRMs like Salesforce, they have it through Facebook data, Meta, Mailchimp, email, newsletters. So all of my data is meshed in their platform. Web3 comes and then gives you a report. You don’t really own that data and you’re not harm-free to do with the data what you want.

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With Web3, I’m owning my data and I can disclose my data directly to Disney plus. You don’t have those intermediaries where you have to pay a lot of money for marketing automations and marketing growth tactics. Now, how are media businesses stay relevant in our Web3 era? Going back to the media businesses. And of course, this is something that you all know better than me, the attention economy. The attention economy is super important because I’m going to explain what interoperability is for us in Web3. So attention economy, you have a lot of different platforms that are popping up and all those platforms, they want more and more users. So users now, I think I have three, four different accounts on streaming services. So what happens with the interoperability is now I have to make an account on every service. And okay, some of them are aggregated, like a DPG has a ZPM. And then you have Disney+ you have your VRT profile. You have a lot of different profiles that you just every user has to sign up again. And now you have sign on with Google, but that means that Google owns your data, so that’s not ideal.

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But what happens with Web 3, you have that simple button at the top of a website where just connect your wallet. You connect your wallet and then you select what you want to share with that platform and that’s it. And those platforms don’t need to have all the different data. And I don’t need to share my address where I live with VRT or with DPG because I don’t have to, I don’t want to. It’s my private data. I only want to share it if I get rewarded for it and if I get utility for it. With wallets, that’s perfectly possible. So you sign in with a wallet and then we’re going to change from the current identity model to a self-sovereign identity. And a self-sovereign identity means that me, as a user, I have a lot of traits, so I can put that in. That’s also going to be my cookie preferences, but it could also be the favorite team that I cheer for, it could be where I live, etc, all my data. And then I choose what data I share with who. So it puts me as an owner of my data and it puts me in control of what data I’m going to share with different brands.

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So let’s say, Sporza, I choose to share a few things with Sporza and it gives me a personalized feed when I log in to support them with my wallet. Because sports, I can read that from my wallet and can give me the news of Cagent and can call me by my name, can put content in different languages. And that’s the future of personalization, in my opinion through Web3. Now, memberships, imagine that I’m a token holder of a specific streaming platform, and then with that token, I can connect to Metamask, like I explained. That token most of the time is an NFT. With that NFT, I connect my wallet and I can play a streaming on an app or on a platform. But even better, an app could come up and say, Hey, with that token that you have from that other platform, it could even be a competitor, we’re going to give you one month of free watching or streaming, because now that data is accessible on the blockchain, and if I want to share that I have that token with that platform, they can give me a free months of watching. So you see that it’s going to be different business models in the future.

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You can even see it in a B2B perspective. So Catnet can have a token as well. They connect through Metamask or to another wallet service, I’m taking Metamask here, on the Media Hub website, and they can order subtitling because they bought a token that gives them access to subtitling rights and subtitling services. And then we can even go further where Media Hub becomes a DAO. But now I’m talking maybe years ahead, where that DAO could say we have services around us that can do subtitles for you and we’re going to pay them with our own fungible token, like a cryptocurrency would be the MDH. So we can even go that far. One of my favorite funding examples is Ashton Kutcher and Mike Cooneys. They raised funds with selling NFTs. So they sold 10K NFTs. And with the money that they got from the NFTs, they were able to record a series and then the series was only watchable for people that hold it, that’s NFT. It wasn’t a huge success. It was a huge success in the beginning because it got sold out, but it gave you a really good idea of what’s possible in the funding landscape with Web3.

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Dao, and this is my most favorite example. So DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization. Dao is an organization that isn’t run by a boss, it’s run by a community. And this guy, Mathias Kuchyara, an artist, he developed a series and he did just the same as Ashton and Mila. He said, I’m going to first sell NFTs. And with those NFTs, people can vote every step, every let’s say, 10 minutes in those series, you have different choices. And then the most popular choice, that will be the next part of the series. So in this series, for the ones that had an NFT, you could choose going with the wolf or going with the woman or taking that other part, that third part. And you were incentivized to vote by getting a wrapped token. So you got money if you were able to vote. And then the most popular votes, that was then the rest of the story. And now it’s watchable for everyone. But only the people that invested in the beginning in that NFT are getting rewarded for every time the content is being watched or resolved. This is another one. With OG, we also invested in Kaladida, that’s a short film that’s also funded with NFT.

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So people get rewarded now that if the movie or if the video is going mainstream or being sold, then the people that invested, see it like stock shares are getting rewarded for the content. And then the bragging rights again, imagine being able to prove the fact that you watched Square Games before everybody else. That would be pretty cool as well. Music, that happens in music as well. New artists studying NFTs, and then they say you get, with that NFT, you get 0.02 ownership token and you get also rewarded when my music makes money and when it’s streamed. So that’s a good model as well for new artists. But not only for new artists, because news is also to release its next album on a Polygon-based platform. So they’re also making money now in the Web3 scene.

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So that’s it for this episode. Thank you for listening to our podcast. If you have any questions or suggestions for future topics, we’d love to hear them. And of course, tune in next time for more.