Cooperative on Hedera! Tyler Morrey of Upside Co-op / King Solomon (Part 2)

This interview was originally published by Genfinity.

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King Solomon interviews Upside Co-op as part of the Hedera Corner in the LightHouse by Genfinity! Brought to you by LightHouse Report sponsor Hedera Hashgraph and in collaboration with our partner and Hedera wallet provider HashPack.

Transcription

Upside Cooperative – Tyler Morrey - Founder
‍All businesses, web3 are not a lot similar than we all think. Last question I think was if you're already doing something, you already have a reward system, you know, you already have tokens, you know, whatever it is when you integrate the, you know, the upside Co-op into your project, you know, I we aren't going to, you know, I'm always going to say please consult with legal counsel, on what exactly you know you're doing already, but we're integrating in as a way to supplement what is already happening. You're not, you don't have to change what you're doing to integrate upside Co-op, you know, there are different legal implications with the different things that people do, so again, that's why I would say everyone should consult with their attorney, but that doesn't preclude you from being able to leverage, you know, our platform and add the community to, you know, as we say, add to the cap table, but bring them on, give, make them equity holders as well. That at least is going to mitigate some of your risk, right? Everything you'd continue to do right is it has its own risks and everything involved, so you know, again, you have to make decisions for your project and what's best for the project, but you know, the straight answer the question is, you don't really have to do anything or change anything, we can just step in, integrate, and you can move forward with at least being able to get a little bit more sleep at night.

Genfinity – Valor – Founder & CCO
‍Does the co-op, this is just a quick question for myself, when you, if I were to become part of your Co-op, let's say I had a project and I had an existing reward structure in place, and I don't have really like, I guess the whole equity of my company is currently, or would be currently, the NFTs or the rewards that I've, you know, given out or that have been bought or sold within the my project, do you actually create an equity structure based on the existing holdings, and then evaluate it from there, or is it something that's evolving over time, like let's say I do a future drop, how would that work in an equity structure, is that I thought you said that there was something having to do with an equity structure being like implemented when you join something like a co-op.

Upside Cooperative – Tyler Morrey - Founder
‍Yeah, so let's see if we can approach this the right way, you know, if you're, if you're just a person and you're issuing something, that's a different story, right, let's say Genfinity, I'm sure is like an LLC right behind it or a C Corp, right, and so when that's the case, right, you already do have an equity structure, right there, someone has, if it's an LLC, you have units, right, someone owns those units, some person or group of people own that company, right, and what we're doing is outside of the tokens because the tokens aren't equity, right, and they aren't the ownership in the in the company, right, the units of the LLC are, we're taking some of those units, you're giving that to the cooperative, and then we're measuring their activity within the digital assets ecosystem to reward them and you know, for them to earn the equity in the company itself, right, and so it, you know, in that context, if you already got you, you know NFTs and you do "Another drop" or whatever it is, those are actually a lot more comparative to products that a company sells, right? Okay and yeah, they can go, you know, they can go up and down in value just like you know, Pez dispenser or you know a baseball card can change in value, right? That's what NFTs are, and what we're doing is we're adding in that layer. So now, based off of your purchase of NFTs, your, you know, the Secondary royalties of NFTs, the utilization of them, whatever you're rewarding people for on chain, we can, we can mirror that with the equity ownership as well.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍So, that's always going to fall down, so like for example, if I'm not saying we're going to, but if Genfinity were to ever, you know, launch Valor's laughing, I'm definitely not saying we're doing that, NFTs or any of that stuff. And then internally within the company, we decide, you know, hey, x amount of revenue from NFTs or from a token, you know, gets kicked back to the to the to the company members through an equity structure. It's essentially just you know everything always falls to the equity structure, I guess, and it's just kind of diversifying that equity structure out to uh, to community, as well, in a way it makes sense, on a you know. And that's going to be totally different from every project you know, if they decide to go the co-op route, but yeah, I kind of, I definitely understand it now.

Genfinity – Valor – Founder & CCO
‍This really good question, I think that was a really cool answer, because I think there's a lot of community members I've talked to several projects that are looking at, you know, rev share and all these things, and it's like, oh, I don't know, it's like it makes me cringe, right, like I, I think that maybe this is a safer way, and it does seem like it could be definitely utilized by quite a few projects that want to kind of go that route, to be able to, you know, reward beyond just NFTs and tokens, but actually give back to them in a portion of the equity of their company, um, or their NFT projects, which is great, I love it, it's awesome!

Upside Cooperative – Tyler Morrey - Founder
‍Well and you can even do rev share through a co-op too, right, because they're equity holders, right? Exactly, you issue a dividend to the equity holders, boom, there's your routes share, right? So I'm also not going to say that Genfinity is going to do this, right, but if you were to do it, right, I think this is a good comparison to draw, if you know, just like Yuga has done, they've sold a license to the brand of board ape many times, right, and they've generated a lot of revenue from that, right? They sell a license to a toy maker that makes these little board eight toys, right. And let's say Genfinity does the same thing that you know, where that value is accruing? When they're you're getting that Revenue, that's always accruing at the equity level, it's not accruing at the token level, right? So, really what we're doing and what we're saying is that you can now accrue all of the actual value created by a project. And it's it, and it's going to benefit token holders and it's going to do it compliantly. It's going to do it legally. That doesn't necessarily always mean that your tokens are now compliant and legal, but it does mean that the value share is.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍That's awesome to know, that's cool. Yeah, ask Batty real quick because I know it's late there. You guys have an upcoming launch of the one of one of Wands through I Think it's Hedera Sentient, isn't it? Can you tell us just a tiny bit you know more about kind of the one of ones that you guys are launching, as well as and I know that we, for those of you just hopping in now, back he's super old school in the Hedera community. Maybe what you're looking forward to in in 2023 with this launch and moving forward, Batty, because I know it's late there.

Batty Hattie - Founder
‍So, yes, I thank you. I mean, it's 9 p.m, so we're pretty good, but yeah, so we've got a generation H launch coming up on uh February 14th. Brilliant timing for hashentines actually, so couldn't have picked a better date. Whitelist is on the 13th. Generation H has been, I think, we've worked on actually since we collabed with Veceezy on the Phys Easy HBS V1. Um, and we've kind of kept going back and forwards, and as we've developed, we've kept changing and changing, changing. We finally got to a point where we're really happy with that. And I mentioned earlier, you know, we had to learn how to use you know hash lips and visual studio code, and it was again an educational journey for us. And we're here, we're excited to and nervous at the same time actually to share the work. There's 676 generation H Bears, or one of one, with uh I think it's about 17 traits with a variety of different Rarities. Um, we're going to be looking at how they can be farmed and staked and start to apply those sorts of things as well moving forward. So we're really looking forward to that. It's been a year in the making. Whitelist tokens are out there, are some kind of VIP holders with multiple. Um, because we just basically distributed the whitelist tokens to our community and said, "Look, you give them out to friends, do giveaways." Um, because I think that's far more powerful. There's no royalties on them, there's no full batteries, and then we don't even want them on a Marketplace. Ask come into the import of the Emporium Discord and just say, "Anyone got a whitelist?" And there'll be someone there to give you one. So, um, don't feel like you've got to pay for one. Please don't. Um, just help yourself, they're there. Um, so we're looking forward to that. It's on Hedera Sentient. Um, Sam, the team have been really great. Um, it's 8 p.m UTC when we launch, that's coming up obviously this week. For the rest of the year, we're really looking forward to the second phase of Pixel Drops and more Community challenges. We're hoping that we can start to develop more educational resources to onboard not just anyone into web three. Obviously, we've partnered with Helping Hands, and we've worked with other community members as well because we've all got a collective focus. You'll see that, in other Discords, now there are Helping Hands channels, and so on and so forth. And we do our own educational stuff within the Pixel Drops Discord, and we hope to do more of those. We want to start to help and create resources to help educate the Educators and to start to get the language of web 3 into education into family dialogues. We can do that through that kind of creativity and fun. So, for the rest of the year, series two Pixel Drops, if we sell out series one, then we'll obviously launch series two. If not, that'll be sort of September time. Who knows where the rabbit holes will take us? We've got lots of ideas. Obviously, we'll be developing Generation H as a project and driving that forward throughout the year. As well, we've got more merch coming. Obviously, at the moment, we've got a "Stronger Together" line out, and we're going to be giving away a bundle for Hashing Times. There will be a special Pixel Drop from Hattie, but there will be quite a big bundle of "Stronger Together" merch for Hashing Times. I mean, if you want to get a conversation started about Hedera and what the community stands for, those kind of neon H Bears on the T-shirt definitely do that. And yeah, we welcome anyone to go along and take a look. But this year's gonna be great. We've got lots of collaborations, things I've forgotten about coming up throughout the year. So, yes, we're really excited for 2023, learning more, developing more, grown as the community, and being part of such an amazing kind of time in this space.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍Yeah, I mean, I will give a shoutout. Like, if you guys are potentially not in the Hedera ecosystem right now, Batty is certainly a follow. I would definitely give Upside Co-op a follow. While I pinned something to the top there, Baddie is somebody that definitely will answer questions for you, help you out, and maybe potentially even from a contact standpoint. And I'm going to get killed if I don't mention this, so we are Hashentines days. It's the second tweet pinned to the top. We're doing it Saturday and Sunday from 11:30 to 2:30 p.m Eastern Time. I'm gonna push out the Twitter spaces today. We have 60,000 H bar or more, and about 200,000 H bar and NFTs and tokens. The Forum is live on that tweet that I already put up above. It's going to be probably, I think, we have 34, 35, 36 somewhere around there projects. So, there's 10-minute time slots. Do the math, to three hours a day. And we're going to be doing, like, five minute discussions with the projects, and then kind of roll right into the, the giveaway for whoever, whoever won. I don't even know. I think we're over 100 NFTs and, like I said, probably around 60,000 H bars. So, and also on top of that, real quick plug for the Series 65 that we're doing through, Genfinity, and uh, certainly recommend you give them pre-IPO Club a follow. So, I know, uh, Tyler mentioned, you know, financial thresholds around being an accredited investor, and that is, there's ways that you could potentially educate yourself and be sponsored by one of the 15,000, you know, RIAs that are in the United States. And, you know, once you do attend that sponsorship, as a byproduct, you do become an accredited investor. Pre-IPO is helping us build that out, so if you have questions about the Series 65 that we're doing, give pre-IPO a follow and DM them, with any questions that you might have, and would love to see you guys, get into it. So that's it. And that's free. Again, the Series 65 guide that we're doing is free. The lighthouse report that we do is free. These spaces are obviously free for you all. I wanted to ask you, Tyler, just because I kind of was thinking about this with the Pie-Fi aspects and Upside Co-op. You guys obviously have Hashgraph's name as well, and just trying to provide some thought leadership here, maybe forward thinking, but like I'm sure that you guys see some sort of a feedback loop or synergy with Hashgraph name stuff and the co-op aspects, is there any, you know, can you talk kind of if you see kind of that synergy between the different products or ecosystems that you guys are really trying to put together from Pie Fi standpoint.

Upside Cooperative – Tyler Morrey - Founder
‍Yeah, no, I mean we do. We see a lot of synergies, you know, a Hashgraph name was a great opportunity for us to, yeah, but before being able to, you know, launch everything, to be able to get into the ecosystem to, you know, make a, quote unquote, name for ourselves, but to also get a feel for what it means to build community in the ecosystem, to understand what the community is like, so that we could, you know, learn how to best support them, how to best, support the rest of the ecosystem. You know, one of the interesting things is a lot of the people who have become, you know, our community at Hashgraph name, the people who hang out in our Discord most commonly, you know, their project Founders from all the other projects across Hedera, and that is really, that was really what our goal was, to get in and to meet as many of the people that we could, provide something that was useful that, that, that, you know, honestly, the whole, you know, that Hashgraph needed and, to be able to learn from that. And, you know, it's been a great experience to be able to launch Hashgraph Name, to you know, build alongside the community, to you know, get to know everyone in the ecosystem and to do it in a way that was very authentic and not, you know, just trying to reach out to everybody and introduce ourselves. So, you know, where does that go from here? I'm not going to spoil anything, so I can't tell anybody yet, but you know.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍I always try to, I always try to ask those targeted questions, or maybe somebody just like gives up some information that they weren't ready to give up, totally appreciate that.

Upside Cooperative – Tyler Morrey - Founder
‍So, sometimes, sometimes the obfuscation itself is the true giveaway, when the non-answer is itself the alpha, right.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍Yeah, I mean, I asked Batty this, but you know, for you guys looking forward into 2023, I mean, co-publishing a white paper with KPMG and, uh, Orrick is obviously kind of gigantic. Um, we did see you know the, um, the raise that you guys did and I forget what it was like, was it three or 3.6 or 4.6 million that you guys did from the traditional,  purview. Um, what are you looking forward to in 2023 like, for you guys, um, should we expect to see any more kind of announcements coming out, um, is there kind of integration points that are going to be tackled from the Hashgraph Name stuff, um, additional utility aspects or, yeah, I mean, just anything, just, you know, what are you looking forward to this year?

Upside Cooperative – Tyler Morrey - Founder
‍I mean, there's, man, I'm looking forward to everything, you know, for ourselves, for, honestly, the ecosystem in general, I think there's a lot of really cool things that are happening, um. I would say, you know, number one, the thing that we're looking forward to the most is, you know, getting the product out into the, into the world, to getting people using it, and to, you know, continue to develop something that is, you know, the best that the product could be, to drive growth, both for the companies and for, uh, for their customers, right. Like, that is our number one goal this year, is to build the best product that we could around this model, and to, you know, iterate and evolve the thing that we already have built, um, as we launch it in the next few weeks. You know, I think, and I'll answer my big, my big answer to the question is also an answer to the previous question that I, I didn't get to tackle, but you, know, what types of traditional companies are, you know, are we seeing interest from? I'm gonna say that that is the thing that I'm most excited about for 2023 and I think that's where we're all going to see a lot of the bigger announcements coming, you know, from us over the next, you know, few months to a year. What kinds of, and, and the reason being, what kinds of companies, it's, it's pretty much everybody, right. We are we are talking to, uh, apparel brands and restaurants and retail brands, we are talking to, consumer technology companies, we are talking to, honestly, like ESG companies everything in between, you know, there's interest pretty much from everybody across the board. And you know, part of that is because it's a very obvious answer, to why it's valuable, right? I'll draw the example you know, talking about, let's say, you know, apparel brand Adidas versus Nike, right? We make shared ownership, community ownership, so easy that it's just like, it just starts with your spend, right? Like, think about it, like, I go and I spend 100 bucks on a pair of shoes from Nike and I'm gonna get five percent back in equity, I'm gonna earn five dollars worth of equity, right? But now, now that I have that, the more that I spend, right, not only the more that I earn but the more value I create for what I've already earned, right, the more that I share through word of mouth, you know, the more that I get my friends to buy and to share in this new identity that we're creating for ourselves as big sneaker heads, right? The more value we're all creating together, the more we participate in that, it makes obvious sense for a consumer, it makes obvious sense for a brand, right? And then, when you go to make that decision on, well, where am I going to shop, am I going to pair buy a pair of Adidas or am I going to buy a pair of Nike shoes? The answer becomes very clear: it's well, I'm going to buy where they value me, right, as a community member, as someone who is a fan of a fan of this brand, right, so I'm gonna go buy those that pair of Nike shoes, right? I'm gonna buy that limited edition drop of sneakers because that's what I like, and that's where I actually feel like I belong, right, so that is what we're excited about for 2023 is that that becomes a reality for brands in any industry and at any stage and, uh, you know, I guess really what I'm most excited about is to see what happens from there, right, when that actually starts happening, where, where do communities and where do brands take it?

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍Yeah, and I mean, I think it's really interesting too, because you know, just kind of even thinking outside the box a little bit, you know, talking it to me, it seems like it could be an amazing way to work with traditional companies, other kind of the, yeah, we take care of our community within a brand or within whatever it may be based on X, Y, and Z, and removing a portion of this to, and I would love to hear something from somebody like Nike or Adidas, but I know that, you know, there's a time in building kind of that name recognition and all these things out, but starting that and being a thought leader in that, um, and then it's almost like, okay, well, there's also kind of a natural connection into web 3, where it could almost be looked at as if we can get kind of you know some brand aspects or whatever within this kind of mechanism of just giving back to community under a co-op structure, whether that be you know a tiny bit of equity that goes into a co-op structure or whatever it is, it's almost like as a byproduct of that, they get an additional community within web 3 where if they do see synergy, they it's much easier to onboard them on because they kind of like are being integrated into the community without being integrated directly into the community, which is pretty crazy to think about.

Upside Cooperative – Tyler Morrey - Founder
‍So, yeah, yeah, I know those are the network effects of community ownership right there, and that's it, that's what's going to drive a lot of stuff, right? Like, uh, like I mean, we might be surprised with some of the names that start adopting this over the next year, you know, nothing outrageously soon, but you know, everyone might be a little surprised with some of the names that come out at some point, like they want. And the reason being, a lot of them they look at this as their, you know, their authentic way of beginning the web 3 experiment. And it's not about what they've already done in web3 or if they have done anything in web3, it's to do this and then they can start layering on all sorts of different things, you know NFTs for identity and experience, you know, layering in different kinds of digital assets, you know, whatever they want to do that they're able to now start participating even more thoroughly with their community, creating a stronger, bigger community, accessing a community that they did not have access to before being the web 3 community. There's a lot of really you know, value enhancing things that happen the minute that you make the decision to start doing shared ownership and to start, you know, leveraging a co-op.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍It's a really, I mean, you know, we always hear web 2 and web 3, but it, I always like thinking about web 2.5 and what web 2.5 represents. Because if you look at these gigantic boom and bust cycles in crypto in general, um, a lot of it is because you see, you know, you see projects or you know ecosystems just go full web three, like even look at Nike and Adidas with the NFTs that they launched. I mean, they went essentially full web three, um, right off the bat, you know, kind of launched into Ethereum XYZ. That web 2.5 aspect is kind of really where I think we start seeing what mass adoption really looks like when web3 is truly mass adopted, and I think that that, you know, breaking down those silos with what traditionally exists, building out community,  and then kind of transitioning in a way that makes sense for that community to go totally web through is a really kind of what's going to be interesting to watch, um, so, yeah, I really appreciate all the answers, dude. Of course, so, yeah, I mean, guys, I don't have anything else unless you do, again, just to give you guys a heads up, passion times days, um, 250,000 plus h bar and tokens or NFTs, uh, is going to be Saturday and Sunday. The link is pinned above if you guys are interested in participating. Last October, I think we had seven thousand, seven thousand people in the space, we had about 300,000 HBAR and, NFTs and tokens, we were able to measure onboarding into Hedera, and we created about between six and eight thousand wallets within like an eight-day period of time, which is pretty ridiculous around one event. Um, doing something similar as well, and this isn't just for new people. Obviously, we want to onboard people into the network. Um, so when you go onto that form above, you'll see, "Hey, create a HashPack if you don't have one." We also, I know Batty mentioned, "Helping Hands," if you're not sure of how to participate in Hedera or are unclear on setting up a wallet. We have a link to "Helping Hands" right within that. They're not affiliated directly with us, but they've been in the community for quite some time, so we try to drive as much traffic to them as possible. That'll be Saturday and Sunday, from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time, both days. And then, also like I talked about the Series 65, so definitely give pre-IPO a follow. Definitely give um Batty a follow. Definitely give an "Upside Co-op" and "Upside Tyler," who's who was up here, and these are going to be I think the way forward. So, we would love to hear some feedback from you guys. You can hop into "Genfinity's Discord" if you like these Twitter spaces. Um, and again, these are going to be an evolving thing. We were doing you know interviews just on videos, but I think it makes much more sense to kind of do them where the community is. If we get questions, we'll answer them. And yeah, just keep moving forward. So, I really appreciate your time today, Tyler, and Batty, as always. Um, super awesome to talk to you. I mean, you and I have been talking for years, so it's always a pleasure, man. And, tell Hattie, tell Hattie I said, "Thank you," for hopping in. That was honestly amazing. So, all right, guys. Uh, we're gonna end it and thank you guys so much. We really appreciate it. We'll see you Saturday and Sunday for Hashentines days.