Web3 Engagement Tools on Hedera! Dimitri Nikolaros of Bountyblok / King Solomon (Part 1)

King Solomon interviews bountyblok 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

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍I would like to ask you guys because I know Bountyblok and Liithos have collaborated, can you talk about some of the aspects, whether it be media engagement or marketing, that you guys have worked with together, and what kind of results you've seen so far? Because I think Michael, you may have mentioned it, that it's always, you know, it's a revolving door, nothing stays static, we always have to try to pivot and adjust towards what the market wants or needs. So what has been the relationship thus far with Bountyblok and Liithos in the initiatives you guys are driving, and how do you consider that relationship moving forward?

Liithos – Michael Mumbauer – Founder & CEO
‍It's been great. I mean, we got introduced via Alex. He knew the kinds of things that we were doing, trying to build community and just kind of trying to create value for the ecosystem. And we had a throughout with the campaign of what we're doing. We created a bunch of assets and collectibles that we really were mainly designed to just help celebrate the IP and what we're doing. On both TikTok and with the comics. And it was actually May from HashPack that said, "Hey, I showed her the storyboards that we created for the TikTok series, and she's like, 'Well, these would make really interesting collectibles,' and I hadn't really thought of that. And it was, but it sounded like a really interesting idea. Hadn't been tried. Most of, I feel like, most of the NFTs we see in the space, or most of them are, at least you know what I see a lot of it, is kind of profile pics and just, you know, specifically art related. This was an opportunity to create something that was a little bit unique, that was the digital collectible, digital collectible used in the creation of one of the pieces of entertainment we did. And so it was like, 'Okay, this is a very interesting opportunity to see, okay, what if we created collectible cards that were celebrating the piece of the series, as kind of, you know, again in the web 3 way of bringing people into the process of how we're building these things and making that a part of the collection moving forward. Now that's one step, another one would be, you know, if that is a success and people like it, and that's really success, just here is defined by, do the community appreciate it, do they like it, do they find value in it, are they trading them with each other normally, like, you know, the kinds of things you'd see with any kind of collectible cards, and then if that works, we can do more, you know, that are similar, you know, to this, and more about creating fandom. And so when Alex turned me on to Dimitri and Bountyblok, we initially had a very, you know, great conversation, but weren't sure exactly how we would create a contest or a thing at the time. And then I kind of drew back to what May said about this idea about doing these cards and said, 'Well, maybe this is a perfect opportunity while we're in the middle of, you know, showing people The Tik Tok series and introducing them to the comic series, well let's see if we do, uh, make these cards and make that more of a contest. And a celebration. And fortunately, they had a very mature technology and we're ready, so that we could actually move very, very quickly. So we kind of created something, you know, in a matter of days that, you know, we had all the art pieces. So it was more about, okay, well, can we, you know, what would this be and how would it look? And mostly technologically, it would take a lot to kind of pull this off. But because Bountyblok was so mature, it was a pretty fast turnaround for us to kind of collaborate. So it was a really great way for us to, you know, get to know each other, build up something awesome, and then, you know, see how that goes, and then, you know, look at opportunities to do more of these if the community likes it.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍That's awesome. And from your guys's standpoint, Bountyblok, you know, what would you like to tell the community in the audience? Because we're obviously going to be pushing tweets out around, the spaces, you know, can you explain how you guys are helping projects? What are the easiest ways that you guys invite projects in to try out your platform? Where do you recommend people go? Who do they get in contact with for potential services that you guys offer? What does that look like from community building standpoint like? Because I think platforms like you guys, you know, that kind of have TurnKey Solutions around, you know, engagement or contests or things like that are important in this space, so where would you like to drive people towards and learning a little bit more about what you guys are facilitating?

Bountyblok – Dimitri Nikolaros - Founder
‍Yeah, absolutely. First of all, thank you Michael for the nice kind words. I just want to add quickly, you know, our team has been working with Michael's team, and the synergy and the just the way they're connecting, it's magical. I love it. It's like a, it's such a mutual chemistry there going on. It's really nice, very, very, and what I love about their team is that, and Michael himself, it's the background experience. So, you know, when they suggest or they want some feature or an idea, we know it's like, man, this is actually a really, really good idea because it comes from, you know, real experience and real reason. It's not just a, it's a nice to have, right? So we appreciate that. So, going back to your question, you know, our tools are basically, it's very simple. They're currently a white list only, meaning that you have to request access, but it's a very, very basic approach. You go to our website, there's a button, it's a type form, it's a few questions just to make sure, you know, you have some kind of a collection or you're building something, right? Because we don't want to just open it up right now to just anybody that just goes in there and just creates, you know, whatever, uh, you know, without them actually having a real project. Because,, you know, we're still in beta on Hedera, and we want to be able to, and we want to, you know, we're doing, you know, regular updates and builds all the time, right? We're working with May from HashPack and even Alex from Hedera Foundation to make, some kind of official announcement that we're live, probably in a couple of weeks. But right now, we're in this beta mode, and you know, we're, you know, we have this kind of like thing where we know, you know, we're fixing bugs, we're adding features, we're tweaking things. So we're doing constant builds and rollouts. So, that's why we have, it's not fully open, but it's still, it's still available to anyone that's interested. You just go to our website, request for access, and within 24 hours, you'll have access to the platform. It's just as simple as that.

Liithos – Michael Mumbauer – Founder & CEO
‍I know that both of you guys have brought up the monstrosity of the team that is the HashPack team, and I'm pretty sure we have Marc up here today, but if you think about Marc or Jacob or May or any of these guys you know, and the rest of the team, I mean, these guys are just, I mean, I can even speak for my own personal fans how much Marc has helped me out personally, within some of the events that Genfinity has tried to facilitate.  I would like to hear from you guys. I mean, I know this is recent probably for the Liithos team, but I think it was over the past couple of weeks we saw integration with Liithos and HashPack. What has that experience been like thus far, as far as, you know, the claiming aspects and just working with the team?

HashPack Wallet – Marc Ugas – Director of Operations
‍Yeah, well, thank you so much, Ryan. This is Marc. Yeah, so, I mean, May has been dealing with, like, you know, taking care of mostly everything, but if anything from our side, whatever, what we've been hearing is that it's just been incredible the speed at which most of the drops have been selling out have been incredible. And also the feedback from the community, I mean, our discords have been just filled with people just asking, "Oh, how do we get on this, how do we get on that?" And it just, it's just awesome to see this, this use case is coming live and like Michael was saying, you know, being able to, um, showcase this great IP that they're working on. And I feel like with the engagement side of things with Bountyblok, further incentivizing people to engage with people, learn more about it. And I think that the whole company approach is super interesting. I'm actually, you know, I love comic books and all of that. And I think that overall has been, it's been incredible. The entire user journey is something that was super polished and really, I think it made it super, super simple. And, yeah, I mean, it's been truly, it's really incredible too to be part of this and really excited for everything else that will come in the future.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍Yeah, and Michael, from Liithos’ standpoint what's the experience that you guys have had so far working with HashPack?

Liithos – Michael Mumbauer – Founder & CEO
‍I mean, everything's been phenomenal. Like May was phenomenal, you know, we are able to deliver everything to the community as smoothly as possible. And again, to your point of us trying a web 2.5 approach is very accurate because, ultimately, again, we want to help. You know, satisfy the Hedera ecosystem and bring something really great for them, but we also want to come in and help grow it. And so growing it requires us, kind of onboarding, or at least helping to draw onboarding new non-crypto or non-NFT, non-web 3 savvy people. And that's, I think, that that's the industry's challenge. So I think it's a thing that everybody wants to see, is, you know, increase awareness and simplify onboarding and sort of demystify web3. And so I think from my perspective, things like working with HashPack and Bountyblok to just create opportunities that are, you know, familiar to just, you know, analog, right, so analog, you know, regular web 2 or whatever behaviors and collectibles, but within this space, and, you know, creating that kind of bridge between the old world of how we collected things and what the value of those things are intrinsically, and tied to entertainment or not, and then just trying to kind of bring engagement via the entertainment side and, you know, inevitably bringing them into the more of the bigger game ecosystem.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍A hundred percent. I mean, and I know that you guys, like, with the claiming of the digital collectibles. Um, right now, I mean, like, whenever, I guess I can talk for myself personally, whenever I saw that, like, there were OGs from, like, Days Gone, Last of Us, like, Rebuilder stuff like that through The Liithos Branding, like, that was, this was, I mean, I don't even remember when this was, maybe six, eight months ago, maybe even a little bit longer, just staying on top of like the founders passes and everything else, you know that, as you guys launched one thing, that was extremely interesting to me, is that like, it, there's not really, it's way more about community building than it is about trying to make money on the backs of the community with the sale of NFTs and things like that, which I think is really refreshing because you guys are building out a triple A game. You guys are also kind of doing the fan and the community onboarding, I think in a very legitimate way from everything that we've seen so far, which is fantastic to witness. One thing I would like to ask both Liithos and, Bountyblok, how would you guys, so given the experience that you that you've had so far with community onboarding, what would be some recommendations for people that might be listening or people that get involved in the future so to allow them to get more involved and to help you know spread the word about both Liithos and Bountyblok so,  you know, what, where would you like people to kind of really try to go and support the initiatives that you guys are building out, both from Bountyblok standpoint and from the gamification standpoint with Liithos.

Liithos – Michael Mumbauer – Founder & CEO
‍From our side, I mean, the thing is, you know, we are just scratching the surface now. I think, you know, to your point, we announced last June and then, you know, introduced some very early things into the community, but needed to bring more value. And so now, six-eight months later, we're now unveiling those pieces of the things that we've been working on for that short period of time, which I think is, you know, familiar to the crypto web 3. Okay, well, we announced, and now you're producing things, and it's a reasonable amount of time. But I think what happens now is we will just continue to be creating new opportunities for the community to participate in, you know, more comics, more collectibles. We have, you know, again, card games that we're looking at that will lead to the bigger game but that will support the things that we've created going to them, and we have ideas on how to kind of merge all of these worlds together. And so just, you know, people staying active in, you know, Twitter and Discord, and coming to the website, and we'll continue to keep dropping, you know, very, very, you know, hopefully intrinsically valuable things to the community at a very low-cost entry to mostly be about celebrating the community and the IP, and then we do hope that that passes that value to the community where they can, you know, know their own value in it and trade and participate and also tell, like, share with us what they like that we're doing, what isn't working, you know, that happened along the way when we did our first outing of drops, we really tried to kind of do it more on a web 2 plus experience and the community was like, we really wanted a more direct web three one, so we quickly pivoted, had been more already working on, you know, a background way to do that, so we were able to just kind of pivot and turn that on so that we could serve both audiences. I think the key is obviously it's just trying to figure out and how, having the community help us figure out together how we start merging these ecosystems together without kind of having two discrete ecosystems.