Hello Diamond, Tony! Welcome to our fifth ChainChat actually, suddenly everyone is taking an interest which we’re really excited about. What we do is ask each guest to leave a question for the next guest, thus creating a chain. You won’t have to think about this one too much! When did you first get into Blockchain/Web3?

Diamond: So for me, that was about a year ago because he onboarded me into this space.

Tony: Yes, I got into this space in 2019. Through my friend yungcontent, who onboarded me. I thought all of this was a big fad and I was like, Who wants to do business on the Blockchain? With NFTs and all that, I was like, It will never get this big. But then I started seeing little things were happening, you know like a lot of BigTech companies were getting into this space and expanding it and I was like, If Coca-Cola is getting into this space, and this person is getting into this space… that’s when I noticed a lot of brands coming in too and I was like It’s time to take this serious and see where this can go.

Is your interest, whether together or separate, personal or professional?

Tony: Together.

Diamond: Yeah, we’re together. We own an organization called NFTCLT, we’re based out of Charlotte. We have monthly, if not more often, get-togethers in the community but we also travel the world, educating people on Blockchain, NFTs, and Web3. And I think what really makes us different and why people have been attracted to our organization is because we break it down very simply. Ultimately, mass adoption and bringing more people on the chain requires connecting with people where they are, we can’t expect everyone to find us on Twitter. We have to go out in real life and do the grassroots work, making the information accessible to people. Ask What’s your industry? Let me translate this for you in a way that makes sense. Yeah and then I think, just being very inclusive. People use that word a lot but if you come to our event you will truly see every race, a beautiful mix of gender, a nice balance of men and women, you’ll see kids running around, you’ll see young adults making that transition from childhood to professional life. Navigating their way through Blockchain and so I think that’s something that’s just really unique about our community.

Tell me more then, about your community and about your specific project.

Diamond: Yeah, so I mean the project is building a community in the city of Charlotte, and then we’ve started expanding to other cities. We have a sister city that was brought up by our friend Lionel, in Phoenix, we’re gonna be out in Atlanta next week, we do some work out there. We were in Cincinnati for Midwestcon, so we really support other organizations in addition to our own. Building community and bringing accessible education to the masses.

So the main theme is the education side of things?

Diamond: I like to call it activation because I want the people to walk away yes, learning a little bit more, but it’s like drinking from a fire hose — we all know when you get into this space you can go down the rabbit hole.

Tony: And there’s so much misinformation out there so you never know like who is actually in the space, actually building, actually working, because people will try to throw you off. Right now, it’s a new technology, it’s emerging, but you got to be careful so we try to be that resource for people.

Diamond: So yeah, we want them to walk away with a nice understanding of where we’re going with Blockchain, why it’s relevant, and then walk away with some resources. We go to all the major conferences where our friends are, and we have a very strong network with the builders of this space, so being able to bring resources that you can trust I think is very important for building a safe community for onboarding. And people will walk away inspired, I like to say activated. We activate people, we activate cities to participate in the Blockchain ecosystems. 

Nice. Do you have NFT artwork or different kinds of NFTs?

Diamond: We do! We have been experimenting with launching our own version of POAPs (?) for events that people can collect, last night at our event we have a whole DApp up now where you could go, and connect your wallet, that’s going to be integrated into a new website we have coming out soon. So yeah, we’ve been building steadily but people will jump into this space and wanna launch an NFT, but your existing community doesn’t even have wallets and doesn’t really know how it all works. We are coming up to our anniversary, it’s been a year in November so we have that behind us. Education, activation, connect wallets, encouraging people to do their own research and it’s not until recently that we’re rolling out a more robust NFT membership program.

It’s interesting what you said. It’s come up before that people have a project and they want to push it out there without prep. Like you have the vehicle, but the infrastructure isn’t there. 

What have been your challenges in doing more?

Tony: Well, one big challenge is that there’s so much misinformation out there that what you know now, in six months you won’t know a thing. Everything changes so much in this industry that you got to be able to adapt to the fire because everybody’s entry point into this space is different. You might have people who are artists that want to sell artwork, you might have people who want to be a collector. I have people who want to be a part of a project or people who just want to be a part of coding and get a job in Web3. So, it’s got to the point where, you know, when we started this project back in November, it was all about PFPs (?) and what project to get into. So everything changes, the question is How do we adapt? On education and onboarding, and How does the community benefit from that?

Diamond: And I think another big challenge is just scaling, like, we travel so much helping other cities and our friends in this space, through events that help activate their communities that in our own community it’s just a question of bandwidth. You can’t be in two places at once! As we look at expanding, it’s just about having more resources and people who are passionate.

Tony: Absolutely, an educational resource that’s what we are.

How do you broach the topic of diversity then? I know you said that at your meetings you see a diverse range of people, so do you think it’s an issue?

Diamond: I think if you’re not conscious about who you’re bringing in, it can be an issue. When we have panels and guest speakers, we very much intentionally curate who’s speaking and we make sure they’re not only different races and genders, but they’re coming from different industries. Last night we had social influencers, a musician, an Intellectual Property (IP) lawyer… just this wide range of folks in conversation together on a panel and I think that’s something that can be missing depending on the project or depending on the community. In the NFT space, people are comfortable with their friends and who they know, whether it’s on the investment side or Wall Street side, or you know, just the friends that they’ve made online around a certain art or whatnot, and you don’t realize sometimes you have unconscious biases that we end up creating environments that aren’t diverse without meaning to. I’m biracial, Tony has a mix of heritage, and it’s kind of in our blood to make sure that everyone is included.

Any projects that you think are ones to watch?

Tony: Huxley Saga and Feature.io. It was established by one of the co-creators, an illustrator for Microsoft, HALO. Super sci-fi, a mix of comic books, and also with robots, humans, noise…

Diamond: I would say it’s like the next generation of Star Wars.

Tony: Yeah that’s cool, right there!

Diamond: When we think about projects that are gonna make it and last, it’s the ones that have strong IP, strong story IP, right? That is, I think, a necessity. Then you mentioned Feature.io, feature is actually Blockchain hardware, that makes me so excited because I come from manufacturing and hardware, that will exclusively have Blockchain-created content on that platform so similar to Apple TV or whatnot. That excites me. There are a few others — Cryptoys are going to do really well, they’re built on Flow, they’ve just announced a partnership with Mattel, and they’re based out of Charlotte where we are at as well. Black is Beautiful, House of First! Beautiful collection, House of First is always bringing artists from Web2 to Web3, really supporting them and making sure that they’re exposed to a safe Web3 community.

Tony: And also, they give 10%  back to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), too, they help out around the community with a lot of community projects in the area, as well as a lot of the other stuff that they can vote on, to actually help facilitate that as well.

What is your background?

Diamond: I studied mechanical engineering at USC in LA and then started my career at Microsoft and Juul where I was doing global supply and strategic sourcing so going overseas, managing those business relationships, being in the factory, negotiating costs, negotiating manufacturing processes, working with engineers, it was really cool - I was building awesome products. I helped build Surface, I helped build Juul devices, managed many commodities for them, and so I’ve always had experience in tech, even my first internship was at Visa in a data center, so when you start talking about decentralized networks, it’s so tangible to me because I’ve been in a centralized network, where all of the Visa processing happens in the world. It was a natural progression or transition into Web3 for me.

Tony: Me, I’ve done a bunch of things. I’m the type of person that I always want to learn more, and I have always wanted to try out new things. I’m a former chef, a former welder, I did concerts, I did tours, the afterparties, I was on tour with Chris Brown, so I’ve done a lot of things. I’m a gemini, I’m always up in the cloud. I gotta do more things, I feel like you can never be boxed in and labeled as something, you only get one life, so I don’t wanna be a one-trick pony.

I sometimes like the analogy that one of my first colleagues made which is that it’s just as nice to have horizontal goals as it is to have vertical ones. 

What do you wish you’d known sooner?

Tony: Ahhh! I wish that I was who I am now, then. Because now I have a clear vision of what I want, and how to attain it. Before it was like I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do that, and you always do it because of this society of I have to do it because I need money. Now, I do it because I love to do it. I want to do it. It gives me purpose in life. So this is the difference between now and then. 

Diamond: I love my journey because I’m still young, I’m 26, and I really feel like I’ve had a beautiful set of experiences in a short amount of time but, becoming a full-time entrepreneur, I wish I would have had more confidence in life, being able to step out and do something on my own without the safety net. You become an entrepreneur and have to wear so many hats, I used to not wear hats, I wear them all the time now because I don’t have time to do my hair! I honestly, though, wish I would have been inspired to go the entrepreneurship route a little bit, not sooner, like I said I think time and COVID and all that decided that, but I think for so long the Get a good job at a good corporation! Had me stressing myself when life has so much more to offer. 

Any predictions for the future, broadly speaking?

Tony: Yeah, I’ll go ahead. I’m not gonna say anything though.

Diamond: Well our general prediction about where we’re going is — he wants to spill the beans about what we’re working on — but I think in the future everyone is going to have their own social token. This is kind of what our event was about last night, what social tokens looked like for creators and any people with any kind of talent. There are platforms where you basically have your resumé on-chain, and people can endorse it. That’s going to be a massive revolution in terms of money and the use of Blockchain for the average person. And then I think hardware. That’s my second biggest one, I feel like we’ll see so much more blockchain hardware come into the mainstream whether that’s phones, streaming devices, or wearables, although wearables always have a challenge because if it doesn’t look cool if it’s too clunky it’s not gonna work. Hopefully, as the technology progresses we are going to witness all sorts of things including really cool hardware that interplays AR with the real world seamlessly.

Tony: Yeah. I feel like this space is not what we thought it would be, it’s not just like this Metaverse where you put goggles on and go out, y’all have to live a real life, but I look at it like it’s going to be so many different places and avenues people can go to, and you’re gonna have a niche for everybody, it’s all about community. That’s what it’s gonna be, the future of this. It’s all gonna be about community and what community suits you. And everybody is gonna have to understand that as she says, she’s from hardware, a lot of these devices are gonna start coming out and you’re gonna see a lot of major companies starting to drop off like flies, if they don’t have a Web3 integration and don’t understand what this technology can do because this is the New Age, we’re in the dotcom era of 1999. Everything’s gonna be changing in the next ten years it’s gonna actually be a whole new world, supply chains…

Diamond: Yeah you talk about communities Tony, DAOs! DAOs are really gonna change the way we collaborate as communities and govern and create real change.

Tony: Even the way you run an election, that’s gonna be transparent. The whole voting process in America doesn’t really benefit the American people. So it’s gonna bring a lot of transparency. As for us, with the tour — did I say tour? Oh, OK…

…that wasn’t on purpose at all, was it?

Haha! We’re going to be onboarding and educating a lot of the collegiate youth and helping them integrate into this space and see what it can do. And basically, be a resource to them on their journey, and help them find where their niche is in this technology.

Diamond, a quick question for you with your background! If I have say, an iPhone, it won’t be as simple as downloading some Blockchain App, would I need the piece of hardware to be able to use that technology?

Diamond: Well not necessarily, we already have Apps, we have wallets that connect to decentralized internet, Metamask, you can connect to a decentralized browser, Apple has really beautiful robust hardware that seamlessly integrates everything. The problem is you have a third party there, right? So ultimately, Apple makes the store — if you make a DApp that doesn’t align with them or it isn’t something that they feel is necessary or that the brand wants to support, then you won’t get your App on the store. You’re going to need an alternative. That’s where I think Apple is a huge company, when you think about the market they have most of the devices so It will be interesting to see if they shift gears, right now I don’t believe Apple Pay has crypto on it, and most POS aren’t accepting crypto. Either they're gonna figure that out quickly, or some other person will come in.

… Or they’ll go the way Blackberry did. Compete or obsolete. Anyway, it’s interesting for me on the non-tech side to try to understand how it will work. OK, so unless you have anything else you want to share?

Tony: All I would say is don’t fear change and don’t fear the unknown. The unknown sparks a lot of innovative ideas. From the unknown is how we advance as the human race or expand our knowledge. Change is good, but don’t ever fear the unknown. We conquered the moon, that was unknown but we got that, there’s a lot of unknown in this life but don’t fear it, just embrace it, and have fun.

Cool, thank you. In that case, I’m going to ask you to think of a question for our next ChainChatter.

Diamond: I got one, I got one. Question is, What do you care about, what do you want Blockchain to be a solution for?

Love it. Thank you very much, lovely to meet you both and I’ll be following closely on social media to see what you’re up to.

Peace! Have a good rest of your day.