Lukas Seel: 0:00

Welcome everybody. This is Helios Horizons, episode 24. Today, we welcome Micha V, the founder of many companies, including two of my very favorites, built on Multiverse X, peerme and Taggarty, and we'll talk about what they do, but first of all, I want to welcome Micha to the stage. How are you?

Micha Viehauser: 0:24

Thanks, doing good. I mean, we've talked about DreamSpace for a long time back at the Collabathon and, yeah, glad to make it happen finally.

Lukas Seel: 0:33

Yeah, yeah, it's been a long time in the making and a lot of things have actually happened since. So I'm glad we actually get to discuss that, because when we spoke at the Collabathon in Spain in September, some things weren't live and hadn't happened. That have happened since, and we'll touch on that. Before we dive into all the technical stuff, I want to go into some personal background, because that's always very interesting. What kind of informs the things you're building, the things you're interested in and all of these things? So, um, yeah, give us a little bit of an introduction to you as a person. What, um, yeah, what? Where did you're from? Austria, but where did you grow up like? What kind of were your interests as a younger person? And then, how did you discover this entire blockchain space?

Micha Viehauser: 1:26

yeah, okay, so I'm from Vienna, austria. That's where I grew up and about the age 11, 12, something like that, I got my first computer from my dad. That's also, I think, where the whole passion for coding, building some cool products, started it. When I got my computer, basically what what I discovered was you know, the whole HTML might say something to you and what you can build with it some amazing things. And it was really hard back then, got a lot easier, I would say, by today, and I think this is also very much comparable to how blockchain evolves right now. It starts out really hard back then three years ago when I joined, and now it's getting easier and easier for new people to join.

Micha Viehauser: 2:12

But back to the story, to my story. Um, yeah, I started very early, then did school and everything. Um got my first web developer job back in 219, something like that, and that's where I also got to meet a very brilliant person, which I considered my mentor was all about, or we shared a lot of similar interests, which is about, you know, writing clean code, clean applications that are not just clean on the user side, but also the whole infrastructure is built on great foundations, and that's a principle we shared. That's a principle that I took to Pyramid Taggarty, spawnable to all the products. And yeah, I started a side project during this job too, which was called Free IM. Some might have heard it. It was all about achieving personal excellence, just getting better at what you do. A very simple, simple way to say this is if life is a game, then free I am would have helped you become the best person or the best character possible. And, yeah, took this further. It eventually came a business with a user base and that's where I went in full time.

Micha Viehauser: 3:28

And alongside doing this, I discovered blockchain. Uh, very interesting, you know. Maybe some of you might remember the first time you got to discover blockchain. It's like this whole mind blow moment where you got to learn a lot of things, the fundamentals, so that you can understand what it's actually capable of doing. So, yeah, next to next to running 3i am as a, as a company, that then into into all the blockchain space and thought of ways of connecting the two, project the blockchain with 3am and maybe value that it can do, and we can dive into this later. I actually wanted to become a validator with 3am. Didn't make it back then because of some circumstances. But yeah, that's all the journey back to the moment when I got into blockchain.

Lukas Seel: 4:13

I want to go back a little bit, though, because I don't know when I guess I got my first computer, or like. I never have my own computer. I had a shared computer with my brother and I think my parents used it too. But like, was that something you were asking your dad to do? Or was it something that, like, once you had it, you were kind of messing around with it and got into it? What was your what's kind of the story behind? You know, learning to code and then looking at that, and was that something you got into? Like, my only interest on the computer was like messaging, like people or like, um, I don't know, I played like one or two video games, but I never was big into that. But like, was that the intention? Were you like, oh, I want this computer to do xyz, or or did you kind of like get absorbed by it as you were looking at these websites and you mentioned HTML and all of that?

Micha Viehauser: 5:08

I like that question, it's good. So we spent a lot of time at my grandparents' place back then and my grandpa was actually the first who had a computer and you know we slept at their place and waking up I was the first one, you know, straight to the computer as a kid and starting the games we had, I don't know. You know the pinball game and all that, and I had quite a passion for gaming. I would probably pick the game today too, but you know time is a limited resource, so not getting too much to it. But back then I played a lot of games, including, you know, the FIFA soccer, some shooter games too. Oh, I remember FIFA. Yeah, I played, including, you know, the fifa soccer some shooter games too.

Micha Viehauser: 5:47

Oh, I remember fifa yeah, I played that one a lot, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, you know the, the game where you play yourself, and then the managers too. So all different kind of variations and these games as they as they go, you, they always have the possibilities to strategize and to to find a lot of content around them. You know, and what I was doing is create websites around them, using and this is also, you know, you have a project and you learn while doing the project. I think that's the best way to learn too, so that's how I got to learn a lot doing this project.

Micha Viehauser: 6:19

A lot of them just didn't, you know, were just going to the waste basket afterwards, but the learning experience and the skills stay. Yeah, so, through gaming, building web systems around them leech of leggings was one of them, but you know, we can have all these strategies, you know, becoming better, um, through, through help, tools that are useful and yeah, that's uh, that's the story behind that and then you asked your dad I, I want a computer, or he bought it for the family, and then how did you end up really getting into the coding side of things?

Lukas Seel: 6:52

because that's, I mean, still a leap. Like obviously I enjoyed the strategy part of a lot of these games, as you know, like I like playing chess and and this stuff, although I didn't do that as a kid. But, um, you know like it's. It's quite a different experience, like looking at binary code or like importing libraries or doing all of this debugging and really annoying things that I think would turn off any normal like 11 year old or or teenager. Like what, what fascinated you and what was kind of the? The leap that you made from the like, oh, this is a fun game and I can like strategize to, hey, how are these games built? Or like, how can I mess with this stuff?

Micha Viehauser: 7:32

yeah, good, good point. So I missed that one, of course. Um, grandparents staying at grandparents place and playing computer games you go, you go home and then say, hey, I want something like this, I want, I want this one and let's take it. And yeah, my dad built one then for me. That's how I got into it, just experimenting, and back then because he said, importing software libraries and all that back then nothing like this existed.

Micha Viehauser: 7:54

You have to do everything from scratch yourself, and I think that helps also to have a good understanding of how things work, and I always was driven with this curiosity where I wanted to understand how things work, and best things to understand this is to do it yourself. And yeah, that's how this path never stopped. Right, once you understand something, then there's something, a component behind that, something that you also need to understand. The rabbit hole goes deep and I think on blockchain, you have this again where you understand smart contracts, and in order to understand smart contracts, you have to type in deeper again and you end up with binary, zeros and ones and hexadecimal and all that. Right, so the learning never stops.

Lukas Seel: 8:42

What was the first thing you coded yourself?

Micha Viehauser: 8:47

That's a good question. I think it was a website for a band I play guitar. I played guitar back then a lot in a band and we wanted to have a website and the website. I think you still have the code somewhere of this website. I try to never throw them away and I need to look it up, but it's definitely it would be a good experience to look back at the things you did like years ago and you, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was.

Lukas Seel: 9:17

I mean, didn't you have MySpace as an alternative? That's? That's, that was customizable, I guess, right. That was a bit before Ah okay, um, interesting, um, so, from from that, uh, you mentioned going to school and you mentioned the mentor, and I want to hear about the mentor. What, um, you know who was, who were they? And um, uh, you know what did they do and and how did they help you on the path?

Micha Viehauser: 9:46

And you know what did they do and how did they help you on the path. Well, I was working for a project, an Austrian company that's quite popular I'm not sure how deep I can go into this. It's like orange black colors in the racing space and we worked on a new. They built a museum, basically, and we had to do a website for that and then some configurators where you can configurate some vehicles, um online stuff like this, and I joined this as as the first developer and I had new developers join in, and one of one of the guys was the senior developer, which I, which then became a mentor, and he, like he, had a huge focus on.

Micha Viehauser: 10:26

Everything had to be clean, even if it takes a long time. If it's not clean and if it's not built with the right foundations, then we remove it and we do it again, and that can be quite annoying, of course, especially if you're not so long in the space. But I shared the same values and I think a lot of people they think they do clean work, but then if a more experienced person comes and tells you, no, this is not clean, then yeah, it takes a lot, a lot. Also, it's easy to get ego. The ego gets affected. You know what I mean. And it's also a lot of awareness too, like if you don't know if you do clean work or not, if someone else doesn't tell you. And yeah, just used had the mentor wrote down all the questions I had, maybe how to do things, and after a couple of hours I had uh, every couple of hours and that every day for probably a year or two came back with the questions, got them answered and did my thing. So that was the experience and I think that has helped a lot with the projects going on right now.

Micha Viehauser: 11:36

And especially if you do things in a good way and keep them clean and maintainable for a long time, that will also help you move forward in a fast way, efficiently, without having to do a lot of maintenance and refactoring, as we call them, where you have to rewrite code. They cost a lot of time. So if you do things the right way from the start, then you can move efficiently and fast. And I think that also shows in projects like Pyramid, where we have had times where we released features every couple of days. With TagRoutine R2, I think we have done a lot of work in four months what would otherwise take teams a year. Yeah, I think these are the principles that if you, if you follow them um you will have good results yeah, I think that's so interesting too, like this idea that foundations are actually so important.

Lukas Seel: 12:39

Um, it's, it's so many people try to break into space, like in in this um, new way and and that's totally cool and bring like some experimentation, but to really hone the craft and get good at these fundamentals so you can build everything on top of them, even if it takes a bit longer and is very arduous and annoying in the beginning, what will happen is that you can move so much faster and, like you know, having worked with you for a while now, like it's like you seem very methodical and very you know, everything is thought out, but then it happens so fast, you know, from like a feature request to the delivery.

Lukas Seel: 13:17

It's really an incredible turnaround. I want to go to the blockchain part. Now You're working for this company, getting experience and all this stuff, and then, all of a sudden, you're exposed to this new, you know, way of building or different possibilities. Do you remember your first like touch point with blockchain? Was that something else that you heard about before in terms of, like Bitcoin, speculative stuff? And then you, you know, do you remember first perceiving it and what was that like?

Micha Viehauser: 13:52

Well, that's a few years ago, but it feels like forever. So first touchpoint was Ethereum, was you know all the terms small contracts, but, of course, a new blockchain with all the investment, investment focus and and that's also how perceived blockchain for a long time to be all about the investments, and that's why I think I didn't get into this um until a later point, which is around 2020. Yeah, then I followed ethereum, um, and I wanted to learn more about it. So I thought, okay, let's put some money into this because that will get you more attached to all of that and learn more about it and all that. So that definitely helped explore the ecosystem, but I liked what the vision was all about and what it can do based on the knowledge that I had back then.

Micha Viehauser: 14:37

Of course, you always learn more and then see new opportunities, but I never really liked the state of that. So, for example, ethereum in order to do anything more than buy ETH or any token it was just way too complex to use and I'm a technical person. How should anyone else, a non-technical person, use that technology? And I was looking to other blockchains, like Cardano, for example, but Cardano you know the blockchain I don't know. I didn't try Cardano for quite some time now and I hope Adam Bates doesn't hear me now saying this, but I think Cardano was always the blockchain where you need a degree in order to use it and you need a degree in order to be part of the community, otherwise you're not accepted. But yeah, so I never really stick much with Cardano.

Micha Viehauser: 15:26

But then I had a friend actually uh new from university back then tell me um, hey, you need to check out this blockchain. They released their mobile app tomorrow and yeah, I definitely should get some eagles. And then I was like, okay, that dived into maya. You know the? Uh. The next day, my, it was the maya launch back. So, for those who don't know, maya turned into Xportal and, yeah, I loved what I saw. I think it was the complete contrast to the experience I had on Ethereum, where everything was so complicated. Maya was so super simple and, yeah, I think that was the first thing. That was a positive surprise. And then, as a technical person, I went to the GitHub of Elrond or Motivatex now and checked out the code and this is a whole new ecosystem.

Micha Viehauser: 16:11

I did this with Ethereum too, by the way, about Ethereum and as a person who cares about clean infrastructure, code whatever, never really liked or felt. How do you say you know, convinced of? Wow, I like what I see, but this was the complete opposite of multi-reistics. I think they have a very clean infrastructure. They used tools and coding languages that I personally also like. So that was all very good touch points in the beginning that led me to dive deeper into it, like what I saw, got to know, you know, when you dive into the code, you also understand kind of how to use it and you learn more about the ecosystem. So that's how I got to learn you know the developer tools and all that.

Micha Viehauser: 17:01

And something that's been very interesting to me as a blockchain concept, as I got to learn it was the concept of dows. I think they in order to grasp what they can do and I think I still did not grasp like everything that's going to be possible with dows, but they're a very interesting concept that I also followed on ethereum a little bit, but also on using DAOs. You can't even use the base technology, right? So how are you supposed to use any kind of DAOs? And that's all the things that I wanted to make more accessible and bring it to more people, because I think the technology itself is incredible? Who was it? Was it Daniel from EcoSqueeze?

Lukas Seel: 17:57

He said, discovering blockchain was a moment like discovering the internet, something like this. You're a technical person. You even dove into some blockchain stuff before, but then what brings most of everyday users in perhaps always is a good user experience, and I think, like you were saying, meijer, was completely unparalleled. Back in the day, there was no usable wallet, much less one that you could have on your phone, and so I think that was really a breakthrough and such a UX breakthrough as well. Is that something that still like when you now code your things and think about your products, something that informs how you think about blockchain and we'll go much deeper into that in a second like how you connect users and blockchain and all this stuff but, would you say, also something that still resonates with you? It's like I want people to have that experience when they first discover blockchain.

Micha Viehauser: 18:57

Yeah, and I think also MultiplaceX has stepped it up constantly with the release of xExchange, having less transactions that are needed to do things that you actually need to, constantly making things simpler because there is still a huge entry barrier to blockchain. As a normal user, you still have to remember kind of seed phrases, you still have to wait for long for transactions to finalize. Basically, there's still a lot to do. You have to know what tokens are and what gas fees are and you have to have gas fees in your wallet. So there's a long way to go.

Micha Viehauser: 19:42

But of course, that um, that fundamental belief that blockchain should be part of everyday life and it should be easy to use and not much differently from web2 applications. All of that we take into pme, taggerty and spawnable also, which is more technical tool, and yeah, I think they all complement each other, like Pyramid and Taggarty. For example, we try to make the entry barrier to Pyramid a lot easier through Taggarty and we try to make the entry barrier to smart contracts and hosting smart contracts with Pyramid easier through Spawnable. So they're all very complementary in how they achieve this fundamental belief that blockchain should be very easy to use for everyday users.

Lukas Seel: 20:35

Yeah, and let's finish that transition too. What convinced you to then make the personal decision like, okay, web2, that was all fun and learned a lot and all this stuff, but it's time to really commit myself to web 3 was was there a particular thing that really was like, oh, this technology is so revolutionary, or was it, you know, money, or was it what? What really, uh, convinced you to make that? Um, final step, let's say, to your final destination, web3?

Micha Viehauser: 21:05

Yeah. So back then I was still working more than full-time on Freeim, the other company, and I got just, you know, you learn about blockchain and as you learn about it, you, you understand what? What? Uh kind of revolutionary technology technology this is. And from there I thought, okay, are you going to pass this train now, basically just to work on on the other product, which is also doing okay and good, or do you actually follow through? Now? And I wanted, I said I wanted to be become a validator.

Micha Viehauser: 21:43

Back then I didn't get the response, I mean in order to be verified. And if you're not verified as a validator, you know, then it doesn't make much sense if, if people don't delegate to you because you're not listed in in the my app back then. So I dropped that plan. Uh, took the money instead put into the project and, yeah, 3am, basically I tried to find um people who who can take this further, try to sell it and all that. But uh, let it eventually fade out because the competition was extremely strong on that side and just wanted to go more into blockchain technology. I I thought I cannot let this train pass. It's just and it's also way more interesting, personally for me. So that's how it went.

Lukas Seel: 22:27

Yeah, super interesting, and your first project that you started building was Pyrami. Let's talk about that.

Micha Viehauser: 22:35

Well, lucas, question for you. Do you know the project that was? What was the name of Pyramid back then?

Lukas Seel: 22:42

Something city, Superciety, Superciety.

Micha Viehauser: 22:46

Yeah, and how did you perceive it? That's something I'm curious about, like what was Superciety for you back then?

Lukas Seel: 22:53

Oh, that's an interesting question. I remember getting at some point like a Camel NFT or something. And I remember getting at some point like a camel NFT or something and I remember looking at it and I was more into like the gambling NFT side of things. Or let's say, let's frame it positively I was into the community side of things. I never gambled because I never sold anything, but I was like, oh, this is interesting.

Lukas Seel: 23:31

And I remember that Super Society was basically this peer token, that I don't think it was DAOs at that point or not so exclusively. But yeah, I mean, you see, my memories is failing me a little bit. It was something that I had on my radar but it was not something that I ever interacted with. And I have to admit, also peer me this entire voting system and all of these things. Like I got into that first, I think, through the media collection, and then Vapor Republic, I believe, and then Vapor Republic, I believe, but it's something that I hadn't really integrated into stuff that I was doing on-chain. So now it's very different.

Lukas Seel: 24:10

It's not necessarily a DAO tool for X-Alliance, but it's something I use basically daily. So it's very interesting also to hear from you, like, what was the initial super society idea. How did that evolve? Were there challenges, um that you discovered? Or or like a product market fit or lack of? Uh, lack thereof, that's that made you pivot. And like how did you go from super society to appear me? I'm so, so glad I turned this question around on you now.

Micha Viehauser: 24:42

Yeah, it's an interesting evolution there. So, because you asked about the first project or product that I was working on, it was called Egotist. Back then I'm not sure if maybe a few of you know it was like a platform that is a simpler form than Xspot like this right now. It was to display NFTs, to mint NFTs, because back then there was no way to mint an NFT in an easy way. So that was what this platform was about.

Micha Viehauser: 25:12

It was later merged into Super Society and Super Society was more of a concept and I had this interest or fascination for DAOs back then, still from Ethereum, and thought, well, we can take this concept further and bring it to people in a simple way. But still, super society is the early form of Pyramid, but it was more conceptual, basically, where lots of people come together into groups with shared interests, a common goal, and they work together into groups of shared interests, this common goal, and they work together. They maybe have shared income and they expand there, and this goes also a lot in the direction of network states, which I think you want to touch on today. So let's see, and why this transition from SuperSighting to PMU? This was more to make out of this. What is a concept? Fundamentally? To make this commercial, to make this a for-profit thing, and for-profit I know this sounds bad to many people, but for-profit means it allows us to reinvest the profits back into the platform so that we can make it what it is today.

Micha Viehauser: 26:17

Because back then, super society was mostly you could create a DAO. You could vote yes, no and that was it. But by becoming for-profit and we also changed a lot of divisions where we went from being a concept to actually targeting teams of any size and wanting to onboard them to the blockchain I think Pyramid is in a very good position. We have added a lot of features to make it customizable to bring teams of any kind that are interested in blockchain. They want to interact with blockchain itself to the blockchain. So I personally see Pyramid as, in the first instance, as a tool to bring teams to the blockchain through multisig or DAO, and in the second instance that goes in a more esoteric way that we'll talk on another space, but maybe let's see if we get into this today.

Lukas Seel: 27:09

No, I mean I'm super curious what the sort of conceptual layout is and where you see it going. Go for it.

Micha Viehauser: 27:17

Well, daos are interesting concepts. So DAOs is basically groups of people coming together. They can own resources together through a vault, through a shared vault, and they can make decisions with those resources or as this entity together. You know, to call out a smart contract through some kind of voting they can sign. You know, three out of five have to agree in order to send the payment or call a smart contract, or they can vote yes, no different options and all that.

Micha Viehauser: 27:48

And I think daos, they can go really far and right now I mentioned this a few times in the past it's daos. They can own items. Daos, they could pool funds together and the more funds you pull into the style, the more voting rights and voting power you have. And you can actually purchase uh, purchase, um, assets like robots, if we go really deep into this, like you know, a tesla robot that does a job that earns income, maybe even just a software, ai or any kind of asset that yields recurring income, basically, and is redistributed back to its members. I think that this is a very interesting concept to explore and it's going to be even more interesting as AI evolves and the whole robots take over the world, right.

Lukas Seel: 28:42

I mean let's touch on it since we're on it, because I'm super curious what your vision for that is and perhaps also how PureMe fits into it. But this obviously now several blockchains have teased or are releasing their own AI agents. There's obviously AI agents now acting on several chains already. Do you see that as a use case, perhaps for the DAOs? You already said buying one and deploying it. Perhaps it's also a way to control it and make sure they don't go rogue. But yeah, how do you see this intersection of ai and blockchain emerging currently?

Micha Viehauser: 29:24

yeah for sure.

Micha Viehauser: 29:25

So there's a lot of inter, there's a lot of um, open questions and things to figure out, but in the end, if we talk a lot about tokenization and tokenization means nothing else than bringing something to the blockchain to have a smart contract or an nft, a token, whatever um to represent this item that exists in the real world or in the software world in the software world, we have ai, and if we tokenize an ai, it could be, for example, a smart contract and ais they take orders, or.

Micha Viehauser: 30:01

But what if you wanted to control the actions of an AI collectively, not just you, but only if three out of five people agree, then the AI does this, and this is not really possible unless you use a DAO. Of course it's possible, but a DAO just streamlines this and makes it secure. So there's DAOs they basically, or blockchain in general you encode the rules to follow by and no one can go around that. So that's what DAOs are very powerful at, and I think you could, for example, vote on the actions of an AI through a DAO. So three out of five or whatever yes, no, voting controls what the AI is going to do next, and I think that's something we will see in the future and also something I'm personally very interested in.

Lukas Seel: 30:57

Yeah, super interesting. There's so much more to talk about in that space, in that realm, and also how DAOs and AIsable and that's like an auto-deployment tool for developers, making it easier for Web2 developers or any developer to just deploy smart contracts on the blockchain without having to do everything themselves A very handy automation tool tool. But then you came up with another cool concept of you know having an impact on the real world with with blockchain, not just for humans, but for objects.

Micha Viehauser: 31:50

so tell us about tagger T tagger T, so I want to go like connect this to the previous topic a little bit. So Pyramid is the platform that allows teams, or bridge teams to the blockchain, and the thing with having teams in any kind of platform game or ecosystem is only worth. Let's make this a game analogy. You don't need guilds in a game if you don't play the, or you don't need to be a guild member of a game if you don't play the game. You know like it doesn't make sense to be Clash of Clans. You know this game where you can be part of a guild and then you play this game, but if you don't play Clash of Clansans, it doesn't make sense to be part of the guild in clash of clans. That doesn't make sense. What I'm saying I hope, and and taking this concept now to blockchain is it doesn't make sense to be in a team, uh, on the blockchain, like in a dao and a multisig, if you don't use blockchain. So we need to get people to play the game, we need to get people to use the blockchain, and that's what integrity is all about. It's.

Micha Viehauser: 32:59

If you look at I mentioned this in the x-day talk if you look at blockchain explorers, all the kinds of transactions that you see is stake, restake, claim rewards, but these, for me personally and you can think about this what you want it does for me this doesn't have any. Any. These transactions don't have much meaning. Meaningful transactions are the ones that that connect to the real world in any kind of way, and that's what Taggarty is all about. It's not only about connecting items that we have in the real world to the blockchain and make them liquid, basically, or to give them a life in the blockchain, but also all about services, also about all about services, and services mean meaning. With that I mean smart contracts to scan basically anything in the real world and interact with a smart contract.

Micha Viehauser: 33:47

But let's take with tokenization for a while. So this is basically tokenizing any kind of item. Um, I've mentioned this in the x they talk to. If you, when you bring an item, any kind of item, whether that's your iPad or maybe even animals, you need to be careful. What I say here, because tokenizing animals sounds kind of cruel, but I think this is also very good could be very useful and beneficial. By the way, I love animals, so it could be very beneficial to bring animals to the blockchain. We can talk about why a bit later. But yeah, tagroot is all about bringing any kind of items to the blockchain. We can talk about why, um, a bit later, but yeah, integrity is all about bringing any kind of items to the blockchain in order to, for example, trade, trade them on marketplaces.

Micha Viehauser: 34:27

If I want to sell my uh, I sold my uh apple tv a few days, a couple of weeks ago, on a local marketplace. I was charged double fee with people and the marketplace itself and then also the sell the buyer. Basically, he wouldn't, he couldn't be sure that I actually told him the truth, right like he couldn't know that the apple tv is that many years old, or it was, it was. It is like I bought it and no one else had it before. You know, there's a lot of lies that I could have told this uh the the buyer. And if we took, if this apple tv lived on the blockchain from day one, then all all, the, all these things would be not only streamlined, because you know the person could scan this apple tv and buy it, but also we would know how much has it been sold for in the past, when was it first bought, when was it created and all these kind of things.

Lukas Seel: 35:28

Yeah, and let's talk about that because it's very interesting to dive into some examples. You mentioned animals. I mean we could talk livestock. Right, this is, in part, already happening.

Lukas Seel: 35:39

I actually know of a project that um that uh has nfts for cattle um on on chain and it's it's very interesting right, this um verify verifiability issue that you mentioned, with um items that you're selling or reselling um, all of these things really come, come play and are, like you were saying, meaningful transactions and I think it's such a great way of putting it right. Like we look at the Explorer and it's all of this noise, right, it's like nobody is interacting with the real world and that's something that where Taggarty and companies like that come in, that's something that, where Taggarty and companies like that come in, let's talk about the meaning of that right. Like, what are the possibilities that open up once things become tokenized? Let's explore that a little bit more. If you want to take the cattle example or the pet example or a supply chain example, what are some of the things that you really want to tackle um or most curious about tackling with taggarty?

Micha Viehauser: 36:47

well, tokenization of products is just one part, um, or not products only, but you know, as you said, animals, then the whole other part is, um, tokenization of services, that's, uh, there is a distinction there. But for products and animals and all that, I think the history is quite important. A quick example when this whole thing started, actually in 21, something like that I got my dog, adorable dog, I love her. I got her from a shelter actually, and the thing is I personally I don't know nothing about her from by the shelter. At the shelter, they told me, um, she's a certain breed and the one we wanted to have, my family wanted to have, but turns out we did a dna test, um, a half a year or one year later and turns out she's something completely different. So this is just one example where how much can you trust, uh, someone who provides an item or, in this case, who who the shelter, or? But even in the apple tv example, how much can you trust them?

Lukas Seel: 37:55

and you basically just want to add here. I think it's interesting because that was probably not done in bad faith, right? They probably just didn't know better, and this can be like honest mistakes in these things, but it's still a very useful example to say like, look, this mistake couldn't happen if this technology was used.

Micha Viehauser: 38:15

Exactly yes, and I think a very good way to frame this and I thought about this in the bus to X-Day before the talk. I think, like I mentioned this in the talk, when you bring an item to the blockchain then't have a blockchain at all, then these stories they would be forgotten. And these stories include, um, where the item has been and who has interacted with the item and also value that it the item has given added to people in in the past and on on the slide. And actually there was a tesla where in the inside the, the NFT, inside the tokenized NFT, there was services that have been done, like an air filter change or the miles that the Tesla has driven.

Micha Viehauser: 39:08

So there are so many things that are part of the story of this item that without this blockchain, you wouldn't know of them. And so at the shelter I got my dog, took her home but knew nothing about her but knew not where she has been before. But if you had tokenization I hate this term anyway but if you have a token on the blockchain then you learn so much more about them and that might even include vaccinations for the animal and then you would maybe, if you don't know that it has happened before. You would vaccinate them twice and you know all these things, where things can go wrong, and I believe, if you know about the items that you actually buy and take home, that's a very important aspect.

Lukas Seel: 40:00

Yeah, and for the services, did you mean um the tokenized services? Did you mean specifically things like vaccinations that then are also recorded? Are you thinking even more um different use cases in in that area?

Micha Viehauser: 40:14

yeah, different use cases for sure. So services are anything that um, it's a smart like. That can be done with a smart contract. For example, if you go to a doctor, okay, and the doctor I don't know how it is where you live, but in Europe, especially in Austria, you have to sign privacy documents and all that, and you have to fill in your data and all that. So what if, instead of providing a manual signature on this document, filling in your data, this would be just, you know, you scan a tag and it prompts you with Xplot to sign a transaction, which is the signature, and you're done. And these are just so many micro tasks in real life that could be easily made more efficient if you bring them to the blockchain. And this is the services aspect of Taggarty. I can say this because it's on the website already. We call them action tags and for action tags, I approached you Lucas I see you smiling behind your muted mic.

Micha Viehauser: 41:14

I approached you with an idea that I also presented to Robert Sasu, and the feedback was actually good. He said it's an. It's an amazing idea. It's about the new protocol or standard where you can create shareable links for transactions. So if you open this link, it will automatically construct the transaction and it will generate this transaction, that the UI for this transaction based on an inscription, on the blockchain.

Micha Viehauser: 41:41

And now we're at a whole nother topic, right about inscriptions, where we first had this hyperbot inscription um, where we were urgently looking for use cases for intrinsic inscriptions, but now we're doing the reverse, where we actually find the use case and and discover, wow, inscriptions can be used for that. That would be actually powerful and this is how I like to do things personally. I like how this turns out and if everything goes well, then we will see this become deshareable links, which basically make deshareable transactions via links, via web URLs. Basically, maybe we'll make this a standard that is going to be useful for the ecosystem. And, of course, shareable links, just to complete this, how it links to Taggerty. Shareable links can be encoded in QR codes. Shareable links can be encoded in NFC tags. So, basically, if you scan an action tag which is an NFC tag, then you are going to be presented with hey, please sign this. And I think there's no better way to integrate blockchain and smart contracts and all that into real life than through such simplicity.

Lukas Seel: 42:57

Yeah, and it's such a simple use case and I love this idea of just like tapping your phone somewhere in public, like, let's say, there's a, an advertising campaign, whatever, sign up to my newsletter, right, and this is a cooler version of a newsletter that somehow blockchain integrated and can create a more meaningful relationship with customers because they see the wallet or you know whatever there's. There's many things we could construct here, but just like in a real use case, ok, I tap this, I sign a transaction and I'm in the club or whatever. I'll get a discount and so many things. I think where we're now actually seeing these things. It's time to take advantage of the technology that was built. And I also want to get your perspective there, because we'll look ahead a little bit. Where do you see the technology right now? Is it ready to go out into the world and be plastered with action tags around Vienna, or are we still kind of lagging a little bit? Is there still things in the design, in the architecture, that we need to fix before we invite the great wave?

Micha Viehauser: 44:06

Yeah, so normal users, when they access the internet, they know what to do in order to solve their problem or achieve their goal, and I think if a normal user would use anything with Web3, I think they wouldn't perceive this, as this is what I'm used to. You know, from Web2 applications, and that's mostly because we are missing still some wallets abstractions where you don't have to care about. You know from Web2 applications, and that's mostly because we are missing still some wallets abstractions where you don't have to care about. You know, like, if you tap a tag in real life and you have no clue about blockchain, are you really going to download Xportal or another wallet? Probably not. So, yeah, I think there's still some innovation needed there. Like with the passkeys that are coming, so MootersX props to them there. Like with the pass keys that are coming, so motor as x props to them. They keep, keep um innovating and releasing new things that remove the entry barrier, so that some this is going to be one important thing. But now, of course, then, if you have a wallet, are you really going to when you want to sign? Let's take this privacy thing privacy documented doctor. Are you really, then, going to buy e-gold in order to cover transaction fees? Probably not. So there are some things needed there.

Micha Viehauser: 45:16

But also that's going to happen soon with relay transactions. We have relay transactions, but then we will see them become more integrated into all the apps that we have, where you basically don't have to have e-gold in order to do transactions, but it's, you know, the relay services. So that's, I think when you have components like this that reduce the entry barrier of Web3 so that it feels like Web2, but you still know and are aware that you're using blockchain, because the benefits are just amazing, they're huge, then I think then we are ready to integrate blockchain in the real world, and until then it's probably going to take a couple more months, but until then or in the meanwhile, integrity is going to just keep building and bring action tags and tokenizer and all that to, of course, the audience we have in Web3 already or in motorway ecosystem, and that's I want to get. I actually want to use this opportunity because before we bring the tags to the real world and that applies to integrity, it applies to pyramid we need of the ecosystem, we need as an, as an audience in the ecosystem.

Micha Viehauser: 46:28

We need to refine the products to a level that they're usable by non-web2 people, and that means finding bugs, making them simple to use. You know all that and I think, and everyone in here in this audience, everyone in our ecosystem, we ourselves we constantly look for feedback. How can we improve our product so that a grant can use it right? And I think that's also X-Alliance in this room virtual room also, of course. I think X-Alliance could use this as initiatives to incentivize somehow to get people we have in the ecosystem ready to help refine products, give them feedback, so that we can bring all this to everyday users, everyday life.

Lukas Seel: 47:14

Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's have a conversation on that, a separate one. Also want to remind people this is a live recorded podcast, so if you have some questions, feel free to write them in the comments or even request to speak. We have about 10 more minutes. I do want to ask keep going a little bit on. This is the technology ready bit Because from your perspective now, having worked in Web3 for four years-ish, is it a good enough experience to bring your fellow Web 2 developers into it yet, or is that also a major hurdle, and how do you think about that? And what are some things we might want to address there to get all the people to transition from building these Web 2 applications into Web 3 and really reap the benefits that you were just describing as well?

Micha Viehauser: 48:17

So I think builders what they need is also an extremely low entry barrier, because blockchain and smart contracts all in itself is very complicated. You know, we always take this as a certain, I would say, in the space, but if I go back and remember when I joined, I actually was quite confused about what is this blockchain? And I think people who join always also all have the same experience, and then if you add all these technical complexities on top, it's going to be very hard for them, and that's a big reason why we branched out and used a lot of the technology that we used at Pyrami to manage all these smart contracts in order to create a service that helps automate a lot of these things and make managing, especially of smart contracts, a lot easier. And that's what Spawnable does. That's why why we created spawnable as part of the hackathon, and what spawnable does is to to explain this, because some might not know um.

Micha Viehauser: 49:19

What spawnable does is it takes the code from github, which is like the default um hosting solution and version management solution for coding for coders and developers. It takes a code there without you doing anything and deploys it to definite which is the testing environment right, like it. Really, you don't have to do anything there. It just push the code to github and it deploys on definite. And then, when you tested it on definite, the only thing you have to do to bring it to Mainnet is connect with your wallet, which is Xportal, a ledger or whatever and you do sign one transaction and you have the smart contract on Mainnet. So the levels of automations and all the efforts that went into this are really insane, and I think this level of abstracting the complexities in order to to develop on blockchains is needed in order to develop develop uh to onboard developers, because blockchain in itself is already too complicated, so why make it uh compliment complicated on the development side too?

Lukas Seel: 50:24

yeah, very interesting. How do you, how do you think about, like, the interoperability between different blockchains in that respect? Also, is there something that could help connect the existing Web3 ecosystems to perhaps benefit all of them and share developer experiences, languages, all of this stuff that brings people that are in the space closer together, to then perhaps also accelerate the progress on multiple ends, including the dev experience that then brings the new generation of Web2 developers in?

Micha Viehauser: 50:59

I don't think personally about the. I don't think much about cross-ecosystem cross-blockchains. I don't think much about this. I think users, they have a problem Everyday. People have a problem and if blockchain can solve it, then we should bring it closer to them. Um, but of course, I think there's also quentin in the ecosystem who is working on, you know, making the space vm, the.

Micha Viehauser: 51:24

To express it in a simple way, to be able to write smart contracts in swift. To express it in a simple way, to be able to write smart contracts in Swift, which is Apple's language, and a lot of app developers for iPhone and the Apple ecosystem use Swift. So that's definitely, I think, very much needed. If someone is part of the Apple ecosystem and wants to integrate the app with smart contracts, why should they learn another language? This would just make it harder for them. So I think that's an important addition to the ecosystem and the more we can achieve. And, by the way, this is not something you know, that's just a given and it works on every blockchain. This is something you can, to my knowledge, only do on MultiverseX, where you have this multi-language web assembly-based space VM. You know, very technical, but I don't want to go so deep into the technicals, but I think this is the way to go to reduce the entry barrier so much that it becomes almost natural to get on board blockchain.

Lukas Seel: 52:29

Yeah, this is interesting and also in closing and kind of looking into the future one. What would you say is, like you mentioned the three products that you're focusing on Spawnable Integrity, pureme what's kind of the unified, or is there a unified vision for those three and how do you see that develop in the near and midterm future?

Micha Viehauser: 52:55

Well, we want to solve problems. We want to bring blockchain to everyday people. Pyramid Asset is the bridge to bring teams to the blockchain, to get teams to interact with all kinds of smart contracts and services. My belief is that every like everyday life, if a token is products and you buy a car and the car is a token, then the user will be on the blockchain. If the car is a token, if all the items that you interact with and all the services, if you interact with a governmental uh platform and this is a smart contract, of course you're going to be on the blockchain too. So if everything in everyday life is on the blockchain, then you will be too. I think that's the way to onboard by bringing uh, by doing the rwa um hype, you know, by following it. I think that was important that uh multi-r6 put some focus on this too. I think we have seen very good use cases and if, if everyday life is on blockchain, then most people will be too.

Lukas Seel: 53:50

Yeah, and, in general, going away from your products. If you think about the future of blockchain as a technology and I think you basically already touched on it how do you see us adopting it, or how far do you feel the mass adoption is from this moment and what's needed for that? Is it complete abstraction? Is there a big teaching moment? And I think that was interesting something you mentioned before.

Lukas Seel: 54:20

It was like I remember learning how to do internet, you know, and I think all of us had. I mean, now the kids grow up with it. But like for us who were born and think all of us had, I mean, now the kids grow up with it, but like for us who were born and just kind of got introduced, like how to browse on the web and all of this stuff, do you think there's going to be this big like shift and learning moment? It's like, okay, now we're going to learn how to do web three, and it's kind of similar to what, what? Two, or is the future of the blockchain really this completely abstracted and it is just the internet and the infrastructure, um, behind it doesn't really matter to the user because you mentioned learning internet.

Micha Viehauser: 54:58

I don't know if it's me, um, but probably around like. If you were a kid at that age and you had the internet um app, basically what it was called back then on the phone, you were scared to open it, right like because because it everyone told you oh, if you open the internet, it's going to charge you tons of money, you get a huge bill, and I think a lot of people think about blockchain that way. Not that they're going to get charged, but it's just something scary for them because it's so uncertain. Tokens are rock pools and all that right like.

Micha Viehauser: 55:27

I think that's how people think about blockchain space in general. So, proving them wrong, making sure we show them useful tools and solving actual problems I think that's the key word here. There's a lot of talk about how do we bring blockchain, how we gain mass adoption and all that, but I think if this is just you know, something that comes naturally if we focus on solving problems people have problems all day, otherwise we would all have enough time to do what we want to do and if we can solve problems and blockchain can actually solve a lot of problems for people, as we talked about in the space before then, mass adoption, as we call it, will just come naturally.

Lukas Seel: 56:18

Very interesting. Micha, I want to thank you. We're at the top of the hour. I don't see any comments or questions. Let me check one more time Is your paycheck funded by middle class users like me? Yes, the answer is yes. Yeah, I want to thank you for these great insights. I really think, some great products. You can perhaps, in closing, tell us what the next exciting things are coming up for Taggarty or Pyrami or any of the other products you have and then we'll close it out.

Micha Viehauser: 56:57

Yeah, so for Spawnable, because you mentioned Spawnable, no, you didn't. Anyway, for Spawnable, we want to introduce multi-chain or sovereign chain, basically deployments where you can deploy to any sovereign chain in order to accelerate development on sovereign chains too. Pyramid is going to take a similar path, where we want to bring DAOs and multisigs to sovereign chains. And because I mentioned multisigs, we're working with multiresics, some more or less in collaboration, on the new multisig smart contract, which is going to be very powerful. There's a lot of auditing happening on that front, but Multisig is very excited about this front. And for Taggarty, I mean, there's a lot happening there. We have Tokenizer Plus, the more premium product for pre-orders.

Micha Viehauser: 57:46

So if you're interested in experimenting with it or supporting the project, I mean we put all this, all the funds of the revenues we get, the profits we get, back into the product. There's, you know, no lamborghinis for for team members or so. So we put everything back into the project. And yeah, you know, putting this back into into the project for taggerity means we're going to release new tags, um, new different versions of nfcs and, just, you know, to make a bring prod, to bring blockchain to everyday users. That's the goal and, yeah, we're doing everything to move very fast and for the free project projects to achieve this yeah, so impressive.

Lukas Seel: 58:28

Really want to also hear officially on stage say that, like, everything you're building is extremely useful, and like, having used many of the products and, of course, being a first day buyer of the Tokenizer Plus, like I'm really looking forward to experimenting with that. Your app is also live, so Taggarty's app is available in the App Store, where you can actually just buy that product as well. This is not a product placement thing. Just wanted to mention that, and what I'm really trying to say here is that it's so impressive what you've built, and Taggarty was something that you got a grant for a few months ago and it's live today. And so, yeah, huge compliments and shout out to all the amazing work you do, and not just for yourself, but helping so many people in the ecosystem, both through products but also through mentorship. So, yeah, very impressed by all the things you do and it's really been very interesting to hear your perspective on this. So thank you for coming on the show.

Micha Viehauser: 59:31

Thanks, lucas, to you too. Let me use this opportunity to also give you a shout out. I think you've done an amazing job, not just on the X Alliance front, where you have actually like really, this has really helped the integrity beyond the initial grant. We got in touch with X Money, where we might be working on something there too, and yeah, just overall I want to give you a shout out because of the efforts that you put into not just ecosystem but also X Day itself. I was involved a little bit there to see how much effort you actually put into this, and I think ecosystem wouldn't be the same without you. So thanks a lot for that also.

Lukas Seel: 1:00:12

Well, I'm so glad I prompted that. Thank you so much. Very unnecessary, but thank you. I guess we'll end it on that note, although I really wanted to end on the Micha shout out note. Thank you all for tuning in Been a great episode here, been a great episode here. This was Helios Horizons, episode 24, with Micha V, the brilliant founder behind Spawnable Taggarty, PeerMe and many more in the future shortly. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to this and we'll talk to you all very soon. Bye-bye and have a great day.