JB Carthy: 0:00

Welcome to Helios Horizons, episode 25. Today we're chatting about bringing X-Cities to life and we're going to have a discussion about the NFT space the community space on Multiverse X with Harry Burrell. Thanks for joining us, my friend.

Harry Burrell: 0:16

Very happy to be here. I'm very excited to talk about X-Cities.

JB Carthy: 0:21

Now I'm excited to hear everything that's going on with you guys, but maybe just kick it off before we jump in. Do you want to give us a little bit of a background and introduction to yourself and maybe how you got into the space?

Harry Burrell: 0:32

Yeah, of course. So my name is Harry, most classically known as Offhead Harry because this is my pen name. I guess I've been in MultiverseX since 2020, back in the ERD days, so I got in really early. I was getting into crypto around that time because of the dip due to COVID, and my now wife came up to me she's Romanian and said hey, there's this Romanian cryptocurrency being launched soon. What do you think of it? And then I looked into it. I listened to Benny give his philosophical speech about where blockchain can be and what can it do, and I was sold.

Harry Burrell: 1:15

So I bought early on and I haven't left since, got into NFTs in 2021, became a huge NFT holder and kind of started working with loads of different projects, including originally it was like Frizzies. It was an NFT project. I was like a moderator for that. Then I got involved with ComBase and I was part of the community team where I met Yannick and Joe Wu. And then I joined up with Yannick and Joe Wu on their company, malt Economy. So I've been working with them for a very long time still am today and then I got into Project X and then, from Project X, I became DAO leader for Divergent Club, actually having written the plan to take over Divergent Club and it was agreed by both their community and Project X's community that we can go ahead with it, and then I became the leader for that. So I've had a crazy journey in Web3, enjoyed every moment of it and it's been really good fun.

JB Carthy: 2:17

No, 100% man. So we're going to like dive into a little bit of that, maybe, chat about, like, your history and how you've got here, how it's maybe shaped, how you're approaching things at the moment and your outlook, but first even maybe taking it before that, and a little bit about yourself outside of the outside of crypto, even what, hopefully we all have some sort of um, irl lives, you know, and so maybe a little bit of a background even into yourself well, unless you're an AI creation JB, and then I suppose you were born here yeah, no, my life's not that interesting, so that's why I like to ask other people about their yeah, no, that's, that's completely fair enough.

Harry Burrell: 2:59

I mean, I was. I suppose my main occupation originally was in complaints in the financial services sector.

JB Carthy: 3:09

Oh man, so you're well set up for crypto anyway, like all the complaints from the communities.

Harry Burrell: 3:16

I'm well equipped for that. I mean, when I was working in that sector I ended up dealing with primarily vulnerable customers, so people going through mental health issues, financial concerns, death of a loved one, stuff like that. So if I can handle the sort of things that come up in life insurance around these things, I can basically take any complaint at this point. But I decided to leave that all behind a couple years ago and I tried to go back to university to do a postgraduate in my original discipline, which was clinical and developmental neuropsychology. Started doing that but I came very ill halfway through due to COVID. I had a really bad reaction to COVID and then I decided to leave that behind and at the same time I got into NFT space community building, blockchain et cetera and found that this was my new passion and it was all meant to be.

JB Carthy: 4:17

No for sure, A hundred percent. No, that sounds super interesting. Obviously, you left it behind at a certain moment, but I'm sure even having studied such a complex topic, like in terms of, like, neurodevelopmental psychology, even for a little bit of time, was definitely eye-opening and, like you, obviously have to have a good level of intelligence and ability to understand topics to be able to grasp something of that nature.

Joaquim: 4:45

So I'd hope so anyway no, for sure and yeah.

JB Carthy: 4:50

so like, let's maybe jump in to maybe take it, take it back to the start and some of the earliest projects that you were involved in and like, let's say, talking about some of the differences, how you've seen like the community evolve from your earliest time in the space, back when maybe your community member, I think, was saying with Flokies, Frizzies, it was called. Frizzies.

Harry Burrell: 5:17

Yeah, it's a primarily charity focused NFT project which was based around these pictures of a character called Frizzy, which was basically a young boy, and they were giving a percentage of their returns back to children's charities. So I got involved with that early on, largely just managing the community doing games and facilitating kind of like partnerships. It was a very different period of time because it was peak bull run. They didn't manage to sell out I think they sold 40% of the collection and the founder didn't end up holding a lot of his promises. In fact, little did we know at the time. 0% went to children's charities in the end, which was a bit of a shocker to all of us.

JB Carthy: 6:09

Yeah, no, I think those early and that's probably set you up and set all of us up. Actually there was a more successful, probably charity project that was launched around that time with Victor and Super Victor, oh yeah, and obviously that ended really really well. I think actually Victor got his treatment without even needing to dip into all the funds that had been raised. So I think Valentin went and helped a lot of other people who needed help. And then obviously we got Tom. He was over at the collab-a-thon with us and he is bringing Phil philanthropy to to life, which is obviously just a kind of more transparent um um donations platform on payments platform for charities and where people can directly see the, where their funds are being used and obviously make sure that they're not being siphoned off.

JB Carthy: 7:01

But those early days of nfts, like there was a little bit of cloak and dagger about it, like no one was really quite sure and how to conduct proper research, proper understanding of what was going on on chain probably represented a little bit I wasn't really around for it but and the dot-com bubble back in the day, where it was like there was, there were so much promises and so much like future assumptions and then a lot.

JB Carthy: 7:23

The a lot of the promises never came to life. So I'm sure you're not the only person that has ever found themselves in a situation like that, if you stick around this space long enough. And but even then, moving on, how did some of those like earlier experiences, how'd you carry them forward and to maybe what you're doing now, like what are your head of dive? Or like leader of the DAO, like Divergence Club obviously it's a sub-DAO of Multiverse X, maybe what about your journey to this point? Do you bring to that like role, to that responsibility in terms of, like, some of your values and things like that? How do you like to run the community and the projects?

Harry Burrell: 8:03

Yeah, I mean it's a core basis of me and Full Stop is transparency and honesty. So I'm very honest and transparent about everything we do, and you have to be, especially since the amount of times that the community has been rugged and had their money taken away and used for God knows what I mean. Straight away, the Divergent Club was a failed project originally, so before we took it over, uh, the founder went silent for months and then came back and then said I'm going to solve all our problems by launching a whole new collection that I've already paid for with our money and it's like well, the first collection only half sold out at that point. So why are we making a whole new project? Uh, to basically raise more funds to go to nowhere? Um, so kind of led a rebellion from the community where we all kind of shouted at the, the poor founder and said what you're playing at, that's not how you use the money, and then he started looking for someone to take over the project.

Harry Burrell: 9:05

Um, so I think just from that experience it informed everything that I kind of designed around divergent club um, and what I presented to andu, our honorable leader, project x, as the potential roadmap moving forward and how we can get it back on track. And, um, yeah, everything is on display. I I haven't taken any funds for myself at all from the divergent club funds because we we only had about 130 e-gold that was transferred over at the time. Um, so it's very important that we kind of build things from a community perspective rather than expecting some kind of reward in return. So a lot of the stuff that we've built rug royalties, for example which wasn't even in the original plan, it was just an idea that I had one day and Boo Boo gave a lot of his time for free or at a high discount to what he's probably worth as a professional developer, and we managed to build this thing that is now giving rewards back to the community.

JB Carthy: 10:11

Yeah, no, 100%. Maybe dive into a little bit more about Rogue Royalties and how it works, maybe some of the inspiration behind it.

Harry Burrell: 10:20

Yeah, so in terms of how it works and functions, the whole point of it is you sell your NFTs to us like a couple of pence, just from an English perspective, or a couple of cents from a dollar perspective, and this allows you to then go off and mark that as a tax loss, so you can then regain a portion of your money spent in taxes. So if you spend $100 on an NFT and then you sell it to us for a couple of cents, that saves you $10 of tax. If you're a taxpaying individual and I know not everybody is but for the people that do pay their taxes, it gives you that recourse of claiming something back. Um, and then we, we really wanted to design it around the aesthetic of what Divergent Club is all about. So 8-bit artwork, uh, kind of like an RPG feel to it, you know.

Harry Burrell: 11:16

So you visit uh old rug, as we call him, in his rug royalty shop and it's like this Turkish bazaar with all these rugs hanging up everywhere. We have homage to all these different 8-bit projects, including, like elrond ducks in there, uh, pixel outlets from our city, uh, and also our own collection, divergent club. And you just got all these characters sitting around and old rug talks to you. You hear the doorbell ring when you sell something, you hear the dropping of coins. You know it's just getting that feel for the people to actually enjoy the experience. I mean, for example, the whole point of it is to sell it to get tax losses. But on the very first day we had someone rug a Subjet X to us, which we know isn't a rug and we're obviously part of it. But we were told that that person just enjoyed the experience so much that he just wanted to give something back to the dow.

JB Carthy: 12:11

So no for sure, and I suppose it's kind of creating that like, let's say, even it shows that people value fun and engagement as much as they value, um, in some aspects like financial returns, and then obviously it's maybe an appreciation of the work that went into and creating something like it yeah, I think that's the whole point of nfts as well.

Harry Burrell: 12:35

Like nft communities, they, they rally behind the community. Vibes of it, the fun of it. Same in it with meme coins as well. You know, it's all about that fun no for sure.

JB Carthy: 12:47

And so obviously, rug royalties maybe came out of a time on multiverse x and probably across the entire like crypto space, where like nfts were just being like produced left, right and center and everyone was launching nft projects and um, not all of them were, like, led very well or got to reach their ambitions and some of the teams behind them fell away and some of those things were just to be expected. You know, new technology, people exploring it and trying new things. Some of them didn't work out whether it was through intention or just through like circumstance. It was, um, through intention or just through like circumstance, um, and I suppose that's probably what led to rug royalties in terms of like some of these nfts not really as active. Probably the roadmap isn't going in the direction the community hopes, so you guys are giving them an opportunity to at least derive some benefit, um, in terms of getting maybe a little bit of tax relief.

JB Carthy: 13:42

Um, probably two questions leading on from that is do you guys have any plans when, like, someone like maybe like drops an nft into the rug royalty and box and you give them back and a couple of pence for the tax relief? And then the second one is, why do you think maybe the nft space um has gone the direction it has, and what do you think would be the kind of spark that will revive it a little bit more? Like you know, we see the meme coin craze at the moment. There's obviously a good demand for, I would say, like good vibes in the crypto space, in the web3 space, and what is it that you think will kick off a bit of an NFT resurgence in the form of, maybe, community building that we saw with more regularity a few years ago?

Harry Burrell: 14:35

Yeah, I'm happy to go into that. I just want to ask you to reconfirm the first question. Jb, yeah, I know.

JB Carthy: 14:42

Just say, when someone drops in a little an NFT into the, into the rug royalties box and do you guys have any plans with them or anything fun, anything fun to do with them yeah, yeah, of course.

Harry Burrell: 14:53

Um, so I got a few plans for, like the true rugs, uh, but we we haven't managed to get the whole of a single collection to be able to do my side project plan, which could be fun in itself, but the actual current uses that we do with them is that we either hold them and put them into, say, whatever staking they might have active, because, although some of these projects still pay some kind of like MEX or something like that, something little for the, the general holder, it might be not enough to keep them around holding it because the rewards aren't that high. But if we're paying two cents for each NFT, it makes a lot of sense for us to recover that investment through any passive income they're still giving. The other thing is, you know, even if 10 percent of these projects recover, they do a comeback, like we've seen with, like crypto pits recently. Uh, monkey supremacy is making a comeback. You know we're seeing all these projects that people had lost faith in and didn't know whether they'd ever return, and you know they they rug it to us and maybe on their on their recovery, we either hold them for the passive income that they start generating or we look to flip them in like a nicer way, not just dumping them on the floor but maybe making use of a liquid sale or something like that kind of get a return, hopefully by just holding them and having that passive income. That's my preference because I don't want to be dumping on their communities or making it harder for them to recover the floor. But in the off chance that we can make a nice like 10 e-gold that'd be amazing if we could. But let's say we could do 10 e-gold sale of an nft. I think we will take that and we'll give those rewards back to the holders for kind of like funding rug royalties and sticking around with us.

Harry Burrell: 16:50

But the other thing that you were speaking about is what will spark the recovery of NFTs. I think, like anything, there's cycles. We only had like kind of one cycle for the NFTs to really believe that maybe it could reoccur. So when the tokens themselves start getting quite frothy, you know, when we start hitting that peak, people start looking for where they can put their money elsewhere to kind of double their returns, quadruple, or start making some profit from a like a passive income point of view, making some profit from a like a passive income point of view, then I I think when we get to that peak ego price or the ball like peak ball run, then we start seeing people jump into nfts.

Harry Burrell: 17:34

We'll probably see the same kind of craziness we saw the first time around, where we have all these completely new people come here launching every nft collection they they can think of and then unfortunately some will rug. But by the end of the bear, the next bear, we'll have the true believers still sticking around, like we do now. But I really hope that, having gone through one cycle already, that a lot of people are kind of aware of the projects that have really put in the passion and the hard work throughout the bear and that they give some love to those projects to. You know, shout out to project X. Obviously I'm biased, but there's other projects as well, like our city, for example, and I really look forward to boogers because I think boogers could be another powerhouse in this space.

JB Carthy: 18:22

No, for sure, and I see actually um.

JB Carthy: 18:27

Seve from x cards as well, oh, x cards as well, of course. So I actually not around as much, but I still have my nft. I still got my notifications on discord about like poker games that are going on and so, yeah, there's definitely like um, there's definitely still um great activity and, with some of the, with some of the projects that launched even back in the earlier days, and still great commitment to keep following through, even through these probably a little bit more challenging moments with the way the markets have been over the last two or three years, as you mentioned Xcards.

Harry Burrell: 19:03

I just want to do a shout out to Seve. I mean, having worked with her with Xcity. She's part of the X City's team. She is one of the most dedicated, hardworking people I know and if she, having seen this, it only gives me more and more hope for X cards. You know the amount of passion she puts into this project. She must push it, put it everywhere, yeah no 100.

JB Carthy: 19:24

I actually met them um over in over in bucharest last year at x day and actually we had the, we had the poker tournament as well and I think that is really the true value of like, I think, with if the cycle, obviously as with everything you know, and people will try to get the value from it. You know nfts that speculate in the prices, they'll try and cycle some of the liquidity in and make, like you were saying, multiples on their, multiples on their capital and in kind of a pvp environment. But obviously for me the hope with the nfts and the communities is that they make a little bit more of a revival and maybe a more modest manner where it's like they really are truly like community-led projects, where they're almost started from the ground up and with maybe a few team members or a few members of a community getting together and putting together a vision, an idea, a space for people to get together, a core idea and reason to be there and and building up like followers are building up like their tribe over time and then growing all the functionalities and growing all the using all the utilities of web3, like tokenization and like distribution of rewards, like managing a community-owned treasury, having multi-sigs implemented and implementing them as they need them over time, rather than um, the way nfts were launched. Um back in we would say 2020, 2021, and it's no like there's no shade at anyone, you know, because um it is. It is what it is.

JB Carthy: 21:00

In the time, every like the space was fast moving and people saw opportunities and people thought this was the way things should be built.

JB Carthy: 21:07

But maybe there was like projects raising really significant amounts of capital without any proof of delivering anything and really just giving the opportunity for a single person to do whatever they wanted with with the capital, which in some cases went well and then in other cases didn't work so well.

JB Carthy: 21:29

But really, if the NFTs are to get a little bit of a resurgence and it's why I really like what you guys are doing with Project X and with Divergence Club and, as we touched on, we got Xcards and we got plenty of other cool NFT projects that are still owls, that are trying to do cool things, but when they do make their resurgence, that there's a little bit more of like an authentic community focus rather than just um and the community are involved at every step of the building process, rather than just these kind of like very centralized, I'd say, capital raises, like we had the the crazy, the crazy hype cycle back in 2021 where, like we almost had like an nft convention on multiverse x over in the no no again con, like you know, and and obviously everyone's trying their best, but you know, probably this time around maybe having a little bit more like modest expectations of um where things might go and building authentically from the ground up will probably lead to a more sustainable environment for everybody yeah, and I think a lot of people doing these things that you're talking about the multi-sig, the community-led focus, etc.

Harry Burrell: 22:42

These are people who have survived the the bear market at this point and these are going to be the powerhouses moving forward. And, yes, it may be in a more modest way, but it's very important that we kind of educate the incoming retail and the existing retail in what to look for in a solid project, aka, have they locked it away into multi-sig? Are they taking this community approach where every everybody within the community who are holders are contributing to the success of the project as well? Um, I think these are all important things that we need to look out for, and also honest communication. Are they doing the things that they promise? Are they, um, using the funds in the way that we expect them to? And, like you can see, with Project X, they took a very community-focused approach.

Harry Burrell: 23:32

I was a holder originally, just a holder, but I came to them with this idea and we followed through on it.

Harry Burrell: 23:39

We got several like trait-based DAOs, we got like the Briden hat, we got the Dr Dow dow, we got all these and they're all led by community uh members as well and they're given some amount of funds and they even.

Harry Burrell: 23:58

One thing I've started doing is that we do these like leaks. So last, uh, last month we did a smash carts lead league where all the dows choose representatives to basically fight for them and then the the representatives get a like a reward in dna at the end of the month, but also the dow gets funds as well. So it's like this kind of gladiatorial um fight, fight to the death and give your DAO some glory kind of situation. And we got poker this month as well and we're even including our affiliates. So we got two affiliated projects who kind of hold some DNA and we gave them a loan of DNA to boost their rewards. So we got Frug Friends and Our City and they're involved in all our games and they try and involve us in the the community events that they do and we kind of have this alliance going. I'm hoping to grow this a lot more.

JB Carthy: 24:53

It was it was originally my my idea for the loyalty affiliate program and it won over our holders who decided to vote for it no, I really, I really like that, like and I know it's an oft, it's an oft-used word and but creating these ecosystems around these communities that have these interests. It's one of the beauties of the internet is that we can connect people with similar niche interests all around the world, and I suppose NFTs adds another layer to that, where you can almost give people ownership of those communities that are connecting from different places around the world and then create, can almost give people ownership of those communities that are um connecting and from different places around the world, and then create. There's numerous possibilities that can be create, be created out of it, and but little things like poker tournaments, smash cards tournaments, like I suppose that's just bringing the vibes back and, you know, like building communities based around authentic interests and fun rather than just on speculation and large capital raises, like you know a hundred percent.

Harry Burrell: 25:50

It's just a way to give back a little something to community and we all come together. It's kind of like you know christmas, you go to your parents house or your family and you play board games all day and stuff like that.

JB Carthy: 26:01

It's just a bonding exercise at the end of the day, just bringing the community closer together yeah, a hundred a hundred percent, man, and, like you know, we touched on people building things and and the people who are, who have been around the longest and the people who've been through maybe thick and thin, building the tools and creating the education that matters.

JB Carthy: 26:20

And you know, I saw um tom was here for a while and he's building, obviously philanthropy and you guys obviously use, like peer me with misha as well, um with project x I'm not sure if divergence club have a have a down project on peer me as well, but you know it's those sorts oh well, brilliant, but it's those sorts of tools that, like um, really empower communities to like set themselves up in the right way.

JB Carthy: 26:47

Um, and like you were saying, it's kind of the same way. People probably have a little bit more awareness around like how to maybe approach things like meme coins and approach other and other kind of niche and kind of sub-sectors of the industry that have emerged and, when the NFT cycle comes back around, kind of creating that education piece to help people understand what constitutes maybe a community an NFT project or a community that is set up based around an NFT project or a collection of NFTs being set up in the right way, or being set up in a way that makes it kind of immune to centralized corruption, and maybe what red flags to look out for in terms of, no doubt, no transparency and some of these other factors.

Harry Burrell: 27:42

Yeah, and I think there's a place also to be said that we have a responsibility to educate the nft projects and new founders that come in as well. Maybe they're not used to having all these tools available to them, for example, maybe they were on a ecosystem that didn't have pme, that didn't have multi-sig uh, just at their fingertips. So if we can hold them to that standard without being gatekeepers and saying, hey, you, you should have been like this from the get-go, we don't want you here, you're going to steal money, maybe we should be educating these, these founders, as well no, 100%, man 100%.

JB Carthy: 28:19

And I think um, with this kind of like discussion about NFTs and about community um, at least in a digital sense, it's probably a nice segue to go into um, the into the other kind of topic we're here to discuss, which is X Cities. Obviously, real-life events are as important as digital events For some people, more important For some people. Less X Cities coming to London I think it's at the end of the month, that's right, and you're involved, yeah, 100%. You're involved with maybe setting it up. I think it's at the end of the month and you're involved, yeah, 100%, you're involved with maybe setting it up, contributing to it. So maybe a little bit about, like, what inspired you to get involved with XCities and maybe a little bit of an insight into how the planning is going Well.

Harry Burrell: 29:01

I mean XCity comes from everything that we've been discussing here. Really, it's a community-centered uh action to push awareness of uh the block, just blockchain technology in general, but also multiverse x at the heart of it. I mean it came from um me coming together with joe keem from galpa labs, with thomas from philanthropy and from savvy from Xcards. You know we're all from our own separate projects, but we've come together to kind of bring this into life and we're kind of there as general.

Harry Burrell: 29:35

We're going to be setting up a business which kind of acts as an intermediary to allow community members all over the world, wherever they might be, to kind of set up this same approach that we're taking with X London in their local cities to bring in not only just existing community, because you know it's great, our community is amazing as it is, but we want newcomers, we want more people to be using blockchain, to be using multiverse x. So it's important to kind of mix them up with some Web2 people. And for me personally because something I didn't say about my background is that I work for a university currently and I'm in international missions recruitment so it's important to bring the students, the developers of tomorrow, into our ecosystem and to introduce them to it. So this is where X-Cities comes about. It's the bringing together of Web 2, web 3, the layperson and students to kind of get them introduced to this concept and introduced to our community.

JB Carthy: 30:40

No, 100%, and actually it's one of those things that, having been at a few crypto conferences now at this point that I think is super important and I'm really glad that you touched on it is. It feels like sometimes when you go to these conferences, that they just end up being a lot of people who are already, who are already users of the technology, already believe in the technology, just talking to each other about the technology and and there's probably not enough maybe outreach to new groups of people, new segments of people, existing businesses, other sectors, other industries, to educate them about the potential of the technology and how they could integrate it in their own specific ways with their own unique business or personal challenges.

Harry Burrell: 31:24

Yeah, and you see loads of other blockchains doing this already. You know you see solana doing uh events all over the place, uh, usually with that kind of community-run focus as well. And x day is great. It brings a lot of the community and a lot of people interested in the technology together, but it doesn't have that community focus and it's very business business like. So we're taking more of a fun approach as well. You know we're throwing in games and quizzes and mini hackathons, that kind of challenge these people and get them using the technology in some maybe new and unique ways, and these aren't things that can necessarily be accomplished at this kind of like business like X days approach, and it's sometimes better to have this kind of one to one with the community who can act as ambassadors themselves. Have I lost you, jb?

JB Carthy: 32:25

Yeah, no, sorry, I was just saying that yeah, yeah, no, I have not had myself on mute, so I'm saying that, like you know, there is a place for that business focused um kind of like focus on progress and upcoming developments, on institutional partners and on like the bigger picture and the bigger mission. But there's also a need for um, like you guys are, it sounds like going to bring to x cities, like that need to go out and meet the community where they're at and go out and onboard 20 new people to export and on a week, yeah, and if you amplify that across um, if you amplify that across like 30 cities, across the year, you have 600 new people on board and, depending on how big it becomes, like you know, if you do an event every week or if there are events every week run by different community members across different cities, like the onboarding potential and the ability to expose new people to technology and grows and the industry grows, the projects on it and the tools that are being built upon it get more exposure, more chance of succeeding and being integrated into like real world use cases. So I really think and the next step is like the infrastructure is there, the technology is there. You often hear and Benny talking about it and other and founders founders as well and have different blockchains and different products. Like the technology is there. It's just a case of going out, getting boots on the ground, showing people how to use it, showing people how it can integrate in their daily lives or solve some challenges that they may have. Yeah, so it's going to be an exciting time, like you know.

JB Carthy: 34:07

You see, um, the level of adoption that's coming in on an institutional level with, obviously in america you had, like the bitcoin etf. I think that really triggered a lot, a lot of interest and a lot of like um, credibility to the industry and really kind of validated it and maybe a lot of people's eyes over in america. And then you follow that up with things like paypal and stripe and bill. I think paypal built a stable coin up on top of um solana and I think stripe are integrating like web3 payment abilities. So all these like big companies and entering the space, integrating the technologies.

JB Carthy: 34:44

It's coming, it's coming down the tracks and it's just a case of now getting out there educating people about it and showing people how to use it and making the adoption happen even faster and helping some of the projects that are being built on chain and showing some of the value and the utility they could bring to the everyday user or to the everyday business small, medium sizedsized business owner and trying to like, hopefully, move some of the more inefficient web web two processes over to web three and, with almost mutual benefit, in the process of like more people on chain, more people using the products that are being built here, being created by the fantastic builders that are doing wonderful things, and then, for the business owner, they get the benefit of things like increased business efficiently, efficiency, lower, lower cost of payments and faster payments.

JB Carthy: 35:38

More, more transparency, more ability to manage their own money, better control and maybe even like tools with you know, like inspire, with peer me maybe even better ability to connect with their community communities and their audiences on a deeper level and depending on like how I think recently there was like did mcdonald's launch some sort of web? There's so much happening at the moment that, like it's impossible to keep up with everything, but I think there was like major there's like more and more kind of web two companies that are integrating some form of like web three technology or um into their community management, to their marketing, and so it's.

Harry Burrell: 36:18

It's interesting to see where it all, where it all will lead, you know yeah, I understand, and we may not be uh right, like from day one doing a event a week.

Harry Burrell: 36:27

I mean, you have to have the kind of community ambassadors to be able to push this particular movement forward in each of the different regions.

Harry Burrell: 36:34

But there's certainly a demand for this kind of more community-centered event run approach. Um, because we're like from like very early on, uh with x cities, as soon as we announced, we've had uh people approaching us from Romania looking to do one in Sibiu Brasov area. We've had a gentleman who we all know called Kingdom, who runs CryptoPits. He wants to do one in Nashville, tennessee in America, and we've even had someone contact us randomly from Brazil looking to do an event. So there's a call and demand for this kind of approach and this is why we're here to kind of facilitate that, where we can actually help them through it with our template of how things go, because we're using X London as kind of like a test run to see if everything works the way that we want it, whether the schedule is good enough, whether things can be improved here and there, and then we can kind of give that template out to others to kind of run with.

JB Carthy: 37:34

So I will also help them try and access any kind of funding that we can get to them, so any kind of grants that we know are available from X Alliance, from other chains et cetera no 100, so it's just getting out there and making sure things work, creating like a system that is hopefully people can bring to other cities and other community, other regions, other communities replicate and like yeah, reach, reach a wider amount of people yeah, and um x london is probably the the best place to start.

Harry Burrell: 38:11

Really, I mean, three out of four the team members are based in the uk and quite close to london. I'm a little bit further out compared to the others but, uh, not not too too much far out. Um plus it's it's, you know, it's one. It's still, despite brexit, it's still a core financial and innovation hub in Europe. So it's a very good place for us to connect with Web2 people who are in the industry and kind of get them to come to it.

JB Carthy: 38:40

No 100%. So maybe a little bit about maybe, if you guys have an agenda planned or is there any kind of insights about, like, how the day will go or what you guys have planned and who's going to be there and chatting, who's going to be there, maybe giving some, giving some presentation, some insights?

Harry Burrell: 38:59

Yeah, yeah, I mean we got loads of different. I could give you the full, full agenda, but it's kind of not ironed out 100% yet. But what we have there on the agenda is workshops on how to build on multiverse x, and these will be kind of built by our gold and silver sponsors from projects. Um, we've got fireside chats talking about the function of nfts, you know, decentralized finance, uh, those those kind of big, big topics that you have about blockchain in general. We've got mini hack hackathons where we're going to be pairing up the community members with a student and they have to solve the particular puzzle that we have on the blockchain for them. I can't give the details yet because we want it to be a surprise. We don't want people preparing their knowledge ahead of it to try and win it, but there's some fun things to happen there. We've got games and quizzes throughout the two days and obviously the most important thing in some, their knowledge ahead of it to try and win it. But there's some fun things to happen there. We got games and quizzes throughout the two days and obviously the most important thing in some ways, like moments of pause where people can just network, get to know each other. Uh, we'll have some parties and social gatherings after each event as well, just to connect on that social level. But, uh, we got loads of projects attending uh at moment.

Harry Burrell: 40:11

We've got XOXNO, who is our gold sponsor. They've not only given us money to help fund the events, but they've also allowed us to use their ticketing solution for free, so that means the tickets will be completely on-chain, even for the layperson. They'll be able to interact with this technology without having to necessarily set up a wallet. We've got our silver sponsors, so we got hatem, we got dino vox, we got in in coal validators and boba. Of course, boba will be there at the event. We don't know if he's going to show up in a, in an outfit, what, but Boba will be present and we can't wait to have him there. And then we've also got our bronze sponsors. So Project X has given us some money and NFTs to allow us to give these away to the people who attend, along with CryptoPits as well. So we've got loads of presents for everyone who comes, loads of free stuff to give away. The ticket's free, and they'll be able to really, really enjoy this.

JB Carthy: 41:20

We'll also be making exclusive merch for the event, based on all these different projects that are joining us, so you can pick up your mug with a uh logo and graphic design on it related to both london, the uk and x cities and the partner project oh, I like, I like the sound of all that you know, I like the sound of um the events after, you know, like the kind of the little parties and the little social gatherings of those events are definitely um, all well worth attending, you know, and plenty of good times that always happen, and I'm sure london is pretty fun, plenty of things to explore and then like who doesn't like, who doesn't like a nice branded mug man, you know I may actually travel I I may, I may actually travel to london for that myself, like, but um, but I was.

JB Carthy: 42:13

I was actually saying like we were at the collabathon or hosted the collabathon um a couple of months ago and we actually got to try out XOXO's um ticket platform and we're tickling system as well. We actually had um Mihai chatting to us a few weeks ago and it's really super smooth and anyone I I'd say that was over in um germany for the recent x day got a chance to try it out, and obviously anyone who's coming to london here is going to get the chance to try it out also, and so so it'll. It'll be a good experience. You know it's. It's super clean, super nice interface and you have the tickets in your wallet and, yeah, it's a. It's an example of the things that can be built with real world and utility on chain.

JB Carthy: 42:59

And he was he was on when he was a few on. When he was on here a few weeks ago. He was chatting about the real world implications of being able to provide, like direct ticketing platforms or issue ticketing through web, three technologies where creators will be able to keep more of the revenue and they'll be able to have more control over their ticketing distribution and they won't have to pass it off to intermediaries who take large percentages and often distribute them to audiences who might not be part of their core and fan base, you know. And so there's great potential for um ticketing and obviously xox and I were doing a great job and making their platform. I think I think they actually re are like launched a launched a brand. Uh, another name for the brand recently um or specific zontics yes, it was um. So super cool to see them kind of like creating that branding and probably going after the audience more directly.

JB Carthy: 43:59

So, rather than saying we're on Web3 and we're a ticketing platform, just going straight to market as a ticketing platform and just showing the benefits of what the technology can bring, rather than talking about the technology itself and I think that's something as an industry we probably have to get a little bit better at is like, rather than talking about the technology and what it might be able to do, to going to leaders, going to businesses, going to people who make things and want to connect to their customers and their communities, a little bit more deeper and going like here here is the potential of the technology, here's what it can make, the things you already do more efficient, rather than just talking about, like things that might not be of as much interest or make as much sense. And to the individual who's not as versed in the space and hasn't been here a while, like you know.

Harry Burrell: 45:02

I think it's sometimes we we forget as a space that the same things that get us excited aren't the same things that get like 99 of other people and excited, you know yeah, and I think a lot of our space is filled with dreamers, you know, um, people who love to think about what this potential is of the technology rather than making some kind of action to actually show off and show how it can actually be used, and to be able to talk to these people. I mean, if you listen to Benny talk, for example, he talks very philosophically and I think some people get lost in all these big words and buzzwords that he can use sometimes, and sometimes you just want to see action. So I think that's something to be learned there. But yeah, as you were saying, most businesses just want to know how does it make their processes more efficient? Where does it save them money?

JB Carthy: 45:58

No, 100%, 100%. We're getting towards the end of the spaces and 10 minutes to go. So at this stage we always kind of ask anyone from the audience who wants to come up, wants to ask a question? I'm going to look through the comments and see if we have anyone. We have Skila88, I think ProjectXStalwart, if I'm right.

Harry Burrell: 46:22

Yes, yeah, that is our proofs as we go on.

JB Carthy: 46:27

Yeah, no, so he's in the comments section saying Hi guys, and we have x city's account and dropping a location pin. So, um, there's not not a lot of questions going on in there, but if anyone in the audience wants to take the mic, wants to come up and ask a question, have a little chat and feel free. Um, but yeah, like, maybe with 10 minutes left, we'll look to the future and maybe with yourself, harry, we'll chat about maybe a couple of things that excite you about the space at the moment, and then a couple of things that maybe, from when you got involved in the space back in 2019, 2020, as you were chatting about that haven't quite gone the way you thought they would, or that you thought would have improved a little bit more by now.

Harry Burrell: 47:15

I think one thing I wasn't mentally prepared for, being my first kind of cycle, was how low we could go with the bear. I mean, we've seen a lot of negative sentiments. I just remember the excitement back then of where we could go and then seeing the bear and see the community's mood really significantly dip. You know, having been rugged so many times, having watched their tokens go to nothing, it seemed like the community started turning on each other at one point. I think things are getting more euphoric again. So people are very positive. But I mean within the communities it always stayed quite positive. I mean, project X launched midway through the bear, not during the bull, and that community remained positive throughout. But it's yeah, it's been a difficult time, I think, for a lot of people. Even I felt that at moments, although I try and stay positive about these things because I'm building here, I want things to go well. So it's better that I keep that, that mood up, you know, for my community sake too no 100, and maybe something that you are super excited about going forward.

Harry Burrell: 48:32

I'm super excited for Sovereign Shards.

Harry Burrell: 48:35

I think that's going to be something really cool the fact that any kind of business can come on here and make their own ecosystem within Multiverse X and have full control over it and still make use of the blockchain technology.

Harry Burrell: 48:50

I think that's going to be something that really develops well. And I'd like to see more interaction with AI. I mean, I did an article recently about it on Twitter regarding using blockchain as a truth machine for AI, aka cementing when AI is made at the point of being made, onto the blockchain, so that someone can call the blockchain and go, hey, is this ai? Because we're going to have huge troubles moving forward, determining what is real and what isn't real in the digital space, what is created by a person or what has been created by ai. And I think there's a value on culturally, not just from a political point of view, where you can have Donald Trump punching a baby in AI and then that gets circulated as fact, but also from the point of view that artists need to be protected from this and people are still going to put a huge emphasis on something that is culturally human rather than something that is just algorithmically generated no 100.

JB Carthy: 49:55

I think that is probably one of the one of the biggest challenges is how do we kind of differentiate between what's real and what's not when we can generate, like almost seemingly now like infinite amounts of content?

JB Carthy: 50:09

Um, and it's like more complex content. You know, at the start it was like blog posts, written posts, not as impactful, but now it's like voices, movements, words, things that, like you, previously would have thought impossible to artificially generate, are now being artificially generated and it's like I remember the words being floated about a few years ago, like with the truth, and it feels like having a having a truth machine is probably more more important now than it ever has been. And with all these advances and making it impossible to discern, like, what is real and what is not, unless you can physically actually almost reach out and touch something, but anything you can interact with through a screen and any media you can consume through a screen, the ability to understand whether or not it really happened or whether it's just, um, some sort of interpretation of like generative ai is like, or creation of generative ai is like, more and more difficult to, is more and more difficult to discern between. We actually have Joaquim up and Flacca is requesting as well, so we'll bring Flacca up too.

Joaquim: 51:20

Joaquim, you were first, so if you want to pop up and say something, yeah, I'm just going to tell Harry off for dropping way too much alpha regarding X-Cities. On a more serious note, we just want to say that we hope to see as many of you as possible on the 30th of November for the event. You have no excuse not to be there. Weddings, funerals, I don't care. We want you there, so please come.

JB Carthy: 51:51

What if it's your own funeral? Are you excused?

Joaquim: 51:56

Well, we'll be muted on the blockchain for you.

JB Carthy: 52:00

No, I actually would say anyone who's within distance of London or can get over, I'm sure it'll be a super cool event. Plenty of you guys will probably make it a fun time. And if anything, if previous events or anything to go by and Flaka, you were up as well Do you want to chime in with anything?

Flacka: 52:22

Hey, hey guys, to be honest, I kind of accidentally pushed the request button.

Flacka: 52:32

We have to say something now, Flaka I'm saying right, I'm not, I'm not shutting up. You know that. I mean you guys, um, know me for for now that if I'm on the mic I can't stop talking. I I think the only one who can beat me to that is like Owl King and Vito from Chrome. I'm sure you know him also. Yeah, well, pretty exciting news with XCT. I'm so sorry I can't get there, too much distance and pretty much expensive for me this time, but for sure I'll be in one of the cities in romania at least yeah, well, hopefully, uh.

Harry Burrell: 53:23

So the two community members who reached out to do one in like cbu or brush of were kujets and um larissa from art tunes design, so hopefully they they run with it and we can help support them over there. I can hopefully fly out because, you know, romania is my second home now, thanks to my wife, um, so yeah, you can say you visit your uh parents-in-law and actually you don't visit your parents-in-law because you go to X City.

Flacka: 53:53

I'll be visiting you instead, Flako yeah, for sure, I'll wait for you brother no for sure.

JB Carthy: 54:03

I think that was like there's great excitement, obviously for X Cities. I actually wish I could go. I'm just pretty far away from pretty far away, from pretty far away from London as well at the moment, so can't make it over. But before we maybe jump off, is there any final words, harry, that you'd like to have say to the people listening or that might be listening back, anything about X Cities or anything about Divergence Club or Project X that people should be looking out for, that you'd like to let people know about?

Harry Burrell: 54:35

Well, I'll start off by saying, reiterating what Joachim said there's no excuse that if you're local to London, you should come along to this, because there'd be, even if you don't care about the blockchain side of it. Maybe you just want to socialise, or maybe you just want the free food. There's going to be free food there. We'll blockchain side of it. Maybe you just want to socialize, or maybe you just want the free food. There's going to be free food there. We'll coax you in with that and we'll talk your ear off about blockchain at the same time. And multiverse x and also pick up uh, your your free merch when you come.

Harry Burrell: 55:01

Although I think that was supposed to be the alpha. I was supposed to keep quiet, but there you go. I'm reiterating you should come along and grab a mug, but also I I mean, I'm hella biased, but um, a project x is an amazing project. The future is incredible. Divergent club I've got two products planned that we have yet to launch and we still need to get the lottery system and the staking system out to give even more back to the holders. So there's there's loads of positive things to come there as well, but the the main takeaway is come to exit ease.

Joaquim: 55:35

There's no excuse sweet I can bring your friend and bring your friend.

JB Carthy: 55:42

Yeah, plus, plus one's welcome, plus one's welcome bring your friend, bring your, bring your child.

Harry Burrell: 55:48

it's never too early to learn about blockchain 100%, 100%.

JB Carthy: 55:55

I think that is a good note to leave it on. So this was like Helios Horizons, episode 25. Today we were chatting to Harry Burrell. He's bringing X cities to life in London at the end of the month and going out reaching out to the community driving blockchain adoption. Um, yeah, anyone who's in the vicinity should go check it out. Um, and check out their Twitter. Find out everything they're up to. Thanks everyone for listening and talk soon.

Harry Burrell: 56:26

Thank you, JB, Thank you to all the listeners. It's been. It's been great talking.