Fyre Festival was a fraudulent luxury music festival founded by con artist Billy McFarland and rapper Ja Rule. It was created with the intent of promoting the company&#x27;s Fyre app for booking music talent. The festival was scheduled to take place on April 28–30 and May 5–7, 2017, on the Bahamian ...

Fyre Festival - Wikipedia

In August 2013, McFarland seeded payments company Magnises with $1.5 million of investor funding, aiming to create an exclusive &quot;black card&quot; with social perks, such as club membership, targeted at status-oriented millennials in certain big cities. McFarland also launched Fyre Media Inc., the ...

Billy McFarland - Wikipedia

The Frye Company is an American manufacturer of shoes, boots and leather accessories. Founded in 1863, it claims to be the oldest continuously operated American shoe company. In 1863, John A. Frye opened the first Frye shop on Elm Street in Marlborough, Massachusetts.

The Frye Company - Wikipedia

In July 2018, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that McFarland, two companies he founded (Fyre Media and Magnises), a former senior executive, and a former contractor had agreed to settle charges against them.

Fyre Festival's Billy McFarland, who was released early from prison, ...

Now, documents show that the CEO ... of Fyre, also claimed to have “final cut” over the documentary while it was being put together. Though his editing authority was later “superseded by the distribution agreement where the final cut was with the director,” according to Netflix, the way the movie was produced suggests that FuckJerry used the film to launder the troubled company’s ...

Fyre Festival Was a Huge Scam. Is Netflix’s Fyre Documentary ...

McFarland, now 27, grew up in New ... company, and he briefly attended Bucknell University before dropping out after less than a year. McFarland presented himself as a successful serial entrepreneur, having launched multiple high-profile ventures before he turned 25. But FBI agent John Casale, who oversaw the criminal investigation into Fyre Festival and ...

Fyre Festival: How a 25-year-old scammed investors out of $26 million

McFarland pleaded guilty in March 2018 to wire-fraud charges in relation to Fyre Festival, which became infamous after hundreds of attendees were left stranded in the Bahamas last year. In June 2018, McFarland was arrested again on charges of selling fake tickets through a different company, called ...

These photos reveal why the 27-year-old organizer of the disastrous ...

In July 2018, Margolin faced fraud-related charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) alongside McFarland, independent contractor Daniel Simon, Fyre Media, and McFarland&#x27;s shady credit card company, Magnises. Margolin was also Magnises&#x27; vice president of marketing and branding.

Fyre Festival's CMO Grant Margolin appears to be working again ...

Elliot Tebele, creator of Jerry Media (or FuckJerry as it was called when the company was doing Fyre’s promotion), is an executive producer of the Netflix documentary. However, Tebele and Jerry Media made large donations to Rolle’s GoFundMe, totaling $30,000.

Fyre Fest: GoFundMe for Netflix Doc Breakout Reaches $100 ...

McFarland is currently serving six years in prison for fraud related to Fyre Festival and for additional defrauding, but before he became known for screwing a ton of people over, he had another business. McFarland had a &quot;credit card&quot; company called Magnises that was meant to be an elite credit ...

What Happened To Magnises? Billy McFarland's "Credit Card" Company ...

Fyre

fyre

By now most of us would have heard of the infamous Fyre Festival in 2017 where investors lost over $27.4 million dollars. The festival’s pitch deck has resurfaced online in 2019 and has been labeled as . ‘beyond parody’ Founder Billy McFarland had an idea to host a ‘luxury musical festival’ which would help in the launch of their music booking app. It was meant to be something exclusive and unique and help create massive buzz. . And it did…for the wrong reasons The whole thing ended up falling apart quickly and cost investors millions of dollars of investment money. But did the pitch deck help secure that funding or was it just a warning sign of the impending doom to follow? Let’s take a look. First Section: What is Fyre? The first section goes through the generics of any pitch deck including: How It Works The Problem Statement The Solution The Revenue Model Everything looks standard, although it is quite wordy which could mean this deck could be handed out without narration at this stage. There is a clear problem described in these slides with a solution outlining how it solves the issue stated. One important thing these slides indicate though is that which is subject to validation but still nevertheless important to state. ( ) the company has traction we later do find out this traction was actually faked and they only had $55,700 in bookings vs the millions they claimed Overall it still nicely presented in a way that makes it understandable. Second Section: The Festival This is where it starts to head off into another direction. It switches from a lot of words and facts into lots of ‘inspirational’ quotes. Throwing this left and right, it attempts to take the viewer on a journey by getting them to envision what Fyre’s goal of the festival was. Now you may be thinking that it’s absurd that they asked for to promote their app via a festival but if you look at the history of festivals, it sheds some light. millions of dollars in funding The Fyre Festival was ‘billed as Coachella on a private island’. According to Billboard — The 2017 festival Coachella was attended by 250,000 people and grossed revenues of $114.6 million. Festivals are very hard to execute correctly with many things that could go wrong (this would be one of the best cases ironically) but it had merit in the sense it could have actually been profitable if pulled off and as an added bonus, promote their core business as well. Section 3: The Promotion With celebrities like Kylie Jenner and a load of influencers being paid to promote the Fyre Festival, it was meant to be the biggest festivals with some of the biggest names attending. Although influencer marketing is a legitimate strategy, it is also alarming when you’re hiring more than 100+ influencers including Kylie Jenner to promote a festival in its first year. It was estimated Kylie Jenner’s post alone cost $250,000. Overall the strategy was clear but it was so over the place that there are many possible questions that could be raised including the legitimacy of the entire influencer piece. PR and Influencer Marketing are solid strategies especially for millennial targeted events such as these but they are also extremely hard to prove. The fact that they were predicting to hit 100% of all sales by March 31st, with PR as their main marketing tool is alarming. The pre-order numbers should have been checked to see the actual viability of the claim. It’s important to note many influencers got backlash even after the Fyre Festival failed including a lawsuit against Kylie Jenner. Any influencer needs to be careful when choosing what they endorse and this is a clear example of why. Section 4: Financials and Partnerships There is a lot of content in this section that needs to be discussed so I am going through the essentials on each slide. Partnerships Pending? Why are they pending? I find these slides to be a waste especially with the majority of the partnerships being ‘pending’ such as some major ones like Samsung. Partnerships can also mean little or nothing especially if it’s contributing minimally to the cause. This needs to be articulated clearly including what the partnership provides for both parties. Financials Financials should be one of the most important parts of the pitch deck. It should outline what their revenue model was (if not explained already) and showcased how much revenue they’re currently gaining and their run-rate or an estimated run-rate. Investors love to see 2x and 3x growth charts. But out of all 56 slides, there was only one slide on this and it wasn’t even a financial slide. It was to reference an appendix slide. Now that’s fine but its also giving a sign that they might not want to dive deep into their figures which is spelling trouble. Land Ownership The slide here is straightforward and looks impressive. If legitimate, this would be a great nab for the festival. This would definitely need to be validated especially due to the fact it was free and the island was worth $8.4 million dollars. Achievement Slide Overall, this slide may look impressive on the surface but when you dig deeper into the meaning of the numbers, there is a lot of information missing. are always known as a vanity metric especially without solid proof that it converts into ROI. Simply stating a bunch of impressive numbers seems weak especially twice as social vs media. Impressions ‘ is once again flakey like the partnerships section. If it was clearer perhaps on its run rate of how it was going so far including current tickets sold, this would be far better represented. Expecting’ to be sold out in March 31st The issue is why is it all ‘expecting’ or ‘pending’ or ‘going to be’? Section 5: The Ask Every pitch needs an ask like in Shark Tank. Here it is — 25MM raise. There are a few questions around this including why this specific amount? How was the valuation done? There are many unanswered questions in this deck and this again is likewise as it doesn’t explain the background of how they reached this figure. What exactly is an exclusive manager? Why do we need 500 of them and what do they bring to the business for Fyre? At this point, the slides are looking dire with too many unanswered questions. Section 6: The Team Honestly, it does look like an impressive team. The team has a lot of relevant talent and I actually enjoyed the layout of this section as we all know how a good team can make or break a startup! Every section of a team from product, engineering, marketing to sales play an important part in a company and these slides illustrate it well. Final Comments Overall there were some decent slides, but the majority was fluff. There were many concerns with the pitch deck including large amounts of claims without evidence or extra detail. It later resurfaces that many of the claims were false (from actual booking amounts to partnerships). In the end, Fyre itself was a great idea and but the festival failed miserably due to deceiving details, misplanning and more. The slides should have been a forewarning of the possible failure of the festival even though it managed to secure million of funding (larges amount of funding was secured through fudging of numbers). What is clear though is that the slides most likely did not contribute to how Fyre got the large funding amounts it got. Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed these tips, feel free to hit that clap button 👏 to help others find it.

Deconstructing The Fyre Festival Pitch Deck

Marc Weinstein on What Happened at the Fyre Festival

Here's an interesting fact for you: did you know that over 1 million French people were already surfing the net by the year 1981? Seriously – they could buy things, chat with strangers, make bookings, watch the stock market, and more. And it was all thanks to the Minitel. Before the World Wide Web, this nifty piece of tech was considered the most successful online service. Not only was it a super innovative alternative to phone books, but the business model was way ahead of its time; Minitel terminals were given to phone subscribers for no upfront cost, meaning they were distributed quickly and successfully. What's my point here? Well, today's newsletter is about the immense value of looking ahead at all times. It's about having the foresight to pick trends before they become trendy – or in some cases, create a completely new trend from an idea in your head. And that's exactly what the Minitel achieved. By having the foresight to use France's phone lines in a new and useful way, the company had millions of people web surfing before the rest of the world even knew of the possibility. (They made pretty serious bank off of it, too). What's your Minitel? Is there a potential trend in your industry that no one's taken advantage of yet? Let's talk about it. Alvaro Nunez' Phenomenal Real Estate Career Brief topic change here – I want to introduce today's newsletter inspiration who, as always, is someone I interviewed over on my Success Story Podcast. Alvaro Nunez is the Founder and CEO of Super Luxury Group, an acclaimed luxury real estate media network. Fueled by his passion for real estate, he has been working to enhance people’s lives through homes, real estate and experiences. He aspires to revolutionize the luxury lifestyle industry by celebritizing and selling multimillion-dollar homes from Miami to other jet-set locations using innovative and disruptive marketing techniques, technology integrations, and influencer collaborations. Alvaro has sold some of the largest, most luxurious pieces of real estate on the planet. He's also worked with some of the most well-known celebrities and influencers to create the perfect intersection of luxury, lifestyle, and influence. All of that success is no dice roll – he's worked smart and hard to make it happen, as you'll soon see. What Alvaro Adds to the Conversation The reason I'm talking about Alvaro here is that, on the topic of innovation, he's pretty much an expert. It's been part of his strategy from day dot. After moving to the US at just 16 years old to live the 'American Dream' and create some professional stability for himself, Alvaro went to school for marketing and eventually found himself moving toward the luxury real estate space. He wanted to break into the industry without the years of experience traditionally needed – but how? "The idea was, how do I tap into a luxury market without having that much experience? Well, you need to understand luxury," Alvaro explained. "First, you need to understand the lifestyle. You need to brand yourself as somebody that understands it." As it happened, Alvaro had the opportunity to do just that. His parents were selling a house they'd designed in the Dominican Republic, and the buyer wanted the home to be rented out during the parts of the year when he'd be absent – so he employed Alvaro to market the apartment as a luxury rental. "They asked me like, 'Look, you are the marketing guy. How would you promote this home to rent for the short term?' So I went check that out," Alvaro explained. What he found was a pattern: there were lots of empty homes in the Dominican Republic. Their wealthy owners were gone for the majority of the year. So what were the houses doing in the meantime? The Beginning of Something Great For Alvaro, this was a big discovery. Lots of wealthy people with vacant homes to rent out meant one thing: if he could pull it off, Alvaro had just found a new market to tap into. This was his ticket into luxury real estate. He began conversations with homeowners about putting their houses up for rent as luxury holiday experiences. "I started talking to them. I started to tell them, 'Look, I believe that we can generate some income for your property, while at the same time I could manage it and make sure that it remains in good status. Otherwise the properties may start getting damaged.' And the whole goal was to keep yourself elevating to a higher degree of quality, whether that's through the properties, or through the type of experience that you offer." Bam; he'd found his doorway into the luxury space. Not only that, but Alvaro now had a means of building a high-end clientele base that would give him the experience of the luxury lifestyle he felt he needed. "Once you build that infrastructure, and it's working well, you start thinking, 'How do I tap into a higher community? How do I tap into building my community? How do I bring more people on board?' And once you start building relationships with these people and understanding the game, you're like, wow, I want to become that big guy." It wasn't long before Alvaro expanded his business of luxury property management – but he'd only just begun. The Influencer Advantage Something I think we're all aware of these days is the incredible power of influence that celebrities have. Whack the face of a celebrity onto a product or service, and watch sales skyrocket. Just look at Fyre Festival – it was a total disaster, but the influencer marketing alone made it one of the most talked about (and expensive) events in recent memory. As it turns out, this was the next evolution in Alvaro's luxury real estate business: celebrity endorsement. "That's when the concept of celebrities in homes took place. Because it was the idea of bringing these influencers to the properties, and then create this super sexy content that will make it very appealing for anybody to want to be part of this home." Alvaro had built a healthy network of brands, influencers, and high-end clients at this point, and he knew that this was something he could use to his advantage. "The moment you realize that people are lacking in something, and you can provide that value, then you're winning. We started looking at all these top brokers... they don't have that marketing push, they don't have access to the influencers the way we do, they don't have access to the international high net worth." What Alvaro built was not a brokerage; it was a brand. It was an experience. High-end clients knew they were getting a premium house marketing service that went above and beyond what your average real estate company could offer. Why Finding A New Angle Is Crucial Without telling Alvaro's entire story (you can watch it in full here), what I really wanted to emphasize through his business model is this idea of taking a different approach. He could have gone the traditional route into the real estate industry, yes – but it would have taken far longer, with considerably less impressive results. I firmly believe there are no shortcuts to success, but that doesn't mean you can't be smart about it. Alvaro tended to agree. "One of the things that I believe SLG has been really good at is staying ahead of the curve. Yes, some trends might die quick. But some of them will stay, and if you ride that wave from the very beginning, you will win and you'll maximize." It was pretty impressive to hear about some of these 'waves' Alvaro has been riding, like the movement of real estate into the metaverse. He's passionate about taking the plunge and seeing where you land, regardless of what everyone else in your industry is doing. You want to stay ahead of the curve. You want to become a pioneer in something, because life is about taking chances. Who knows if something is going to take off or not? But if you believe in it, you go through with it." Businesses That Stayed Ahead of the Curve Alvaro isn't the only entrepreneur who knows the wisdom of staying ahead of the curve. If you look back at some of the most successful and disruptive companies in history, you'll see that they all had one thing in common: they were constantly evolving. Apple is almost too obvious an example; those guys totally reinvented what it means to listen to music. Amazon has a long list of innovations to its name – I've even heard they're starting a drone delivery service, if you can believe it. GoPro changed the game for extreme sports enthusiasts everywhere. And now that I'm on a roll, what about Dyson? I love the way this company took a simple concept – rapidly moving air – and took total ownership of it, from vacuuming to hand-drying to hairstyling. A move of true genius on their part. But it isn't just the big names that have the resources and options required to stay ahead. Think about Alvaro's story; his goal was to enter luxury real estate, an extremely saturated and competitive space, without the traditional experience of his competitors. And he more than excelled. So what does that mean for you? How To Find Your Curve It's easy to view innovation as a one-off stroke of genius, or a moment in which the stars align and you happen to stumble onto the next big thing. I've been thinking about it, though, and I wonder – is continual evolution actually a lifestyle, rather than a single event? In other words, maybe the approach we need to take is not one of finding the next earth-shattering invention, but of making an effort to observe new opportunities every day. It could be an incredibly small innovation that leads to your big break. In Alvaro's situation, a lot of his success can probably be attributed to the way he observed what was going on around him. It was only because he took the time to investigate the housing situation in the Dominican Republic that he found his business opportunity. Think about it; he could have gone to the Dominican Republic, marketed the house he was asked to rent out, gone back to the US, and moved on with his life and career. But instead, he took the time to actively seek out a new opportunity – and what he found was nothing short of a goldmine. The Take-Home Observation is an incredible tool. We're constantly bombarded with new information, but it's up to us to pay attention and find the hidden trails branching off from the main path. It's also important to be open to new ideas. Too often, we're quick to dismiss concepts that don't fit within our current ideas of practicality. (You can read more about this in one of my more recent posts – check it out here). If Alvaro's story compels you to try and look for a new angle, I'd encourage you to watch the and hear more about his innovative approach to real estate. I was super impressed by how actively he continues to cover new ground and innovate in a saturated industry. full podcast episode As always, thanks for reading. Catch you next time!

Never Stick To The Same Angle

The picture in this article preview is a copy of Bored Ape .  This particular Bored Ape - number one of 10,000 in its 'family' collection - can be yours right now... . 7729 for $345k Earlier this year, Beeple ...for . sold this NFT $69 million To round out the examples, this sold for nearly . flying poptart cat picture $600k As part of writing this article I had to double check - sure enough Ja Rule sold a for $122k.  Imagine the hype for an exclusive Billy McFarland x Theranos crossover NFT drop. FyreFest NFT We've heard about NFTs these last few years - it's almost daily that some pixelated artwork makes headlines for its million-dollar sale.  But how do they work?  Are these a giant Ponzi scheme or the next big metaverse investment opportunity? The list of companies joining the NFT space is long - Nike, , and are all getting involved. is even dishing out NFTs to help us . Adidas Visa Taco Bell Live Mas And the money flowing in and valuations are stratospheric: OpenSea recently at a $13 Billion Valuation, and (behind NBA Top Shots) raised $250 million at a $7.6 Billion valuation. raised $300 Million Dapper Labs I have long been curious about NFTs, so in this article we'll explore it all... How big is the NFT opportunity?  How is value created digitally on the blockchain?  Why is any of this important? We'll also break down the technical components of how NFTs work and the different networks that make it possible.  How decentralized are these networks and their NFTs? And we'll go full 'right click save' mode and remint a $300k Bored Ape (and also create a brand new NFT) using the great resources and tutorials from , , and in a demo. Alchemy IPFS Filebase Crypto Kitties and Bored Apes - NFTs and the Intersection of IRL and Digital Communities "Crypto" covers just about everything.  Macroeconomics, game theory, monetary policy, politics, economic incentives, and world-changing protocol design. With NFTs, it gets absolutely wild.  Pump and dump schemes, Ape Coins, and discord servers with dedicated #gm (good morning) and meme generation channels abound. If you ever need an extra dose of chaos or entertainment, just sign in to a random crypto coin, DAO, or NFT Discord Server at 10pm at night.  Schemes for days. But this energy and a new sense of community have quickly formed over the last few years.  In his podcast, , Patrick O'Shaughnessy , a Fidelity money manager and owner of a Bored Ape. Invest Like the Best brought on Eric Golden Their conversation was fascinating.  Shaq, Neymar, Justin Bieber, and Paris Hilton all own Bored Apes.  An entire community exists, with special chat rooms, and worldwide parties for owners.  It's like a country club that spans the physical and digital worlds. And it's not just Bored Apes that have captured everyone's attention.  Back in 2017, the Crypto Kitty revolution started, where digital cats could breed with each other on the blockchain.  At one point, the on the blockchain made up an estimated 25% of the Ethereum network.  To quote the term VentureBeat coined in their article - the "Kittyverse" is just now a full Metaverse. Crypto Kitty activity This whole idea of community and ownership continues to take a new prominent role in our ever-growing digital society. And with more of our lives being lived in the digital world, having control and transparency of digital property is so powerful, and it offers ownership in a world where the value of traditional user-generated content has accrued to the platforms, rather than the creators. Layer on the creativity of the communities and the idea that a digital creation (artwork) can be augmented and improved over time, benefits can be accrued to the holder, and governance can be established (DAOs) - the opportunities hold great promise. How Big is the NFT Opportunity & Market? OpenSea, one of the leading NFT marketplaces, most recently .  In one month (August 2021), transactions on their platform hit $3.4 Billion - giving .  (Another great with their co-founder here) raised $300 Million at a $13 Billion Valuation OpenSea revenue of $85 million 'Invest Like the Best' podcast Dapper Labs, known for creating the NBA top shots collections, is now valued at . $7.6 Billion after raising $250 million Yuga Labs, the company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club, raised $450 million just this week - . putting their valuation at $4 Billion Alchemy, an 'IaaS for blockchain' company recently , putting their valuation at $10 Billion (their great platform is used to help make the below demo in this article and others) raised another $200 million The list goes on and on of companies making their way into the blockchain space - and more specifically the web3/NFT space. So is this a giant pyramid scheme or the foundations of the Metaverse?  There is certainly some to pair with the high flying valuations. healthy skepticism But that hasn't slowed down some of the growth in the NFT space.  A few more high-level numbers and growth statistics - all of these are pulled from the annual report from nonfungible.com : In 2021, 27.4 million NFTs were sold - a 1,800% increase from 2020 Total NFTs Sold : In 2021 $17.6 Billion was traded, a 21,350% increase from 2020 Total NFT Sales (Volume) : In 2021, the Average NFT went for $807, up from $49 one year earlier Average Sales Price The Network Effect - Analyzing On Chain Metrics and Blockchain Network Activity All of the above statistics are pulled from third party research, but because everything is recorded on the blockchain, it can all be verified.  We won't be downloading, indexing, and querying the Ethereum blockchain here, but it is worth taking a look at the mechanics of Minting NFTs and the network they are built on. NFTs are stored on a blockchain - the most common blockchain is Ethereum.  Decentralization and blockchain adoption is key - if a blockchain does not hold its value over time, the NFT will also lose value.  And an NFT cannot be 'transferred' to another blockchain. There are Blockchains beyond Ethereum, and some Blockchains are layers on top of Ethereum (L2's).  But a blockchain can only be as decentralized as the network(s) below it.  If an NFT blockchain is an Ethereum Layer 2, this may offer faster transactions or more features, but at the end of the day, the transaction has to make it onto Ethereum in some form. As such, an NFT minted on the Ethereum blockchain is a bet on that blockchain winning out over others (like Solana). [ ] Bitcoin is in an asset class by itself and NFTs are not directly related to Bitcoin Ethereum Contracts, Transaction, and Blocks Ethereum operates as a world computer, and it is a decentralized state machine.  Every ~12 to 14 seconds, a new block is mined.  Within each block are transactions, which are changes to the global state.  For example, if a was executed, a new contract was created, Ethereum was exchanged, or new data was recorded - all of these would change the state of the network, and would be included in a . smart contract block Some operations are more computationally expensive than others, and someone's server out there has to handle the load to execute the changes, so Ethereum has a concept of ' ' which is a unit of compute.  Gas costs money (measured in Eth) and is paid to the miner who takes care of the computation. gas Ethereum block size target is 15k gas, with an upper bound of 30k.  In other words, there is a maximum amount of computation that can be packaged up in each block.  It will resize based on demand on the network, but this offers an upper bound on the overall network.  Every ~12 seconds, the state of the global network is updated for every participating node, complete with any network additions or changes that have taken place. NFT's are required to be recorded on the Ethereum network.  First a contract must be created and added to the network.  And then the specific NFT data must be sent to the created contract.  There are more than on the Ethereum Network.  Of those, to being able to create and transfer NFTs. 3 million smart contracts ~10,000 contracts are dedicated When the crypto kitty craze took off, it accounted for 25% of Ethereum network activity.  Does this make NFT’s or Ethereum valuable?  Maybe... Netflix makes up some , but doesn't accrue all of the value of the network.  But this is a good benchmark for volume, and serves as a demand factor for valuing Ethereum. 12% of internet traffic Can I Right Click Save an NFT? Truth, Copyright, Ownership, and Value “Can I right click save an NFT”?  Yes, this is possible.  It is even possible to remint the original image (we will do that in a demo below).  But just like physical artwork or a collectors edition baseball card, the original is where all of the value is - copies are worthless. With any art, value is all in the eye of the beholder and subject to supply and demand.  The Bored Ape collection has value because they are scarce (only 10k of them).  And the creator and their community matter.  A random person dunking a basketball is not going to command the same as . Lebron James doing the same But who says what the 'authentic' picture of Lebron's dunk is?  There may have been hundreds of people who captured the same dunk on their iPhone. Could they all mint their photos as an NFT and make thousands?  This is again where community, network effects, and ongoing digital rights come into play.  If Lebron himself mints the photo it would have tremendous value.  And if an 'official partner' of the NBA such as Dapper Labs, does the same it too could hold the value. Beyond just a collectible, NFTs can have Utility Value.  Patrick O'Shaughnessy references this throughout many of his and Blockchain - using the idea of a unique digital sword or clothing item that could appear in an online game. podcast conversations on NFTs For me personally, one of the most exciting and interesting things about NFTs is the ability to make a unique, verifiable token of anything - and preserve ownership rights. If I own the private key to a digital item, I can cryptographically prove ownership.  And as this moves from art to things like a car title, housing deed, or certificate of stock in a company, the possibilities are much more real. Combining smart contracts on Ethereum, a decentralized way to move data on chain ( ), and decentralized storage mechanisms gives us a much clearer path to understand what is 'real' in our evolving digital society.  It gives back a premium and avenue for truth and ownership. Chainlink How Do NFTs Actually Work? Decentralized File Storage The first step to creating an NFT is to store the data somewhere.  And it has to be decentralized.  The whole point of an NFT is that it is unique, and cannot be changed by anyone.  The data can’t (*shouldn't*) be exclusively stored on AWS or Azure, as this gives the uploader or the cloud platform the ability to modify or restrict the data. We talked a bit about the Ethereum network constraints.  Every byte that is stored on the Ethereum network costs money ( ).  If a 2 Megabyte image (a common iPhone photo size) were to be stored on the blockchain, it would cost nearly - which at today’s prices would be about $50k.  This is infeasible for nearly all digital art, so the NFT can’t be stored directly on the Ethereum blockchain. 200 gas per byte 18 Eth So the data can’t be stored on a cloud provider and it can't be stored directly on the blockchain…what are the other options?  Enter .  IPFS offers a peer to peer decentralized platform for storing any files.  In a way it is a bit like LimeWire used to be. IPFS (Interplanetary File System) by using Content Addressing.  Any file (which is just 1’s and 0’s) is run through a hashing algorithm to get a unique CID.  If I write 'hello world' in a text file and upload it, it will be the exact same CID as your text file with the same content.  If we change the text and reupload the file, the CID will be completely different. and Filebase offer some great background content into the mechanics of how this all works, and walks through all of the various networks in detail. IPFS works IPFS Filebase Anyone can download IPFS - they make a Application.  And you can test it out by uploading various files and seeing what the CID is (be careful, these files can theoretically be around forever). Desktop GUI Pinning Data With this CID the data can now be shared globally using the IPFS platform and protocol.  But who wants to store any files?  File storage costs money and no one does this for free.  This is where the concept of comes in. pinning With pinning, a storage provider will store the file (identified by CID) on their servers.  Anyone can browse to this file (and repin it) as ong as it remains pinned by someone on the IPFS network. Just like Ethereum needs to keep its decentralization and network effects, IPFS must maintain the same for any NFTs to preserve their value. Multiple IPFS Pinning Services and protocols have become available lately.  Some are more centralized than others, and some are blockchain based with their own tokens.  Pinning is not free, so various incentive structures are in place for third parties to offer their pinning (storage) services. In our demo below we will use both and for pinning the files we upload to IPFS. Filebase Pinata Minting an NFT The first step to creating an NFT is to upload the image/file itself to an IPFS provider.  This could be our own instance of IPFS, but we want to make sure the file will stay pinned, so we can also use a service such as Filebase. After uploading the file to IPFS, we get its CID and will create a metadata file pointing to this new ID.  We then upload that metadata json file back to IPFS, again giving a different CID. Lastly we need to store our record of ownership of the metadata file, which points to the actual image, on chain.  To do this requires an Ethereum Contract ( ).  After the contract is created, we can then invoke it with the specifics of our Content ID and send all of the data to the Ethereum Network. ERC 721 Minting an NFT on Ethereum - A Demo with Alchemy, IPFS, and Filebase To see everything in action, we will walk through minting our own NFT.  The end result is your very own with your own collection of NFTs.  (For me, that is a picture of my brother's dog, alongside a couple of reminted Bored Apes) MetaMask wallet The final code for this tutorial is . here And the demo NFT Contract and interactions can all be seen on the Ethereum network . Ropsten here Much of the code and details to deploy an NFT Contract, Mint a new NFT, and view it in a Wallet (MetaMask) are all covered in the fantastic tutorials here from and (all using Hardhat scaffolding). Alchemy Filebase Rather than go line by line through them, I'll add a few notes, from where I ran into questions, to augment their fantastic resources.  And in the spirit of decentralization, there are many great companies that support Ethereum node-as-a-service development. is another fantastic provider of all underlying blockchain infrastructure that offers a fast track for NFT contract development and deployment. QuickNode You can demo IPFS as much as needed by downloading their Desktop GUI .  Once downloaded, you can upload test files or directories and see how CIDs are created. here You can use Filebase and Pinata to create accounts and upload the same files from your local testing.  You can see they get the exact same CIDs even on remote platforms. I was a bit confused seeing between Pinata and Filebase - there are two versions of CIDs.  Filebase uses the V1 version and Pinata the V0 version. different CIDs When creating the metadata files, you can use either version of the IPFS links for the CIDs created. There is another form of centralization to account for, which is IPFS Gateways.  See the next section for more details. To see the metadata and IPFS CIDs for an existing NFT, you can head over to OpenSea, , and click the metadata details.  You can then download the data.  Even when uploading the image to your local IPFS, you'll get the same CID (which is expected). find the NFT about how they handle data storage and compute.  They offer IPFS storage, but also ensure decentralized pinning, taking care of all details to create contracts with storage partners on the Sia Network.  Their docs are great. Filebase has some great resources The NFT Contract deployed in the github code linked is from the sample code from Alchemy.  This captures some recent changes to OpenZepplin extensions for ERC 721. updated a bit To transfer an NFT from one account to another, the contract deployed has inherited methods like that can be used ( ) transferFrom example code here Big thanks to Alchemy and Filebase for their great tutorials and resources. How Decentralized Are NFTs? To recap everything so far: NFT's are created by uploading a file to IPFS The IPFS image is then referenced in a metadata file pointing to the IPFS image, which is also uploaded to IPFS The metadata file is linked to the blockchain with an on chain transaction to a deployed ERC 721 contract. The maximum decentralization of an NFT therefore is limited to how decentralized the Blockchain network is (Ethereum in most cases), how decentralized IPFS is, and how decentralized the interactions between each system is. The decentralization of the Ethereum network involves many components (soon to be staking and Proof of Stake, roadmap, deployment process), all covered outside of this article. IPFS is a protocol for file addressing and sharing that enables anyone to host and pin a file in a fully decentralized manner.  While the file may end up pinned on AWS or a third party vendor, or even replicated on another decentralized network, there are protocols in the middle that allow 'sovereign' hosting of any content and the choice of any pinning vendor if desired. The last piece is the communication between everything, and specifically the .  When a file is referenced from the blockchain, it needs an HTTP link to point to the metadata.  In the demo we could use Filebase, which uses the , or Pinata, which uses the . IPFS Gateway dweb.link gateway gateway.pinata.cloud gateway I'm not sure of the best way around this gateway centralization.  Any third party gateway requires a centralization of trust.  From what I understand, as more browsers or clients build for the IPFS protocol, this centralization risk of any one gateway being offline or taken down goes away as the client could iterate multiple gateways using the file CID by itself.  So instead of adding a transaction record to the blockchain with a specific CID, we could just use the file CID itself.  The Brave browser for example auto links from a CID to a dweb extension (ie type in this and see the auto redirect): There is also an option to self host a gateway that would route back to the underlying CID on the IPFS network.  So there are options for decentralization here. ipfs://QmbUpvyA86q2GLSh1VKKyugNyoJdKFcthX8Joy5mtU2FSv/ I'll keep digging here and see what I can find, and if you are reading this far please let me know what I may be missing or any other factors to consider. Conclusion While the NFT space may be rife with gambling and the occasional scam, and overvalued in 90% of cases, there is already great demonstrated value.  And the underlying principles of cryptographic ownership, decentralization, and transparency will continue to prove invaluable as we all seek truth and digital property rights heading into the next evolution of our digital world. If you enjoy this kind of content, please subscribe to the to get all updates on new videos and articles. Exponential Layers newsletter

Million Dollar Pixels: Diving into NFT Decentralization, Copyright, and Minting

Million Dollar Pixels: sumergirse en la descentralización, los derechos de autor y la acuñación de NFT

Free Software Versus “Open Source” In 1980, a brand new Xerox 9700 printer was installed in an office of MIT’s computer science department. It often jammed. Several people in that department probably could have fixed it if not for the fact that it ran on proprietary Xerox software. One of those people, Richard Stallman, tried to at least program it to notify the rest of his office when it jammed, but wasn’t allowed to do that either. Whenever he and his colleagues needed a printout, they had to go check if it was jammed first. It was on a different floor. Stallman begged a colleague with Xerox connections to share the code for the driver. The colleague, despite having access, was contractually obligated to say no. This experience broke something in Stallman’s brain. It was a catalyst that solidified his resolve to give free software a permanent place in the world. If he couldn’t make all software free, he could at least lay the groundwork for free alternatives. He had the skills to help the world preserve the possibility of fixing your own printer, or asking a nerdy neighbor to do so, rather than remaining at Xerox’s mercy. He would not tolerate a society where people were actively discouraged from helping each other by the fact that Xerox’s profits might suffer a little. He soon left MIT to work on GNU, which stands for “GNU’s Not Unix.” Unix was an operating system built and owned by AT&T. Stallman’s goal with GNU was to build a completely free alternative that could run on any computer. Crucially, when he did this, he created a new type of copyright license to protect it called the GNU General Public License. It’s also called a “copyleft” license because it reverses what a traditional copyright license does: the GPL states not just that anyone can modify or distribute the software, but that any modified versions fall under the same rules. Corporations who tried to build on top of GNU, for example, would have to be careful in how they did so lest their product become free software. His vision was no pipe dream. In the early 1990s, a Finnish student named Linus Torvalds used what already existed of GNU to finish a central piece of the operating system, known as the kernel. The GNU/Linux operating system was born. Stallman, Torvalds, and their globally distributed team showed the world that wildly successful software could be developed both remotely and without corporate funding. Many tools that developers take for granted today, such as the version control system Git, have been developed for this project. Likewise, many huge companies owe much of their profit and success to it. GNU/Linux got so good that countless software giants began using it extensively, such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and even Microsoft, despite Steve Ballmer once calling the GPL a “cancer.” (They’ve been careful, of course, to not do so in a way that makes their products free.) That such a project could be built this way feels obvious now, but it wasn’t obvious at all back then. In 1997 a hacker named Eric Raymond, inspired by his experiences working on GNU/Linux, published an called “The Cathedral and the Bazaar,” arguing that building software in this open, communal, bottom-up way, rather than the private and top-down way favored by most companies, yields inherently better results. Putting vastly more eyeballs on a project’s code, as it turns out, makes it vastly harder for bugs and security flaws to take root. It doesn’t hurt when a lot of the contributors work on it out of pure interest and fun, either, rather than economic need. essay A year later, a browser company called Netscape did something crazy. Desperate to stop Microsoft’s Internet Explorer from cutting into their market share and inspired by this essay, they publicly shared the code for their latest web browser, inviting the world to build it with them. In the same initiative, with help from supportive hackers like Raymond himself, they also coined the term “open source.” The nascent open source community ended up , but the move heralded the future. Companies were now allowed, even encouraged, to start projects where large chunks of development, along with distribution and branding, still happened in-house, but where the whole world could contribute. (Projects like React continue to see great success under this model.) From their perspective, it makes perfect sense: if people are going to build free software anyway, why not benefit from that? scrapping the browser and starting Mozilla.org instead In giving companies a free pass to enter the “open source community,” however, certain hackers said “take what you want and give what you want” to a bunch of organizations built around maximizing the ratio of the former to the latter. Here we are with Schrödinger’s open source, both broken and unbroken. It’s unbroken in the sense that people still write terrific software because they can and want to, and the world still benefits from it. There is also, of course, a darker side. The recent is merely the latest dancer in a long conga line of problems stemming from the unholy marriage of the cathedral and the bazaar. Companies adapt an open source library without contributing; the library falls into disrepair because its maintainers can’t work for free forever; security vulnerabilities arise that the companies, building their cathedrals, don’t notice or address until irreparable damage has been done. log4j fiasco These companies often have the nerve — as Microsoft did in 1998 in response to Netscape’s “stunt” — to claim that the open source maintainers are the ones being risky, and that the cure is pouring even more trust and resources into their company, which know what it’s doing. Again, though, they’re incentivized to be this way. Software consumers like you and me, instead of rallying around better free software, want and use their products. The collective demand that this puts on good cheap software has direct impacts on the maintainers of the free software underlying it. Facing increasing pressure without proportionate rewards, maintainers can burn out. Even Guido van Rossum, “benevolent dictator for life” of Python, . Linus Torvalds from Linux. Jacob Thornton, whose on the history of open source I’ve been paraphrasing large chunks of, references “cute puppy dog” syndrome: you start a project because it’s fun, but then it grows. It becomes a more thankless job. While it’s hard to pass off your baby to people who won’t care for it like you did, it’s often harder to take care of Clifford the Big Red Dog when everyone wants to play with him and no one wants to finance his kibble. stepped down took a break talk Filippo Valsorda, an engineer on the Go team at Google with extensive open source experience, forcing companies to “professionalize” (invoice without hiring) the maintainers of the open source projects they use. I suspect this suggestion will grow in popularity; it lets companies part with some extra cash rather than their fundamental assumptions about how freely shareable software should be, or about who should have input in decisions about software that affects the entire world. (Some have carried the torch of questioning these assumptions, like the late Aaron Swartz in his unfinished work about the , though they’re few and far between.) recently suggested Programmable Web In a 2001 where he told the Xerox printer story, Stallman noted that in the 1970s, the heady days of free software being the norm, none of this was an issue. The survival of your project didn’t depend on funding or software licenses. It didn’t really even depend on what your project had. People contributed work they cared about. They debated it carefully. They delegated decisions about specifics to people who clearly knew and cared about those specifics, probably because they’d already worked on them. There was also no insane reactionary erasure of all governance whatsoever, as some have found in “flat” organizations; there was no leaving people to grapple with the — informal cliques of power — and no driving people to because they cared more than the higher-ups knew how to handle. (Or because they kept running into buggy proprietary software they weren’t allowed to fix.) speech model of governance Tyranny of Structurelessness burn out and disengage It was all a “do”-ocracy. People weren’t in it for power and clout; they were in it for fun and community. “Cooperation was our way of life,” Stallman said. The Indigenous Critique For a long time after the Renaissance, European culture actually stayed pretty authoritarian, hierarchical, and bound by strict puritanical codes of morality. People like Jean-Jacques Rousseau who finally started touting “Enlightenment” values — individual liberty, questioning authority, rational debate, all that good stuff — often did so with traceable influence, sometimes even explicitly-stated influence, from Native Americans, many of whose nuanced and well-reasoned critiques of the West (read up on for a good example) found their way into widely-read books written by New World explorers. Kondiaronk In fact, it was natives of the American northeast and Great Lakes regions who were already living these values. They prized and prioritized personal autonomy, doing virtually nothing they morally disagreed with, to an extent that would make any modern libertarian jealous. They went so far with those principles as to automatically ensure a social safety net. When you’re going hungry or otherwise in mortal danger, you don’t have much personal autonomy, as you’re just trying to survive. The community would help you out. One could say the reverse was true; in caring for each other, they protected personal autonomy. It doesn’t really matter. This was just how they lived. Cooperation was their way of life. There was no blind, reflexive, dogmatic reverence to the authority of the humans you lived with beyond their ability to morally and logically convince you. Words like “lord” and “commandment” were hard for early missionaries to translate into the natives’ languages. Rigorous notions of private ownership were not really a thing; in practice, these amount to telling everyone else in your community “you cannot access this, even if you find it helpful; it’s mine.” Amassing power over others wasn’t really a thing either. The mechanisms that allowed it in European society, like money and social status, were simply not that important, even if they existed. The European reflex to sanctify and protect ideas like these was alien, especially when it came at the cost of actual human life. This had the interesting effect of translating directly into the kind of “equality under the law” that the Founding Fathers began enshrining. (If anything, the Greco-Roman traditions that my high school history books instead pointed to when explaining the Founders’ talk of “equality” merely kept it limited to property-owning white males.) The natives, in living this way, flouted the European cultural assumption that individual liberty and social cohesiveness were at odds. It was literally revolutionary. In the centuries since, the tendency of Western historians and anthropologists, lulled by stereotypes of the “noble savage” (or simply the “savage”), has been to discount the direct shoutouts of people like Rousseau, as though they couldn’t be accurate. These thinkers must have been trying to seem “exotic,” or were just joshing us, right? Indigenous cultures were too “simple,” “innocent,” and “primitive” to know what they were talking about when it came to statecraft, right? possibly The time has come to show my hand again. Much of what you’ve just read is a direct paraphrase of the beginning of the book by David Wengrow and David Graeber. They go on: The Dawn of Everything What if the sort of people we like to imagine as simple and innocent are free of rulers, governments, bureaucracies, ruling classes and the like, not because they are lacking in imagination, but because they're actually more imaginative than we are? We find it difficult to picture what a truly free society would be like; perhaps they have no similar trouble picturing what arbitrary power and domination would be like. Perhaps they can not only imagine it, but consciously arrange their society in such a way as to avoid it. The historical record shows that even the Europeans preferred these ways. Benjamin Franklin himself wrote puzzled and disgruntled accounts of how pretty much anyone with years of experience living among both indigenous people and Europeans (via adoption, kidnapping, etc.) would overwhelmingly end up choosing to live amongst the Native Americans. As Wengrow and Graeber write: “There is the security of knowing one has a statistically smaller chance of getting shot with an arrow. And then there’s the security of knowing that there are people in the world who will care deeply if one is.” Decriminalizing Caring The type of world you live in comes from the way your society values and prioritizes different freedoms. Everyone, by nature, is “free” to do anything, including murder; when we deny the freedom to murder, though, it protects our freedom to do much more. So while freedom is not always a zero-sum game, like when people write useful free software that enables greater autonomy for all, there can be tradeoffs. The current trouble with open source comes from the fanatical worship and defense of one particular freedom at the exclusion of others. It is the freedom to own and hoard property — to keep software (or land, or whatever else) private and maximally-profitable by all means necessary — even at the cost of our freedom to help each other, breathe clean air, enact a 4-day workweek that lets us write more free software, or not be by Chevron. wrongfully imprisoned As those examples show, the freedom to hoard is tied up in a vicious cycle (well, virtuous for some) with the freedom to use money to influence laws. People from a certain class, like Billy McFarland of Fyre Festival infamy, get 6 years in prison for committing tens of millions of dollars in wire fraud, and that’s when they get caught and publicized; poor people routinely go to jail for life for . stealing $50 of food As Stallman mentions in his 2001 speech, when something (like a computer, or a justice system) is broken, people stop caring as a defense mechanism: You know if the computer is constantly frustrating to use, and people are using it, their lives are going to be frustrating, and if they're using it in their jobs, their jobs are going to be frustrating; they're going to hate their jobs. And you know, people protect themselves from frustration by deciding not to care. So you end up with people whose attitude is, "Well, I showed up for work today. That's all I have to do. If I can't make progress, that's not my problem; that's the boss's problem." And when this happens, it's bad for those people, and it's bad for society as a whole. The status quo is that workers in many industries, not just open source software, are increasingly overburdened and undercompensated, largely due to the same dynamics that hobble the justice system. Companies take, and fail to give, as much as the law will allow, and “money as speech” means the law will allow a lot. The minimum wage, especially compared to inflation, remains a sad joke. In tandem with spending less time caring about and helping each other, then, we therefore have to spend more time grinding, hustling, and seeing each other as competition, which compounds the problem. Our financial rewards for doing so are artificially suppressed by both corporate lobbying and government unresponsiveness (but I repeat myself). Charlie Warzel makes this connection in a recent though unfortunately paywalled called . There is a growing realization — not just among software developers, but among Kellogg’s workers and healthcare professionals and others — that we need to force necessary changes in how companies not only pay the workers, but also invest in the systems, that sustain them. article Guardians of the Internet Our world obviously depends on systems: software systems, energy systems, healthcare systems, and more. The legwork of keeping these systems going falls to workers. We have to incentivize caring for those people more than the brand names that leech off of them, lest those people, and those systems, fall apart. I urge you to ask yourself, not just once but often, if it’s really worth prizing private property and its protection as we do (i.e. above the protection of all else) or instead if, as the natives did, we should prize community and personal autonomy, perhaps even more — crazy, I know — than private property. Ask if you want your laws to enshrine the freedom to care only and solely for yourself, or the freedom to cooperate. As the early free software community shows, living in a complex technological world doesn’t mean the latter is blocked. It can be harder, of course, given all the corporate resistance one may face, but it’s possible. Since I value autonomy, I’ll respect your choice; I just find it a pretty obvious one. Previously published here.

Cooperation, Survival, Open Source, and Decriminalizing Caring 

So, millennials, huh? Oversensitive snowflakes, always in their smartphones, but don’t like phone calls. What else do we know about people who are already the and most influential generation of consumers and only going stronger? largest What I’m (with a bit of artistic exaggeration) trying to say here is that we can’t seriously discuss the future of customer support without knowing whom exactly we’re going to ‘support’ in 2019 and further. And that would be millennials. 5 facts about millennials that every business should know If you’re still wondering why on earth I’m talking about millennials now, once again, here’s a quick explanation. Millennials, or Gen Y are the demographic group of people born between the 1980s and early 2000s. Millennials are quickly becoming the most important consumers encountered by most types of business, with a spending power that is estimated to be worth $10 trillion over their lifetimes, according to . Forbes Millennials are not just kids anymore. No, they can become the biggest group of users for your business, they most probably work for you (and yes, I’m 24, I’m biased as hell in this matter, but then again, aren’t we all?) – millennials are the future of customer support and we should start reckoning with this force. 1.Millennials trust their peers’ endorsements Word of mouth has always been one of the most powerful marketing tactics (if something you can’t really control can be called a tactic). With millennials, it’s growing even more relevant.  These people read and trust product reviews and care much less about ads than previous generations. 2. Millennials are seriously into influencers, though A product endorsement from someone popular and influential is what millennials can truly appreciate. Just think of the , one of the biggest frauds of our decade. All those millennials were willing to pay thousands of dollars for a non-existent event just because their favorite models endorsed it. Influencers are what marketing is made of these days. Fyre festival 3. Millennials like to buy online According to study, 56% of millennials buy online half of the time after they visit a brick-and-mortar store first. 21% of millennials “almost always” buy online. Thus, millennials are dominating online ecommerce as we speak. They are a breeding ground for all of our digital marketing channels. If those channels are handled right, obviously. Euclid 4. Millennials have instant access to any information they need Don’t try to fool millennials. These people are born with technologies, they know technologies, they use them for everything. They check every piece of information they receive in a couple of clicks and a few swipes. And if they aren’t satisfied with the quality of service they receive, you can be sure you’ll get yourself those bad reviews in a split of a second, no hesitation. (And in case you had any doubts, millennials do like rating products and leaving reviews. of them do.) 64% 5. Millennials hate phone calls I know I do. According to all possible and common sense, millennials would rather text than talk things over the phone. And calls from unidentified numbers are an absolute no-no. Millennials actually consider calling without prearrangement straight up bad manners. studies All in all, I don’t mean to generalize about every Gen Y representative, but the vibes these days are all about being woke and tolerant, authentic and real, inspiring and distinctive. Can businesses keep up with all these changes and mind shifts? IDK. All I know is that the struggle is real, but we can try our best 😉 The future of customer support: 6 trends to keep up with Technology is somewhat of a milestone when it comes to millennials. Internet explosion is one of the defining characteristics of Generation Y. That is exactly why new technologies are at the heart of the customer support future. You need better technologies, faster resources, effective automation to keep pace with the tech boom around us. Modern customer support is all about that. I mean you can’t seriously continue using old school ticketing systems while Elon Musk is sending David Bowie’s songs to Mars and BostonDynamics’ robots are dancing better than we ever will. 1. Self-service is the most preferred customer service channel Self-service if going to be big. If people can find answers to their questions without any help, if finding those answers was easy and fast, why would they contact your customer support team in the first place And that is great news for all customer social warriors out there. Self-service means fewer requests, fewer requests mean more time for other more important tasks. According to the recent report , 73% of customers want to solve their issues with a product or a service on their own. So yeah, in 2019 having a robust knowledge base is a must. You should have detailed articles about everything – from registering to every basic and advanced feature. It should be easy to access these articles and find any information in them as well. But it would be a huge mistake thinking that a help center is everything there is to self-service. If you have resources, people and time, you definitely should create some videos and step-by-step tutorials for your business. The ultimate goal is to make everything so clear that your customers won’t even need to contact the support department. There’s also this cool thing you can add to you self-service support. I’m talking about communities. You can give your customers all the resources to build their own communities around your product – something like a FAQ page or a forum where people can talk to each other and discuss their burning questions. One of the awesome examples of such communities is . It’s the place where everybody can ask any question concerning SEO (and I mean ANY) and get a bunch of answers from virtually anybody willing to share their expertise. The Moz Q&A Forum All in all, people only contact customer support directly when they have no other choice left. They don’t want to talk to your support even if you have the most pleasant people working for you. That’s why quality self-service resources are a must for the future of customer support. 2. Real-time messengers will replace emails (… and call centers I hope) Every single day, people send via WhatsApp, the most popular messenger as of this day. 195 minutes is an average time a person spends in this app every week. 200 million messages And don’t get me started on WeChat! Suffice it to say, the most popular messenger in China sees active users every month. 1.08 billion Yeah, we like our messengers, that’s for sure. So how can all these numbers be applicable to customer support? Well, all this means only one thing: you should use real-time messengers for communicating with your customers. If that is a preferred way of communication these days, why fight it? My understanding is that real-time messengers as customer support tools give you two significant advantages (or rather a combination of them) over any other communication channel - speed and personalization. With only 2 minute average response time, are the fastest way to communicate with your customers. However, with great power comes great responsibility – meaning that if you commit to providing live chat customer support, you’d have to constantly push the limits keeping it fast yet personalized. For instance, many businesses already use Facebook Messenger for their customer service needs. It’s only understandable as the tool is familiar to everybody and there’s no need to adapt to new features. live chats This post was originally published on the HelpCrunch blog by Anastasiia Khlystova. But I wouldn’t stop on it as there’s a bunch of more professional real-time chat tools for businesses on the market like , or . One reason I prefer such tools over FB Messenger is that while giving 100% messenger experience, they can be customized in accordance with your website design and look like its integral part. HelpCrunch Intercom Tawk offers a great variety of customization options meaning you can change everything from chat buttons to colors and wallpapers: HelpCrunch 3. Data will rule everything Is it me or has ‘data’ become somewhat of a buzzword over the past couple of years? Everybody’s talking about data and argue whose database is bigger. Data in itself doesn’t mean a thing, you know. You can have thousands of yottabytes (real , btw) of info on your hands, but there’s no point if you don’t know how to analyze it to your advantage. term In terms of customer support there are actually two kinds of important data: 1. Data about our customers. Modern customer support tools collect lots of data about each of your customers and visitors. As creepy as it may sound (hello, Mr.Robot), it’s a good thing for businesses. Great, actually. The more you know about people who use your service or product, the better support you can deliver. Just imagine the level of personalization you can achieve with the help of data. Let’s take HelpCrunch as an example. It collects lots of user data by default – things like time zone or browser language. Not only is this information always available for your customer support agents at any moment right in a chat window, but it also updates in real time. Additionally, you can transfer any of your custom data to HelpCrunch making it a high-end database about your customers. 2. Analytical data about your customer support performance. The only way to know for sure if you’re doing everything right with your customer support is to look at numbers. Look at them more. Then start adding them. Then start seeing some patterns and abnormalities. Then learn to draw conclusions out of all this. What I mean is, businesses can only rely on their performance analytics to make sure their customer support is being any effective. Tools and technologies in use should have all the necessary means to measure everything from response time to overall customer satisfaction. And you should learn to analyze all these stats properly. You can then base any of your further customer support decisions on hard data. For instance, here’s how you can track your customer satisfaction rate in HelpCrunch. At the end of each chat conversation you can send an automatic message asking them to rate their experience. 1 second for them – and you get a valuable insight into what people are feeling about your customer support. Over the next couple of years, the need for better and more price data will only be growing. All the customer support tactics together with marketing and sales campaigns can only be based on data and its thorough analysis. The more of it you have, the better armed you are. 4. Proactive help is better than reactive So, remember when I said people won’t contact you unless it’s an absolute necessity? What if I say you can help them even when they don’t ask for it? It’s called ‘proactive customer support’, and it’s totally awesome. First of all, you should make it a rule to constantly check your service or product for possible pitfalls that might be confusing for your customers. Start with analyzing your existing data – look through all the conversations and try and find some common patterns. I’m pretty sure there are questions or difficulties people have most often and that’s some great material for building proactive support right there. After you wrote those self-service articles about things you uncovered (which goes without saying), it’s time to take your proactive game to the next level. For instance, tools like HelpCrunch allow setting up proactive chats that are automatically triggered by certain criteria. Let’s assume you’re running a software company and you’ve noticed that your customers often skip an important step of the installation process. Or you have a mobile app, but people keep forgetting about it. So you can set up an auto message based on this criteria that will be automatically sent to everybody who hasn’t installed your software or a mobile app three days after registration. 5. Chatbots will take over basic customer support tasks The key word is ‘basic’ here. It doesn’t matter whether you’re pro- or anti-automation, our Blade Runner cyberpunk future is not as near as we might have thought. Customer support tools can call their bots artificial intelligence all they want, but it doesn’t make those bots any smarter. What I’m trying to say here is that enhancing your customer support with a may be a great idea in 2019, but don’t expect any wonders from it. chatbot As Michael Redbord of HubSpot so accurately it: put …Bots can actually be very clever when backed by good tech – but it’s not “artificial intelligence”. It’s extremely clever math, turned into experience. That being said, we can’t just dismiss chatbots. As primitive as they are, chatbots are rapidly developing and can already take over a bunch of tasks from your customer support representatives. As assistants, bots can do a great job asking preliminary questions and qualifying leads before your customer support team steps in to help further. Here's a nice example of the Drift chatbot: There are also knowledge base bots, which can drastically help with finding the right articles and suggesting pre-made answers to frequently asked questions. Do I think customer service is going to be completely automated any time soon? No, in all honesty, I don’t.  But you should start implementing the available chatbots nevertheless. They ‘everything that can be automated, must be automated!’ and I can’t agree more with that. say 6. Social media is not going anywhere People still spend a lot of their time in social media. Moreover, they still use them for contacting companies and asking them all kinds of questions. Yes, you can give your customer all possible channels to get in touch with you – and they’ll still go to Twitter whenever your website’s down. I’m sure every single business has its accounts on all known social media. Maybe they even post stuff there from time to time. But it’s crucial for companies in 2019 to keep up with everything that’s going on there. You should regularly check your inbox on Facebook for new messages and track your mentions on Twitter. Here's how Instagram handles its Twitter account: Companies that strive to be transparent (as all same companies must) should use their social media for communicating with customers openly. Social media also contribute to another important customer support trend. In 2019, you can’t just get yourself a live chat tool and call it a day. Customer support will continue being multi-channel, so can you rise to the challenge? Bottom line I can talk about future technologies all I want, but it won’t change a simple truth: customer support is nothing without open communication and personal touch for each particular case. Stay friendly, genuinely try to help and get yourself all modern technologies for customer support – and the future will be yours.

The Future of Customer Support: Facts and Trends to Watch in 2020

Jed McCaleb on the Creation of Mt. Gox

Bitcoin’s bull run in 2017 has caught the world’s attention, bringing the once obscure distributed ledger technology mainstream. from $900 to $20,000 at its peak Many industry newcomers have the misconception that blockchain is a newly emerged technology. However, the fact is that cryptocurrencies and the underlying blockchain technology have been around since a decade ago, back when Satoshi Nakamoto first published the Bitcoin Whitepaper in 2008 and mined the genesis block of bitcoin a year later. Source: Coinmarketcap The hype and attention buoyed by the parabolic price action have also attracted more players to enter the industry. Just 3 years ago, the total number of ICOs stood at 29, with total funds raised totalling being 90 million. In comparison, the total number of ICOs in 2018 stood at 1,257 and total funds raised at 7,852 million — which translates translating to a whooping 4,234% and 8,624% growth respectively! Source: ICOData.io Despite being around for over a decade with positive news and directions, blockchain technology remains far from practical adoption. A has indicated that blockchain adoption rates are still low — 1 percent today and only 8 percent expected by surveyed CIOs in the short term. 2018 survey by Gartner Meanwhile, user adoption of decentralized applications (dApps) on Ethereum, the remains surprisingly low. Daily users of all dApps averaged . Yet, Ethereum has a multi-billion dollar market valuation at $14 billion, highlighting that the prices of these cryptocurrencies are mostly driven by speculation and not use. second largest cryptocurrency by market cap less than 10,000 So what exactly is holding blockchain technology back from mainstream adoption? We explore a few possible factors in this article. Scalability of technology Current technology limitations such as scalability remains a significant issue facing blockchain technology. The as termed by Ethereum’s founder Vitalik Buterin states that blockchain systems can only effectively possess two out of three components — either decentralization, scalability or security hence trade-offs are almost inevitable. scalability trilemma , a ERC20 dApp enabling players to buy and breed digital kittens on the Ethereum network is a prime example highlighting current technical limitations of blockchain technology. This single dApp alone has resulted in the congestion of the entire ethereum network, highlighting the difficulties in scalability with decentralisation. In December 2017, unprocessed ethereum transactions were reported to rise up resulting in Cryptokitties having to increase their “birthing” (transaction) fees to minimise network congestion. CryptoKitties six-folds Source: CryptoKitties Twitter It is promising to note that improvements to current technological limitations are actively being explored, such as the recent and new structures like the (DAG) aiming to solve current limitations with blockchain technology. Ethereum Constantinople hard fork Directed Acyclic Graph Expectations outpacing usefulness The state of ICOs draws parallel to the infamous , with charismatic millennial founders over promising and under delivering by “selling a dream”. framework seems to ring true for many projects, with a recent showing that only 29% of 2017 ICOs have ever delivered a product. Fyre Festival saga “80% marketing, 20% product” E&Y report Hence, it is important for investors and the public to do their own due diligence while assessing any opportunities. , ICOs founded by already established businesses with a proven team, communities and use cases may just prove to be an effective filter. Reverse ICOs Lack of trust in a trustless system Public sentiment and perception of the industry have been low, especially with the current bear market and bad actors in the industry. In recent news, we have , to a . It is no wonder that there is currently a lack of trust in the system, with regulatory and security issues being frequent occurrences. investors being locked out of $190m after the death of the exchange founder exchange with 9.4% of its total holdings stolen 20% spike in money laundering cases in Japan last year Misconceptions fuelled by lack of education Understandably, it has been tough for investors and the public to really get to know what cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology are all about, with the technical jargons and the ever-evolving landscape. This has led to common misconceptions such as: Misconception 1: Bitcoin = Cryptocurrencies = Blockchain technology Fact: Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology are not interchangeable terms. Bitcoin is a form of cryptocurrency, while cryptocurrencies are forms of digital assets as mediums of exchange. Blockchain technology is a form of distributed ledger, a technology underlying cryptocurrencies enabling peer-to-peer transactions. Misconception 2: Blockchain technology is only for cryptocurrencies and payment Fact: Blockchain and cryptocurrencies may go like peanut butter and jelly. However, it is not the only use case for blockchain, a distributed ledger technology that spans across multiple industries and use cases. Misconception 3: Price volatility, bear market reflecting current state of technology progress Fact: Blockchain technology, as the underlying distributed ledger technology, should not be conflated with the incentive layer of public blockchains, namely cryptocurrencies. As Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak shared in a CoinTelegraph interview , people should focus on Bitcoin value creation rather than being preoccupied with price. No moonbois or lambos but the future is bright Despite such factors holding the adoption of blockchain technology back, we still believe in the vast potential of blockchain technology, with its ability to impact and improve different industries. According to a from US-based market research firm International Data Corporation (IDC), global blockchain spending will account for almost $2.9 billion in 2019, which is an 88.7 percent increase from 2018. recent report With such positive projected growth and the involvement of big corporates and institutions such as NYSE which recently launched digital assets platform and corporates such as IBM’s well-known active involvement in blockchain technology, there remains long term growth and opportunities for the industry. Bakkt In order for the industry to mature and grow, we believe that education is key. Investors, projects, users and the wider communities should look past the hype and instead learn more about the true state and merits of blockchain technology and explore how it could be used to solve problems or enhance existing solutions in different industries. In time and with solid development, trust can then be slowly built up. How can we expedite the rate of blockchain tech adoption? We’d love to hear your views via the comments below or continue the discussion with us on Telegram here . Disclaimer: Nothing written, posted or said by representatives of ArcadierX, its community managers, or community members should be interpreted as, taken as, or constitutes investment advice. All written comments are opinions of individuals and any investment is a risk that individuals take themselves. *** Our team of blockchain enthusiasts is behind ArcadierX , leading marketplace builder Arcadier ’s blockchain initiative to onboard users with a blockchain enhanced platform. . For more insights and developments about blockchain and eCommerce, check us out at https://medium.com/arcadierx

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