Road to Success

Don Thibeau: Mm-hmm, I was indeed, yeah.

Leah Satlin: So, tell us a little bit about
your journey for Hedera and whether if you worked on any validator
initiatives at IBM.

Don Thibeau: Yeah, I have been lucky enough to
spend my whole career in the crypto and blockchain space, starting
with IBM, and at the time, what we were doing was similarly cost
casting that wide net to say, “How is this technology,
blockchain and distributed ledger, technology going to impact all
of these different industries?” So we worked with banks, with
governments, with insurance companies, you name it, to explore how
they could benefit from transparency, data sharing and efficiency,
all enabled by blockchain technology. My primary focus was an open
source project called Hyperledger Fabric, which helped to build
permissioned networks for those different use cases, and of course,
also our product at the time, the IBM blockchain platform, which
helped to make that available as a service.

Now, we obviously started focused on the enterprise space from a
software perspective, but very quickly saw the rise of public
cryptocurrency networks like Ethereum and others, as a
transformative piece or part of the industry that enterprises would
inevitably start to work with. So, we were exploring at IBM,
different opportunities for integrating with and supporting those
public networks, but I didn’t yet really start the conversation
until I joined Hedera, of IBM actually joining the Hedera governing
council and becoming a validator on that network.

That being said, when I joined, we made that pitch back to IBM
and said, “Look at Hedera as a platform for enabling your
access to public networks, while still delivering an enterprise
scale of technology.” And that’s one that I think IBM has
greatly benefited from in the years since they joined as a council
member.

Eric Swartz: We definitely agree. On that
topic, we know Hedera takes a slightly different approach, both at
the technological digital ledger layer and the governance layer as
to their validator selection. Can you tell our listeners a little
about the approach to help them understand the incredible
innovation that is Hedera?

Don Thibeau: Sure. And obviously, now I get to
speak as an interested party and advisor and no longer team member.
But that being said, the goal with the launch of Hedera was to
build with decentralization from the start, but allow
decentralization to grow over time. So, Hedera has a group of node
operators that are also network governors. They join an
organization called the Hedera Governing Council, which is the
decentralized organization that helps to make decisions about
Hedera’s roadmap, direction as a technology, et cetera.

Those council members also were the first node operators.
It’s important that you have that wide, but also known set of
validator nodes early on in a cryptocurrency network’s
lifecycle, to ensure that no singles, party, or small group of
entities, really collects all of the power in the system. And
through that model, Hedera was also able to have distinct cloud
service providers being used to operate the network. They were
required to be operated in different jurisdictions and of course,
operated by different companies. So, when you look at the actual
distribution of validators, it’s actually more decentralized
than a lot of other networks that run 90% of their nodes in AWS, so
that when AWS goes down, the whole network comes down for them. But
that being said, although Hedera started with that permission
validator model, it will I know, expand to public permissioned node
operation to help enable anybody to join that network as a
validator and benefit from the role that provides.

Eric Swartz: And can you just speak to the
quality of the validators in that initial set? Because I think what
is a staunch difference between Hedera and other validator sets
within the proof of stake chain world, is just that you guys have
some of the top organizations in the universe working as validators
on your network from almost day one. And so, with that in mind, I
think the partnerships that are available, the just reach that you
have by including those folks rather than trying to take in an
approach that effectively excludes such parties, must have been
unimaginably game changing for you guys. Has that been the case?
Can you talk a little bit about that?

Don Thibeau: Yeah. I think that we first really
saw the benefit of those organizations in the decentralized
governance behind Hedera, when we would propose new additions to
the roadmap, or even prioritize our roadmap. These organizations
obviously always brought an incredible depth of technical
expertise, but also a mind that was focused on scale, so that they
would push to have lower latency, higher performance because these
organizations were going to be using it for things like
cross-border payments or for creating authentic, auditable
sustainability assets, use cases which can’t take 10 TPS and
say good enough, but need the thousands of TPS that Hedera
provides.

But the other real benefit, more so than I think the node
specifics themselves was use of the hash graph consensus algorithm
for that consensus process. So hash graphs, graph to get technical
for a moment is an asynchronous Byzantine fault tolerant or a BFT
consensus algorithm, which in layman’s terms really means that
it’s pure decentralization. Every node participates in every
round of consensus. There’s no leader or small group of leaders
that take consensus and can bring down the network. And so,
you’ve seen Hedera really start and scale without some of the
issues that have caused outage on other networks based on their
consensus algorithms. But really, I’m excited to see where
those organizations go and take Hedera and also what they continue
to build on Hedera. Just LG for my new interest, launched an NFT
collection that integrates to their smart TVs, smart mirrors and
more. And that just shows the type of skill that is going to be
brought by many of the applications on Hedera.

Eric Swartz: I couldn’t agree more, and I
just am so excited to see the partnerships and incubation
acceleration that occurs within the ecosystem, having partners such
as the partners that you guys have. We look forward to some really
great things. Switching gears a little bit, you guys have a new
venture, NFT.com, which I’m incredibly excited about. It
frankly is very similar to Hedera in many ways, and I think the
vision for it is very similar, but I think in particular, we want
to just hear about what you have in store for the community. Tell
us a little bit about Genesis Key NFT holders and what they’re
entitled to.

Don Thibeau: Absolutely. So NFT.com, which is a
subsidiary of Immutable Holdings, really seeks to build a platform
which helps bring millions of creators to billions of people. The
transformation of NFTs at its core is fundamentally the ability of
creators to generate assets that they own and can deserve royalties
from long term. But to use that as a means to engage communities of
interest around them, whether it’s gamers on a gaming platform,
fans of a particular artist, or even somebody who’s attending a
given sporting event. NFTs, and the creators that build them really
are discovering each other and engaging one another much more
frequently through these NFTs. Just the number of new brands that
are entering the space through NFTs is another indicator of
that.

Our goal with NFT.com is to really build the social NFT
marketplace. So, to expand on what that means, all of the
innovation that’s been driven by cryptocurrencies and NFTs has
been social and community oriented. It’s about what’s in
the zeitgeist, the actual … what’s the word? Rumors is
probably the bad one, but the buzz that gets generated around these
assets that drive and have driven a lot of the value to date. But
many of the technology platforms which support those tokens and
those communities are actually incredibly inaccessible. So, our
goal with NFT.com was to give users an experience that was
analogous to many of the social networks they use today, but has an
NFT marketplace and NFT trading built in.

So, you can go to NFT.com and create a profile that is in and of
itself an NFT. So, it’s like you’re joining a social
network, but you are in part owning your identity on that social
network, which we think is absolutely critical to the vision behind
Web3. Once you create that NFT representing your profile, you can
then display NFTs from wherever you’ve collected them, or you
can use that profile to promote a NFT collection that you
created.

Then we built in the ability to buy and sell those NFTs across
other third-party marketplaces so that you can easily expand your
collection or sell your NFTs if that’s your objective. Our
long-term goal is that NFT.com will be wherever NFTs are and
we’re certainly excited to continue with that development.

I’ll talk maybe a bit about what we’ve been doing to
date. So, I mentioned some of those core principles of Web3. Our
goal was to start the project as a community effort, and so the
Immutable Holdings team did an NFT drop of what’s called the
Genesis Keys to form that initial community. So, those people who
buy a Genesis Key NFT can actually access our private beta, which
I’ll talk about momentarily, and also mint for free, NFT
profiles. So that could be something that you use for your personal
collection or to build a particular brand.

Now since that drop, which was at the end of Q2 this year,
we’ve been in our private beta phase, which is delivering new
features to those Genesis Key holders every two weeks. So,
they’ve actually seen and helped provide input in what
we’re building as we’re building it. So, they’ve seen
new features like customization of an NFT profile, buying and
selling of NFTs on new marketplaces, and also helped to give us
feedback into that direction and that community focus is something
that we’re certainly going to continue into the future.

Eric Swartz: Just a related question. In
picking Genesis Key NFT holders, did you guys pre-select anyone, or
did you guys offers to the public and just purchasers who wanted to
contribute have taken part?

Don Thibeau: So, it was very much a public sale
that anybody could and still can participate in. So, there was an
auction process which actually determined the price of Genesis
Keys, but users today can even go to NFT.com to join that community
and buy their own Genesis Key. But it was something that was meant
to be broadly accessible and decentralized. We have worked with
many partners, like Kevin O’Leary, who’ve served as
strategic advisors and investors into Immutable Holdings and
actually joining the NFT.com community as well, and many more who
are helping again, to really grow awareness of our community, of
our project, and help to drive its scale and adoption as well.

Eric Swartz: That’s amazing. And we’re
happy to hear that folks have been able to contribute and, down to
the public, has really been able to feel what the Hedera system
probably was on day one so that they can have that same moment that
some of the biggest companies in the world got to have.

Don Thibeau: Exactly. Our Discord server, which
is where we discuss everything from those latest trends to new
product features, is one of the most active I’ve ever been a
part of. So, it’s really fun to work with.

Eric Swartz: I believe it. I know that I’m
pretty excited about what you guys are building and I just
can’t wait for the public launch and to see what true
competition to Open Sea really is. And with that said, what is
NFT.com promising that something like Open Sea could never really
provide?

Don Thibeau: I think really, it’s our
orientation towards building that decentralized social network with
a marketplace built in. We want our platform and we want NFTs to be
a model and mechanism by which people engage one another, and do so
in a way where when they bring assets, when they bring activity,
and when they bring their reputation, they actually are in part a
contributor but also an owner, if you will, of that social
network.

What we’ve seen in the social networks to date, as everybody
knows, has really been exploitation of identity, of reputation, of
data, and certainly some of that always has a place in the digital
space, but our goal with NFT.com is to build a platform that
enables all of the great features around trading integrated, even
to Open Sea. So, you can still buy and sell through Open Sea if you
like, while focusing on the social aspects of NFTs that really make
it so great and so powerful. I, let’s say that, use it instead
of Open Sea right now, but certainly you can buy and sell through
Open Sea and by aggregating those marketplaces and the social
impact around NFTs, I think we’ve got something really exciting
ahead for us.

Eric Swartz: Agreed. And honestly, I think
that’s exactly what folks are looking for because Open Sea does
provide a easy channel for the sale and purchase of NFTs, but what
I think is missing in Open Sea and generally from the NFT space, is
a good linked social network. Obviously Meta’s doing what they
can to bring that to the table, but when you don’t have the
marketplace interconnected with the social network, it just
doesn’t really … Simply displaying NFTs as if their artwork
on your wall is not the same as sort of being a part of the
community and a part of the marketplace. And a lot of what folks
are really looking for is exactly that because they’re active
traders. So, I think simply being able to display things is never
really going to be enough and I’m really excited to see the
next steps from NFT.com.

Don Thibeau: Yeah, I’d also just add to
that, we see fragmentation in the marketplace side of NFTs. Not
only are there different Open Sea, Magic Eden, LooksRare
competitors, but the NBA, the NHL, GameStop, all have their own
marketplaces as well. And our view is just that users shouldn’t
be siloed into those different marketplaces and should be able to
integrate and transact across them as frictionlessly as
possible.

Eric Swartz: With that, I mean the only thing I
can think of is you guys are bringing the DEX aggregator one inch
approach to NFTs, which is something it certainly needs, given the
fractionalization you noted. So, we’re really excited to see
it.

Don Thibeau: Appreciate it.

Eric Swartz: Thank you again, Don, for joining
us today. Before we leave for the day, do you have any last minute
thoughts you’d like to share?

Don Thibeau: I’ll just turn back to my
favorite comment, which is about the community. If you’re
building in the NFT space, if you’re interested in the NFT
space, come join our Genesis Key club, join us in the NFT.com
community and help us to make this vision a reality and have fun
with it as well. Because that’s what I think makes the space so
great.

Eric Swartz: Absolutely.

Leah Satlin: Thank you, Don. Well, you heard it
here. Hop on NFT.com and explore. If you’re interested and if
you liked this episode before you go, please be sure to subscribe
to our podcast and hit the like button. Thanks so much
everyone.

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