Efinity ($EFI) - Most Hyped NFT Blockchain

With all the hype surrounding NFTs and metaverses recently, with projects such as Decentraland and Sandbox taking front and center stage of the metaverse discussion, there's one aspect that is super important but nearly never discussed by anyone, which is the foundation on which these projects are built. You see, a lot of metaverses are built on Ethereum, which is great, but it does get expensive to use over time, and over time this presents a huge barrier to adoption. What's interesting is that this type of issue is exactly worked on by Enjin and their newly developed blockchain, which is called Efinity. In this video, we're talking to the co-founder of Enjin, WeTech. He's the visionary. He's the guy behind all this, imagining and dreaming up the future so we can have it, well, now. Anyways, we're going to explore both the metaverse in general and what Enjin is building specifically to solve a lot of these important needs of future metaverses. On top of this, Enjin needs your help now. So there's an ongoing auction that's happening for slot 5 on the Polkadot ecosystem. It's happening right now. It's actually started already. And if Enjin does win this, then it means that they will be able to secure that parachain slot and launch ASAP and become a primary metaverse game chain on the Polkadot ecosystem. And without further ado, let's check out the interview and talk to WeTech to see what's going on with Efinity and Enjin. We have our good friend WeTech back from a long time ago. He's a co-founder of Enjin. We've known each other for a long, long while back. And he's got some good insight on both gaming and what's happening with the metaverse. And more importantly, as well, what's happening with Enjin and Efinity. So WeTech, let's just start with the basics first. I mean, last time we spoke, gaming wasn't this hot, but now it's getting super hot and the future looks even hotter. So what's your take on this gaming and the whole metaverse situation right now? Well, finally, NFTs got into the mainstream lexicon. Everyone knows what NFT is now. And suddenly Facebook says metaverse and everyone's like, oh my God, metaverse, right? So finally, the stuff we've been talking about for the last four years is happening. And now, you know, like AAA game developers are actually starting to say, huh, maybe we should step into this and try it out. I mean, we just saw Ubisoft push Quartz, which is like pretty cool for Ghost Recon. And, you know, there's a lot of AAA games now getting into the space. They're still not seeing the full picture, I think, but they're trying. They're doing social items, doing things like that. So it's pretty exciting. So it's almost like an experimentation phase, right? But people know that there's a future. It's almost like the internet. I feel like it's like the back in the internet days, right? People know, okay, everyone's going to be connected here. People know that trading is going to be huge. They know that gaming to give the items weight, you need to have some form of value. The NFTs provide that. What's your take? What do you think like fundamentally is attractive about the space? I mean, that's my take. What is yours? Well, I think that, you know, right now people are just doing the, you know, the basic thing, trading NFTs, making some money, you know, a good way to monetize a game, things like that. But what we want to do is actually create this sort of library of cool, creative tools that game developers can use beyond just, you know, marketplace selling stuff. You can use this technology to build like more interesting game experience, just like VR does for your, you know, for your visual field. This does for, you know, social connections, building economies around games, building games that actually require player collaboration with NFTs. Those things are coming. They're not there yet, but they're coming. And I think AAA mainstream games are going to start doing this. So it's not just going to be CryptoKitties, Axies, all this kind of, you know, JPEGs being traded around. It's going to be like actual cool, immersive, economic and collector experiences in like really cool games with millions of people. And I think that's the vision is much bigger. So I definitely agree with you here that Axies is just barely scratching the surface of what this can do. I mean, already, and the crazy part is just scratching the surface, already got billions of dollars in the Axie ecosystem. So like, just like my mind is blown at how far we can really take this, right? So, you know, obviously at this point, we see AAA companies coming in, we see other indie studios coming in, we see just like a whole explosion of games. All right. So where do you think this is going? Do you think there's like, you know, are they all hitting the right blocks? Do you think there's some fundamental things that they're missing out right now? I think experimenting, like I said, so they're going to see how the community reacts. There's going to be a lot of hate for some games that just treat it as another way of monetizing and, you know, charging players more. But you're going to see some cool indie games come out that do something new in the space. You're going to see players like start finding things that they like in the games that are doing new things. And I can see in the next few years, there's going to be like a few games that hit it so well, like that, that hit some new experience where you're like, people are collaborating, like, you know, Pokemon Go did it for AR, right? So that's going to, the same thing's going to happen in the blockchain world. It's, I feel it's like on the cusp. So what we're trying to do at engine is like give game developers the tools and inspiration and very soon the sort of like framework and library that they can work with. So if you want to build a collaborative player game, you know how to do it. You don't have to like, you know, invent it in your head. You can actually like get some examples and have an easy way of getting that onto the blockchain. Right. And I think this is the hard part, right? Because I've seen a few interviews with you and you're like, oh, is engine a metaverse? How does engine differ from sandbox? But I feel like, okay, in your own words, how do you position engine? Because engine is even more fundamental than just the metaverse. It's really a foundation layer, right? Yeah. So we made a bunch of tools, made an awesome wallet. We made a platform that, you know, now it's actually moving to an open source platform. So game devs can just like put it on their own server, put it on their own Amazon hosting or on their own local infrastructure, plug it into their game, immediately start minting things, using it in their games. So we were building all this whole tool set, you know, piece by piece. And now there's a blockchain layer, Efinity. So we see this as now we're providing the tools, we're providing the kind of knowledge and sort of inspiration and vision for what we want gaming to turn into. And, you know, now we see the path. Now we have about a hundred adopters and we see the path to thousands next year. And by adopters, what do you mean? Who are these adopters right now coming in? A lot of them are games. So 90% games. But there are some businesses that are trying to do stuff like gamifying with NFTs. You know, we had Microsoft a couple of years ago and they're continuing to work with us on, you know, giving people rewards for doing cool things in the Microsoft Azure community. And we're working with even like parties, like if I'm even allowed to say like the United Nations now to figure out how to use this tool to make the world a better place. So with this explosion of metaverses, a lot of people are getting confused. We see projects like Sandbox and Decentraland having a lot of traction and people are kind of confused, you know, how does Engine fit in? What are you working on? And how does this whole ecosystem tie in together? Yeah, well, basically we are trying to build this sort of infrastructure of the metaverse. We're not building a single game, like a single 3D world, but we're trying to make it possible for people to build thousands of these different games and worlds and experiences. So the problem with Ethereum, you know, when you look at Ethereum, it can get very easily congested because this is a general purpose blockchain. Anyone can deploy smart contracts to it. Whereas what we're doing is purpose built for NFTs and games. So you can think of it as kind of like a city where you have, let's say a playground, but when the, you know, people can play in the playground, but when the city gets congested, the streets can get congested. It's very, you know, very difficult to get around in that city. It gets really clogged. You have to sit in traffic jams. Got it. So it's like, it's dope. That's the way the metaverse is, right? It's not just one universe. It's really about connecting ecosystems together. So whether Microsoft ecosystem wants to connect together some game, you can always just provide that bridge, right? So engine is really the tool set available to do this. There's wallets, there's a blockchain now. And there's, and I personally, I thought this was interesting. It was actually like different plugins for game engines, like the Unity engine, and you can just directly create those assets from there. So I feel like that's kind of the tool set possible, right? Now, now you know, that is engine. Now I think there's a confusion between what is engine and what is infinity, because there's two coins out there that you guys are both working on, right? So how, how does that come into play? Well, infinity is a parachain it's on Polkadot and it's part of this internet of blockchains that Gavin Woods has been masterminding over the last five years after he, you know, left Ethereum and started working on this new brainchild. So infinity is basically the point of it is to remove these, these really difficult friction points you have with Ethereum, with old blockchains. So like the experience we want people to have when they play a game is just install it on your mobile phone. Just go start playing a game on your console. Which is logical, right? Which, which is what people have been used to for a long time, you know, 2 billion gamers, they just click a button, install it and play, right? So right now that's the big city of Ethereum. It's getting congested. NFTs is just one use case. So it's projects like Sandbox and Mana, Decentraland, they're all here. But of course, when something crazy goes on Ethereum, it gets congested, you can't access it. So how is that different with, with what you're building here? Well, infinity is a blockchain, but it's custom built for NFTs. So where Ethereum, you can, you know, just build anything, build all kinds of smart contracts. And it's not super efficient. Everything you build is not super efficient. What we're doing is building this, this purpose-built NFT platform. So if you want to build a game and you want it to have hundreds of millions, billions of NFTs, you can do that in seconds on infinity. You can have all the tools available to make those. And we, we efficiently store that data. We, it's super cheap orders of magnitude cheaper than you can do that on Ethereum. Got it. Because so, so I guess the difference here is that Ethereum and infinity, their own, their own blockchains. So there are separate ecosystems, but difference is that Ethereum is general purpose. So when, when anyone's doing something with NFTs, even something like minting, we know that this is now passed to the consumer. So some people pay say $400 to mint an NFT. That's insane, right? But what's happening on Ethereum is that this is optimized for NFTs. So because of that, it's actually much cheaper to do any sort of minting processes. And of course I've seen as well, there's also subsidies that you can have where the developers can subsidize those transactions as well. Yeah. It's like an ASIC for NFTs. There you go. So, so, so what is the current process? Well, what are the current pain points right now that you're trying to solve with infinity then? The biggest ones, like just the, the, the, the fact that you have to go and install a wallet or install a MetaMask and set up your seed phrase. And that, that's a, that's a big one. Just that, that kills like 95% of users immediately trying to play a game. Second one, just having crypto, having to pay transaction fees. We're, we're trying to solve that as well on affinity where the game developer can actually say, you know, if you're using our game items, you can do a certain amount of transactions for free because they've, they've calculated that into, to their, their monetization. And we're trying to like give game developers the tools to do cool things like, you know, multi-sig transactions, like guilds, guilds owning wallets. We're also, a big thing that we're solving is this, this, this issue with NFTs not having a price. So if you look at the marketplaces, you know, they like to showcase these giant, you know, sales of hundreds of thousands of dollars, but we're trying to actually figure out how do you price items that are, you know, 20 bucks or 50 bucks. So we're, we're creating this price valuation mechanism on the chain. So, so people can actually basically estimate what an item is worth and they're really, they're going to be incentivized to, to put an estimate on every item on the chain. How would that work? Let's say I created an NFT, you know, it's ultra rare, it's one of one, you know, how, how would, you know, Ethereum help the community figure out the price of this NFT? Yeah. So, so on Infinity, you just put a stink bid, like maybe you put, I think I'll buy this thing for five bucks. Then another person says, I would buy this thing for six bucks. And you know, that they are, they, they want to keep that top bid on that item. Now they can be stink bids and maybe you'll never get a sale, but eventually you will actually get, get a reward if that item is sold. So you'll be able to, to basically you're incentivized to put estimates on as many items as you can on the chain. Okay. All right. All right. So, so it's like, even if this item's not listed for sale, they'd be like, okay, look, Michael, I like that NFT of yours looks pretty extractive. I'll offer you six bucks. Love it. All right. Six, six bucks. Come on. We take, okay. So someone will be like, yo, come on, come on. We take let's, let's go for 600. Right. So they'll be placing these bids and then that will kind of give an indication of how much is worth because you, you, um, do they actually have to put down the, the amount of money though? Like do they, is it just like an estimate or do they have to put down actual value there? They have to put down, uh, some, some value, but what they do is they, they can put bids on a lot of items. Um, the only value that they've locked in is for the highest value item. So once that sells, then, then, you know, they, they're locked in value gets depleted, but, uh, that's all they really have to do. All right. So they can guess as much as possible, but then in order to, uh, you know, put, put money to where your mouth is, you still have to put the money in. And if, if the person decides to sell, it just hits that. Right. So you create, you create a virtual floor for the item basically. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's gonna be a big experiment because it's not really been done this way before on a chain. So, uh, we're going to see how it goes, but I think it's going to incentivize, uh, you know, a completely different mechanic of, of people figuring out what things are worth. And, uh, there, there's a lot of interesting things that we can do here. I mean, you don't need to bid on every single NFT out there. Like most games, they have like, you know, a thousand of the same golden sword or whatever it is. Uh, maybe they have slight differences, but they're basically that. So you can put a bid on that whole category of item. And now, you know, now anyone who owns that item can sell that to you. Got it. Okay. So, so that's some of the primary features baked into this blockchain. Now, obviously now you're calling people to complete and actually launch it. So, so what's this launch process like for a Polkadot parachain, which is affinity. Yeah. So, so basically there's this, this auction that, uh, parachains, we basically have to obtain a slot on Polkadot. And what that means is like, we, we get a piece of that security of Polkadot for the next almost two years. And we, we have to go through an auction process. Everyone's like fighting it out to get that slot. Um, now we're, we're coming up to, you know, the end of the first auction and, uh, you know, we're, we're neck and neck now. I think we're in, in, in, uh, second place for that last slot. Uh, and basically what you do is you contribute your dots and your dot gets locked up for 96 weeks. And, uh, that's a long time. Okay. Yeah. That's a big commitment. That's a big commitment. It is, but you actually, you actually get EFI tokens, uh, while, while your dot dot's locked up at the end, you get your dot back. So you're earning EFI, uh, for supporting the parachain and, and letting us have that lose. So, so from Polkadot's perspective, they want to see, okay, which one, which one is the, got the most supporters in terms of dot, right? So they want the supporters of every project to lock up this dot. It's, it's not a payment. It's a lockup, but for a period of time, right now, this is the last slot available. So, uh, you guys want to win, right? You guys want to win and go to West want to launch. So you're trying to call as many people. So you guys watching this, you guys, um, care about infinity, then contributing to this crowd loan and beating out all the other guys. That's the important criteria. That's what they want. You want them to do now, right? Well, yeah, it's, it's, it's crazy. Like we're going to be the first NFT chain, the first gaming chain on Polkadot, this like massive new network by Gavin, like the creator of one of the creators of affinity or of Ethereum. So it's pretty crazy. If we can get that, that slot, slot number five, um, it'll be huge for the gaming and NFT ecosystem. Nice. So I hope that goes well. When's the deadline? What, what's the, what's the deadline for this? So the candle auction phase, which is the really like stressful phase starts on December 11th. And then, uh, five days after that it's decided, uh, you know, who's won. So during that candle auction phase, we have to like, hopefully maintain the top bid as, as long as possible. Got it. So from the 11th to the 16th then. All right. So that's the, that's, that's where you guys have to fight. All right, guys. So if you guys are interested, check out what's happening with affinity and this crowd on loan, we'll take a, I'll talk about it in this auction, but it can happen both on Polkadot and on Binance and major exchanges. So we'll talk about that soon. So, uh, we tech, thank you so much for talking with us and telling us what is, uh, in affinity and hope everything goes well. Thanks a lot. Awesome.