ryangtanaka's Podcast
Web3. Politics. Economics. Art. How it all ties together, in one big, messy scene.
Sponsored by teia.cafe, part of TEIA's (teia.art) artist-owned, digital arts collective on the Tezos blockchain.
ryangtanaka's Podcast
The Enshittification of Crypto (And Everything Else) - December 22, 2025
Ever get the feeling that everything around us is just getting worse, more expensive, slower, and less interesting over time? Well, that might not be a coincidence - that was the plan, all along.
A chat with Marc Fendel (@fendelmarc) of Sustainable Music NorthWest and how the concept "enshittification" (a book by Cory Doctorow) and how it relates to crypto and NFTs.
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teia.cafe | Decentralized Radio
teia.art | Arts Collective on Tezos
teia.art/ryangtanaka | Ryan's Music and Artworks
Sustainable Music Northwest (Seattle) | Public Music Concerts and Fair Wages for Musicians [https://www.sustainablemusicnw.org/]
*Episodes are also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, iHeartRadio and most major podcasting platforms as well.
Hello everyone, this is Ryan from Taya Cafe. Today, uh, this will be episode number seven, I think. And I'm here today with uh guest, Mark Fendo. Probably know him as Fendo from uh uh Tezos Things, NFTs, he's a great musician. Um, we both live in Seattle now, so we hang out quite a bit. But uh this time I thought uh let's try to talk with someone else and see how it goes. Yeah, hey, can you introduce yourself, Mark? Sure.
SPEAKER_01:No, thank thanks for uh thanks for having me, of course. Um and uh pleasure to be here. Yeah, my name is Mark Fendel. Um I mostly go by Fendle in the kind of web three space. Yep. I'm a musician, uh producer, uh music producer for many years. Um and uh the last five years been very focused on uh Web3, Tezos, NFTs, and um pairing my music and sound design with art and uh collaborating with people all over the world. Um I absolutely love what I do.
SPEAKER_00:He does, he already does.
SPEAKER_01:And so it's nice to be here.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, true. Uh no, thanks for well, actually, I'm in your uh studio right now, so I'm the guest. But um yeah, uh but I talk with Mark a lot, like just random things. We hang out together quite a few often, and uh we do have like interesting discussions on really various different topics. And I thought we might be interesting to kind of use this podcasting format to just kind of let people know what sorts of things we talk about because yeah, not not a lot a lot of these you know conversations are pretty private and and never really sees the light of day, but I do think it's like very important. So today we're gonna be talking about insidification. There's a there's a lot of different ways, uh things falling apart. I don't know if you have any other how would you describe the the theme, you know?
SPEAKER_01:Well I think things things fall apart is a good is a good way to speak about it. Um I think and shitification a lot of times in its modern day um refers to um companies building products and and making them worse and worse as time goes on. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And sometimes intentionally.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Um a lot of times intentionally, and a lot of times. And we see that all around us these days. And some of it I think is doom and gloom. And and and then I'm pleasantly surprised about you know how sometimes things turn out too.
SPEAKER_00:So yeah. Well, uh, at least for the Tesla's people listening to this, right? Like one example of something going against that is Tezpol. And uh yeah, if you're not familiar, there was sort of uh at Art Art Bazo, Miami 2023, and I was there at the time as well, but uh some things are falling apart in the display of the Tezos NFT, let's say you can you can look it up if you know if you're really curious. But but in that moment, there's something interesting that really happened that that they turned this in shitified thing into a artistic movement, you know, and uh yeah, so that's what's known as a TESPO. People have very fond memories of it, and they're still making art about it to this day. There's a coin. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So so we'll be we'll be talking about like how things are falling apart, but also like how can we get out of that, you know, and and yeah, I mean, you know, things going poorly, we could probably spend all day talking about like I don't know if there's a example that like comes to your mind right now, Mark.
SPEAKER_01:I mean when we talk about insidification, you know, I I immediately kind of oh I read Corey Doctorow's book. Um so I immediately kind of think of the first like the big social media, you know, pla places on the internet, X and and Facebook and the things that they've rolled out um only to make their their product mu much worse as time goes on and and um and and charging people more money too. So things getting worse and things getting becoming more expensive at the same time, right?
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um and we see this over and over with with all kinds of with all kinds of companies, um and with Google as well. Um too many too many things to name here.
SPEAKER_00:Um Google, Facebook, Twitter, Meta, like yeah. Uh yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And they're totally willing to throw a lot of money at these products only to maybe even kill the whole thing, you know.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Part of me is like, I don't know if it's all intentional or not, but it's more like a result of like short-term thinking. And if if really the goal is to make a money a lot of money very quickly, as soon as possible, you're not really thinking about like making a good product down the line, right? Sure. And I do think a lot of that has been the norm for quite some time now. And yeah, so uh the the example I was talking about uh earlier was uh printer ink, because I think that's the most egregious example of that, and something maybe a lot of people can re relate to because if you notice, uh printers have gotten very, very cheap, but how are these companies making money? It's actually through printer ink. And those little tiny cartridges, 20, 30 bucks, they're not cheap. And uh it doesn't have to it doesn't have to be that expensive. The ink itself is like worth a couple cents at most. And I remember in the past you used to be able to like refill it yourself, or they used to be a dollar, two dollars. Now, how did it get so expensive? Well, they they make it so that you can't buy ink from anywhere else, and if they catch it do it, it just won't work. You know, they have special chips embedded in these cartridges where it monitors what you're doing with it. You can't refill it, you can't use other brands, you know, there's no competition. We're kind of stuck in this monopoly environment, right? And what you can't do anything about if you're so it's kind of a similar thing with social media, I think. It's just it yeah, you know, everyone's on a few platforms, and yeah, you just basically have to do what you say at this point. So it's gotten shitty.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. It's uh it's funny because Kevin and I were talking about that too, and like we have this black and white printer that you know.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know how you guys found it.
SPEAKER_01:We we you know, I think we did that uh homework a long time ago, many years ago, and we were trying to find the printer that just did black and white that was cheap, you know, um just really cheap cartridges to to replace.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, then you guys had like a cartridge, you said it was like 15 bucks and it lasts all year.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It's insane. I know. I haven't had that a long time. I noticed that the the thing, the the ink it it gets smaller and smaller every time I buy a new one. Like it prints less yeah, it prints less and less. It's less and less, and they're like, please refill. I'm like, what? You know, I play forget like one document and I go, what the hell? So That's crazy. Yeah. But kind of like since we're both in like NFTs, um how does that I guess like from your perspective, how did we get to the point where like both of us we got into the whole web 3 thing looking for something better, right, than what the music industry or the art industry was doing. Absolutely. Yeah, I'd like to hear like, you know, um your perspective, like how you got why did you get involved, really, right?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I you know, probably I would say the biggest reason was I could actually see who owned my music. Um and so that really resonated with me straight away. Um and these are some of the things, you know, that I mean that alone solves this problem. Um that Spotify and streaming services do not just do not have those metrics for Well, they're not gonna let you know.
SPEAKER_00:They don't tell you. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You don't know who's listening to your music.
SPEAKER_00:You don't know how the algorithms work, you don't know how they're weighting things.
SPEAKER_01:Um Yeah, it's I mean this was this was totally not up to artists the way that this played out. Um talking about I mean, historically, we could go way back. Right.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, but um well the music industry was never a nice place, right?
SPEAKER_01:It sure wasn't, yeah. Um, especially for our black Americans, um, black American musicians, um, respectfully, like it was a it was a terrible deal.
SPEAKER_00:I just watched uh uh the P. Diddy Diddy's documentary.
SPEAKER_01:Oh really? I gotta see that.
SPEAKER_00:Whoo, oh man, it was really eye-opening because I was like, I knew that guy was sketchy, but wow, he's really wow. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So I'll have to check it out.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's worse than you think. So he definitely deserves to be in jail, but like, but it's you know, so so a lot of it is trying to do better than that, right?
SPEAKER_01:Or yeah, absolutely. And and um, and then I guess the other thing that really just got me excited about the kind of a new landscape of sharing music was just the idea of collaborations and musicians and artists having a split share at the time of sale in perpetuity, um, with royalties attached that get paid when somebody collects the work um in perpetuity, like really like made a big difference for me and and moving forward um with NFTs instead of this instead of the streaming kind of way of of sharing our music. And and so that's what really still makes sense to me. And I think the that collaborate those collaborations is really like one of the main the main things why I stick around is because I really value that and I value their real human connection. We get together, like we have Tezcon. Like we do put this together, even though um people are all over the world, and you know, people can't always travel. I I understand that.
SPEAKER_00:But that's something special we have here uh on Tesla's thing. That that doesn't always happen in other projects, the the human side, right? Yeah, uh you have similar reasons why I got in. Uh I think like the streaming model is not necessarily a bad one, but it's just the lack of transparency, lack of accountability, right? It's a black box, and you don't know how they're weighting their revenue, right? And yeah, there's probably a lot of money going to places where it shouldn't be, but oh we know this uh for facts. Yeah. I know. But we're spot, right? We can't prove that they're doing this and that since we don't, right? So I thought the blockchain could help to bring that sort of transparency and just good record keeping, right? And then definitely. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Definitely. Um and I think that the even there's a lot like there's a lot to do, you know, in Web3 with the with this new technology can evolve in a lot of really interesting ways where I just don't see I just don't really see that for like streaming services. And I just feel like it's gotten infinitely worse, especially in the last year with fake streams and and AI and massive AI dumps of streams. And even like we saw like three weeks ago, um, an AI generated song what was the top was the top's play on Spotify.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, this is just I I heard a this statistic that um well I don't want to get the number wrong, but but there's millions, you can probably believe this. There's there's millions of AI-generated songs being generated every day. Yeah. Every fucking day.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Who's gonna listen to that? It's physically impossible, right? And uh, but I think even uh Spotify, they have a uh something like 70,000, 100,000 new songs being uploaded every day. And and how are how are you going to really the the business model doesn't make any sense, like like and right if if a lot of the if it's be being measured by volume, not by quality. And I think that's the biggest like issue the uh really in tech, because right, like ads are based on views and clicks, the stuff that gets pushed to the top of your feed are all like bottom of the barrel stuff, right?
SPEAKER_01:Usually, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And yeah, you're we're just talking about today, just like that's how it works, you know, that's the reality. There's no quality control, and this is like nothing new to uh internet in general, it's like been like that a while. But uh the whole crypto NFT thing was supposed to be an antidote to that, right? Yeah. And that's where the excitement came from. But yeah, but I do think like change doesn't come easy, right? I I think what what the Web3 world really it took a lot of the bad habits of the old world and just kind of slot the coin on top of it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And we saw we've seen plenty of bad behavior in Web3, obviously. It's why people don't like NFTs. Yeah. You know?
SPEAKER_00:It just made it it made it infinitely worse because there was it was a promise broken rather than something new as it advertised itself, right?
SPEAKER_01:Well, you know, I mean I think I mean Tezos doesn't really really have that much in the way of like people breaking it. You know, like it just works. Um which I think is really nice about that chain.
SPEAKER_00:But um For me it's like a blank slate, you know? Yes. It's kind of uh hey, we have this thing, anyone can do anything with it, but at least they're not trying to actively sabotage, you know, things like that. Exactly. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um but then again, I'm glad that you said you think of it as a blank slate, because I I do think of it like that as well. Um just in the way of it being open source and people can build, you know, using that, using it. Um yeah.
SPEAKER_00:When I look at it's not easy though. It's no we'll say and and no, the big problem is, and it is part of the initification thing, too, because when you look at the models that social media and the tech in general, even AI, it's like where's the quality control, right? It's all based on volume, even AI, right? Generative AI. You can spit up millions of things every day. Who cares? Right? Like it's how much of that is going to get actually used. But they're measuring the wrong things, they're measuring volume, yeah. They're measuring even past past tech cycles. Uh, do you remember big data? Remember that phrase? Oh yeah. Big data. And I didn't like that either because uh I was working in in data projects at the time. Most of the data you have is junk, it's like garbage. Yeah. And you have to clean that stuff up for data to be useful. That's kind of the work that we really haven't been doing, even now, you know? Yeah. And so I would like that to kind of change. And but again, change doesn't come easy.
SPEAKER_01:No, and I think that in a as we talk about art at least, art cycles are usually measured historically in decades. So in that capacity, we've only been doing this for, I don't know, one cycle.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. If then, right?
SPEAKER_01:If that. See, I think of it as like a half a cycle because because like hick at nunk, like artists, you know, didn't really start.
SPEAKER_00:2021.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So late 20 yeah, see it's so early.
SPEAKER_01:So I still feel like it's very early in that there's a lot of like really great things that are that are possible that make this that make this landscape work even better than it already does. And and that definitely like excites me about the future um a lot. Um that that people want some want something better.
SPEAKER_00:One would hope. Yeah, I'm not sure, but but I do think most people w do want things. It's better. It's just uh the opportunity to do so is is can be few and far between these these days, right? Yeah. And I I do like the open slate idea because if we're being kind of honest, we're all kind of like just trying to figure out this this thing on the fly, right? And even if uh people have good intentions, sometimes you don't. Um sometimes you just don't know, right? Yeah. But that is preferable to what I've seen in other projects where they are actively investing in the wrong thing and doubling down on it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Like I won't name any chains, but but they're like creating extraction models. Yeah. I'm like, well, Web 2 already does that. And they do it better because people actually like them, at least to some extent. So yeah, so hey uh at least for me it seems to make sense to take a chance on the unknown.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And at least, you know, like, you know, you've done a lot of work, and I mean I think that even just like talking about copyright.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you know how hard it was just to get anyone to recognize it.
SPEAKER_01:No doubt. Even at the same time, if you watch some of these YouTube producers and and uh like um um I'm forgetting her name right now, the lawyer, the the uh music lawyer.
SPEAKER_00:Oh yeah, uh told told me earlier.
SPEAKER_01:Anyway, several other people that are big on on YouTube. They're talking about copyright issues all the time now because of AI and these models, like modeling like super famous people and like just you know, blatantly like trained their model on yeah, on whatever it is, or or even Suno or you know, Yu-Di-Oh or any of these people who are getting sued over and over again uh for basically like stealing and like so blatant. And then here's you just like making the copyright baked into the NFT. Yeah. Which is to me, it's like there's on one hand, there are these people who are like like Crystal is i is like literally going after these companies and holding them accountable, you know, and we need we need people to do that. Um and that but we need people like you who are actually solving these problems like for real. And then I try to point it out to these people and like uh it's crickets. It's just uh I'm like I'm stunned actually. Well like I'm like wow, well here's the here's the solution. You know, you you guys should should look at look at this. It solves this problem, but then I can't get anybody to so I don't know, maybe it's a deal.
SPEAKER_00:I've been working on trying to solve this problem for many, many years now. This it's like when I first got involved with crypto was like 2013, but it was already a problem even back then. And and really the the issue so this is kind of how the history of the internet went, right? And so there's internet, people started uploading, uh if you remember like Napster and LimeWire, right? And then that was like a like a big copyright issue of that time. Uh eventually they got shut down, but but the way that they couldn't really stop the piracy itself. They but they made it easier for people to basically listen to music through streaming. So in that sense, that's why I'm I don't think streaming is is inherently a bad thing. It made it a little bit more convenient. So the next step after that, right, is we need to uh the internet itself needs to monitor uh usage and copyright. Because ideally, if you have a a file, like a song that you wrote, someone takes that piece of music and they use it on their website, you should you should be getting roties for that. That is a broadcast, right? And there's all these people, it's not just me, there's a lot of people who are interested in like DRMs, right? Digital rights management, and uh they tried to embed uh music and art with these things just so you can keep track of it. It made sense, but that was a long time ago and it went nowhere because the companies themselves that's not what they were thinking. That's that wasn't the business motto. And so for them, piracy was just engagement, it was just clicks, more clicks. And skip over to 10-15 years later, now the whole place is just flooded with a bunch of garbage. You know, and then I'm not saying that the people are garbage, I'm saying the companies incentivize that. And what do you what do you expect, right? Like so this is the norm, this is the intritification of content, in sherification of art, music, whatever you want to say.
SPEAKER_02:Sure.
SPEAKER_00:And AI has just accelerated that tenfold, right? Because now it's so easy just to pump something out. And but I still do think the answer really is we have to reset the whole system. Because it is it doesn't it make more sense just to register your work from the beginning? Because what they're doing now is that when you upload copyrighted works onto YouTube, you have teams of people, they have algorithms, they have people that are scanning. I think I think I showed you a picture, a video of like putting people putting weird filters on the video just so they can avoid the copyright detection algorithms. You know, there's ways around it. They're finding it, fighting this endless war that they're not gonna win. And they're wasting a lot of money and time doing it. So But there are people who are invested in the fight, right? So some people get paid to round these people up, right? People get paid for for enforcing copyright. Lawyers get paid when the problems happen, not when the problems get solved, right?
SPEAKER_01:Totally Top Music Attorney is her name, by the way.
SPEAKER_00:Oh Top Music Okay. What was her name?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Uh well she goes by Top Music Attorney. Okay. Her name is Crystal uh Delgado, I think.
SPEAKER_00:Um Yeah, yeah, because I think he mentioned her name once. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah, she does great work, you know? She's definitely like on the side of the musician, so yeah, but she cares.
SPEAKER_00:But she's only one person, right? This has to be like Exactly.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Um, I think she does have a a team, but you know, like, yeah, she's only one person, and there are other people that are that have expressed their concern too.
SPEAKER_00:But getting getting people to use this new system that makes sense is gonna be hard. Because it's so different, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it takes time, you know. Um change it does not come easily. And one thing that Paper Buddha and I were talking about a month ago is this idea of Blue Ocean and Red Ocean theory. The red ocean being being the place where you would maybe put your music where you're always up against other people and other musicians and you're competing for ears. And and Blue Ocean would be something completely different, making something completely new and where you don't really have you're not competing, you know, per se. And I I mean at least in the yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Like the so what are you doing it for?
SPEAKER_01:Well, to to do something complete something else entirely, and saying like we're not gonna as an idea, like saying, okay, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna put my music on streaming because I know like that this doesn't create sustainability, but if I put my music over on Teya or Object or somewhere else, like I'm participating in a community that legit likes each other and like wants to hang out and wants to support each other. And and uh that's a that's a pretty uniquely different situation than than a bottomless pit of of wonder of something like Spotify that is generating billions of dollars and putting money in the world.
SPEAKER_00:At least with like NFTs, like you said, you like being able to know who bought it. Yeah. And sometimes that's hard that kind of information is hard to get. Uh unless you go after it yourself, right? Yeah. And so Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um But yeah, I love the idea of I love the idea of collabor collaboration splits and having lots several different people on one collaboration contract that have um percentages. I mean, why did any band ever break up? You know, yeah, yeah, they broke up because mostly, mostly, not not every in every case, but mostly bands break up because there's arguments over who owns what.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, money. Same with marriages, right? Always, you know, like number one reason for a divorce is is putting money issues.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So I mean, like if you had that all if you knew exactly what it was at the very beginning, which on these smart contracts we do. And like there's just there hasn't been any disagreement after the fact yet. Yeah, not even once. Not once.
SPEAKER_00:I've not same here. Same everything I've done through the blockchain has been pretty straightforward and fair, no drama. Assuming you use the technology like it was intended. And even in the traditional industries, right? You do these things through lawyers, your managers, your agents, and sometimes people are not honest. So you get this situation where it's like a he said, she said kind of thing, right? And you gotta resolve it through the courts, and it's just it's just messy and expensive, you know, and why not just have an agreement that's just right right there, yeah, that everyone can see. Yeah. And yeah.
SPEAKER_01:That's why I like I that's why I really like this. And you know, um, we haven't really seen like a lot of use case scenarios for several people on the contract itself. But I think that that could be a real powerful thing at some point, you know, where you have like a like a a group of people that are collectively um sharing the contracts.
SPEAKER_00:And I mean, it would be great if like one of the celebrities like sort of used their platform to like set an example, right? Mm-hmm. And like, hey, we use the thing and see what happens after every sale. Uh, it goes to this person, this person, this person, and here's the breakdown, right? It would be a great use case for like showing how this stuff can work.
SPEAKER_01:It would only really I mean it could That's how it needs to get done.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. That's how it should be done. Yeah. But I can't think of a single example where that has happened above a certain uh popularity, right?
SPEAKER_01:I mean, maybe we could talk to some of the people that have had some decent success in music NFTs that might be willing to talk more about it, like Violetto or McShinotto or Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Well, you know, people are who are too famous probably prefer to do it through their lawyers, right?
SPEAKER_01:And yeah, maybe, but I don't know. You we don't we don't know until we ask, that's for sure.
SPEAKER_00:Maybe the lawyer might be open to it, right? Oh yeah, yeah, we got nothing to hide. Like, check it out. Seriously, I mean uh But I think we uh on some level we underestimated how much people have to hide. Oh yeah, a lot. A lot, and uh that's a reason why a lot of the blockchain projects that had good ideas didn't get anywhere because the people in charge were like, I don't want people to know what I'm doing. Yeah, there's that and someone straight up told me that about the music industry some years ago. I was like, oh, okay. Like, oh, yeah, actually.
SPEAKER_01:That's unfortunate, but not surprising. Yeah. Um yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So I I but I do think it's hard to talk about because when things are working as they should, there's no drama, nothing happens, and you don't hear about it. That's true. But those are the success stories that go untold every day. And yeah, I w trying to think of ways how we can how do you publicize nothing? Nothing's happening in us. I feel that way about Teya. Like, yeah, you know, I I mean we have we have had not not any drama at least between the team members, like since the beginning of it, it's inception. Like small disagreements here or there, but like but no one knows about us. Maybe we should maybe we should have more drama. I don't know. Kind of interesting thing, right? Because that's what sucks people in.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I guess I I guess I like to have strong opinions loosely held is what I like to say. Yeah. Cause I don't I want to be I want to learn and and I think there's like a certain amount of in intellectual curiosity that keeps me engaged. So I might agree about something or I might disagree about something else, but I have to be willing to to listen and to have a different opinion, maybe, about how how things ought to go.
SPEAKER_00:Well, it uh That's how I involved it. Yeah, actually some like uh you know, we're kind of getting towards the end of this conversation. We c we kind of agreed we wanted to like be more forward-looking, right? Sure. So in in your opinion, like what do you think is the best thing, like Tesla's, not even Tesla's, but just NFTs or even just artists in general, what should they be looking for or what should they be doing or things to pay attention to? It's kind of like hmm general outlook for the future.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, general outlook for the future in the in the short of it. I mean, I think the reason to do it is because of connection with real people.
SPEAKER_00:Like I think that And you can get that from like where does that come from?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I guess it does come from um how we've connected online.
SPEAKER_00:So Oh yeah, but now here I'm in I'm in your house right now.
SPEAKER_01:But then but then yeah, but then we get together, yeah. But then we do get together, and so like that's what I mean by by real connection is that like authenticity. Yeah, like um, I think in the short of it, I think that's the best that's the best case scenario. It's worth it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um authenticity is worth it.
SPEAKER_01:In the in the long of it, I think you and I like talked about provenance and what real ownership means and and understanding who really wants to um be part of that journey.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:Um and and honoring the people that that want to support us in that journey is uh is such a uniquely different kind of landscape than just trying to see how many streams we can get or how many likes I can get from a video, um or or these other kinds of dopamine induced type of like things that we see in social media and stuff. Um but so I I value the I value the collaborations, the connection, the provenance, and the I those these ideas of of um open source and building new um new tools. And to to and not to say that that's an easy thing on Tezos, it is very, very difficult.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but but like yeah. It's earlier. It's early.
SPEAKER_01:It's ear it is early. And we have good people that really um that really do want to be part of that change.
SPEAKER_00:They want they care, right? They want to do something.
SPEAKER_01:They they really do. And there are great people in the space that are that are doing this work, either getting paid very little or nothing, that that believe in it because they see uh a better a better future for it. Um and and I'm I'm I'm there. Like because it's not going away. We've seen that too, you know. The problems are still there. The the market the market is is shitty right now.
SPEAKER_00:And yeah, AI is kind of eating web two alive, I think, in a lot of ways. Okay because it is really exposing the limits of like yeah, like a million songs a day. Like, what are you gonna do with that?
SPEAKER_01:I I don't know. It's right, it's absurd.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's absurd, and it's getting worse still. So I think there's like a room for uh something new to happen. We're just on that cusper now, yeah, I think. And on my end, I think NFTs still have like a lot of potential, but it's really adding utility to owning one that we really need to be focused on because even previously minted works, works that already exist, can be made useful by attaching copyright. And royalties for licensing and distribution, reproductions, like there's a lot we can do with already existing content that people haven't figured it out yet. Yeah. So yeah, you know, there's we just gotta do it. But it is gonna take a while. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I don't know. I'm here for the road. I'm here for the ride, rather. Like, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I've been in here long enough already. Why not just finish it up, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, I will I definitely see see the the cool things that are that are happening and and um I'm excited about that, those possibilities. So thank you.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I don't know, you too, for yeah, being around. Yeah. Uh if you're ever if you're ever in Seattle, I should come to Mark's place. It's the coolest place hang out in in in the city. I've he made me a very, very good veggie sandwich today. Yeah. And I'm not even like a vegetarian or vegan or nothing, but it was very, very tasty. So we got good sandwiches, uh good fry mugs, uh chill people, jab sessions, you know, all of the deal. And we're recording it right right here in the studio.
SPEAKER_01:So yeah. Come to Tezcon.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, oh yeah. It's a little bit of an ad. Yeah. Tezcon, July 11th. The Hiawatha building. That was Hiawatha. I Hiawatha building 2026. So exciting. Come on by. It's gonna be great. Okay, well, I think that's it. Cool. Um, so that's the podcast, episode seven. Uh we'll see. Yeah, what comes next. So thanks a lot for hanging out today and see you in the next one. Thank you.
