Why Adidas is All In on Web3

33:13We realized it was more. Our community actually told us that like, wait a minute, this isn't just about the three products, right? Like there's, we're going into the metaverse together, right? And we're like, actually, like, yeah, like, yes, yeah, we are. So let's do this part now, right? Global supply chain is another whole podcast, right? I spent six years in the supply chain in a regional model, trying to optimize that. And so understanding the challenges logistically to make that happen, it seems obvious from the outside. Why does it take so long to get a hoodie or whatever? But, you know, the industrial machine isn't really set up for that.

33:49But to get that part done and move into that next chapter so openly with that roadmap is not typical for a large company to do. And the Discord-like part, the community, feeding stuff is one thing, but it's not all easy either as well. Like there's a lot of, like, it's a lot of emotional labor where to spend time in the Discord as well, right? Not something that necessarily I think we were mentally or emotionally prepared for. So talk us a little bit about the role of this, the council that you set up to help to kind of, you know, create a little bit of a bridge there between what all these people want out there in the community and channeling that voice and creating a little bit more of a constructive vibe for that relationship.

34:35Yeah, one of the things which we learned as well is that we need some structure. We need to have a way to consolidate that feedback and that it's not scalable, that all of us are all the time in Discord and spending our time in conversations there. So what we actually decided to do is to nominate 15 people from the community to represent them. And we did it in a process where half of the spots the community could elect themselves. So basically we gave an open voting and people could go in and decide who they want to support. There was a lot of campaigning and making sure that you bring your message across if you wanted to be part of the council.

35:18And half of it we actually chose. We handpicked from the community. We didn't know people which were more active, which were in different regions. It was very important for us to have diversity of thought, diversity of background, diversity of perspectives in the people which we'll be selecting there to ensure that we have unequal representations from all parts of the existing community. And yeah, February this year, we actually started. We did run the election, we selected the 15 people, which will be part of it, and we started creating a bit of an interaction model. Also, first for us, we're still learning, we're still things which we need to iron out in the interaction.

36:06Sometimes it gets also very emotional and very, very direct. but we actually learned how we can create a group of representatives, a 15-people, a smaller community, which is able to stand up and to represent the rest of the 60 ,000, which are in this group. And that has been really, really good for us as well. Those people are super passionate. They are 24 by 7. and they're having new ideas, and they're just helping make everything so much better. What we're doing with them is we're showing them in front of how we plan to roll out something with regards to communication, with regards to wording, with regards to plans.

36:58But also, we are showing them initial drafts and ideas of things which might not yet even be committed, committed and asking them very early in the process for how would you react if you were in the community and that was the thing which is now being introduced as a product and yeah that that has been really really great experience specifically for me but I think also for the rest of the 3Swipe studio team being able to have that you know sounding board if you if you will which is able to judge on everything which we do and help make it better. It sounds like a very important thing to establish, right?

37:42And also, by the way, I think a brave move as well because it's a double down on the commitment to find a way to sort the signal from the noise. And, you know, because 60 ,000 people, but I don't know what the Pareto curve really looks like in discords. Obviously, you've got a bunch of people who just kind of have probably checked out. There's going to be some people who are checking in every now and again, several who are engaged, some of whom are constructive or not. But you've got this 15 here to help to kind of create that mutual understanding, give critical mass, I think, as well to some of the messaging that you want to build.

38:26And most importantly, to help you understand how to listen. right like so i think that also feels like something which is a you know if there was a the do's and the don'ts from the experience that you've had it feels like that council i don't want to put your words in your mouth but like you know that's on the do list right yes this is definitely the best thing which i can recommend to to other brands if they're looking to enter the space or maybe have already entered to establish because it will yeah it will definitely change the way they navigate the space. All right, we've got, we're kind of like in chapter one and a half now, right?

39:04So we've done, we've done like, we thought it was going to be a hype drop, redeemed the three pieces. Everybody's kind of going to get an email sometime when their stuff is turning up or at their front door. The virtual gear has been airdropped as well, right? To sort of reinforce the relationship and show directional progress there. six items I think was it six items can't remember how many eight eight different items yeah eight different items um but I guess one of the questions is like how do I wear these things right and then you kind of you then you sort of said well when PFP became more about identity so I've got stuff that I'm not sure I can wear but like actually my base relationship in this with this token you also had a plan to evolve that.

39:54So talk to us about how alts came about, why identity is such an important layer to this for Adidas, and what the reception has been like to that. Yeah, so the one thing which we saw in the space is that those profile picture collections started trending. People were buying all sorts of different human rights, animals, whatever is out there, and rocking those profile pictures on their Twitter profiles, on their Instagram profiles, and their social accounts. and at the same time we were seeing our community asking when PFPE when when do we get that and then we started thinking about okay why do people actually want that what what what is this attachment to to to this to this piece and soon it became very clear it's all about the identity how do you represent yourself in a virtual experience in a virtual space and you need to show up in one way or another.

41:00And it's more fun if you show up as a character, as someone who is unique, who is unique as you are in the real world, but maybe can show some traits which you wouldn't naturally rock in the real world. So that's where the idea and the conviction to actually go ahead and create a profile picture collection came to be. But we didn't want it to just be a profile picture collection, which you can just put on your Twitter profile. We wanted it to be much more than that. We wanted it to be this ecosystem starting point, this vehicle for self-expression. And how do you do that is by actually having a unique way to combine this, let's call it static identity with things which you can change, with virtual gear, with wearables, etc.

42:03And that's how the whole idea of Odds by Adidas came to be. The idea of using new technology, using composability as a concept came to be, I remember more than 12 months ago, we were talking about new standards and we were looking into, okay, how can we create this composability? And yeah, ultimately, that was the whole vision. It was, we will build a journey in reverse of you getting your virtual identity. We will help you influence that journey along the way by giving you some choices, some decisions, some options. And then at the end, you have something which truly represents you, which you can use to express yourselves in virtual environments, virtual worlds, virtual spaces.

42:54Okay, there's so much in here. I don't even know how deep we can go because I've obviously been following. There have been some very interesting things around the sequencing of these steps here, right? But just to zoom out for everybody, what is an alt? An alt is your virtual Adidas identity. It is a virtual character which is built out of individual traits, which people can collect as part of the experience. Right now we are in chapter two, and so people are able to do that, which truly represent yourselves. And OATS is a journey which consists of different chapters, as we call them. Along the way, you are actually customizing your avatar, your profile picture, which will come out at the end of it.

43:44You're customizing it by influencing the way you interact with the NFT. So I think the way that you guys did this was pretty cool as well. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but chapter one was also kind of around like, it's a little bit like in a video game when you're sort of building your character, right? Like when, you know, in any of these kind of RPGs, like I'm a big Elder Scrolls geek from back in the day. And, you know, used to sort of pick my class and pick my attributes. and where did I want to sort of put my skill points and things like that. So this is kind of like an extended version of that, right?

44:20And chapter one was like, well, which, for those of you that can elect, which are the kind of main buckets of interest, is it, that you have an affinity to, right? You kind of had a series of like the drips, the ones who are kind of more into like the streetwear and fashion side, like the deco is more kind of like the creators and artists and things like that and so so you know in stage one like what were the different people things that people could declare that they wanted to be you know one of the kind of broad brushstroke characteristics of their identity yes so we wanted to make that journey as interactive as possible if you want to to customize it, or as random as possible if you don't want to do that.

45:10So we offered both options, and chapter one was really about choosing what we call your alter ego. And your alter ego is basically one of eight different sub-segments in the Outs by Adidas journey. They all have different rarity because, you know, there is inequality in life and you'll never have the exact same categories, but we ensured for sure that they are as representative enough to what Adidas stands for. And it was a combination between sports and style and activities which we can do. So we have sprints, which for example, our running sub-community, if you want, or strikes, which is all about football.

45:55Or you mentioned souls, which is about sneakers and streetwear. Souls, sorry. Or we have trills, which is about gaming and action sports. Or if you think about dribs, which is all about fashion. So there is different subgroups there. And we wanted to allow people to either choose it or get assigned one if they wanted to make it a bit more interesting along the way. So that's what was chapter one all about. We introduced it with an interesting mechanic, which we called the Universal Key. We introduced this new world of the Rift Valley Motel, where Indigo Hurts, our board tape, which we bought back in time as a main character, is going and going to get transformed into an alt.

46:44So with some narrative episodes, with some videos, with some, you know, riddles along the way, we are actually telling that story of how Indigo Hertz is coming into this world and interacting with it and having those choices. And so we introduced the concept of the universal key, where people would be able to choose the key to the room, which will then determine their auto-ego. and that was what chapter one was all about. Now we're in chapter two where we have a new mechanic and that is the vending machine in the Rift Valley Motel. And it's not your standard vending machine where you can go and get some drinks.

47:26You're actually getting your traits and that's basically how you look like the aesthetics of your avatar. You still cannot see how they will look like but you can read the name and you know how rare or common they are. So that allows you to actually also have a bit of influence on which category you choose. Do you go for ears? Do you go for eyes? Do you go for eyebrows? What do you care about? Is hair important for you? Then you get a randomly assigned trait within that. And as a next step, you're actually able to swap them and exchange them with other people in the community. Be part of that journey in a very interactive way.

48:07and through that customize the final outcome of your identity i wanted to go into these chapters a little bit here because i think i think when you start thinking about this journey from a macro point of view right there's there's there's a few things which stand out we started by doing something we're known for right physical product with a different way to drop and then we realize you know close to the time of actually doing it it's a lot more than that and then the community community confirms that with the feedback and we're like okay you know what let's get this done let's chat to the board commit all that kind of stuff process i remember very well right which by the way for most people i probably would have think that like the ball would be fully aware of everything like we actually explained all of that stuff after the fact right like that was that's you know corporate innovation works differently everywhere right sometimes it's better to show and not tell up front and then the commitment to set up the team right under Erica and enter into these chapters where it's like we're not just doing what we're known for before we're also starting to think about world building right this is now this is now a question of if somebody wants to express themselves in a world that we have a hand in creating how do we help them have a pretty dope and fun experience defining who it is that they want to be.

49:31Which by the way, when you think about most people's interactive action with the sportswear or fashion brand will be, I probably need a new pair of sneakers. Let me go and search on the Adidas app. If they're really committed, if they're really kind of engaged, they'll probably have the app. This is completely different. The frequency of engagement and the depth of engagement is a huge extension of what it would mean to interact with a brand for those engaged few right has everybody come along for that journey though like has there been kind of drop off along i mean firstly hands up i stupidly you know got fished and hacked so like i know i fell by the wayside along the way right my my uh my first my first time getting fished or hacked and like my my my adidas itm nfts things i actually had a hand and bring it to the world got taken and i was so bummed about that so i fell by the wayside but even some who are holding those things like you go on open c you'll still see some people are holding these phase one and phase two into the metaverse nfts what do you think is happening there do you think that's this is like people collecting now or maybe people sort of maybe falling along the wayside uh two-thirds conversion though of those nfts still seems pretty strong but it's a more concentrated community now is that good for grooming like who's really here to stick around what's your perspective on that whole like funnel of who's coming along for the ride yeah you you mentioned that we have right about 20 000 people well 20 000 tokens which which did come along to the journey out of 30 000 about two-thirds of the initial community or the people who bought in at the later stage have converted into into the odds by adidas phase there is definitely a certain percentage of people which hold their phase one and phase two NFTs as a collectible, as something which they want to keep for a longer period of time.

51:25There are a couple of people which do it with speculation in mind, and maybe the price will go up because the demand will increase because it's less supply. So there is that as well. But there is also a significant amount of people which have dropped out of the space for multiple reasons, for some of the right reasons, for some of the wrong reasons, which we have been seeing in the crypto and NFT space recently. And they might come back or might not come back. They might get engaged back into this world or not. I think it's part of the journey. We'll never be able to keep everybody equally engaged.

52:09I think, however, specifically, as you mentioned, for us as a brand, it's important to keep that engagement. It's important to keep people interacting with what we do. And that is one of the reasons why we don't feel this is a significant problem for us, that 10 ,000 tokens haven't converted into this last phase. We would love to take as many of them as possible but the ones which are there we want to ensure that they are fully engaged that they are part of the journey that they interact frequently and that's why we reward that behavior as well because ultimately those people have a better connection with the brand and want to interact more with the brand more for more right i mean that's pretty much what every engagement and loyalty program is really about like anybody who's ever heard me say anything about this stuff is that loyalty and engagement is one of the obvious winning theses to go explore here.

53:07And it's going to be natural that there's just a bit of a curve about who's more into it and who's not as into it. And technically, by the way, go back to the beginning. You delivered on the promise, right? If you wanted to collect your gear, you get your gear. And thanks very much. like you know like that's kind of that was actually what what uh the whole thing was set out to do in the first place it's become a lot more and that kind of leaves me i said i mentioned it before about coming back to the whole like the token gate inside of things because this story that you've just taken us on is is fascinating because you've got this kind of like natural um concentration of the community getting deep more and more deeply involved a promise by the way which the brand never made to begin with right so this is all investment this is all like you know the brand deciding to say okay this isn't just about what people pay for the nft which i think was around 0.2 eth is 0.2 eth right at the very beginning yeah um and um what was that that was about 700 bucks i think at the time 770 in fact right for a collection of three items so not cheap but also like not Gucci levels right so you know a reasonable expectation for sort of gives and gets that's been closed but the investment continues in in actually a concentrating community of more highly engaged people but it's not the only thing that you're doing either right so go back to December 17th right the hot seat night I remember messaging you about this I'm like dude this 20 000 get token gated nft drop thing like we're just watching the number of um claims go up no bots in sight super chill um i mean almost super chill right with the like if you get your if you get your allow list right and it's all smooth it's it's super chill now a lot of people don't understand the streetwear game because on the other side of our lives at that point in time the confirmed app where we're dropping like you know at times you know tens of thousands even hundreds of thousands of sneakers sometimes even just 100 sneakers with thousands of people waiting for them that is basically like a process a sales process which gets attacked all the time right like give people a flavor of what it takes to help people who want sneakers get sneakers and in comparison this token gating thing where if i protect this room with an nft it's a much kind of more robust or let's call it safe experience like what was it like to contrast those two worlds for you for those of us who are into sneakers we know that space as well.

55:57And it is very similar to what happened on this December 17th. You mentioned it. When there is a hot sneaker release, there are millions of people which actually want to cop that product, get it into their collection, or rock it on the streets, or maybe flip it. And that is a part of the game. So the game is very similar. And one of the biggest challenges which you have in sneaker collecting is actually the fight against bulk reseller orders. Let's put it that way. Because what happens is people create clever automated scripts, we call them bots, to do more entries, to trick the system, and to ultimately get more of the product.

56:43And that then leads to genuine people being left behind, not being able to get the product which they want. And this game is actually one of cat and mice, I would call it. We play it every day. And at Adidas, I would say with Confirmed, we are pretty good at having a way to recognize those automated entries, filter them out and basically make sure that we appreciate the loyalty of the people who are really into that for the love of sneakers, for collecting of sneakers. However, I do believe that with NFTs, there is a different angle to look at. And that's what we actually did. As part of our Outs by Adidas journey, we introduced token gated in the Confirm tab, token gated access.

57:35So what you can do, we do that through TokenProof, one of the leaders in the space for authentication or for proving ownership of specific tokens. Through their system, you're actually able to connect your Adidas confirmed membership account with your wallet. And then we can actually see in real time if you're having one of our tokens. Based on that, we can decide to give you access to a very limited item. And we did it with the Indigo Hertz collection, where we had two items, a very limited super stash shoe and a very limited hoodie, which people were able to only get if they hold the NFT. And that solves one of the challenges, which are usually a challenge of perception, of I'm not being recognized for my loyalty.

58:29But solves one of the challenges of giving access to genuine people and recognizing them. As your token gets recognized, you are also recognized. And that is a very special feeling, which this technology and this opportunity actually allows us to do. I'm super happy with having that in Confirm now and excited to see what is coming next in that space. Excited to see, like you have got no idea what's coming next. Just excited to see what happens. Look, I mean, this is why I was so keen to get you on, is because you can start to see now the dots joining. Maybe we didn't all see them all at the beginning, right?

59:12But you start to see the dots joining about the different ways in which the tech can be used. because you've now basically said, okay, well, for that narrow group of people who are quite deeply engaged, we're going to actually go back to the core thing, back full circle, and make a shopping experience better, right? Not just better because it's safer from attacks from botters who are trying to sort of cop the scarce things and then resell them for more money in the secondary market because it's actually a different emotion, right? Like I've been, I'm closer to the brand. I've been, you know, collecting the different parts.

59:52I've been choosing my characteristics and all of that stuff. And now when I come back to shop, that's seen, right? I'm now allowed into the room to go purchase this product, which actually was made specifically with me in mind. Like we're really talking about belonging, right? Yes, it's a better shopping experience. And yes, there's this cool world we're building. but the things kind of come together right and i remember i was chatting about this over tapas a long time ago there is a membership program right with like millions and millions of members in it and the idea that like and you know there are different tiers like you know right at the top i'm an icon member because you know i've i've bought more stuff i've engaged more i've shared more i've customized my profile and all this stuff um i mean i've run more in adidas shoes like using the Adidas running app and things like that, I can earn in lots of different ways.

1:00:48Do you see this experiment with this small group here being something which just becomes normal in commerce? Is this like a sign of things to come? It is definitely a sign of things to come. You summarized it pretty well. We have AdiClub, which is our membership program. It has different tiers. It has a level up system. It allows you to collect and spend points. So there is all the, let's say, traditional ways on how you reward loyalty. But with NFTs, you can actually take it a step further. You can prove that on chain. You can make it interoperable between different entities, which widens the opportunity to reward participation and to reward loyalty across different touch points, not only the owned ones by the brand.

1:01:42And it definitely allows to actually scale the access to whatever opportunity you're putting behind the wall. So yeah, it is definitely one of the big trends which I think we should be taking a look at and one of the big opportunities for Wectry as well. It's funny you say that, you just reminded me of something which I'm just so engrossed in the conversation. sometimes I forget like what we speak to about with brands every day and the idea of open loyalty right the idea that like I demonstrate my engagement here with Adidas but like if a brand partner of Adidas like a football club for example or one of those entertainment partners that that you got like if there's an experience where they that group of people could you know also have access to just like the special apparel and sneaker drop you know our boy Fonz and the token proof crew uh like actually can help that happen too right so in a way it's a little bit like you know because to do that without this tech would actually be very difficult right because there's quite a lot of like rules about how you know account share like information sharing and things like that around consumers that you can't just say oh here's the email list of people who can log in to your experience and only them and make it super safe.

1:03:06So the brand partnerships angle feels also like a really big kicker for this whole thing. Absolutely. You said it. We're trying now to make sure that if you engage with one of our wholesale partners and you are buying the Anadidas product, you get recognized and rewarded for that as well. it's a pretty, pretty difficult process to get through all the limitations, all the data sharing restrictions, the technology behind it. So it's not easy. And I think that technology allows you to actually make it easy. An NFC tag in the sneaker might help too. Let's see about that. Okay, look, Vlad, thank you so much.

1:03:50Like I really, you know, I'm so grateful for the detail that you've taken us through here right in these different chapters we're going to start to zoom out a little bit now and i'm just going to ask you some questions which like i just i've got literally no idea about this but what you think about these things now so first things first if you could go back to yourself or the team 12 months ago and say you know one thing that you would advise yourself or the team to definitely do and definitely rethink what would what would that be? What council would you give? I think the answer on what I would have done 12 months ago if I could is very obvious.

1:04:33I would have put forward the creation of the community council to 12 months ago because we talked about all the good things which came out of that, the reason why we are doing it. It is basically the one thing which helps us to really lift the web tree, culture of making people collaborators, co-creators, co-innovators, and ultimately co-beneficiaries of what we do. So yeah, that is the one thing which I'll definitely pull forward. I think the one thing which we would rethink is the phasing of some of the things and the timing some of the things which we released so that we make it a bit closer to the exact moments when people were expecting it and also maybe compress it a little bit with regards to time.

1:05:28The other thing which we learned is that a year in this space is probably more than a decade in the real world. Yeah. And actually, I mean, in a way, that's advice. If there's anybody listening who's either on that journey or thinking about beginning that journey, I think those things are very transferable, right? Like the idea of embrace that proximity to the most engaged and create a reason to bring them together definitely feels like it stands true. So what about some of the recent moves in the space that have excited you recently? So aside from what you've been doing, like day in, day out, night in, night out with Adidas, you know, you are definitely very active in the space.

1:06:19Like you've bridged the degen and corporate world extremely fluidly. What else has been exciting you? So I don't want to necessarily talk about individual products and projects or brands specifically, but I'll give you three trends which really excite me, which I'm seeing. The first one I would say is the one around composability, new standards. which is ERC-6551, which basically introduced the possibility to open up. And this has been at the core of everything which we do at OATS. We planned it for a very long period of time. I'm seeing other projects embracing it as well right now. I do believe that there is a lot of opportunities which this opens up, and it's definitely something which excites me.

1:07:06Also, the second one is the focus on scalability, be it through the introduction of new collections or new chains or through expansion of existing collections. The use of this decentralized IP in new ways, in real life, in virtual spaces, that is definitely something which is the second trend which excites me. And I would say the third one is the progress which we are seeing in virtual spaces. It still blows my mind that you can, with your browser, use pixel streaming technology, open your browser, join a virtual world with tens of thousands of people, interact with them in real life and build a virtual economy around it.

1:07:51It makes me very bullish on the future. Add to that the progress in virtual and augmented reality. Add to that the progress in AI. And, you know, that's actually Web3 is here to stay. I mean, what a great answer. I mean, you know, 6551, you know, the idea that every NFT is a wallet and you can almost like nest NFTs with NFTs, like feels like it fits extremely well with the idea of an identity and what the traits of that identity, what that identity can wear and all that kind of jazz. It seems as though that was almost made for that. And I think your point about the virtual space is really interesting because I think a year and a half, two years ago, everybody was wondering, well, how far away is this metaverse that we're talking about?

1:08:39And I think that was really a case of how open and seamless and always on do we expect it to be and what have you. So is it correct to say that things have maybe outpaced maybe the expectation that you might have had back then? Yeah, for sure. I wouldn't have dreamed about the opportunities which we now have with technology. And that's a great thing because it truly allows to create those meaningful connections between people across the whole globe. Previously, you could only create it through traveling. Now you can teleport yourself within a couple of seconds to an event and jam with people on the other side of the world and interact with them as if they're present in the same room, I think this is also something which is here to stay.

1:09:32That's amazing. You touched on AI. I think anybody who's in the Web3 space would have noticed as the market drops and the FOMO on Web3 and NFTs drops down and AI is trending most people think it's come out of nowhere after it's been actually going for like decades and decades through its own cycles what are your thoughts on that I mean I can imagine that the applications for that for for for Adidas are wide but like from your personal perspective just like you said at the beginning around you know diving down that rabbit hole what are some of the things that excite you about how AI kind of fits in this world that you're uh that you're describing?

1:10:12I'm mind blown by the opportunities which generative AI that open up this year. I would have never expected that all this would be possible within such a short period of time. The applications which all those companies are bringing out are incredible. I do believe it also underlines the need for provenance, basically ensuring that the piece of information which you're looking at did come from the person which we expect it would have been. So yeah, I think the combination between AI and web3 technology and decentralization is very, very strong. And we'll be seeing a lot of additive use cases, which bring those two worlds together.

1:11:05Yeah, Raul describes these things as the exponential technologies, right? The exponential age and how these things kind of all fit together. Hopefully we won't see too many fake sneakers in the digital world. I mean, it's inevitable at the end of the day, but that would be the least of our problems, I think, anyway, if that's what we're talking about. Okay, another question. What do you think are some of the biggest obstacles that brands face right now in trying to do this kind of innovation? Like, it seems like a fantastically wide opportunity. Nobody exactly knows how it's going to pan out yet, but not everybody's moving or moving at the same rate.

1:11:41Like, what makes it hard for brands and what would your kind of advice be for anybody who's thinking about it sitting on the sidelines? I think it's two things. And the first one is the reputation of the space. Recently, it hasn't been great. There have been quite a few challenges and quite a few bad actors have emerged. And I do believe that plays a role. But there is another good thing about that one. And it is, I think, some of those behaviors are being filtered. and through the bear market today, it's also moving away from this being a place where I can just trade a coin with an image on it to actually using the technology for what it's meant to be and providing actual value.

1:12:33And the second one, I do believe, is probably the biggest limitation and that's the onboarding of new people into it. and that's where it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem but i do believe the role of big brands is to make it super easy for people to become part of that and to own digitally any kind of kind of asset so that one is probably the second reason why we're not seeing that option which we maybe would like to see but it's also on brands to embrace it and to make it part of the journey yeah i mean certainly the reputation part i think anybody watching this will be will be uh have been along for that ride to some degree but that chicken and egg thing i think is a real interesting conundrum right because like back in 2021 when this first experience started even for the people that were onboarded through adidas confirmed there was still this thing of like i've got to now have the po app in a wallet to now enter this thing so i've got to have whatever it's metamask or or Coinbase Wallet or whatever, the 20 ,000 were kind of already in, right?

1:13:43It was those new ones that I needed to do that. And there's this weird kind of contradiction, right, between, you know, do you own the asset in your own thing, like sovereign in a sovereign way? Or do we hold it for you to make it super easy, but then technically we're kind of back where we started and it's not as portable for you to take with you and all of that kind of jazz? What's the answer? I think the answer is always somewhere in the middle. You have to embrace the people who want to have the full flexibility, to have their ownership of their assets, to hold their keys. But you have to make it super easy for people which don't want to engage with all of that, who want to have it easier, who want to have it more user-friendly.

1:14:32and it's important to cater for both audiences in order to allow the opportunity for this to scale because you cannot expect that everybody will go and learn how to remember seed phrase and how to protect it and how to deal with security in this space. You have to make it easy for people to come along on the journey and that's the role of brands. For anybody interested in that, go learn about account abstraction and all of that kind of jazz as well. That's a very interesting topic. One that I don't think we can necessarily, I'm sure we'll talk about that as well at some point. But it definitely is coming up in a lot of the conversations that we have with companies is how to crack that one.

1:15:18And it kind of keeps us in a stage where it's like, well, you know, for very high context audiences who are ready and willing to, you know, small volume, high value kind of situations like the audience that you build. It does feel like there's a lot to go after there. But that question remains about, you know, how to solve that chicken and egg conundrum. So let's see what happens there. Vlad, last question for you before we just do a little bit of summing up here. what's your dream for the next 12 to 20 months for your project for the space give it give us an idea of the world you want to live in 12 months it's we mentioned it already it's a decade in this space i feel there is so much going on every week but i'd say the dream would be to transition this from being a space as we talked about it today to being an industry and that can only happen if the focus shifts from from short-term trading and flipping to actual engagement, to actual benefits of interoperability, to actual real economy in the virtual space, and to actually using the benefits of provenance and proof of ownership and all the good things which Web3 is bringing to life.

1:16:31So the dream is to actually see that becoming a reality. And I think we're on the right path. I think it's not an impossible dream i think we'll be able to make that happen and i'm excited to be part of it as well i i've got to say i'm excited as well to have been part of it but also to just see where you all are going because i think you guys are on an absolute tear right now i mean just just to sort of for you know the sum up of this thing is you know the adidas journey in this space has been one of very open-minded and open-hearted discovery right from starting with you know doing something that we're good at with people who are good at doing what they're good at and entering authentically to realizing that actually you know it's not just about elevating and extending how our brand is experienced we now have a community that we can shape our direction with right which is a learning journey in itself as you described right to going from you know involving that community like the change in the plans there moving towards the identity thing was something which really happened with the community, right?

1:17:36The establishment of the council as well, like opening yourselves to that process and then leaning into the idea of creating belonging with identity as well and coming full circle to actually improving the core commerce experience that just helps to sort of cement that feeling of like I'm seen, I'm recognized as something special for me here. I think it's a fascinating story and you kind of touched on so many things about what the technology is able to offer consumers. So I just want to say thank you so much, Vlad, again, for taking us through that really candidly and openly. It's a real pleasure to have shared some of that journey with you and to share this story with the audience.

1:18:20So I couldn't say thank you enough. Thanks for having me, Tarek. It was a pleasure having that conversation. And yeah, just follow me on Twitter, follow Oats by Adidas on Twitter and be part of the journey. And your handle, Vlad? It's Big Fish, spelled with the underscore between Big and Fish. So, yeah, find me there and always open on exchanging thoughts and connecting with people and curious to just learn about new cool stuff. So drop me a note there. So there he is, at Big underscore Fish. You know where to go. Alts by Adidas, by Adidas. Follow the story and check out the vending machine. It's pretty dope.

1:19:01Thanks, everybody. And hope you enjoyed this episode. And we'll see you for the next one. What's up, revolutionaries? Thanks for tuning in. For more content like this, head over to realvision.com and get unfiltered access to the very best, brightest, and biggest names in finance.