The first ever Flow Fest is underway, featuring a slew of guest speakers, a mystery pack, and over a month filled with drops, activities and full immersion into the Flow metaverse.
The festival, hosted by Flowverse and The First Mint, kicked off its speaker panel on October 12. We wanted to share some of the highlight quotes from the amazing guests that joined throughout the festival, as well as share the keynote address featuring Roham Gharegozlou.
Make sure you check out the Flowverse landing page to keep up with everything happening, join the Flowverse Discord to be part of the community, and tune in to the panel series with The First Mint.
Day 1 Highlights
Keynote Address with Roham and Layne
Roham Gharegozlou
“People are just realizing, we’re doing something different here at Flow. This community is going to be unstoppable.”
“People build on Flow because they want to be part of this community. More than 10,000,000 transactions on mainnet so far, and we’re just getting started.”
Layne Lafrance
“Flow performs at consume scale, and its programming language Cadence makes building apps at scale much better. “
“I challenge all of you to push the boundaries of what you’re seeing.”
Panel: What Can NFTs actually do?
NFTs are far more than .jpegs. Learn from industry experts about how NFTs have started to have more use cases in the metaverse and IRL. Feat. Kylo Ren (APE DAO), Jeremy Born (NFT Genius), Amanda Terry (Metagood), and Tristan Rattink (NBA Top Shot).
“I’m looking forward to the day where I can distribute an album I love to my own friends through the blockchain.” - Trista
“ I don’t want to just buy a jpeg sometimes, I want to feel like an owner and get some benefits from owning it.” - Kirk
“I definitely think NFTs are here to stay in the long run. We talk about main stream applications, and I feel like NFTs are just scratching the surface for what they can do.” - Tristan
“Play-to-earn is going to be one of the biggest things in NFTs.” - Kirk
“I’d love to challenge ourselves to go beyond Play-to-earn into Play-to-give and take the utility to that next level.” - Amanda
“99% of the world doesn’t know what’s actually happening right now in NFTs. Our dev is in Hawaii, our artist in the UK, and I’ve only ever spoken to these people in Discord - and yet we’ve created a collection worth millions. This right now is the most outlandish thing happening.” - Kylo
xtingles
Presentation by xtingles’ Andrew Fai.
“We think it can really revolutionize the music industry. As a collector, you get paid out every 30 days with royalties. The more you buy, the more you own, the more you share, the better the song will do for everyone.”
Panel: NFT Adoption into the mainstream
The mainstream is coming (and some might say it’s already here!). Come discover how the industry is preparing for the billions of people yet to come. Feat. Josh Ong (influencer), Andrew Fai (xtingles), and Brendan Alper (Everbloom).
"It’s going to be a cultural shift — Having brands be owned not by the large corporations but by the people who are in love with and interact with the brand." - Alan
"It will eventually become the new Rolex, the new car to show off. It will show people that NFTs are valuable digital assets. It's going to be a paradigm shift from the free content, the free jpegs, the free art you see on Instagram, to 'You own that NFT?'" - Fai
"When you think about showing off your car, how many people are actually seeing that on a daily basis? And then you think about the internet and the opportunities, and how many people see a viral tweet or an associated PFP, NFT or rare art, it scales so much more than your real world status symbols." - Alan
"(Mainstream Adoption) will look a lot like social media. Social media is status. We talk about a Rembrandt hanging in our house or our child’s art - that’s how we showcase style, culture in the physical world. When you move that online, you can do that with the whole world. And NFTs allow you to show who you are — it’s self expression.”- Alper
Metagood
Learn about the new NFT marketplace for social impact coming soon to Flow! Chat with the co-founders Danny Yang – CEO, Amanda Terry – COO, and Bill Tai – Chairman and early investor in Dapper Labs.
“What were putting together is basically a way for any community of interest to power a cause that they care about.” -Tai
"You see it everywhere. There are distributed communities that are connected digitally with enormous reach because of tools like Zoom or Discord. So to the extent we can empower them to capitalize on doing good for this planet… (missed this end part but it was good)” - Tai
“As we move forward and wonder what modern economies look like, they will be more and more digital.” - Tai
Panel: Culture & entertainment in NFTs
NFTs aren’t just pieces of code – they are status symbols. See how the biggest stars, athletes, and artists have started to tap into the power of NFTs. Feat. Ronin R (GigLabs), Obie Fernandez (RCRDSHP), Alex DiNunzio (Jambb), and Kelly DiGregorio (Dapper Labs).
“We’re working on building a wonderful supportive community, and we see that every day. We had an artist come in yesterday and he spent hours talking with people! The community basically convinced him it was a good idea for the artist to be in the project.” - Obie
“It used to be for me PEZ dispensers and baseball cards. But now its about social signals and who I want to connect with online.” - Alex
“It’s really exciting in terms of various ways to look at what Blockchain can do. One thing that gets me excited is the concept of taking content that's created and minting them into NFTs. But I’m really excited about the prospect of content creation happening ON the blockchain. How can we get composers and musicians together virtually to put together a track on chain?” - Kelly
Day 2 Highlights
Panel: The Future of Gaming
Gaming is at the forefront of NFT utility, with many world-class gaming experiences just around the corner. Come hear the experts provide a glimpse into our digital future. Feat. Maximilian Weber (Chainmonsters), Yang Adija (Blocklets), and Mickey Maher (Dapper Labs).
"With NFTs, we’re able to add a dimension to gaming that simply was not there before." - Yang
"This is a way to get something in the game, and then re-sell it. But what’s actually happening is that this peer to peer marketplace becomes an incredible added social layer to the game" - Mickey
"I don’t think we’ve come close to scratching the surface. We haven’t even seen the farmville of the NFT space yet. There are going to be some big ideas, and even bigger ideas built on top of those ideas. And its going to change the world." - Mickey
"The concept of the game still has to be enjoyable and engaging. I do think NFTs will revolutionize, not evolve, the dynamic. It’s a drastically different dynamic than what we have now in the gaming world." - Yang
Melos.Studio
Presentation by Melos’ Yalu Lin.
"Since music is now on chain for everyone to see, it can inspire other artists to see it and evolve it. Let's say one artist sees another artist’s work in an NFT, they can then contribute and everyone can see that part."
NwayPlay
Presentation by nWayPlay’s Taehoon Kim.
"You can play the game to earn NFTs, and collect NFTs to unlock certain perks within the game. Given that the olympics have a 100 year tradition of pin trading, and people go to the olympics to trade, it made a lot of sense."
"The game will have a Play to earn system, which is super hot right now, and in-game utility with the pins. The players will be able to accumulate points by playing, and use that to win NFT boxes, as well as trading the NFTs on the marketplace."
Everbloom
Presentation by Everbloom’s Lukas Runte & Brendan Alper.
"Its a whole new way to experience NFTs, enabling you to turn special moments into NFTs just by texting. You can also sign the back of the NFT or write a secret note to the recipient."
"They can function like creator-coins, where you can use these NFTs as access into an exclusive club you’re building, and allow them to earn perks and exclusive access."
TuneGO
Presentation by TuneGo’s John Kohl.
"We’re building the premier nft market for the music industry. Our mission is to simplify the business of music, and every approach we take is to make everything user friendly."
"The music industry is very fragmented, and has a lot of issues getting royalties back to the community. There are billions of dollars in royalties every year that go uncollected."
"TuneGo provides a unified platform to secure digital content, protect creative rights, distribute to streaming platforms and monetize /license"
Panel: The creator economy of NFTs
A discussion on how NFTs have unlocked a vast new world for creators and artists from all walks of life: entertainment, fashion, video games, and collectibles. Feat. Michaela Larosse (The Fabricant), Jeffrey Tong (Eternal), Ben Mauro (Evolution), and Richard Pocklington (Dapper Labs).
"This is a revolution, a revelation, the future. I saw it for what it was. To me, its a huge moment in our history for digital history, and id rather be a part of this amazing thing instead of ignoring it." - Ben
"The community is everything. People ask me all the time why these things have any value. They have value because we value them. In the beginning, writing, symbolism and value were all tied together. This idea that value is some real thing that you’re going to get whole, is mythology.
When you generate NFTs, they have value because we value them. And who values them? The Community. And that’s why the development of FLOW was so important, because ETH has some serious problems on how to scale. Building flow helped allow the community to grow." - Richard
"When you do start doing (NFTs), it’s a collaborative process. The community comes up with ideas that I would’ve never thought of. They feel respected and part of the process."
"I ask people - do you play video games? Have you bought a skin? Well that’s an NFT, but it’s locked into that game. We’re all familiar with the ideas, but not everyone has connected the dots. But when they do, it’ll be pretty incredible."
Fantastec
Presentation by Fantastec’s Steve Madincea.
"At the heart of what we do is listen to our fans, and create a global community."
"We’ve got stupendous variety of different kinds of nfts on our platofmr,s co created with European football stars."
"The farther you are from the stadium, any autograph you see is fake. An FBI report found that 90 percent of print autographs are fake. So what can we do for fans? We created contactless digital signatures, which became a huge hit during the pandemic."
NFT Genius
Presentation by NFT Genius’ Jeremy Born.
"Ballerz is not just another PFP set. We’re venturing into the Flowverse with a marketplace and additional collections around basketball and other sports."
RCRDSHP
Presentation by RCRDSHP’s Obie Fernandez.
"The status quo in music right now, speaking as an artist myself - I’ve spent years and thousands of dollars to perfect my craft And then I’m told that I have to turn around and give it to corporations. And making money from that, there are very few people who can survive on such a low amount. So RCRDSHP can solve that."
"How can you engage in the most significant and real way with your audience? How can you perform and make art for that small section of the audience thats so important."
Moonpay
Presentation by Moonpay’s Halsey Huth.
"Instead of needing a two step process of an on ramp, users can now directly go to the NFT and purchase it with Moonpay. We’re building something that's available for the mainstream and for the crypto natives."
