Lions Layer: TheBenMeadows
Ben And I said, man, this is cool. This kid, you know, Vitalik, is talking about a world computer.
Speaker 1 Hello, and welcome to the lion's lair, a series of conversations for an in-depth look at the mavericks that make up the main net DAO.
Speaker 2 a word. And I'm Fuzz. Today, we've got a a great conversation with, one of our stewards, the Ben Meadows. There are some surprises coming up. So I mean, not in a bad way or anything like that. Just, it was a great conversation, and I learned some things I didn't know about Ben. I hope you guys enjoyed as much as Award and I did, and we're just gonna get right into it right now in mid conversation. Thanks for listening, everybody.
Ben What's up, Ben? Yeah. You sound good, Ben. Good. I've got a I've got my my my wife's singing microphone here, so we'll see we'll see. Yeah. Good or bad good or bad idea.
Speaker 2 Well, you sound like a singer, dude.
Ben Yeah. Well, you don't wanna hear me sing. So
Speaker 1 I think I've only ever heard you on a on a mobile phone in your car, so you sound great. Sweet.
Speaker 2 Yeah. You guys you're a what? New Mexico, Arizona area? Southwest? Yeah.
Speaker 2 Yeah. Alright. Yeah. I forgot you're fully doxed. Correct, Ben?
Ben Yeah. I'm I mean, the my name isn't the, but, yeah, it is Ben Meadows. Oh,
Speaker 2 great. You just disappointed me. It's not the?
Speaker 1 Damn it. That was my whole intro was really foundationally built around that fact.
Ben So so there is a funny story to that. So the Ben Meadows company was a forestry company. Most people, you know, and presumably our age group have probably never heard of it. But they used to send out catalogs. I used to get them as a kid, you know, Ben Meadows company. And I thought it was really cool until the Internet came around. It was time to register my domain name, and I was like, these bastards. But yeah. Oh, shit. That's
Speaker 2 funny. What did they do? You did you look into what that company did or just?
Ben Oh, yeah. The most the most the most upsetting point about it now is it's a forestry supply company, and they sold to forestry supply dot com. So benmeadows.com just redirects to forestrysupply.com. Oh, that sucks.
Ben I've got I I yeah. How long oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. I was gonna say I've got benjaminmeadows.com, but I mean, you know, that's a that's a long that's a long domain name. Yeah. It's a mouthful. Yeah. Well and in the South, people wanna put a r in there. So
Speaker 2 Alright. So just wanna give you we're already live, guys. So we'll go and post and and put the intro in and everything like that. Ben, thank you very much for coming on. We appreciate it.
Speaker 2 Is that what you'd like to be referred to as as Ben?
Ben Yeah. Ben is fine. I mean, I always tell everybody my my wife and my mother, you know, prefer Benjamin, but everybody else likes Ben. So
Speaker 2 Okay. Right on Benjamin. Well, I'll start it off, dude. So you're clearly pretty deep into, Web three and the different seems like, some pretty high end, projects, etcetera. How did you get into NFTs? Like well, I guess a better question would be, how did you get into crypto?
Ben Yeah. So that's a there's kind of a funny two step story there. Right? So I work in the construction industry. My background is manufacturing distribution, construction industry. I work as a commercial roofing consultant day to day, but always been a tech guy. I always loved tech, grew up. My grandfather, worked with, you know, card machines and mainframes for the Department of the Navy, sold IBM computers in Africa in, like, the seventies and eighties. So when I was a little kid, we had an Apple computer. We had a PC. I I remember it was an old Packard Bell that, you know, you hit the you hit the turbo button to go from 15 to 20 megahertz, which might be dating dating myself a little bit here. But but so I remember that as a kid. You know, I grew up and I had computers, and I like to talk about sometimes because I'll get there.
But, anyway, grew up around computers, like computers, but it wasn't something I wanted to do for a full time job. I liked business more than wanting to be like an IT guy back in, you know, the nineties or double a lot. So, eventually, at one point, I ended up having software engineers working for me, a data scientist. But it's always been like a hobby of mine to have servers and do, you know, really fun stuff like network administration, system administration. It's always been like a side hobby of mine that I've always enjoyed. So probably around '20 about 2012, I remember hearing about cryptocurrencies and the idea of cryptographic currency. And I played around with it. And, you know, sometimes I hate to think about the playing around with it because I know I deleted wallets and had hundreds or thousands of you know, that was back when you could get Bitcoin out of a faucet, you know, or lots of Litecoin out of a faucet.
So played around with it back in 2012, but it was you know, I like to tell people who's blame You know? It really was magic Internet money. It was kinda worthless back then. And it wasn't until about '14 that I did some cloud mining, tried to do a little mining on my meager hardware at home, and was just kinda playing around with it and actually paid real money for cryptocurrencies. Back then, like I said, was Bitcoin, Litecoin, Vertcoin, you know, some of those sorts of things. And there's a funny story that my wife loves to tell back. It was, yeah, 14. We had moved to Texas. We were just married. And I said, hey. Can I can I build a mining rig and put it in our secondary bedroom? And she said, excuse me. You know, we're freshly married, didn't have a ton of money.
And she said, how much is it gonna cost? I said, don't know. A couple thousand dollars maybe. And she said, well, how long is it gonna take to pay back? And I said, six to eight months at that time. And she says, is it gonna be loud? And I said, oh, yeah. It's gonna be loud. Is it gonna take a lot of electricity? Oh, yeah. It's gonna take a lot of electricity. Is it is it gonna be warm? Oh, yeah. It's gonna be warm too. And she says, no. That is a stupid idea. And now she likes to, you know, say, well, if we'd done that, we'd me and you would be we'd be recording this, you know, on a beach somewhere, not you know, I wouldn't be working day to day. But, you know, so that was back kind of 14.
And then I remember in '16 because, you know, that was very hands off. Mine it, buy it, let it sit. It's a store of value. But I remember in '16 reading about Ethereum and couldn't figure out how to buy it. Right? Because that was back, you know, during the ICO and before it before it was actually, like, publicly available to buy. And I said, man, this is cool. This kid, you know, Vitalik, is talking about a world computer. And I couldn't quite wrap my head around how that was gonna work, you know, how the gas was gonna work, how dApps were gonna work, how this you know, I didn't understand technically, you know, the mechanism that was gonna accomplish that, but I could understand the vision and understand that this was very different than Bitcoin and all its sort of derivatives. And so I said, I wanna get in.
And once it was, you know, publicly available, once I could figure out how to buy it on exchange, I did. I I was very fortunate to buy Ethereum back when it was single digits. And then I didn't do a whole lot with it. You know, you bought it, you held it, you waited for it to appreciate because I believed in the vision. I read about the, you know, technical advances as they occurred, but that was really it for a number of years. And my funny story about NFTs and the EV Mavericks is I was like a ghost on Reddit. I was there. I mean, I was looking just today because I was like, man, how long have I been on Reddit? It's been, you know, eight, ten years. I found one comment I made on ETH Trader, one comment I made on ETH Finance ever, and I think I've posted four four posts ever.
I just wasn't a big posting guy. And so I missed kind of the the NFT boat. I I was working as an executive vice president of a very large plumbing company, and that keeps you pretty busy day to day. You know? My my free time that I did have was keeping my server at home running, reading some books, traveling, and trying to keep myself sane. And so I remember Bored Apes. I remember, you know well, I I remember CryptoKitties and and the tulips, you know, back before the winter. But this this more recent time, I remember reading about this stuff, and I kinda said, well, that's kinda dumb. You know, this is like the, you know, the altcoin shitpost we used to have on ETH Trader, you know, on the daily back in the day. Was like, we're just gonna waste all this money on these stupid things, and they're not gonna be worth anything.
And so I didn't really look into it, read about it until until I quit my job as an executive and had free time, first of all. And I and that's still one of my regrets as I remember last fall, so fall of two thousand twenty one, looking at OpenSea with my wife. We had the computer out. We're looking at it on the dining room table, and I'm going, I wonder if we should buy some of these things. I'm going, I don't wanna waste money on, you know, monkey pictures or something. And, oh my gosh, I wish I did back then. So it wasn't till about January, February that I started really trying to understand what are NFTs, what's a non fungible token, what's it do, what's its use cases, and got interested enough to buy a few, little ones, small ones.
And then when the EV Mavericks came out, I saw it because I'm longtime lurker, first time poster guy. You know? I saw it, but, of course, I didn't I didn't qualify for it. It didn't matter that I'd been, you know, that I posted on Etrader six years ago or something, you know, or laughed at all the memes. And so I was kinda meft, and I was like, yeah, whatever. I I've done well with, you know, work, Ethereum. So I bought one, and then I bought two more. And and so that that was kinda you know, that's kinda the the early on how do I get into it. I mean, now, obviously, like you mentioned, I'm a whole bunch of different places. But that's how that's how I kinda got started, how I went from, you know, Bitcoin to having an EV maverick.
Speaker 1 So you did buy one. You must have bought one literally right off the bat then because I feel like I didn't realize that you didn't mint one yourself. So you must have got one literally right when they they dropped?
Ben Yeah. So, I mean, it yeah. It was before they all minted out. I mean, I I bought I bought my first one. You know, I'm almost ashamed to say what I paid for it. But yeah. Yeah. I bought the first one before they were totally minted out and applied, you know, for some of those extra ones and just kinda missed out on it because I just didn't have the didn't have the activity. But, yeah, very early on, I mean, within the first few days.
Speaker 1 Yeah. You know, that's funny that you did touch on that because I was sitting in traffic today, and I was trying to think it was like, maybe he has a different Reddit username because I don't recall, like you said, you if you were a long time lurker, first time poster. But you've been here since the beginning, so I just assumed you had minted. But then I started trying to think if maybe you had a different username that you use. So
Speaker 1 literally did get it immediately after.
Ben Oh, yeah. I mean, I was there for the drama, right, with, you know, with Eads Raider and and, you know, which almost hurt more after paying for a maverick. You know? But I believed in it long term. And if you ask my wife, that's still, like, her favorite NFT that, you know, she never wants to sell. So Oh, nice. Nice.
Speaker 1 a lot of the DAO, I think. A lot of us look at this as a a soul bound even though it's not on on a contract level, but I know a lot of us view this as a soul bound token to ourselves.
Ben Oh, yeah. I got three because, I mean, I do think it's an investment in the community. Right? I mean, I could have just bought one, but I bought three because I I think this is a good community that will grow. I love sort of the ethos of who we are, where we came from. But, yeah, at least one of them, I will hold on to, you know, as long as there's easy Mavericks to hold on to. Yeah. For sure.
Speaker 2 Yeah. I'm never gonna come off my original minted maverick. What the fuck is my dog barking about? Oh, sheesh. Sorry about that. So
Speaker 1 it it does seem oh, sorry. Buzz.
Speaker 2 What? Can you guys hear him?
Speaker 2 Beautiful. Sorry about that. Anyhow, sidetrack. That's a freaking pretty interesting story, Ben. It's kind of, I always thought, like like Ayward said, I was actually thinking that same thought this morning. I'm like, so, who's Ben on Reddit? Let me see here. No. No search results. Okay.
Ben No. I mean, there is you can you can probably find me, but like I said, there'll be, like, eight comments for post sever, and they're, you know, they're in random stuff like, you know, a sprint forum or there's one on ETH Trader. I think one on ETH Finance. So, yeah, not not the most prolific Reddit commenter.
Speaker 2 Six of one half dozen the other. We're super happy to have you as part of our community.
Ben Oh, yeah. I've I love so that was one of the interesting things was I I don't know that I had a Discord before the Mavericks. I am trying to think if I did. I may have for a couple other projects, but I didn't really use it. I just didn't interact. You know, same thing. I I, you know, bought the NFT, and then I watched what was happening. But it wasn't really probably till the Mavericks that I really, you know, found a group that I wanted to talk to. And in in a lot of ways, it was the alpha channels and the d gen channels. I I will say, while I love the ethos of the Mavericks, the idea and the vision and the mission, you know, it's hard to, like, talk about a lot of things regarding, you know, eStaker grants or governance. You know?
It degen was really fun. You know? And we started having alpha channels and people just screwing around and chatting and that that's what I found really fun and helped it gel for me and made me wanna jump in and just say things.
Speaker 1 the it kinda became the lounge, right, where you kinda get a loosen the tie and and and kick off the shoes and just maybe not tackle initiatives, but all just still be, like, building that connection with each other and and and sharing the alpha.
Ben Well and in a lot of ways, you can talk about the technology there in sort of a more nonchalant way. Right? Like, if I'm gonna post it in the den, you know, everybody's gonna see it, and I and it's gotta have some legitimacy. But when it's in, you know, a section called degen chat, you can kinda go, hey. Has anybody seen this really stupid looking thing? And and nobody's gonna slap you down, you know, in
Speaker 1 section. Or or you get to say, you know, I have done zero fact checking, whereas where in the den, you really wouldn't want to just like throw something out there that you weren't ready to back yourself. So, yeah, it is nice to be able to throw up the the I have done zero research, but this looks really cool kind of feel.
Ben Well and I think back to your early quest earlier comment, you know, you said, hey, you're involved in the space. It's true, but I do kinda like to be behind the scenes in a lot of ways, you know. So some of the things that I've done in the last, I don't know, this past year is, you know, I've written an advisory white paper for a project. They asked me, hey. Can you take a look at our project, see what we could do better from a business and technology standpoint? There's a children's book that I'm working on right now Neat. I was gonna ask
Ben Yeah. With an illustrator. It's already written. The illustrator is somebody that I work with, and I'm just kinda helping them consult a little bit, but it's for a major project, top top few NFT project. I've done some public speaking educationally, like, in real life locally, and then some, you know, online educational things. Obviously, I'm a steward in the Mavericks. I've got a project I'm working on on the side with an illustrator that's really cool, 2,501 of ones that he's been doing every single day for a year. So, you know, but a lot of the stuff I do is is more behind the scenes talking to people, not, you know, not and I understand. In real life speaking is not behind the scenes, but I'm not leading a project out there, you know, chatting all day. I'm doing my day job most of the time.
Speaker 1 Yeah. And I gotta say, I am amazed at your timeline. Like, you're so prolific. I, you know, I was assuming that you've been at it. And and those regards to the NFT game and the different Dow communities that you're a part of, I would have guessed that you have been at that just as long as you have been holding Ethereum. You know? So you have it it it definitely deserves the the highlight that, like, the ground you've covered is such a very short time.
Ben Well, thank you. I think one of the things that I love to do is is read. You know, just take in information. It's it's something I did in my yeah. Or I do in my real life job is just consume a large amount of information, and then you figure out, you know, what's good, what's bad, what's actionable. You do analysis on it. And and it's always been one of my kind of a hobby of mine, in addition to sort of my work world, you know, I'm always one of those guys that just loves to learn new things. So when I worked for a plumbing company, I got a plumbing license in the state of Texas. I have an insurance adjuster license here in the state of Arizona. I'm working on a certificate in data science right now. So if I'm doing something, I wanna learn everything I can about it.
And I'm a voracious reader. I mean, I'll read, I would say, several dozen articles a day. I wake up, and first thing I do is, you know, look through hundred, two hundred technology, primarily technology articles, and read a few, several dozen of them every day. So I think that helps having that basis, you know, understanding the technology helps you a lot when somebody then asks the question, you go, oh, I got this one. I know this. You know? Yeah.
Speaker 1 You're quite the doer. I think, that that motivation is probably just something innate, I think, is as one of your characteristics. Do you find that it was a good crossover coming into Web three having your, like, kind of entrepreneurial skills and stuff like that? Like what's kind of the biggest strength you feel like that you you apply to web three coming from, you know, coming from an executive position?
Ben Yeah. I think one of the most interesting things is, so you you know, one of the critiques against crypto and Web three heck, one of the critiques Against web three. Right? A lot of people don't like the term web three. And I've actually spoken on this, and I said, look, we know what web two is. We know what web one was because we can look back at it. And arguably, web three will be defined in the future, you know, five years, ten years from now. And even when we talk timelines, you know, I think a lot of us accelerate the timeline. You know, we think because we're early that five years from now, everybody's gonna be using, you know, blockchains at the very least. And when I talk to people that aren't in the space, I I don't think that's true.
I think it's ten years before our grandparents are using a blockchain on an iPhone natively. That being said and so Web three itself is probably a long way away from being fully sort of codified and bounded, you know, before we know what Web four is or or as Jack Dorsey says, Web five. And and one of the other things I like to talk about is I think almost everybody will acknowledge that we're not in web three. We're in sort of web 2.5. Right? Because we use web two tools to talk about web three. We use, you know, Discord logins, not Ethereum logins. And so I think we're we're kinda getting there, but I don't have a better term for it. You know, just blockchain or NFT or crypto, I I think Web three does encompass some of the ideas better, even though it's also sort of a key, you know, marketing term.
But all that all that to say yeah. I think there's a couple you know, one of my favorite sayings is there's a road and there's a ditch on both sides of it. And I think a lot of people in the crypto web three blockchain community fall into one or two ditches. It's either the WagMe ditch, you know, we're all gonna make it, you know, and and
Speaker 2 I hate that ditch. You
Ben know, some of the ideas, though, are really dumb ideas. And you're looking at this going, there's no way this makes money, and there's no way it's gonna it's gonna last. You know? I like the I love the idea that we're all gonna make it and the positivity in this space. But let's not by be naive. You know? We're not all gonna make it. So there's that sort of side of things where people are just throwing out very impractical things. And but then there's also the critique that, you know, blockchain technology is a solution in need of a problem, and it's never gonna go anywhere, and it doesn't solve anything. And I think that's sort of, you know, not true too.
And so for me, one of the ways that I think that I can help in the space or that I have found is so when I did a public speaking engagement, they asked me, can you just do, like, a, you know, blockchain one zero one for a group of people at an NFT club? And so I prepared. I've been I've I've heard educational presentations myself, and they tend to either be too technical or, like, they're very artist focused and it's you know, you just make these NFTs and they're like magic money boxes. And so I wanted to stay away from both of those. And so I spoke for over an hour, And when I got done, I'm happy I didn't know who the audience was because there were people there that were solidity developers full time. There were people that, you know, that that ran that ran projects.
And I said, how'd I do? And they said, did great. And I said, really? I you know, you you never know how you do. And I said, why? You know? Because you want feedback as a speaker. Nice. Yeah. And they said, what I appreciated was you didn't go too technical, but you also, you know, weren't naive with the users that, hey. Just set up this wallet, throw your money in it, don't know what you're doing, and it's all gonna be fine. They said you did a good job of synthesizing the two. And so I think that's where probably my strength is is saying, hey. Let's look at this real world. If you're somebody that is not a tech person and you don't wanna know anything about the technology, you might not be the person that should set up your own self custodial wallet and just start slinging money on the things you don't know about based on hype.
You know? This might be too early for you. But vice versa, you know, if you're a solidity dev that's got your head all the way in the code all day, you may not know what's going on in the world. And just because the technology's there doesn't mean that project's going to succeed. And so I think that's where I can bring a little common sense sort of business while still understanding the technology and and look at the sort of, you know, 360 degrees, take a look at it all the way around and go, hey. You can have a awesome project with great partners and good technology and still fail if you don't do these other things.
Speaker 1 Yeah. I think you have a a the perfect balance of a foot in both camps. Right? You you understand the philosophy behind it and the ethos of it, and and you're still able to kind of, like you said, synthesize it into real life situations for for people who just don't want to learn, let alone have the time to learn. You know? A lot of people don't want to be in control of those decisions. That's they wanna pay someone else to. And that's one of the the unfortunate, you know, status of of the industry we're in is that you can't just go trusting a third party with with your your staking box. Right? It has to be an extremely well trusted party, at least if you're gonna go that route.
Ben But I think that's but I think that's smart. I mean, you know, that's gotten people in trouble with traditional financial instruments too. You know, I thought my financial adviser had this covered, you know, and they've done no due diligence and they lose millions or billions or, you know, I think I think that's probably kind of a common sense thing anywhere and especially in a new risky sort of emerging technology market.
Speaker 1 Definitely. Yeah. I think you strike a perfect balance there with the the foot in both camps, like I said.
Ben Well and I think so I went to so real world, you know, the first real world NFT event I went to was I forget if it was in May or June of this year. I went and attended a local event, really appreciated the people, sort of the quality of, you know, people and the attitude that they had, very welcoming. And then I went to NFT New York in June. And part of the reason I did that was I just said, hey. I've got, you know, a fair sum of money and time invested in this over the last decade. I wanna see real world what's happening here. So I went to NFT New York for, you know, the full week, like, Saturday through Friday, took my wife with me. It's it's actually an enter oh, well, my wife got it, and I probably did.
I I didn't test positive, but I lost my voice, and I I'd already had it a few months before. But really entertaining in terms of I do think there's value in seeing real world, you know, and it was kinda shocking sometimes the difference in culture is probably the best word for it between different projects, groups of projects, who people hung out with, what they talked about, what they did, really interesting, from a kinda industry wide, perspective.
Speaker 2 What was Did it Go ahead.
Speaker 1 Oh, I was just gonna ask. Did it seem like you found, maybe one project's execution over another that kind of like, maybe somebody wasn't really you were focused on, but their execution that we kinda put them on your radar. And then I guess the flip flop of that is is there execution from a project that you were hyped on that you kinda lost interest in based on how they went about NFT NYC?
Ben Yeah. So there was let's see. So I'm going to Vegas next week for the Web three Expo. I'm kinda interested to see what what that's gonna be about. You've got Kevin O'Leary will be there, Ryan Carson, Zenic will be there. So there's some there's some Oh, neat. Big names there and then a bunch of littler ones, but I'm gonna go you know, it's it's five hours from Phoenix. I'm gonna go run and see what's that's about. But, yeah, one of the things that kind of was surprising about NFT New York is I would say there were there were projects that I thought probably were all culture and hype and no technology, and they were when I got there. I won't name names, but there were some of those that had a great party. There were some that just didn't execute as well as they could have, or they had unreasonable expectations.
So I would say, for instance, great example of that, Bored Ape. Right? Ape Fest. Huge concerts. You know? I was there one night, and, I mean, beautiful venue, well run, free drinks, free food. They had, you know, some of the people that were on stage. I'm trying to think one night, I think it was Hyam, Timberland, and Little Baby, and people were complaining that it sucked. And so, you know, I don't think it sucked. I think it was an execution and an expectation issue. You you could have never risen to those expectations. It's the old saying about expectations are the seeds of future regrets. People just had it hyped so much that, yeah, I think unless, you know, M Dre and Snoop dropped down on a helicopter and shook everybody's hand, people weren't gonna be happy. Gotcha.
Now there was at the same time, I will say there were smaller projects that I wasn't necessarily hyped about that I ended up going, wow. This is really cool. So I would say the Alien Boy, small community led project. I went to one of their events and actually had some amazing conversations with Life Force Games, some Deloitte consultants. The GOATs were there, and I was actually really impressed by the quality of people. Additionally, I knew some of the Proof and Moonbirds crowd through Rick House Dow, which is a Web three startup liquor company.
Ben I I, you know, I knew some of the people tangentially. Well, there in New York, I met some of the team members from Proof, ended up seeing Ryan Carson at coffee, went to coffee with the Captain, degen network, and found out that, man, those were really professional people that had well executed projects. Likewise, Club Devine, which is a Web three wine club. I'm not a big wine guy. But, man, they sold me on their execution and the quality of people that was there, and I ended up buying one of their tokens. And I would say, likewise, the Proof Moonbirds people I met there were one of the reasons I ended up buying a Moonbird and an oddity. So, yeah, I do think, you know, in real life, you can certainly get a different feel for the project, the quality of the project, and the quality of the people that are in those projects or at least what they're there for.
There was another project, I won't name names, And I'll try and keep the story, you know, PG. We're we're at this after party and we're having a good time or talking to these guys. And this guy comes up and says, airdrop MFer and starts dropping bags of weed into everybody's hands. And nothing wrong with that. Right? It's in New York, like, totally legal. Have fun. But substance wise, you know, I don't know that as as lions, for instance, we would say, oh, yeah. That's that's where we're going. That's public goods and decentralization and education.
Speaker 2 That's on And so that's bro.
Ben So that's what I was saying. That's that's what that's what was more evident when you hung out with people in New York City. And so, yeah, it was it was a good trip. I don't know that I wanna do that every year. It was exhausting. Went from, like, eight in the morning till midnight every day. But some great networking, great connections, learned a lot. Didn't even go to the conference and still don't think I would, but, yeah, good good trip.
Speaker 2 Well, conferences are no fun. I think we can all agree on that.
Ben If they're well done, they're not supposed to be, but hopefully they're at least educational. Right? I mean, I guess they're supposed to be fun, but not you know?
Speaker 2 Yeah. Every concert I go for and go to for in real life work, it just ends up being a money pit. Yeah. Customers, drinks, food, etcetera. Yeah.
Ben I don't want to tell you what my Uber bill was in New York.
Speaker 2 I don't want to know. Alright.
Speaker 1 So now after your kind of experience with the mining, do you find or does does it seem like your wife is kind of more apt to jump on to like, she came with you to NYC for that entire week, is no easy task. Right? Do you seem like she kind of is more apt to jump on the things more in the experimental stage with you now? Yeah. So I
Ben would say, you know, this is like anti marriage advice. But back when I bought Ethereum, single digits, she knew what I put in, and then I bought about three times as much as I told her. So terrible marriage advice, great Ethereum financial advice if you can go if you can go back in time. Right? But it worked out. And so, yeah, I would say one of the things she said with, you know, NFTs is, hey, you know, make smart decisions, look into things. But if you think it's got good potential and it's got a good risk reward, do it. Don't don't ask me about it. You know, don't don't leverage our mortgage or our house or something to go by, you know, board apes. But Sure. You know, may maybe she'd let me do a double log risk, you know, but Alright. Wait. Does she find
Speaker 1 herself kind of looking into anything or is she kinda just like this is your thing and she hasn't really been interested to dive
Ben into the space herself? So I think she's been as interested as she wants to be. She likes knowing what's going on with the EV Mavericks. She went to some proof events with me in California. They had their future proof event last month. She went with me to that. We went to a little Rick House Dow event, which was really cool, by the way. Ended up talking to a cognition professor at oh, gosh. I'm gonna mess up what college she was at. One of the big California colleges. Right? Irvine or Berkeley or so, you know, some of that stuff, she does when it comes to day to day. What am I buying and selling and why? I I don't think she wants to get that far in the weeds. She's got her hobbies and her things that she enjoys. She she likes the technology probably more than the on a big scale.
Right? Like, she believes in Ethereum and the EVM more than she believes in any individual NFT project with the exception of maybe, like, the Mavericks because she understands the community there, who we are, where we come from, what we're doing. But I would say, you know, at the same time, she's not gonna get real hyped up about a picture of a pixelated owl. You know? That's just not why she's in this. Gotcha.
Speaker 2 Yeah. I can echo those statements. For sure. So moonbirds, what do you like about them? What do you don't like about them?
Ben So I think the thing that I like the most about that project was, like I said, I like the professionalism. You know, I like I like Kevin Rose's pedigree, where he came from in technology, who he knows. You know, sometimes I think people can get a little too cult of personality about it. You know? I I think he's a little over invested in gen art and crummy squiggles and, you know, some of those sorts of things. At the same time, I do like that, you know, when they're looking at art in the web three space, they're looking for quality and new things, and I think that distinguishes them from Yuga. At the same time, I I like that they're very risk forward, and they said, hey. We're gonna be a very risk forward Web three point company.
It's something me and some of the stewards and the Mavericks have talked about if we wanna be safe and sit back on our laurels, Web three is not the place to do that. You know, we're in a very dynamic, risky, fast moving industry, emergent technology, whatever you wanna call it. And so I appreciate I actually liked that they went CCO. I CC zero. I bought my Moonbird after they did it, which may have been a stupid decision financially right now, but I think long term, I like that risk tolerance and where they're thinking and that their time frame is five years, ten years. You guys might be, but none of us know that. You know? They're not communicating that. I like the Moonbirds Dow that they're getting ready to come out with, that they're gonna be incubating some projects from within the community.
There's there's a lot of things that I like from a professionalism, risk management, honesty standpoint. Obviously, there's things I don't like. They've they've made some stupid sort of communication mistakes, you know, made some rookie mistakes early on, whether it was with staking rewards, you know, you buy a $20,000 minbird and you get a fanny pack or not telling anybody before you go CC zero. But all in all, I I think it's a smart group of people. I mean, I think Truth is a good organization too, but I think perhaps Truth lacks the same direction as proof does. You'd be harder pressed to say what they stand for and where they're going and what they do. Very smart people outside of the parties that they hold Really like AJT, Process Gray, all see some of the some of the team there.
But I think for me, that's kinda what distinguished it with proof was the professionalism, the pedigree, and the vision.
Speaker 2 So I've been meaning to ask somebody this that went to NFT NYC. Did you get a goblin burger? And if so, how was it?
Ben So I did not get a goblin burger. I saw them, but I have got a relatively sensitive stomach. And at midnight, when I was in front of the Goblin Burger truck, I thought that was probably a very poor idea.
Speaker 2 Oh, right on. Okay. Did you hear anybody talk about them? I'm like, I'm super interested in these goblin burgers.
Ben Oh, people people said they were awesome, that the sauce on them was awesome, and that they were great. So, yeah, I I heard nothing but good things about them. I heard the sauce was a highlight. I did meet the goblin. I forget. What's the what's the guy's name that always plays the goblin? He does all the DAO calls, and I can't think of is it Bruce or anyway, I met the goblin going into Ape Fest. He was trying to convince me not to go to Ape Fest. Sounds about right. Yeah. Exactly.
Speaker 2 That's funny. No. I I I I don't have anything against either project. Six one half dozen the other. Alright. Well, that's pretty pretty sucky that you didn't get a Goblin burger, to be honest. I'm kinda disappointed.
Ben I was more mad I didn't get into the party, but that's alright.
Speaker 2 There was a bunch of people that didn't get into the party. Correct?
Ben There oh my gosh. Yeah. That that's a whole that's a story for another time. But yeah.
Speaker 2 Right on. Alright. So moving forward, like, what do you see so you obviously you bought some Mavs. We talked about that earlier. What do you see us as a community doing? Like, what do you think would be great for us to do moving forward?
Ben So one of the things that's gonna come out very soon, we're we're actually probably gonna start having, like, Friday afternoon campfire discussions, just informal fifteen, thirty minute discussions. One of the things we've realized as stewards is if you go put out a huge long proposal or a far reaching proposal or, you know, without sort of any feedback mechanism, just straight voting is probably not the most optimum feedback mechanism because you can't really adjust that. You know? Whether that adjustment needs to be minor, major, splitting a proposal up. So one of the things we wanna start doing is is finding a more efficient, more casual mechanism to get quicker feedback from the community. I would say so I am not I mean, I'm a culture guy in the sense that you treat people well, you treat them fairly, you invest your money in good things, good people, good businesses, and sort of karma, it's gonna come back to you.
But outside of that, I wouldn't care if our vision was I wouldn't care what the details of our public goods vision were, Whether it was to save a thousand pandas or a thousand giraffes or to clean up the oceans, those are all great. I can get behind that. I care more about the mechanics of how we get there. That's just my personality as a business guy is as long as we're kinda hitting the values boxes and not, you know, doing anything disingenuous or wrong or bad, I care more about how do we get there, how do we get there quickly and efficiently. And I would say, for me, one of the biggest frustrations I've got is, man, we have accomplished a lot. If you look at where we've come from with the funding that we've had, we've done a lot.
You know, we we made it through sort of the snafu that, you know, was the very beginning and we hit the ground running. And, you know, whether it's the PANDAS or the Ratio Gang or, you know, even individual projects like Doomfuzz's generative already did the other day or, you know, just the amount of nodes that that we're running as Maverick. I I think we've done a lot of good things. I think we we've got two issues. Number one is messaging, letting people know, which in some ways, you know, isn't the most fun thing to kinda toot your own horn, but I think we could do a better job of messaging. And I think we could do a better job of organizing because we've got a lot of people doing a lot of good things, But I think we've got some visions for things we could do better and faster, and we wanna figure out how to get those done.
And so behind the scenes, the stewards, we've been working on some proposals that are gonna come out around that very shortly, and that's been kind of my baby to some extent that, man, I wanna see us execute, and I wanna see us do it well and efficiently. There's there's little things for me. Like, I wanna see us fix the metadata on the lions. I'd love to see us put our artwork on chain. And on one hand, you're going, what does that do for public goods? But on the other hand, I'm going, we're a bunch of OGs from ETH Finance and ETH Trader, and and we are guys that you know, we've got technical guys. We we are people that have been in this for a long time, and so we should be an example in terms of our technical proficiency and efficiency.
And so I'd love to see us knock some stuff out like that, but it's gonna take some organization, some structure to get that done. And, you know, that's true whether it's just how do we use the funds in our treasury or how do we actually produce educational material or how do we get the word out with a marketing and communication team. How do we and and I think back to my road with a ditch on both sides of it, you can go one of a couple ways. Right? You can go the way the eat lizards went where it's like Kieran and, you know, a few people, and it's like their full time job. And if they don't get it done, you find somebody that will, Or you can go kind of the way we've gone where there's a thousand people just all trying to kind of do their own thing and make it work.
And I I think there's an in between that's probably more in line with our ethos. And so that's kind of where I wanna see us get to. By getting there, then we can get done decentralization education, public goods better.
Speaker 2 I 100% agree with you, dude. It's very, very difficult to coordinate the way things are right now on Discord. I do not know if another medium would be better.
Ben So I don't know that it's a medium issue. I think it's a structural issue, and that's kinda what we're gonna look at and talk about a little bit is how to structure this thing. And, you know, structure can refer to organization, management, communication, compensation. There there's you know, that structure can refer to a lot of different things. But, yeah, I don't think it's a I don't think the medium is the issue. I think it's a structural issue. You just you you know, a thousand people is just too many to coordinate kind of flat.
Speaker 2 Yeah. No. It's it's definitely tough. Yeah. I that's it. And this is I mean, everybody knows the has listened to the podcast before. I like the idea of a DAAO, but in practice, it seems like they're a little bit impractical. Does that make sense?
Ben Yeah. I mean, one of the things I've looked at is the most successful DAOs actually run like companies. Right? I mean, whether that's whether that's
Speaker 2 Elected board of officials or something that makes sense.
Ben You look at a company and there's a board, you know, and then the board has which is normally a nonexecutive group. Right? It's it's an advisory group. I'm on a I'm on a couple of boards myself, and and, you know, most boards are advisory. They're they're giving general direction. And then you've got a group below that usually at any company of any decent size, certainly a thousand people. You've got, you know, sort of executive directors, you know, or managers or whatever you wanna call them, but they're the ones that are actually getting done the things that the board has sort of laid out. And then below that usually have departments. Right? I mean, you know, you could have a sales department or a production department or a support department or a and if you look at most of the companies in the space that are really successful, whether, you know, DAO or not a DAO, they're structured in a similar way.
There almost has to be. You know, it doesn't matter exactly what that looks like, whether it's functional or hierarchical or matrix or virtual or network or, you know, what sort of exact business structure it is. They still have one. The ones that don't are the ones that are sort of languishing or, know, I think we might could get away with it if we were a artwork DAO, you know, and our only purpose was to go buy artwork. You know, we we could probably get away with that. But I think we got a lot bigger goal and vision than that. And if we wanna do things and do them quickly and effectively, we're gonna have to put some structure in place. And and I think that scares people sometimes, but we've also still got those Dow governance mechanisms in place where we can elect and unelect people.
We can you know, anybody can still propose votes. And so I think people shouldn't be too scared of structure and wanting to get things done.
Speaker 2 So you kind of think of, like, a like a a fast action advisory board that can make small decisions on behalf of the community?
Ben Yeah. Exactly. So break it down into smaller subgroups. You know? I I know we've got some people that are really good at marketing communication maybe or technology or or development, you know, collaborations and working with other groups. You know, one of the things I've looked at is this is one of my favorites. Right? So so if you look at YUGA, Proof, Truth, one of the things they have all struggled with is on one hand, you don't want a ton of tokens in the sense that, you know, a thousand proof passes, 10,000 board apes, 10,000 Illuminati, a 187 of a 187. You know, they concentrate value really highly on those sort of tier one NFTs. And then you've got a tier two, and by nature, you know, they trade at a third or a fourth or a fifth of the price, that tier two to that tier one.
And so there's this there's this dilemma there where, on one hand, you wanna keep your value as high as you can for your OG original investors, purchasers, whatever you wanna call them. But at the same time, Proof has talked about this a little bit very recently, transparently, you can't build a brand around a thousand people or even 10,000, or even at this point, they've got about 20,000 people in the ecosystem between Proof, Moonbirds, and Oddities. That's still not enough sort of critical mass network effect to really be a brand outside of the small world that is Web three. And I think we as Mavericks at some point are gonna have a similar decision to make. It's awesome that we've really got about a thousand users for our 1,300 and change Mavericks. It's close knit. We know each other. It keeps the trust really high.
But it also means people don't know who we are because there's only a thousand of us. And, you know, it also means that we can't tap into that larger community cause they don't feel connected, they don't have a lion. And and I think, you know, there may be some opportunities whether that's, you know, the EI or L PANDAS, whether that's other tangential projects. But even talking about that, if you look at our structure right now, you've got multisig signers, moderators and stewards. Whose job is that to sort of set the big picture growth plan and strategy for the Mavericks? And you can say it's everyone's, but a thousand people aren't gonna figure this out as a mob. And so that's the kind of thing where I think, you know, there may need to be a subcommittee or a subgroup or a you know, one of the things that I'm wary of is getting too far in the weeds too early.
You know, let's as a community, let's agree that, hey, we need to do something better and more efficient. This is the general outline of it. And then we can start getting further and further into the weeds. But I think that's another fallacy that DAOs can fall into. If somebody writes this eight page highly detailed proposal, and somebody doesn't wanna vote for it because they disagree with one paragraph. And so I think you gotta kinda step your way into it and go from big to small and go from big ideas to smaller, more detailed ideas. Well put. Well put. Yeah.
Speaker 1 Very well. It's really it's really easy to forget also when you kind of look at our, I guess, I'll call it resume of what we've what we've done thus far in this short time. It's it's easy to forget that this is all everything you're seeing is on top of full time jobs or or even full time jobs and then students going to school full time or, you know, there's almost a voluntary or a volunteer based participation with this DAO. And it's easy to forget when you look at just what we've done. It doesn't feel like it's been six months at all.
Ben No. I would agree, and I think there's opportunity there. On the one hand, like I said, I don't know that we have the stomach or the desire to do what the lizards or the alien boy does where, you know, they've got full time people. At the same time, that doesn't mean we should always be scared of compensating people for their results Sure. Or find a way to sort of bridge that gap with talented people outside of our community. You know? And I'm spitballing, but one of the ways I've talked about doing that in the past is you look at the lizards. There's honorary lizards. You look at the bored ape. Heck. I met a guy the other day at a party that was honorary board ape number four awarded to him because he advanced Yuga's causes early on, you know, before they were the powerhouse they are today.
And so I think we could do something similar. You know? If there was somebody that doesn't wanna buy a lion, but, man, they do some things that really contribute to the lions. Maybe we have honorary lions. Maybe we, you know, use some of our lions in the treasury when it makes sense and the value is there. Maybe we do compensate people for and I'm a big fan of compensating people for very specific KPIs and for results, not necessarily for task completion, not for effort, but, you know, reward people for their results. And there's ways of doing that that don't drain the treasury. So anyway, yeah, I I I think there's a lot of opportunity there, but we gotta start by saying, how do we get there? What's the plan? What's the structure? And then let people that you know, I think that's the other thing is sort of divide and conquer.
Right? We're all really busy, and we and we don't have time, but we also don't all need to be concerned with everything. You know? I I don't I don't worry about what you're planning for every podcast episode. You know? It'd be matter of fact, it'd be weird if I was emailing you guys, like, every week going, do you think about this? Do you think about
Speaker 1 this? Well, we're open to that, but I get your point.
Speaker 2 Yeah. No. Early on, we decided we're you know, I was chatting with A, and we just kind of decided that we were gonna take on the reins of doing the podcast. We figured it'd be good for the community. We don't know if we're any good yet. So yet to that's to be decided. I
Ben love the and I love that we're doing it. But if there was something you guys really needed, right, let's say that, you know, as the podcast, you said, man, if we could just have an intern to help us with marketing, we don't really have a good mechanism to communicate that either to whoever that should be communicated to, whether that's the stewards of the whole community or or vice versa, you know, how to put that to a vote or get that out there. So that's what I was saying. There's just some very base level functional things I think we gotta work through. And I think we've done a lot with what we have. This is kinda just the next steps to get us there.
Speaker 1 Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. You know, not everyone is looking to, participate quite as much as the next person, or maybe they're looking to participate fully, you know, if if somebody was open to the idea of a of a full time mod position or or something like that. Like, you know, it's it's a mechanism to gauge who wants to participate, you know, going forward. And then, yeah, and then, like you said, like, subcommittees to to make fast action decisions without having to put everything up to a snapshot vote. You know, it's very slow moving governance in that sense when every decision gets gets kind of droned over by the entire Dow.
Ben Well, one of my favorite examples is look at our OpenSea verification. Right? I understand why it's difficult. Like, you know, I understand technologically why it's hard. You know, they don't support a multisig. You'd have to have everybody sitting there at the same time, and you might get it. I get that. At the same time and, you know, nobody wants to hand over the multisig to one person to do that. That involves a lot of trust. But at the same time, yeah, PANDAS is probably gonna get verified before we do. You know. And so that's kind of the sort of thing where I'm going, man, we gotta have a better mechanism to accomplish this and get things done, you know, whether it's cleaning up the metadata for the lions. May not be a big deal, but it might be a big deal long term. It shows our professionalism.
It shows who we are and that we can get things done and fix things. And even that, though, that's gonna involve a million decisions, you know, in terms of categorizing, cleaning up, and then how do you do it? Do you do it on the current contract? Do you do it with a new contract? Somebody's gonna have to build a bridge. You're gonna have to make decisions like the lizards did where there was x amount of Genesis lizards that never got bridged over. And at some point, they had to say, okay. Time to burn the bridge and move on. There's a million little decisions there, and there's a lot of time somebody's gonna spend on that. And I just don't think we're structured for some of those big hard decisions yet. I think we'll get there.
Speaker 1 Yeah. I am optimistic, of any group that's going to, at least be open minded enough to explore just what you know, we might not know just what the next step is, but we're definitely willing to throw everything at it and and reroute around it if need be.
Ben Well, I think that's one of the big things, right, is is, you know, I'm not saying, you know, whatever you wanna call these subgroups, you know, tiger teams, whatever. I'm not saying you give them the keys to the kingdom, but I'm saying they come back and they say, okay. Of the 50 available options you can imagine, here's the three or two we've come up with, and here's the pros and cons. That you can do something with, and that sort of helps with the time management decision fatigue that you can have with a thousand people all going in different directions. Great.
Speaker 2 Yeah. That, yeah. I own a small business, so that I won't call it. Just the, the management of different positions and and responsibilities is huge. You know? I mean, fuck. If I didn't have a mechanic, I couldn't get a job done. You you know what I'm saying? I used to be the mechanic, but then I realized that at a certain point, if I wanted to grow my business, that I couldn't spend all the time working on equipment. Like, I had to move out to, you know, focus on, relationships and the back end, the books, which is really what makes everything tick.
Ben No. I'm I'm with you a 100%. I mean, like I said, I love technology. I can I can do DevOps work? I can spin up, you know, servers, cloud, local. At the same time, there there got to be a certain point in my career when, you know, I couldn't negotiate buying 20,000 toilets at the same time as I was spinning up a Postgres server. You know, there just weren't enough hours in the day. And at some point, I had to let go of the reins and delegate that and have other people do it. And they might have done done it the way I wanted to, but that didn't mean they didn't do it very well and effectively.
Speaker 2 Yeah. And that's that's that's really tough always to to give up control or or what have you in any aspect of especially, like, a business that you grew from the beginning. Giving up those reins is always a tough prospect. You know what I mean? Regardless of what happens, you end up thinking in your mind every single night when you go to sleep. Fuck. Did I make a mistake?
Ben Well, and maybe that's gonna be the easy part for us. Right? As we all own this Collectively, but none of us owns it solely. You know?
Speaker 2 That's the number one benefit to a DAO that I see is that it's a collective ownership, and everybody's kinda got stake in the game, so to speak. You know? Nobody wants to see EVM Maverick's floor be at point zero one or anything like You know? I don't
Ben wanna see our I don't wanna I mean, you know, don't get me wrong. Selfishly, I'd love to see our floor at thirty because maybe I'll sell one of them. But at the same time, I do see it as a reflection of our value, you know, what people know about us, what we're doing, you know, how much value there is in having a Maverick. And, yeah, I wanna see that go up. I want people to recognize the value that we bring as a community, and I wanna make sure we bring that value.
Speaker 2 Yeah. A 100% agree with you. Well, guys, we're at an hour. Do you have anything else right now, Edward?
Speaker 1 I mean, I'd probably just ask, you know, is there is there anything whether it's narrative wise or use case that you're not seeing in the space that you kind of want to see flourish or or hope, you know, kind of to draw some light on in something that you you're excited about that's not quite getting talked about in the in the mainstream?
Speaker 2 I was gonna say, what the heck?
Ben Yeah. Now now my brain's going 10,000 different direction. No. I mean, I you know, I'm somebody that always likes new things, gets excited about new use cases, new technologies. And so I would say for me, the biggest thing is just I wanna see I wanna see us get there faster. You know? I think blockchain does have potential use cases. I think Ethereum's got a lot of room to grow. Right? We we got over the merge, and that was awesome. And in a lot of ways, I was most excited by how big of a nonevent the merge was, that it was you know, as a guy that used to run servers with large databases on them, I can't even imagine doing an in place upgrade of that scale that smoothly. And so on one hand, that's awesome. But now we've still got all these other things to implement, right, coming up ahead.
Not not the end of the road. It's just the beginning. And so I am excited to see how that plays out. I'm excited to see what that does for mechanic structural flows, price, layer twos, how much data flows through Ethereum. I mean, there's all these different things. I'm excited to see where generative art goes on Ethereum, on other blockchains, you know, as that evolves. I've been playing around a lot with AI art. I'm excited to see what happens with that. I still think there's a lot of fundamental questions around NFTs and copyright law, IP rights ownership. You know? What's the token pointing to? What is IPFS and Arweave? Are they are they public spaces? Are they? So I still think there's a lot of real world questions to be answered. I think it's a lot earlier than we realize. I still think Ethereum is very undervalued.
I'm a little surprised at where it's at today, but who knows? You know, it could be 10 times that in a month or half of what it is. So, yeah, I would just say I think there's a whole lot of things still to explore in this space and that's what I'm most excited about. Gotcha. Everything all the time, just faster. And unfortunately, that's yeah. That's that's,
Speaker 1 you know, probably my downfall. No. I think that's probably most people's outlook in the space, really. I mean, that's why we're all here. We're trying forge carve out the frontier. Right? We want all of it. We just wanna get there and and and be living in that, you know, that living in that world that we all know is is possible, I think.
Ben That and I just wish I had a few more hours, you know, to play around with it every day. I mean, you know, there's always something new to try out and look into, and there's never enough hours in the day to get it all done. Yeah. Sure.
Speaker 2 Bandwidth shrinking.
Speaker 1 Well, I I have to say that we definitely do appreciate, you know, the value that you're bringing into the the alpha channels. You're quite prolific there as well. So I
Speaker 2 Hold We didn't even get to the biggest Definitely look
Speaker 1 to you as a as a degen leader. What's the biggest question?
Speaker 2 What is your opinion on aliens? For real, dude.
Ben So my no. No. We're talking, like, extraterrestrials?
Speaker 2 Yes. Nothing to do with crypto. Well, maybe everything to do with crypto.
Speaker 2 I mean, I mean, you're out you're out in Phoenix. Did you guys see the Phoenix lights?
Ben So I don't think that extraterrestrial beings have visited Earth. That doesn't mean I don't think they exist in the universe.
Speaker 2 Very short and concise. Good
Speaker 2 I'm not satisfied with that answer, to be honest. I'm kidding. I I don't know that there is
Ben a satisfying answer, you know. Yeah. No. I just That's like ask that's like asking me what, you know, what happens when we die?
Speaker 2 What does? What? No. I'm just kidding, dude. Hey. No. Yeah. I echo, Award's statements, man. Thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 1 Yeah. We do like to wrap these up with quick little a quick little window, you know, into the the soul. Right? So we asked for a a music recommendation from you. Anything that you that you dig that hypes you up that you wanna share?
Ben Oh, gosh. We'll go with anything by MF DOOM. Right? Your favorite rapper's favorite rapper. Yeah. Right
Speaker 1 on. MF Doom. RIP, man. Yeah. Exactly.
Speaker 2 Oh, man. Right on. Back. Alright, gentlemen. Hey. Thank you very much again. We're not gonna ask you to like or subscribe or anything like that. We don't if you guys wanna listen to it, listen to it. If you like it, like it. That's it. That's all. Thank you, Ben, for coming on. A word, as always, it's been a pleasure.
Speaker 1 Thank you guys for having me. This was fun. Yeah. Appreciate you both. We'll see you in the DJ and chat. Yeah. And
Speaker 2 possibly, down the road, we could do a Ben Meadows installment too. Because Yeah. Let me know. Got a lot more to talk about.
Ben Oh, I can always talk. I'm a salesman.
Speaker 2 I feel you, man. I feel you. Alright, gentlemen. You guys have a great Yeah. Evening, afternoon, wherever you're at, and we will see you in the DJ chat.