Jack O’Holleran on The Ethereum Merge, GameFi & SKALE

In an exclusive interview with cryptonews.com, Jack O’Holleran, Co-Founder of SKALE, talks about the Ethereum merge, the eco-friendliness of ETH 2.0, and current developments in GameFi. 

About Jack O’Holleran

Jack O’Holleran is the Co-Founder of SKALE. Jack’s passion for decentralized systems and blockchain led him to join efforts with Stan Klad-ko to solve the blockchain scalability problem.

Jack is a veteran Silicon Valley technology entrepreneur with a deep background in machine learning/AI technologies and blockchain. His resume includes Co-Founder of Aktana, Co-Founder IncentAlign, and executive positions at Good Technology, and Motorola. His first work with Digital Currencies was in 2008 building a digital currency platform for Enterprise Resource Allocation. He has been an active Cryptocurrency investor and an evangelist for decentralized systems since early 2013.

Jack O’Holleran gave a wide-ranging exclusive interview which you can see below, and we are happy for you to use it for publication provided there is a credit to www.cryptonews.com. 

Highlights Of The Interview

• The Ethereum Merge; its implications and limitations.
• Scalability and Multichain; the future of the Ethereum Network is moving towards Layer-2 and Multichain Networks.
• GameFi – Current developments in the ecosystem and decentralized gaming trends.
• SKALE’s NFT Visionaries Grant Program.
• Taking power back from streaming entities.

Full Transcript Of The Interview

Matt Zahab 
Ladies and gentlemen welcome back to the Cryptonews Podcast. We have a recurring guest today. Believe I spoke with this gentleman close to a year ago after meeting his team at NFTNYC perhaps it was I think it was just a little bit after they threw a banger of a party there as well. And now we got him on for round two. Our guest is Jack O’Holleran, the co-founder of SKALE Labs, Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur with a deep background in machine learning and AI tech blockchain, you name it. He’s back. We’re buzzin and super pumped to have him on. Jack. Welcome back to the show my friend.

Jack O’Holleran 
Pleasure to be here. You know, I remember last chat we had a good time Matt we didn’t only Talk Tech, we didn’t only talk crypto, we talked a lot of that. But we had a good jam session. So this will be another fun one. If you’re listening here today. Thank you. Get ready for us to go off road.

Matt Zahab 
I do think you and I we had a good rip in the hot take factory last time definitely went off the rails. But you know, I had a lot of really positive feedback. So fired up to have you on. Your background. Now for the folks who are only listening, whether you’re commuting or doing whatever got your air pods in. Jack has one of the most famous and one of my favorite books Dune behind him. It seems like dune always gets brought up in the cryptocurrency world in the blockchain world tons of similarities. When did you read Dune? How did it hit? You like to remember where you were? And do you see those similarities with dune in the crypto world? 

Jack O’Holleran 
Yeah, I think I think I read Dune back in maybe there’s like this kind of what I started getting into crypto, I think it was like to like the 2013 kind of that phase. I was just, I was like hardcore, like Foundation series. And then I read the Dune series, I just wanted this crazy sci fi kick for a while. And the funny thing was, before that I was all about reading business books, I could only read business books. I felt like hey, I need to, you know, prioritize my career. I’m gonna read business books, learn things. And you know, that was good. But then the other thing is you read sci-fi and that actually like it let your brain go somewhere else and expand your thinking and expand time and think about and so you look at dune this is like I mean, it’s this alternate world and like crazy tech and, you know, non-tech and you know organics and interesting experiences, but it’s things like that, I think help your brain especially if you’re a founder and you need to create things and try to like, see where markets are going. You have to be able to like put your brain in a different place.

Matt Zahab 
Did you by any chance catch the movie that came out last year?

Jack O’Holleran 
Yeah, the movie was actually really good. And the original movie was even good. The books better than both books phenomenally better than the movie but the movie, you know, I thought was a pretty fair, fair effort.

Matt Zahab 
I haven’t seen the film yet. And it’s only and I will it’s 100% it’s on the

Jack O’Holleran 
Tonight. You got it. You got something to do tonight?

Matt Zahab 
I do. I have got plans tonight. But later on this week. Definitely. Well, question for you about do no 1965 Right. I feel like that was a little bit perhaps before sort of Woodstock and psychedelic era, you know, era kind of thing. You think Frank Herbert was buzzing on shrooms, or LSD or something. You name it because like, you don’t I mean, some of these concepts are pretty far fetched. Like I first time I read it, I was like I remember being like wandering to create it. And then I googled that I look more into it. I read the Spark Notes, just to sort of fine tune some of the concepts that perhaps I missed while reading the book, and I haven’t read it since it’s on my to do list. I need to read it again. But I think he was buzzing on psychedelics or anything.

Jack O’Holleran 
You know. I mean, if you think of the whole concept of the like, dust and what happens like, you know, the first time they’re in the I want to expel the but I think there’s no way he could he’d have to probably mushrooms. Yeah, maybe acid was pretty big back then. So. 

Matt Zahab 
Yeah. When was Woodstock was about seven years.

Jack O’Holleran 
What’s that? 

Matt Zahab 
When was Woodstock? 70s 

Jack O’Holleran 
Like, wasn’t it? 69?

Matt Zahab 
Or yeah, 69 Right, right. Okay. Yeah. So right before he was on the come up there. Yeah, crazy. Crazy. Crazy. Crazy. I know we talked a lot about San Fran a little bit about San Fran. Last time you’re on the pot. I’ve still never been to San Fran. I hope hopefully going to Cali and LA and San Fran in October. Is it still as bad as people say it is and my apologies to put your place of living down but like I see I see stuff on Twitter all the time about homeless people running rampant. The needles that human feces on the street. I know it’s again, it’s San Fran to San Fran for a reason. It’s one the most beautiful cities on the planet. Incredible people but is it turning into this sort of almost shithole kind of thing.

Jack O’Holleran 
It had a wave where Are things were really bad here and one of the worst things, he was just so many people, and especially like so many tech people, they’re just because the city has this growth issue. So you can only build certain buildings of a certain height, you can only design certain buildings to house certain amount of people. And so if you have a fixed supply, it’s kind of like a blockchain if you like, it’s like a theory, I’m like, Well, there’s only a certain amount of supply, but there’s so much demand, you’re gonna pay a lot. And so what happened was, is like, there’s just like, not enough places to live there, you’re paying like double the price for this little place. And, then Uber and Lyft are subsidized. There’s so many people that they needed drivers, right. So they just were subsidizing drivers just to be driving around. So it’s just constant traffic, and half the traffic were just empty cars waiting to pick people up. And it was a so there’s this like, kind of like, just friction, and people weren’t happy to spend energy and then there’s a release valve, all these people just left and went to Austin and Miami and New York, and, you know, and country towns and, you know, mountain towns and beach towns, and all of a sudden, like the vibe got a lot better. And so got better number one. And then number two, you know, recently, I think there’s been a dramatic shift and just kind of the approach to you know, I don’t want to say like law and order and crime, but it’s, you know, what was happening before wasn’t working. And there’s been a change and a change in leadership. And, so hey, if you go into the tenderloin, yeah, you’re gonna see some crazy shit.

Matt Zahab 
It’s the same city though. 

Jack O’Holleran 
It’s, uh, you know, there’s but there’s, there’s unbelievable parts of this place. It’s still has its magic. And, I mean, I’m long on San Francisco. And it was nice to see that there were some, you know, just actions taken to say, hey, like, Let’s protect people and clean the place up. And you know, there’s a homeless problem, but it’s not an easy one to solve. You know, it’s a complex problem, but it’s improving, please come visit. Come visit, we’ll grab some beers. We’ll go. You know, we could go to the tenderloin if you want. There’s a killer there. It’s a good spot. But we also have other places and you’ll feel a lot like cleaner and safer.

Matt Zahab 
100% No, Toronto, a lot of people are saying Toronto is turning into San Fran as well. So we’re sort of seeing it firsthand. And it’s interesting. It’s, it’s quite the change to see it happens quite rapidly as well. Yeah. 

Jack O’Holleran 
The thing in California now is that like LA, out San Francisco, San Francisco, San Francisco really quickly in terms of their like, yeah, like, the pics. Yeah. So it’s, you know how crazy things happening here in the world. Right? 

Matt Zahab 
That’s again, that’s Cali for you though, right? It’s if you want to live in one of the sweetest countries, not countries but you know, suite of states and geographical areas and the whole planet like you got to you got to put up with some shit no pun intended. Will I’m sure the weather’s what I don’t eat. I’m not a good Fahrenheit guy. But I’m sure the weather’s 20 something degrees for you. It’s for me, it’s 10 degrees today and freezing and raining. It’s just like, it’s way different. You know?

Jack O’Holleran 
Yeah. And, you know, it’s interesting to just seeing the politics change and shift and nice for you, like I’m, you know, very centrist. And just trying to think logically, I’m not a member of either party. And, and just so like observing this, it’s like this, this, there’s definitely like a pendulum shift happening where people are, I would say, just kind of getting back more towards like, the middle in terms of being logical instead of being whilst emotionally driven towards outcomes. And, and so I think whenever that, like, sometimes those shifts are good, the swings are good, because they help correct bad things and on either side, and then, you know, but the middle seems like where a lot of people are, you know, there’s logic.

Matt Zahab 
100% And that’s, yeah, that’s, that’s another very interesting thing as a Canadian, seeing your guys politics, where it’s like, it’s so polarizing, you know, and I feel like it’s just, and we’re so infatuated by your politics. Like you guys, when it’s when it’s campaign season like your news. It’s that’s the first thing on our radar. It’s not what happened in Canada. It’s what happened with Biden, what happened with Trump? What happened with the politics show? I’ll never rent it’s like the two the two biggest things that are on our news all the time. It’s literally like American politics, and football or the NBA. And what are those guys? Do? They just they’re masters at locker room talk. There’s a reason why they’ve trumped the hockey and baseball because they don’t baseball and hockey does don’t have those crazy big trades and those moments off the corridor off the field. It’s just they’ve created incredible reality TV shows and are infatuated by that is buzzing on that topic for a little more. And I love asking guests this one. Do you think we’ll see a crypto or blockchain related series or movie or anything like that? Because I feel like we’re right for it. I feel like there’s an appetite for that.

Jack O’Holleran 
Yeah. And I think the other interesting thing is I’ve been spending a lot of time in LA because there’s so much there’s this big NFT movement happening and I’ve been so surprised at how well versed the Uh, you know, the senior people are in media and entertainment, in terms of how blockchain works. So I think it’s got to start when they want to use it, leverage it for their own, you know, resources in terms of like funding content, creating content, managing what gets built and taking power back from the streaming entities. But then in AI as a byproduct of that, you think there’d be some, like, really good content as well. So I think it’s coming. You know, it’s like, who’s going to play Vitalik? That’s, that’s my question.

Matt Zahab 
100%, that’s him in his, in his, in his hog in his pants after we saw that picture that went viral on the internet. Do you think, do you think that was strategic? Because again, I these guys are, you know, light, you’re smarter than me? Do you think that that was a strategic play, where in some virtual ETH boardroom, the, you know, the bo D are just the founding members of the ECE team are like, this is great rate before the merger before he’s 2.0 to just maybe take some light off of everything and just let everyone see metallics hog, like lagenda you think that was planned or you think that was just completely laissez faire nonsensical 

Jack O’Holleran  
After now, knowing how, you know, the, the people work in that entity? Definitely not, there’s not that level of strategy. I love to think that they were that clever, but in there, I would say there, it’s almost more like, you know, like, like a nonprofit foundation in terms of the business strategy, in terms of skill sets, compared to like, these big like, a big corporation would like their PR people that go, I’ve got this idea, we’re gonna do this, and they’d like orchestrate these things. And it’s a statement not Ethereum foundation, they’re, they’re kind of like, you know, they like, you know, humble doers. And supporters of this big thing then, and just kind of think riding the wave of the columns as it happens.

Matt Zahab 
A good point, and you would know better than most you work with them. Very, very closely. Nice little segue, into ETH, we’ll touch on ETH before we even get into SKALE, the ETH merge, it’s been a trending topic over the last month that and then, of course, the whole sort of macro landscape of just the global economy and crypto as a whole. But what are the some of the implications and limitations of the ETH Merge? As a consumer? What do we have to look forward to? 

Jack O’Holleran 
Yeah, so So what I think the main value that we all got from this is Ethereum now is dramatically more eco-friendly. Okay? It’s just a much more eco-friendly product. We’re not burning insane amounts of energy, you know, running proof of work algorithm algorithms, right? Proof of proof of work consensus, we’re using proof of steak, it’s just so much more energy friendly now, it isn’t dramatically faster, or less expensive, but it’s better, the performance is better. I don’t know if anyone has gone and like run transactions run smart contracts, but they’re running faster and less expensive, but not dramatically more. So. Right. And so it’s but that wasn’t the goal, the goal is for this for the merge was to, you know, build the structure that then is more pluggable into Ethereum scaling platforms, like SKALE, for example, or different e scaling solutions, there’s the goal to is to not just have one, but many that are, you know, successful conduits to help Ethereum provide value into different applications and bring scale to Ethereum. 

Matt Zahab 
And yeah, it’s crazy how your name, SKALE and scale it just like it rolls off the tongue so smooth, you know? On the eco-friendly side, though, and again, I’ve heard this many times and full disclosure, I haven’t done my DD I should have I have no reason not to be too busy, too lazy, whatever, insert whatever adjective I want to throw in there, but can you explain how exactly it’s more eco-friendly? Because I know a lot of them listeners would actually love sort of the nitty gritty explanation. 

Jack O’Holleran 
Yeah, let’s. I’ll try to I’m gonna give a Yeah, I can describe this. So the way blockchains work is there’s a certain amount of people or entities that run these, essentially computers, and what they do, is, they all have to, like, you know, say something is, you know, is what it is. And so let’s say there’s like 10 people that were doing this in a group and, and, you know, they everyone had to say that, like, you know, something is green or red and, and the things green, but then all of them have to be like, Okay, it’s green. But then let’s say like, you know, like, a bunch of clue to say, hey, let’s just say it’s red. Because if it’s red, these other people gonna be wrong and we get to take their money. Well, so that’s the way consensus works are all kind of voting on something or like saying something is what it is. And then the majority is right. And so this thing comes up, it’s green, but then like, like six of the 10 collude to say, hey, let’s all just lie together. And they say it’s red. Well, guess what? It’s red, because the truth is what the majority says, not what reality is. And so that’s called, that’s consensus. It’s this. It’s a way of voting and, you know, coming to a mutual, like a group agreement. Now, the way that blockchains work is, there’s two main ways to do that. One is, is proof of work. The other is proof of stake. And the thing with proof of work is, what you’re trying to do is, in order for those people who are gonna say, as green or it’s red, the reality is they’re saying lots of complex things like, you know, you have this many ETH, and this person has this many ETH. And this smart can contract did this and this, like, there’s a lot of complex logic, but I’m making it as simple as possible. It’s two colors, and but how do you motivate the people to not lie? When it’s green, you want them to say it’s green? Well, so use carrots and sticks, the carrot is a reward. And it’s like a block reward. Right? And, and there’s rewards given out in both proof of stake and proof of work. But the sticks different in proof of stake, it’s kind of like, let’s say you rent an apartment, and you have to put a deposit down on the apartment. And if you trashed the apartment, while the landlord takes your deposit, right, that’s kind of you have a stake on your apartment. And as a validator, somebody who runs a computer and proof of stake you putting money down, that’s your deposit. And if you’re a bad guy, and you say, it’s red, and it was actually green, well, if you lose, you lose that deposit. Gotcha. Now, proof of work is you put energy on the line each time each time you’re running all this energy. And if you’re wrong, and you have to accumulate enough energy amongst your pack, to be trying to beat the other guys, if you’re wrong, you just lost like millions of dollars worth of energy to try to beat the other group. And so you need to have the energy costs have to be higher and higher than the like, you know, there has to be this thing. And then the reward has to be a certain. So it just motivates people to do the right thing. And so it’s just very logical, instead of making people burn all this energy constantly, you just make them put something down once and if they’re a baddie, they lose it. If they’re. 

Matt Zahab 
Baddy, I love it. That was a great analogy. Thank you for that. Yeah, it’s the days of low gas wars, and I’m sure they will still happen. But absurd, absurd gas wars those days will be I don’t want to say not missed, because they created some great PR. And I remember just, you know, tweets and stories in the industry. Oh, I lost 10k on trying to invent an NFT name and get it. It’s just, I feel like we’ll look back at this and time years down the road, when ETH is still the behemoth that it is. And I feel like we’ll just laugh at this. You know what I mean? Like, and it’s also very unique, because there’s what been less than 100,000 people who’ve actually got to join this parade got to take part in this parade. You know what I mean? Like, when we talk about this years down the road, most people won’t even know about it. 

Jack O’Holleran 
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, not many people have actually like executed a smart contract on the Ethereum main net. And meaning, like you’ve like mentioned an NFT, you’ve executed a smart contract. And, and but this other thing to those gas wars will still exist, you still pay gas. And there’s still only a finite amount. It’s just that the penalties are different. And the mechanisms different off for the computers, when they come to agreement, the users it feels and looks and acts very similar. Right? And you still that’s why SKALE exists, right? Because Ethereum only has a certain amount of supply. It’s like, let’s say it’s a rideshare platform, or like Uber or Lyft. And there’s only 100 cars. Well, in Ethereum, even though it’s proof of stake, let’s say like, now, all of a sudden, not 200 people on a ride, well, they can’t make new cars, there’s only 100 cars, and so the price is gonna go up and go up in their surge pricing without any sort of easement on the that will help grow the supply element. And so they still have that issue, whereas SKALE has this supply demand model where there’s all this, like all of these cars, and if you know there’s more cars needed more chains can be created. And it just helps there continually be more supply that can balance the load, you know, with the load. And you know, it’s blockchains and rideshare platforms are so similar and, you know, you either if you don’t have search pricing, which a lot of chains like keep their gas prices really low, then you might have like a minute or two minutes or you know, an hour long or what day long transaction because you didn’t put in have gasoline? Because they’re like, well, let’s keep the gas prices low, it’d be like, well, I ordered an Uber, they’re like, well, there’s no surge pricing, I’m sorry, sir, just wait till you’re wait till you’re up in the queue. And then you’ll get the right and you’re like, but I needed to right now, not in four hours. And, like, I will go to the platform that lets me pay more to get the ride when I need it. And that’s. 

Matt Zahab 
That point you just brought up is the thing I remember more than anything else on our previous pod a year ago, and I remember telling friends and, you know, perhaps the odd family member, but just when I was asked, so you know, then you get points from Jack on the pod. And I gave that exact analogy I’ve recited that dozens of times, probably not giving you as much credit as I should. But that really, that really stuck with me. 

Jack O’Holleran
Good analogy, keep using it, keep going with it. 

Matt Zahab
It’s just when you’re when you’re describing a very complex topic, it doesn’t even have to be blockchain related just in life like that people want something that they can be familiar with, you know, they want to familiarize that subject with something that is just first nature to them. It’s just, you know, a walk in the park. Everyone takes Ubers I can’t remember the last time I took a cab anywhere. I Uber everywhere. And it just it makes so much sense. So when he told me that my brains just like, holy shit, this, I get this. 

Jack O’Holleran 
Yeah. There’s a lot of blockchain is very, you know, can be brought back to normal real world analogies. And when you do that, more people can understand it. And instead of like, I think that’s one of the issues, we have all these scientists in the space who know a lot. And then there’s just like, lack of, there’s lot of people are interested, but we need to are getting more of the information to people in ways that are more accessible. Because if you just are talking about technical terms, it’s just unless you have that base nomenclature, you don’t, you’re not going to know what the hell people are saying. 

Matt Zahab 
And like, so many people in the space that are so smart, I have a lot of guests come on to and they’re just stuff that they’re talking about. And I’m just like, well, you know, and I’m not going to pretend like I fully grasp and I’m fully cognizant of what’s going on. So kudos absolutely love that analogy. Some huge SKALE news. I think a couple of different things will happen here. A lot of different things. First and foremost, I believe the rebrand smaller. That was one. 

Jack O’Holleran 
Like I would say, it’s like a brand update. So if you go to the website, the new websites up, there’s just, you know, there’s been a like, you know, an amazing job by a lot of people that came together to help, you know, SKALE is this, you know, it’s like scale verse. It’s a universal blockchains. And so there’s this whole outerspace theme and so check it out SKALE, dot space, new website. 

Matt Zahab 
The websites, it feels a lot more. Before it was very corporate, I found, and whereas now it’s more welcoming and gamey. It’s almost GameFi-ish, you know? 

Jack O’Holleran 
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, gaming is, that’s another big thing. Gaming is just booming, on SKALE right now. And so if you look at a look at the usage data, of SKALE. SKALE, has more transactions and users and a lot of like, you know, top 20 Like market cap coins blockchains. It’s just during the down market. I think there’s just not massive awareness about what’s happening. We’re just, we’re executing, we’re helping as many developers as possible, helping as many applications as possible. And yeah, man, we’ve been on a hockey stick growth. There’s been, I think, 7.9 million transactions. And almost entirely since July. So in June, we had 60. You know, the whole network upgraded and switched to v2, there were 63,000 transactions in June as the upgrade took place. 1.1 million in July 2.6 million in August, there’s already been 3.5 million this month. We’re hoping to hit 4 million this month. So yeah, man, we’re having fun. We’re and there’s already been, I think, 50,000 total active users that have used SKALE, which has been amazing to see. So the good stuff. 

Matt Zahab 
There was never a doubt in my mind that you guys would keep buzzing from the GameFi perspective here. Tons of developments in ecosystem and tons of trends with decentralized gaming, specifically towards SKALE. If I want to use SKALE network, and SKALE ecosystem, what sort of value props do I get as a builder or creator of set game? Like, why should I choose SKALE over MATIC? Or, you know, no one really built on ETH but you know, or immutable flow. Why? Why SKALE? 

Jack O’Holleran 
Yeah, so the thing with SKALE, there’s zero gas fees for the end users, okay? That’s the number one thing I mean, it has instant finality. It’s faster has all this mathematically provable consensus that uses like, incredibly secure bridging. sort of BLS threshold signatures with the end of the day, end users don’t have to pay any fees. And because the fees are subsidized by the chain renter, like the games basically pay a fee every year in SKALE tokens as opposed to the other way around. 

Matt Zahab 
Gotcha. Interesting. So the games pay the fee, every single year, or monthly, whatever the case may be monthly, yeah, instead of the instant transaction fee every single time. 

Jack O’Holleran 
And it’s just whenever you’re paying for things in advance, it’s dramatically less expensive. Number one, number two, number two, it’s like, it’s kind of like renting a car. So if somebody rents a car, and you have to pay by the mile or so other products work on SKALE, you pay by the month, and you might drive the car, not at all, it might sit in your garage the whole time, or you might be driving it constantly, right? But you just pay the same fee. But a car, you know, there’s only a certain amount, you know, there’s only a certain amount you can drive it anyways, right. And so just like SKALE, you can’t like have this unlimited capacity, because it’s just it has certain constraints, but you can use it as much as possible up to, you know, as fast as it will go, can only go 100 miles an hour, but you can drive 100 miles an hour as much as you want. You rented the car. 

Matt Zahab
Interesting. And you guys also just announced the NFT visionaries Grant Program, which is an allocation of 10 million SKL. And that’s from the previously announced 100 mil USD value, which is part of the SKALE ecosystem incentive program. That’s a lot of fucking money, pardon my French, because you guys are really, you guys aren’t screwing around, you’re throwing it out there and saying, come build on our ecosystem, and we’re gonna make it worth your while. 

Jack O’Holleran 
Yeah, we are, well, this is community money. It’s being treasured by the Foundation. And then there’s a grant issuance process, and people apply. And a lot of people involved in determining where you know, where those where those tokens go, but it’s all about helping, you know, people are building on SKALE, we want to make sure they’re successful. Okay. And, and getting tokens to help their growth and their success is, makes a ton of sense. As far as growing the ecosystem. 

Matt Zahab 
Good point there. 

Jack O’Holleran 
If you’re, if you’re a creator, if you’re an artist, if you’re have an NFT project, if you’re thinking, you know, like, come to the SKALE website, you can, you can find the link pretty easily to this. You know, in the blog, or other areas, there should be a button on the website, you can find and, you know, apply, we’re here to also help. You know, we’ve got this whole gaming category, we’ve got this whole NFT, artists, creators, everything happening with NFTs. And we also have this whole web3 application, side. And those are the three you know the thing, the theme of all of these is lots of transactions, super high volume of transactions, where you need low-cost transactions. If you have a bunch of transactions, and you you’re trading 100 grand and you don’t care if you have $100 fee, but if you want to swap $10 of USTC and $10 for the gaming token, why would you ever do that if you have to, you know, pay a $5 gas fee. He just wouldn’t 

Matt Zahab
Yeah, It’s nonsensical and so.

Jack O’Holleran
Scale doesn’t price out normal users and it lets normal types of transactions exist on chain where it’s you know, not feasible and other chains. 

Matt Zahab 
Jack you bang on there we got to take quick break and give a massive shout out to respond to the show and that is PrimeXBT you guys know I’ve been using PrimeXBT for a hot minute now is they offer a robust trading system for both beginners and professional traders doesn’t matter if you’re a rookie or a vet you can easily design and customize your layouts and widgets to best fit your trading style. PrimeXBT is also running an exclusive promo for listeners of the Cryptonews pod. Promo code is CRYPTONEWS50 and that gets you 50% of your deposit credited to your trading account. Again, that is CRYPTONEWS50. CRYPTONEWS50 all one word to receive 50% of your deposit credited to your trading account. Now back to the show with Jack. Jack, gaming. GameFi. Web3 gaming last time we spoke it was almost a sure shot that 2022 would be the year that onboards the masses via Web3 gaming it’s been the exact opposite of that obviously GameFi is doing great on SKALE and a couple other blockchains a couple other ecosystems that as a whole it’s really falling off a cliff and the main issue is still way too much friction and sort of the main ethos the whole play-to-earn is really just hogwash. It’s you shouldn’t be playing a game to earn you should be playing to have fun and if you earn on the side, lovely you had a nice little nice little level up here. Nice little bit of coinage here and there but some of the main ethos how far down the road are we from seeing a bunch of really a games pop off how far down the road are we to see web3 gaming actually becoming a thing and seeing that hockey stick growth because certainly it hasn’t been this year and a lot of us ROP. 

Jack O’Holleran 
Yeah. So I think one piece of that is so the way you could look at it, there’s just like, you know, this x and this y axis, and the x axis is like, you know, gameplay. And, and there’s like basic gameplay and advanced gameplay and what that means is like, How fun is that? How engaging is it? How many? How are these viral loops integrated? How hooked Are you getting on the game itself, and there’s a whole science of that, okay. And most blockchain games are like really far on the on the left side of that where they like have really shitty gameplay. Boring, people are just clicking these buttons so they get totally true. And, and then the y axis is like understanding of, you know how to leverage cryptocurrency smart contracts and NFTs. It’s this whole blockchain skill set. And, you know, at the bottom of that, the low end of that are like traditional games that have no fucking clue how to like, even what this stuff is how it works at the top are like the blockchain, like the GameFis, there’s just dispersion on each opposite end, where the game people the blockchain people have kind of shitty games. And incredible understanding, though, of like, you know, the dopamine around the, you know, like earning tokens and like getting NFTs and like speculators are buying in the other side, they are really good at the game mechanics, but they don’t understand the other piece. Now. One, there’s going to be games, they’re they’re sort of coalescing towards the middle, or like in like, you know, the center, but eventually we’re going to be up into the right where we have these phenomenal games that know how to introduce NFTs they know how to introduced you know, the GameFi they know how to, like, introduce tokens and play to earn mechanics because play to earn mechanics aren’t bad. There’s play to earn mechanics in every game, but the reality is that you’re earning digital currencies that help you just within game asset purchase in game purchases, not extrinsic purchases, and so and so. So one, I think it’s going to still be like, I think we’re two or three years until, like, there’s just like, up into the right full on like immersive gaming experience. But what’s happening is the blockchain people are getting smarter at the game stuff, and they’re kind of going from up into the middle. And the gaming, people who are all the way down on the right are going to be up a little bit and still to the right, so they’re going to both come to the average. And they’re going to be able to start integrating some basics of the other skill sets. And you’re going to just start getting better blockchain games, but they’re still blockchain games, not triple A games. And you’re gonna be getting, you know, get triple A games that introduce like NFT components and, and some like, you know, currency components, but they’re going to be still kind of like obfuscated from the user. And like, very, like, you know, omnibus custodial model where there’s like, one wallet holding all of these tokens and their systems basically, like, pretending to be a ledger, you know, and but still, like, they’re going to be adopting some of these things that people really like that are powerful. And I think I’m seeing that already happen. And so my feeling is, next year is going to be a huge, another huge growth curve, but gaming is leading the wave, and will bring in the next million, or like 10 million users easily, we’re gonna have, you’re gonna say, Hey, where’s the next 10 million users coming the fastest internet for blockchain? It’s gaming. And the second one is web3 applications. 

Matt Zahab 
And it’s true, it’s, it’s just, it takes a long time to build a good freaking game too. And you can’t be a shitty mobile game that just sort of got lucky. And that does happen a lot where a very low bandwidth game gets put into the App Store, Google Play, and it pops off with the amount of incredible triple A games on both mobile and desktop and console, you need to develop something beautiful. And again, most of this money came in end of 2020 or last year. So it takes more than a couple of years to build an absolute incredible game. And I’m excited for that. 

Jack O’Holleran 
We got some friends in San Francisco that do that do gaming they do mobile gaming, they know this world and for them it’s like in first minute the users not playing and hooked and doing something fun the games dead. Yeah, they’re toasting blockchain. It sometimes can take 20 minutes to just figure out how to get in and like get authenticated. Get Metamask going really good point. Oh, start playing and then like, you know, and so you know, just by that like, it’s like already 20x worse in terms of onboarding so. 

Matt Zahab 
It’s gonna be a web3 game that looks and plays like a web two game, right? It needs to have the technology it had needs have web three tech, but interface UI UX flows, everything needs to feel play Ginger’s be Web2-ish, right? Where the in-game assets that you have are actually NFTs. But you don’t even really know that. That’s what it has to be otherwise, like perfectly how is he gonna take away all that friction? You just it’s not there. It’s interesting because again, I’m, you know, I’m not going anywhere you and I are still building in the in the bear market. But it’s it’d be it’d be interesting to see which game do you do you have a hot take on this which game you think will start the braid? 

Jack O’Holleran 
We I mean, obviously some awesome games on SKALE come together. So delta table which is part of crypto Colosseum, check that out. It’s a very basic game as a start just a mini game, but they’re launching this whole series of games and they just have this, like amazing narrative and immersive story and NFT assets. Crypto blades is just crushing it on SKALE. There’s just so many users are tons of transactions like there’s like hundreds of 1000s of NFTs that have been moved over. Block brawlers is a pretty early-stage game and there but there’s just like an addicted set of people playing Metaverse, Invaders is going live this month really, you know very soon on SKALE. And there’s you know, a lot of games a lot of games crypto crusades is another cool game that’s going to be going live on scale that you can play the play the beta right now, that’s a game there’s no it’s actually on SKALE on a test scale chain. And you can download it on the Apple App Store and play this game and it’s like feels like a web2 game fully crazy.

Matt Zahab 
No non-SKALE?

Jack O’Holleran 
The other big one that’s on I think it’s a top five on Polygon that’s moving over to SKALE. 

Matt Zahab 
Any non-SKALE ones you think that could really pop off? Or be that bridge? 

Jack O’Holleran 
You know what, so what I would say is there’s some that we’re talking to right now that aren’t live yet that are pretty cool in that and you know, hopefully they in a building on SKALE, but regardless, I think they’re gonna I’m not gonna say their names but what they’re doing is they’re integrating like with real world sports and real world NFTs and then introducing all this gameplay and like pulling in these fans and you know, things like that I think are interesting because they’re but you know that there’s no like Legend of Zelda yet. There’s not like something that’s like just this immaculate gameplay and it has NFTs and the big pieces that it’s almost like there’s this religious battle because gaming purists hate blockchain to a play. 

Matt Zahab 
They do. I don’t really understand why though to be honest, because like, you think like even I think the FIFA example. Every year you get FIFA you get the new FIFA you keep playing with it. You keep buying new players for fought FIFA Ultimate Team, whatever Madden NHL, that’s the same for every sports game. Same with Fortnite or COD, you don’t get to bring those in game assets to the next one. So as a gamer, if all these triple A studios use the blockchain, you’re saving hundreds of dollars a year because you’re going to be able to bring those in game assets. And then you’ll have access to a peer to peer marketplace. Do you know why they shit on it? Is it just like the scared of something new? 

Jack O’Holleran 
They are making so much money now they’re thinking, well, we look all the money, and all this value people are putting in to buy these things in FIFA. But if all of a sudden the marketplace is free, and they could sell the ball they just bought or like the asset and the leave, and then they’re gonna go over and play like this other thing, they’re gonna leave, they can leave us easier. They feel like they’re losing their. 

Matt Zahab 
Jack, I get that I’m talking on the consumer side. Like we’re again, like they I don’t get it though. Why did they know like it? 

Jack O’Holleran 
Yeah, I know. It’s like they’re getting screwed over. Right? 

Matt Zahab 
Is there a reason though? Am I to lunch here? 

Jack O’Holleran
You know what it is, is I think a lot of the game purists are in the games, because they love them, and they love gaming. And then blockchain games like these aren’t fun to play. You know, we like things that are fun. And these are scammy things. And so but I think it’s also like rhetoric, like they’re all part of these games are very community oriented. And the people that run the communities are the games themselves. And they do them through like, you know, they’re very strategic and how they work with their Twitch influencers. And they’re like, sounds like these religions. And so when the high priest is saying, don’t do that, that’s bad, then the followers are like, Yeah, don’t do that. That’s bad. Right. And so, in a way they’re being I think they’re being manipulated, unknowingly, against their best interests. 

Matt Zahab
Interesting. 

Jack O’Holleran
Because these things aren’t mutually exclusive, right? No, I don’t mean to try and like hey, the other my other theory on this is So imagine you’ve spent your whole career building up like this whole recipe of how to do things and how to motivate people and you’re the person that figured out how to get all these people hooked in the game and you know, loving all this stuff and, and like getting all these like psych like these deep psychology things. About like dopamine hits and viral loops and all these things that go into gamification, then all of a sudden, someone comes up with a shitty game. And they just have a currency and it basically makes your whole library of science that you’ve developed for the last 20 years of your career. Like partially useless. 

Matt Zahab 
Cheese me 100% 

Jack O’Holleran 
Yeah, and I think they’re like, Well, hold on there, this is the right way to do we’ve been doing forever, like, these games, don’t do any of that. But these people are hooked. It’s just because you’re paying them and there’s a current and so they, they don’t like you know, people who are experts in a prior version of the world don’t like change and instead of embracing and saying, Well hey, how can I apply my knowledge and integrate this new thing and come up with something even better and more awesome they fight it because they’re the experts and they don’t want you know, their doctrine of knowledge to be outdated. 

Matt Zahab 
You nailed that on the head there that would suck that’s a lot a lot of hard work that’s not going to waste but you never liked to see the show and you know and that’s the blockchain is going to end a lot shows. Jack this has been a treat and now we’re getting hold tight for time here let’s jump into the hot take factory we had a blast in there last time to do it again. Any Jack-only hot takes can be life politics, health, wealth, happiness, nutrition, you name it, preferably not crypto, just to you know to see the personal side of you any crazy hot takes that Jack has? 

Jack O’Holleran 
Crazy hot takes. Okay. Quit eating breakfast, just drink coffee. 

Matt Zahab
I love that. 

Jack O’Holleran
We talked about that earlier. Right? 

Matt Zahab 
Jack for the listeners at home Jack and I we bonded over that before the show. We’re both intermittent fasters. If you haven’t done it, I highly recommend giving it a chance. It takes about two weeks to get your stomach to shut the hell up and not feel the need to tell your brain that it’s hungry anymore. But once you do, it’s literally life changing. Like I it’s crazy. It’s how much better doesn’t make you feel. 

Jack O’Holleran 
Here’s another one. Do something uncomfortable every day.

Matt Zahab 
That. Yes, that’s very synonymous with Paul Graham’s sort of do things that don’t scale. That’s when you put your Yeah, that’s a good one. What’s the last uncomfortable thing you did?

Jack O’Holleran 
Last uncomfortable thing I did yesterday. I mean, so I quit. I basically quit going. I quit lifting weights during COVID. And I was just doing all like non weightlifting activities. And I used to be a college football player. And then yesterday, I just went back to the gym and I like crushed a bunch of weights and pull ups and, and I was like, I’ve been avoiding doing that because I just haven’t been doing that at all since pre COVID. And anyways, you know, that’s a good example of like, okay, like, you don’t want to do it. And you just make yourself do it. 

Matt Zahab 
Tell us where do you play college ball?

Jack O’Holleran 
Nebraska.

Matt Zahab 
Let me guess tight end?

Jack O’Holleran 
No I was a slot receiver.

Matt Zahab 
Slot. Wow. Because yeah, you look like you’re a bit of a unit. Like in a good way like you got. You got the quickness to you. But what was your favorite route?

Jack O’Holleran
Ah, probably the slat route. 

Matt Zahab
Slot receivers you guys are ballsy bastards, though going across the middle you get your head popped off all the time. Like, you get paid doing it, man. Oh, man, it’s Did you ever get absolutely just clocked? 

Jack O’Holleran 
Yeah, yeah, you do. But you get a clock people too. So it all kind of goes around as long as you like, you know, get a hit somebody once in a while you get him once in a while. It’ll make sense. It doesn’t hurt if you catch the ball too soon you drop it, you get clocked and it feels worse. 

Matt Zahab 
But what was that like playing uni football at a college football at University of Nebraska. You must have been like that. I have goosebumps just thinking about it. And I didn’t even play college ball. What was that? Like?

Jack O’Holleran 
Oh, I mean, it was crazy. I mean, you’re out there on a field and you’ve got 100 You look around, you’ve got 100,000 people watching you. And you’re on TV and there’s millions of people watching it’s pretty it’s pretty crazy. You know and then when your The game starts you just locked in, you don’t even it’s like you’re in practice, like you don’t, you know see it but it’s also just an immense like workload. You’re just good training for my career, because you’re just going nonstop, you know, morning to night school, weightlifting, training plays it’s, it’s it’s Crypto’s nonstop. Yes. 24/7 Global.

Matt Zahab 
It builds discipline. One last question for you here, Jack. And thank you very much for your time. The I’m a big sports fan myself, you and I bonded about this on our first kick at the can on the pod about a year ago. What is that feeling? Like after you hang up the cleats? Right? Because you had the adrenaline that only less than 1% of the population has ever felt and you have 100,000 fans screaming and watching the play. And then once you’ve joined the professional world, that’s gone. It’s taken from you. Did you have a crazy transition? You know, I know it’s more difficult for actual for pros because they do it for a prolonged period of time. It’s more synonymous with their life. It’s all they know really. But did you have any of those sort of, you know, dark moments or times when you’re like, Wow, this shit is no longer growing on trees. In fact, it’s gone. I don’t mean to be negative. 

Jack O’Holleran 
But to reinvent yourself. It’s like an Everybody, you know, you see people, some people that happened to them in high school and they’re like, still glory days, like, you know, talking about their high school football, you know, you know, and they like, don’t ever move on. And a lot, I saw it with a lot of my teammates in college, like, you know, it’s like a can be a peak moment of your life. And if you’d like, let it be the peak moment in the peak gold and like, you’re kind of stuck there forever. And these guys are always hanging around hanging out of the stadium and like, just trying to, like live off that forever. And it’s, it’s great to still always be a part of it, but you have to. And so for me, I just had to, like reinvent my note my Northstar. And I remember I was at a certain point, I was like, You know what, like, I had such a goal to be in the NFL. That was my number one goal. And I realized that one day, I was like, had to be really honest with myself and was really hard. And I had to say, You know what, I’m not going to make it to the NFL. And I also had, like, you know, really good grades, because I knew that even if I wasn’t the NFL I needed to have, I wanted to have a good job and, but I just was like, alright, like, now my next goal and my next goal, and I ended up making like moving to Silicon Valley, I don’t want to, you know, like, start working in tech. And I want to, you know, be a CEO of a company someday and, you know, run a company and I didn’t, I didn’t know if I’d start a company that kind of happened as I came out here. And I learned how things work. But I just reset my goals. I had to reinvent myself and my first job. I went from being like famous in Nebraska where I like sign autographs for people at dinner. Like going to dinner with my friends and people ask us for autographs to like working in a cubicle and having middle managers like bossing me around. It was like very humbling. And I ate dirt for a while and it was good for me. I was my so whoever you are, yeah, if you’re in one of those things, you’ve got to just like, You got to find the next thing and be willing to like, you know, you know, yeah. 

Matt Zahab
Pivot and reinvent Jack do the man appreciate you coming on always have so much fun. Before you go can you please let our listeners know where they can find you and SKALE online and on socials? 

Jack O’Holleran
Yeah, so go to @jackoholleran on Twitter, you can go to @Skalenetwork scale with a K. You can find links to pretty much everything through the SKALE website which is skale.space. And you know, come join the discord. Come join the telegram. Come join on Twitter. There’s an amazing community called the Skaliens just really engaged people every day chatting amazing developer community so Come Come join in. And Matt, thanks, man. This has been it’s been a blast. been fun. 

Matt Zahab 
Always appreciate you man. Folks. What an episode with Jack O’Holleran from SKALE. Dropping knowledge bombs as always great analogies great stories. Can’t wait for round three with Jack and the SKALE team folks I really hope you enjoyed this episode. The team love you guys Justas my amazing sound editor. You’re the GOAT I appreciate you and to the listeners love you guys more than anything. Keep on growing those bags and keep on staying healthy, wealthy and happy bye for now and we’ll talk soon.