Mathew Sweezey, CSO at Smart Token Labs, on ERC-5169 Dynamic NFTs, Future Proofing, and Smart Cats | Ep. 295

In an exclusive interview with cryptonews.com, Mathew Sweezey, Chief Strategy Officer of Smart Token Labs, talks about ERC-5169 dynamic NFTs, Smart Cats NFT game, and Smart Layer, the technology used for the Smart Cat proof-of-concept.

About Mathew Sweezey

Mathew Sweezey is the Chief Strategy Officer of Smart Token Labs and former Co-Founder of the Salesforce Web3 Studio, where he helped create Salesforce’s first commercial Web3 products and worked with the world’s largest brands on their Web3 strategy. A 2X author, his last book, The Context Marketing Revolution, was published by HBR in 2020.

Mathew Sweezey 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

• Smart Layer, the technology used for the Smart Cat proof-of-concept
• Smart Cats is the first xNFT game on EVM
• xNFTs turn wallets into portals for on-chain, programmable applications
• ERC-5169 dynamic NFTs; executable and future-proof
• Tokens are apps, wallets are browsers

 

Full Transcript Of The Interview

Matt Zahab
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Cryptonews Podcast. We are buzzing as always, still coming in hot from Mexico. And I’m super pumped to have today’s guest on the show coming in hot from Boulder, Deion Nation. We have someone with the best name in the world. We have another Mathew coming on the show. Today we have Mathew Sweezey, the Chief Strategy Officer of Smart Token Labs and former Co-Founder of the Salesforce ever heard of him, Web3 Studio where he helped create Salesforces, first commercial Web3 products and worked with the world’s largest brands on their Web3 strategy. A 2X author, his last book, The Context Marketing Revolution was published by HBR in 2020. I am super pumped for this one. We are going to get into a whole lot of stuff, including the Smart Cat proof of concept. And as a Cool Cat holder, this is going to be an absolute treat. Mathew, welcome to show my friend. How you doing? Pump to have you on.

Mathew Sweezey
Great to be here Matt.

Matt Zahab
Great name, dude. Also, your flow is electric as well. You and I were talking before the show. You have like this crazy combo of tech guy and like surfer dude vibes. What’s that from? You got to walk me through your past. Like, where do you get this vibe from? Where do you get this like level of chillness from?

Mathew Sweezey
I live in Colorado, so take that for what it is. But just always been an outdoor athlete. Since I was a kid, I wanted to be a professional mountain biker when I was like 10 before they had youth racing. And then just always stayed in the outdoors. Was an outdoor guy. Was a backpacking guy for a while and was in college and put in like 220 days a year of outdoor sports. I guess just being outside keeps me happy. And then when I’m not outside, I’m playing on the crypto world.

Matt Zahab
Pretty good life, eh? I love that. Let’s jump right into the Salesforce stuff. That obviously stands out when reading the bio. Everyone knows who Salesforce is. I have a sales background myself. If you have been in sales, you’ve definitely heard of Salesforce, the World’s Best CRM. I don’t even think there’s a close second and just a myriad of products on top of that. Walk me through this whole, boom, what the hell happened there? You, like, did they just hit you up and they’re like, hey, we are launching a Web3 studio. We need someone to run the show here. Walk me through the whole process, how you got on boarded, some of the brands you worked with, some of the products you helped create. This is so cool. I want to hear everything about it.

Mathew Sweezey
Yeah, so originally back in the day was a very early employee of a product called Part-O. We were a marketing automation platform. So I was employee 12, helped grow that company up and created the marketing automation space and then we sold that company off. And then we’re acquired by Salesforce and we became then part of Salesforce’s marketing cloud. During that transition, I focused on what we know as thought leadership. So I owned the future of marketing narrative for Salesforce. So worked on the future program and the FutureLab was a part of the FutureLab. So always focused on Future technology and how technology would change the interaction between brands and consumers. Got introduced to Web3 early on through just regular blockchain, Bitcoin. Didn’t really see how that would change the dynamic between brand and consumer other than just a financial transaction. And then till the NFT craze. And then I started to be able to see a new type of digital experience, a new type of digital primitive that could actually change the dynamics. And that’s what got me interested. So started poking around and then started interacting with the emerging technology team. And then just connected and said, here’s what I want to do. And they said, great, let’s go do that. And then we co-founded the Web3 studio. So then help bring up Web3 products to Salesforce. Talking with some of our biggest customers, they were wanting to do some of these things, right? Companies like Adidas, companies like Sony, companies like Unilever, companies like Starbucks. So started to work with them on what does this mean for them? What tools did they need? And then that we brought out the world’s first Web3 CRM enterprise CRM so that if you sold physical products and digital products, you could keep both those two things together inside the CRM. And that was kind of the first foray for Salesforce into that world.

Matt Zahab
That is sick. What about some of the combos you had with the BOD, the Board of Directors? Like again, you get brought in. I feel like there must have been some people like what the hell are we doing here? Right? Like this is Fugazi. What was that all like?

Mathew Sweezey
There’s a lot of that. The good part is, we had some of the biggest executives, Mark Benioff, as well as the president, Alex Dayum, both on our side. So they were always in conversations with a lot of these brands. And the interesting thing during the NFT craze was every CEO wanted to know what Web3 meant, right? So no one really knew what it meant, but everyone wanted to know what it meant. So it was a hot topic conversation all the way up until ChatGPT came out. So you had this interesting conversation and people just trying to figure out what this means for their world and their future. Not to mention it dominated the news cycle. So there’s a lot of conversations. Not everyone knew what it meant, but we were just gonna go try to figure it out, see what it meant.

Matt Zahab
When you’re speaking with these brands, walk me through some of the conversations, when you’re getting on with Starbucks or Adidas or McDonald’s or some of these Fortune 500, very recognizable brands where everyone in the world, but not everyone, 95% of people in the world, see their logo and have some sort of affinity to it, have used their products, consume their products one time or another, how would you speak to them? What kind of utility would you throw their way and be like, hey, this is the power of Web3, this is the power of NFT, this is how we can amplify and bring your brand to the next level? What did those combos sound like?

Mathew Sweezey
Yeah, that’s a really good question. Most of the time the conversations were led by their desire to have better experiences and deeper connection. You started to hear terms such as single casting, which is the concept that I brand. For me to engage with my customers, there’s usually intermediaries in between. I’m usually having to go through a platform like a Facebook or a TikTok or a Twitter, some type of media channel. And they see this as a direct connection. Talking with one of the world’s largest football clubs, they have this concept of, listen, I’ve got billions of fans around the world and I don’t know who they are. I only have about 2 million email addresses. But if I can put a token in everybody’s hands and directly interact with them through the token, that can create a totally new dynamic for me through that interaction. So you had lots of different ideas, different brands, saw different things. Some brands wanted the concept of technical innovation, such as car companies might want to tokenize the car and say, now, how do we keep up with service records better? How do we keep up with assets and ownership better? You had luxury brands such as Gucci wanting to be able to do, see Web3 as in a way that they can do proof. So how can I verify that this is a Gucci bag? And so they can start to use Web3 technology for verification. You also then had the concept of exclusivity, really kind of played in heavy with a lot of luxury brands. They really saw this as digital ownership. You then got into a wide array and then you get into the concept of future-proofing. And every brand believes that Gen Z and Gen Alpha are really game native. And they’re native to these worlds that are digital ownership worlds. So if I go and talk to a niece or a cousin of mine that’s younger and ask them a simple question about how many digital t-shirts do you own in Fortnite? They own 100 and how many t-shirts they have in their physical drawer, they might have 10. And so when you start to then walk down these paths, brands really see these digital worlds and this concept of digital ownership of how they can future-proof, how they can relate and how they then connect to the future audiences, as well as a wide array. And just depending on the industry of what they might have wanted to do with Web3. So it was pretty wide and broad, but really it all came back to innovation.

Matt Zahab
I love the term future-proofing. I’d love to buzz on this for a little bit here. In your definition, and I guess in the actual, theoretical and practical definition of that term, it’s really just making sure that a product or service or entity has a runway for the future. It makes sure that it won’t fade away like, you know, taxis. Well, I mean, taxis aren’t completely gone, but you know what I mean. Or hotel is another bad example, Airbnb. But is that exactly what you’re trying to get at with that term future-proofing?

Mathew Sweezey
Yeah, I mean, future, exactly right. So if you just look at the basic, you know, look at the Fortune 500, right? How many companies stay on the Fortune 500 now for more than a decade? It’s very few, right? So this concept of how do we stay relevant as a company and a business in the future? That’s really what future-proofing means. And so if you look at, you know, if you take the sports team example, future-proofing means if I’m not connecting with kids before they turn 18, the statistic is if the kid is not a fan of your brand, of your sports team before they age of 18, they will not be a lifelong fan. That’s the time that you develop lifelong fandom. So future-proofing means that we need to actually be in 10 years ahead, engaging with people in a very specific way so that in 10 years in the future, we have a lifelong fan base that’s gonna sustain our brand.

Matt Zahab
Very cool. Wow, you sort of got my head spin in there. Huge sports guy myself and I’m trying to think of, yeah, I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever flip flopped any teams since I’ve been 18. All my, you know, for the big four, for my hockey, baseball, football, basketball, it’s the exact same. That’s crazy. Good point there. Never really thought about that. I mean, I do have a couple buddies who are bandwagoners who jump ship at the same time.

Mathew Sweezey
That’s the bandwagoners. They’re just gonna do whatever’s trendy. That’s just all know the demographic.

Matt Zahab
Whatever is hot, I love that. Let’s jump into Smart Layer, which is the tech used for the Smart Cat proof of concept. Before we get into that, give me the TLDR at Smart Token Labs, you are Chief Strategy Officer there. What exactly do you do there? What exactly is Smart Token Labs? And then we’ll get into Smart Layer and Smart Cat proof of concept, which is something that I’m incredibly interested in. But before that, walk me through your Rollish Chief Strategy Officer at Smart Token Labs.

Mathew Sweezey
Yeah, so Smart Token Labs is a team that’s behind ERC-5169 and a technology called Token Script really focused on this idea of token centric architecture. My role as Chief Strategy Officer is I help lead go to market efforts as well as help lead a lot of brand and partnership efforts. Really trying to walk us through, you know, taking this technology to market. It’s really kind of my role as Chief Strategy Officer. And that technology really is kind of focused on this concept of what we call token centric architecture, but the reason I joined and left Salesforce was in the conversations at Salesforce with all the brand leaders. There’s three major problems that kept brands from adopting Web3. Number one was the regulations around tokens. Number two was the UX of Web3. It was very difficult. And number three was the utility. What can you do with these things once you have them? And Smart Token Labs is focused on solving all three of those issues. And so when I saw the technology and I saw what it could do that then allowed us to then say, hey, we can solve those problems. And now we can then start to see a very different future for Web3 with these brands. So that’s my role. That’s what Smart Token Labs does. And we are bringing to market this technology under the moniker of Smart Layer.

Matt Zahab
And Smart Layer is the tech that is powering the first xNFT game on EVM. You guys passed a million transactions in a couple of weeks. That is absolutely bonkers. Walk me through Smart Cat game. What exactly is it? Is it a derivative of Cool Cat? Well, it is. It looks like it, but walk me through the whole process and like elongate this. Like, don’t just give me the TLDR. Give me the good D tier.

Mathew Sweezey
So Smart Layer is all about executable tokens and NFTs. It’s executable tokens and NFTs for EVM. So step one is what is an executable token? An executable token is really this concept of moving tokens and NFTs beyond just being currencies and collectibles to becoming applications. It’s really solving this questions of what can we do with these things beyond just being an asset class? And that’s really when we move from assets to experiences. And that’s what we start to unlock is this is a new digital primitive for new types of experiences for consumers, not just a new asset class. And that’s really kind of what we work on and focus on. Now we brought out Smart Layer back and announced that we’d be doing Smart Layer at about the middle of the year. And then we built a community around it. And that community is now about three and a half million people inside that community who have executable tokens in their hands as a membership pass. And there’s a whole another piece of tech that we can talk about there. So we’ve got this community. What we then wanted to do with this community is give them some type of reward for being in the community. So we have a derivative NFT product. So if you ever minted, if you remember Nifty Taylor with Board Apes and Mutant Apes where you could take your ape and that was our technology, the derivative technology that allowed you to create a derivative of any NFT. So we did that for Nifty Taylor. We used that same technology for ourselves, took one of our Cool Cats and allowed you to then create a derivative of that Cool Cat. We didn’t tell the community anything other than this is just gonna be a derivative mint. They minted out 940 ,000 of those in a few days. And then we released the game very shortly after. The game is based on our technology, which takes any token and allows it to become an executable token or an application or a mini-dap in and of itself. So to showcase this technology, what we did is we made that a game. It’s a very simple Tamagotchi style game where you get your token, you can either play it in a web two environment or you can play it inside of a wallet. Joy ID is the wallet of choice that we currently integrate with. And that allows the token to become a game. Now that’s revolutionary in a couple of ways. Number one, this is the first xNFT on Polygon. Because of this, we were able to then put a massive amount of transactions on chain. It’s the number one game on Polygon right now by transactions. We’ve put over 2 million transactions in the last 30 days on Polygon. It’s one of the top tokens just in the world right now. It’s one of the top collectibles, I believe it’s number 14, based on lots of different metrics. And the community just loves it, they play it. And they’re playing this game. Now the other interesting thing is why do they play the game? Well, they’re playing the game to earn points. So if we start to think about this concept of questing, we start to think about these ideas of engagement. That’s exactly what you can do through the token is you can make the token an experience. And so by playing this game, our community are earning points inside of our community and leveling up, right? So there’s a whole ecosystem and world here, but it’s extremely powerful because we can take this xNFT, put it in anybody’s hands and inside of this wallet, you now play the game inside of the wallet. The token is the game and that’s a very big revolutionary step. For how we start to think about what happens next with tokens and NFTs. This allows us to see that they can move beyond an asset class and actually become applications and experiences in and of themselves.

Matt Zahab
So this is very complex here. So walking through xNFTs. xNFTs are apps and this is driven by ERC-5169. I’d love if you could walk me through the UX, the user experience of actually playing a game within a wallet. Because this is something as someone who messes around with Web3 for hours every single day. This is something that I’ve never messed around with. I don’t think I’ve ever played. In fact, I haven’t played a game within a wallet before. I’d love if you could walk me through the actual process, the user experience. How does this look like? Is this like MetaMask where I have a Chrome extension? I open it up and I can play a game within a tab. Like walking through the whole experience. They’re very intrigued by this.

Mathew Sweezey
So first, Matt, you’re gonna go get a Joy ID wallet when we get off this and you’re gonna send me your wallet address and I’m gonna send you one of these cats and send that at the play with. So you can experience this firsthand. So let’s just kind of step by step. So first off, an xNFT or an executable NFT is gonna be any NFT enabled by ERC-5169, which allows that NFT to then point to an external URI. So it can then carry script beyond what’s inside the smart contract. That then allows, we then have a language called Token Script that we’ve created that then allows you to then program and then have an interface and then have a full application suite behind this token. So that’s kind of what you have. As you have smart contract controlling the ownership aspects and you have the ERC-5169 Token Script controlling the visual front end aspects, the application, whatever it does. So you’ve got a Web3 component and a Web2 component combined together inside of a token. Then inside of that token, you then can open this token into multiple different environments. Any wallet that is enabled to read Token Script can then open this token and then play that token directly. So let me give you a couple of examples. So inside the Smart Cat game, it’s a very simple Tomagachi style game, right? If you remember the Tomagachi is the little key chain games that you feed a cat, keep the cat alive. That’s what you’re doing here, right? So you’ve got multiple actions that you can take per day. You can feed your cat, you can set up play dates with other cats. You can talk to other cats. You have token to token messaging inside of this cat. So you can talk to other cats and organize and collaborate. And it’s a very simple game. So you open the token, you then see all of the buttons, the actions and functions, and you can engage with those functions directly. Some are on chain functions and some are off chain functions. So you’ve got all of that capability in there. But I just wanna give you like an idea of what we’ve also done with xNFTs in this concept of executable NFTs and where this can go. So a few years ago, one of the world’s largest car companies asked us to help them innovate the future of cars. And so what we did is we created an xNFT for them for that car ownership. Now, what that meant was when you got the car, you were given this token. And then when you open that token in your wallet, there’s a button to start the car on the token. There’s a button to rent the car on the token. There’s a button to sell the car on the token because that token is always gonna have that information and it’s gonna always be public facing. It allows an individual to have a very different type of experience. So then when you go to a service station, you simply connect your token. All that information is automatically added to the car record. So you’re not having to then manually keep up with things. So it’s a combination of essentially allowing any functionality that we can imagine to take place directly inside of the wallet and it happened directly on the token itself. So we don’t need to go to another dAPP. We don’t need to download another application. I literally give you the entire experience in a package.

Matt Zahab
Wow. Then this is exactly what we need right now. This is literally account abstraction 101, which is one of the biggest issues with crypto as a whole. We, there’s just so much friction. We live in crypto is literally like the capital city of friction bill. Like we, you know what I mean? Like it’s just, it’s terrible. In your eyes, how can we use this tech? How can we use ERC-5169 in other aspects of utility, in other forms of utility, not just Smart Cat, but in other options. I know you just spoke with the car one as well, but like if you’re, if you’re back at your job at Salesforce or in your current job right now as chief strategy officer and you’re working with Fortune 500 brands, how would you pitch them on the use of ERC-5169 dynamic NFTs, executable NFTs and how it can help their brand with loyalty, future-proofing.

Mathew Sweezey
Yeah, there’s a lot of different applications. So there’s Web3 and Web2, right? So if we go to the Web3 world, let’s just look at gaming really quickly. If you’re familiar with gaming and you may not be, it takes about four years to go from an idea to a game that you can play. It’s a very long time when they announce a game to when they play a game. So what you have the ability to do is a lot of games will create games before games. What you can do with xNFT is you can actually create all of your IP and your assets and launch them as xNFT’s that are all playable. So people can then start to play and engage with the game assets and become invested in the game and the game assets in a very lightweight way. Cause you can create these assets very quickly. You can change them over time. They can become questing. They can have all different types of aspects, but you now have a game before the game to really allow people to invest inside the game, build up assets inside the game well before when the game launches. So we see this as a new dynamic for how we think about engaging communities between those two time frames of I’ve announced my game and when the game is actually going to be launched. So that’s a concept you can use inside of gaming. Let’s just go and look at the example of what happens when McDonald’s has the monopoly game. You can scan the QR code on the back of your cup and that automatically then gives you a token. Then you open that token and then it’s got all of the action that you need to do. So combine a bunch of the things that we’ve done really well in Web3 that the Web2 world hasn’t adopted yet. Questing is one of those. These the ability for us to use humans to drive human actions that drive flywheels. Whether that be take this action on my behalf, do this thing, it’s the next evolution of user generated content. And when you can then put that on a token itself and then that token can then accrue value, you then start to really combine lots of these ideas where now we can say anybody can have one of these tokens, you’ve already bought out, you know, you get your cup, scan the token, now you’ve got the token. If you want to up level that token, here are the actions you take, you do those directly on the token and then that value is transferable or you can hold it, it becomes interoperable. Now you start to think and interoperate with that thing inside the greater world. So there’s lots of different things that we can do here. I think the biggest concept just to keep in mind is every time that we’ve talked to brands, the question always comes back to, there needs to be more than just being an asset or a collectible. There has to be things that this does in experience. We can now literally infuse any experience possible inside of a token. And that’s kind of the big aha, the big unlock, is now that there’s a reason to own these things because they can now do things and we can do things within them. I’m just like the example of a game instead of a game, I love old tokens, you can even take this to DeFi. If I now have a DeFi token and I open that token in my wallet, why should I have to go other places to find out information about that token? Why can’t that automatically happen through the token? Why can’t that be a part of the service of that token? Of here’s all the information about this company. Here’s all the different things that you can do. Like why isn’t it packed with information and an experience of this is where you need to go to vote. This is what you need to do and have all those things right there on the token itself. So that’s when we start to then see assets and experiences combined. And that’s when we see the power and the utility in the future of NFTs.

Matt Zahab
I love that. Mathew, you’ve been on a roll. We got to take a quick break and give a huge shout out to our sponsor, PrimeXBT. And when we get back, we are going to keep buzzing and we are going to jump into token-to-token messaging, which is something that is super friggin cool and I can’t wait to get into. Until then, huge shout out to PrimeXBT, longtime friends of cryptonews.com and longtime sponsors of the Cryptonews Podcast. PrimeXBT offers a robust trading system for both beginners and professional traders. It 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 promotion for listeners of the Cryptonews Podcast. The promo code is CRYPTONEWS50, that’s CRYPTONEWS50. All one word to receive 50% of your deposit credited to your trading account. Again, that is CRYPTONEWS50. All one word to receive 50% of your deposit credited to your trading account. Now back to the show with Mathew. Let’s jump into token-to-token messaging. When I was doing a bit of prep for the show, I was like, this is wild. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this before in crypto. I’m sure there’s another team, there’s hundreds and thousands of incredible teams building incredible things in crypto. Token-to-token messaging using xNFTs, of course, driven by ERC-5169. You can open up direct channels for holders to communicate via tokens rather than wallets, even if the token changes hands. This is bonkers. I’m like, as reading that, I should have done more prep and I should have watched a video or something so I could better understand this. But we have you on the show, so I can ask you now. So I’m throwing the ball over to your court. How the hell does this work? This seems absolutely brilliant and takes away a lot of friction. How did you guys make this happen and give us some other use cases besides just the Smart Cats game here?

Mathew Sweezey
Yeah, sure. So first off, what is it? So token to token messaging allows one token to talk to another token, right? This is gonna then stay with the token, it’s gonna be secure, it’s gonna be private. So if that token transfers, that messaging is not going to then transfer. It’s gonna be tied to the wallet and to the token. So it’s private and secure, right? So it’s not just like, if you have a chat, it just doesn’t transfer the token. Now what this unlocks is this unlocks a lot of really powerful methodologies. If we go back to that concept that big football club has that they want a one to one communication channel with every token holder, they now have that. So every token now has its own communication that it can have that can go from the parent, whoever issues the token to all the token holders. This can also allow token to token. So I can then talk to anybody else that has this token. So we can have our own private back channels inside of the tokens as well. How we’ve used this in the game is as part of the game, you have to set up a play date. So one of the ways that you up level your cat is you find somebody else in the community. You set up a play date and your cats play together. To organize those things, they’re using token to token messaging. To then find tokens, to then engage with each other. And then they built up this network and now it’s a social channel behind the scenes where they can then engage with each other. We just created, cause we thought it would be fun. We thought it’d be amazing that if I issue a token, I can talk directly to all my token issuers directly through that token. And it’s working really well. So we’re extremely excited to see this. We’d love to see other projects that want to kind of try this out. And so yeah, that’s the basics of token to token messaging.

Matt Zahab
I mean, yeah, going back to your football example that you keep bringing up, again, I’m trying to think of which club it might be, but regardless, Cest La Vie, that takes away their need to fire off emails. Because now you have, you know, token to token messaging, and now you have your community. Instead of everyone shit talking each other on Facebook groups or Instagram, you know, comments, or I mean, no one really uses this court except in Web3. But you know what I mean? It’s like, now you have this massive community as well. And going back to your Smart Cat point, when you’re creating a game in present day, unless that game has some social aspect, it’s almost impossible for that game to go viral. Like you need to, that game must also be a town square. And this is just sort of checking off all those boxes, one by one. That’s wild, absolutely wild. Now we are getting a little tight for time here. A couple more questions, and then we’ll wrap up here, Mathew. The, all NFTs will be xNFTs. This is in your guys report that you launched and this is, I love hot takes on the Cryptonews pod. We absolutely love this. You and the team are in the camp that xNFTs are going to power the next bull market. It’s going to drive engagement for existing projects, unlock new creative concepts in gaming, entertainment, loyalty, brand marketing, you name it. How will xNFTs be the catalyst for growth and be the thing that powers the next crypto bull market?

Mathew Sweezey
That’s a great question. We saw that the last bull market was driven by speculation. We’re gonna buy these things, speculative assets. That was the big kind of, actually been the impetus of the last big, two big bull runs, 2017, 2021, was all about financial speculation. We’re now in this world where people expect to see something more. They expect to see utility, they expect to see what else can these things do? They wanna see experiences, they wanna see more than I’ve just gotten membership into a token-gated experience. And that’s what xNFT’s allow, is they allow us to then bake in anything into these NFTs, whether that be it becomes an application, whether that be we can actually then use these things to then be games inside of games. We can then use them to solve existing problems. They allow us to then put different types of information and engagements inside of those NFTs, like we said, token and token messaging. So they allow any community to really go beyond whatever we’ve done before, which was just currencies and collectibles to now really create true Web3 native digital experiences that happen inside of wallets, or they can fire inside of Web2 worlds. And so that’s why we believe that all future NFTs will be xNFT’s just because those, the utility that’s gonna be required. Token gating wasn’t a utility until Board Apes created it. After they created it, you can’t find a single NFT project that doesn’t also have token gating for a Discord channel. That’s the most basic utility we can imagine. If we then start to say that what else can we start to do, this is the palette, this is the tool set that we can then experiment and experience whatever we want. So this allows us to go beyond just token gating to really creating anything inside of that token that we want. And so with that, we fully believe that there will not just be simply NFTs in the future, because why? Why wouldn’t I want to add messaging to this community? Why wouldn’t I want to add the ability for you to interact with this inside of the wallet? Why wouldn’t I want this thing to have advanced functionality become an application and do more? So we believe that if you want to add utility, that this is the best way to add utility. And we think that any NFT in the future is going to have to have utility. Because just the simple narrative of you get access to this community is not going to be enough in the future.

Matt Zahab
That moved the needle during COVID when it’s like, okay, I mean, we were in front of our computers doing jack shit all day and being a part of a community made you feel a little extra special. And of course, like you said, you had the main value prop, which was financial speculation. That’s why I did it. I’m sure that’s why you did it. And a lot of other people did it. It was fun. It was electric. I remember buying a Cool Cat and three weeks later, I’ve 5X my money. Like, wow, I just bought a JPEG and I’m five times richer now. This is wild. This is fun. I also get to shoot the shit with 3000 other people who own collectively own 10,000 different Cool Cats. And we get to be in this community together. It was sort of fun, but those days are gone. Now I can, you know, go to the beach right now, which I couldn’t do back then. Well, I mean, in Mexico, COVID wasn’t a thing, but you know what I mean. NFTs is a whole. You are obviously an NFT guy, an NFT guru. You definitely know what you’re talking about besides your own stuff. Any of the projects that you’re very bullish on, any of the projects that are building some really cool applications that you see where you’re like, wow, these guys are doing it right. We should take an eye on them. Who do you want to shout out before we end the show here?

Mathew Sweezey
Yeah, there’s two. There’s 6551 talking about accounts. Definitely see that 6551 and ERC-5169 both work really well together. So that’s a really cool combo. So like if you want to go look at that, look at OpenSea. So if you go look at the Cool Cats on OpenSea, they’re enabled by Token Script. You can actually click on the image inside of OpenSea, and then you can open the application right there inside of OpenSea and experience the experience. It’s more than just an image. So like that’s one of the big powerful things is go to a marketplace, and then imagine what you’re going to get. You have to imagine. Now with Token Script, you have the ability to literally in xNFTs see that experience directly inside. It’s not just a static image. It actually opens up and shows you the application that you’re going to be experiencing and buying. So that’s super cool. I think the other is we’ve integrated with a wallet called Joy ID, which is a passkey wallet. So the combination is super powerful. Right? So if you go and get a passkey wallet, you get it within 10 seconds, we can then pass you one of these Smart Cats and you can play in the game. So you then have a wallet within 10 seconds. You get the NFT and then you’re playing within 20 seconds. It’s super powerful in terms of frictionless experiences. Of all we can see the future of Web3 being.

Matt Zahab
I love that. And what about you guys? You got to plug yourself before we end here. What stuff do you have popping off in 2024? Again, by the time this episode airs, it will be most likely the last week of 2023. Finished year off strong with Mathew and the Smart Token Labs team. What is Smart Token Labs launching in 2024? I mean, I’m sure there’s tons of stuff. What can you tell me that you guys are launching in 2024? What do we have to look forward to?

Mathew Sweezey
Yes, so the biggest thing is Smart Layer Network is we’ll be releasing the network, which is essentially the hosting of Token Script, right? So if we think about xNFTs, you’re going to be hosting files. And so we have the ability to then have a decentralized service network to host those files to allow xNFTs to scale. And so it’s really this token centric architecture. And we also have some really big news that just check out our Twitter by this time. And I’m sure we’ll be announcing this news sometime soon. So follow along, but it should be something really big happening in Q1 of 2024.

Matt Zahab
I love that. Mathew, you were an incredible man. Really pumped to meet you. Love your energy. Just you’re the Mayor of Good Vibes Town. So love to see that. And you definitely know what you’re talking about. And would truly love to have you on for round two until then wishing you and the team all the best. Before you go, please let us know where our listeners can find. You, Smart Token Labs, and of course, the one and only Smart Cat. And is it Smart Cat, Smart Cat Game, the Smart Cat game? What’s the branding on that, by the way?

Mathew Sweezey
Just Smart Cats.

Matt Zahab
Smart cats.

Mathew Sweezey
Yeah, so I’m @msweezey on Twitter. We are @SmartLayer on Twitter. If you wanna check out and get a pass and experience some of our technology firsthand and start to join our community and start to earn points, you can go to smartlayer.network. And you can learn a little bit more about the technology and join the community. As well as if you wanna pick up a Smart Cat, you can do that on OpenSea. And if you wanna experience the Smart Cat inside of a wallet, I suggest getting a Joy ID wallet and then putting your Smart Cat in there and playing directly inside the wallet. So there’s a couple of things you can do.

Matt Zahab
Mathew, incredible episode. Thank you so much for coming on, wishing you and the team an incredible new year and can’t wait for round two. Folks, what’s an episode with Mathew Sweezey, Chief Strategy Officer at the one and only Smart Token Labs. Also the creators of Smart Cat game. Go check them out. Tons of incredible stuff popping off. We talked about everything, ERC-5169 related, dynamic executable NFTs, future-proofing Smart Cats. We covered it. Huge shout out to Mathew and the team for making this happen. If you guys enjoyed this one and I hope you did, please do subscribe. It would mean the world to the team and I. Speaking of my team, love you guys. Thank you so much for everything. Justas my amazing sound editor. You are the GOAT. And back to the listeners. Love you guys, keep on growing those bags and keep on staying healthy, wealthy and happy. Bye for now and we’ll talk soon.