Arsonic (Guillaume Huot) is the Cofounder of Zeblocks & Sergeant Pepe World. He is an early adopter of blockchain technology and NFTs, and is passionate about pushing the boundaries of generative art, meme culture, and the Metaverse. Recorded on March 1, 2023 for Crypto Packaged Goods Genius Call series.
When Arsonic, dives into the crypto-space, he uses his design background to create a stunningly unique, immersive generative art world full of irony and memes, and inspiring a new generation of digital art collectors.
"I love to push boundaries and explore new technologies, art, and music to create something unique and immersive that will stand the test of time." - Arsonic
In this episode, you will learn the following:
1. How Arsonic's design background and web agency experience led him to blockchain and NFTs
2. The creative process behind developing generative music and immersive generative art
3. How Arsonic's popular "Surgeon Pepe" meme inspired a unique world of art and entertainment
Follow Arsonic at https://twitter.com/Ars0nic
Visit Zeblocks and Sgt Pepe World
Follow Club CPG at https://twitter.com/CPGCLUB
To learn more about Crypto Packages Goods, visit https://www.cryptopackagedgoods.com/
GM. GM. We are back once again, another genius call. Our guest this week is Guillaume Hout, who you will probably know as arsenic or arsonic, depending on how you pronounce it. He is the Cofounder of Z Blocks and Sergeant Pepe World arsenic, because I'm not going to call you Gym because I really am not good at pronouncing things outside of northeastern New York dialect. How are you doing? Welcome. Thank you for having us.
Arsonic 00:00:33
All right. Thank you. Mikey. Doing well. Super happy to be here today with you. And, yeah, I can't wait to tell you a little more about my little story.
Mikey Piro 00:00:45
I particularly love Djens and I feel like the NFT Diaries, I love them for a number of reasons. One, I'm horrible at it, like, full stop. I am not somebody who has necessarily been good at spotting early waves of meta or what the latest cultural meme is. I'm very much like a late adopter in a certain part of the early adoption curve, which can be frustrating at times, but I think is also like, I'm at peace with it. And we've talked about just before the call, a lot of instances of meme culture, but you have a really interesting, eclectic background that you've pulled forward into these two now co founded startups that are entrenched in both the Metaverse and Nfts and also meme culture and web three. But how did you start in the beginning of this? Where did you come from? Because I think when we are in the NFT Diaries and when folks are just chatting, it's sort of lost, but it's fascinating, I think, what you've shared selectively and how you've come about it.
Arsonic 00:01:55
Yeah. So, yeah, my background is I had a web agency for around 15 years up until 2015. In 2015, some friends told me about Bitcoin, so I dived in. I like new technologies and stuff like that. So I bought my first bitcoin, then started mining. I did some blockchain development. And, yeah, in 2017, I've been lucky enough to work with Snowfrom Eric from All Blocks, and he's the one who booked me up with the NFT World, which I really loved. I did my first journey of art in 2020 was season two of our blocks with the uni grids. Yeah, I'm touching everything. I love technology. I love to push boundaries around. And also of memes. Memes have been a big part of everything I have done in the past on Twitter or in private chats. It's something I always used. Even I'm early guy in top shot. I was known for the meme guy in Top Shot early on. Yeah, that's all the stuff I love around crypto and the reptory people.
Mikey Piro 00:03:21
15 years is a long time to be in an industry. It's a long time to be an entrepreneur in a specific category. What are some of those skills that you were using in the web? Two space that sort of made your transition and your interest easy. Can you dig in on the specific tech? Because I think web dev has gone through this crazy transformation where my early days of internet were like bulletin boards. But then when I started to have my professional career, it was a lot of Flash and then Steve Jobs put a bullet in that and then you had to move into HTML Five and CSS and really leaning into JavaScript. So what tech there interested you that sort of like overlapped or was it a complete departure?
Arsonic 00:04:15
Yeah, I think what helped me a lot with the blockchain tech, it's my design background actually. First blockchain project and everything had a shit marketing. They had no design at all or anything to promote themselves. So I think I brought that in early for some projects. And then of course with my web agency background I had some coding ledge so I started digging a bit into the blockchain. But it's in C plus plus which I'm not that good. But yeah, I've been developing front end for some blockchain. I think that's where I was excelling compared to other projects. So definitely my design background was what got me into crypto blockchain at first and then of course with NFDS and Generative hearts and makes a bit of the design and then the coding part.
Mikey Piro 00:05:12
It's fascinating, the design element. I think Chris and Jamie particularly have this really beautiful lens at which they look through the world and can kind of like I admire and Chris a lot, his ability to like spot something early and be like this is going to be a thing. I think when you grow up in design as your first approach to looking at things, it has this really interesting result in that you do get ahead of trends. It's like part of your specific role and job is to be on that edge. And I think for Web Two and Web Three, like the early folks who saw the value of it sort of were able to capitalize on it. But the folks who really then designed well around that first experience really took it I think as a rocket. You mentioned top shots. Was that your first NFT or where did you really specifically join into the NFT community? If you can consider NFT as a community.
Arsonic 00:06:21
Yeah. So yeah, Topshot was not my first NF t, but it was pretty close to it. Of course Snowfrom told me about the Pong when they were free to claim. I thought it was stupid at the time, so didn't claim any. But yeah, after that. I have heard of Nataliex project called Squiggly. What the fuck? That was my first NFD. I minted. It was crazy process to mint one. And I love what Nate is doing is pushing on chain stuff. I think that's why I'm doing that much on chain project as well. I like the centralization of it or the purity of it. I would say to everything on Chain, it has some limits, but that's really what I like to do. Yeah. So squeeze you with the Fog was my first one. Then Topshot was definitely my biggest investment back then, which worked very well. I did mint some border hapes. And yes, after that, that didn't need to into everything.
Mikey Piro 00:07:37
Will you talk about being on that edge? So Z Blocks is part of what you've co founded, and you have Sebi, who you co founded Z Blocks with and collaborated with him on it or them on it. What was the inspiration for Z Blocks? And tell us a bit about what it actually is for folks who don't know.
Arsonic 00:08:02
Yeah. So Z Blocks is a generative heart. I would say company, but it's a duo, me and Cebu, like you said. I know Sebi from a blockchain project I was working on for about, I don't know, seven years now. So we've been side by side working on many things together. And yeah, when Snowfrom launched Hard Blocks, he asked me if I would be interested in building something over there. So I looked into Jerry Farts and that's where it started. Ask Sebi because sebi is the brain. He's the guy who put the code together. I'm more the artistic part of the duo, have the ideas and the visuals. And Sebi does all the matte script and all the crazy shit that's from him. Yes. So it started from there after Snow talked to me about it. And we have developed our first project was Unigrid at first. We did a pattern that we thought it was cool, but it was not enough for me. I wanted to do more. So I told Sebi, we will do music on chain. Called me crazy at first, but we finally put it together and we have been the first one to put generative music on Chain.
Mikey Piro 00:09:26
Fantastic. Elaborate a little bit more on that back and forth between you and he. And why was music so important for you to put on Chain at that time?
Arsonic 00:09:40
It could have been something else, to be honest. But I really wanted to do more than others to be unique because, I mean, there's been great, great drops on all blocks and amazing stuff, but I really wanted to push boundaries a bit. And music had not been done before. So it's something I looked into. I did some research and I saw some possibility there. And, yeah, there's been back and forth with Sebi on how to implement it and if it's possible or not. Because putting things on change on Chain required to minimize your script a lot because the space in the block costs money. So you can't really just push six megabyte file on Chain just for the fun of it will cost you thousands of dollars. So that's the hard part of on Chain stuff. You often stuck with limitation of your script size and what you can do so, yeah, you need to work around and try to minimize everything to be able to put it on chain.
Mikey Piro 00:10:51
So for the folks that are listening, I think you're sort of under selling Unigrids.
Arsonic 00:10:58
Just a little bit.
Mikey Piro 00:10:59
So I'm going to try and tease this out because even in the chats you've been doing so many active things, you're there all the time and I just like, look, a lot of folks will be like, man, such a great insight from Arsenic. We have a side chat of the core team. Arsenic is throwing some bangers in the chat and we're like, great. But unigrids for folks that don't know, was one of 19 that was included in pretty much a historic auction with sotheby's, like so it's like you just sort of casually mentioned unigrids and you throw around for people who don't know who SNOWFRO is. Like another Art blocks founder, a technology and a company that has been doing a lot of wonderful things that really is propelling art forward. Specifically generative art for folks that are at this edge of it. And if you haven't taken the time as a listener to go through and spend some time just looking at generative art and animated or non animated with music without 3D rendered or two D, it is this beautiful state that it's transitive like, you can look at it and put yourself into. Is Transitive the word you could put yourself into this beautiful state of trance by looking at them. So Unigrids was the first project and like you said, you collaborate on it. What was the experience like with Sotheby's? How did that come to be? And how did you really embrace what was in front of you? Because it's pretty awesome.
Arsonic 00:12:42
Yeah, I think it was 2021. I think they did the auction at Soda Beast. I don't remember, maybe end of 2020, actually. All Blocks help a lot to put that together. And one morning they just sent us a message to announce the good news that we will be auctioned at Soda Base. It was very exciting, very overwhelming. There's people working all their life to get there and just like that, we got an auction with them. So it was pretty crazy. And not long after we did Christies as well. So, yeah, it was an insane year for in terms of what we had to accomplish with our hearts.
Mikey Piro 00:13:29
I think the passion really shines through. If you visit the Art Block site, you can see with your eyes, like the artists that are working the work that they're producing. You talked about scripting it, which is a really important piece of the process. But generating the art itself is not click a filter in Photoshop and hit go. It takes iteration, it takes a lot of process. It takes time to get it to where you're feeling of what you want to have produced matches the code. So talk a little bit about your process for creating generative art. And then I really want to understand from that process, you have two other projects that are in Z blocks. Go into those as well.
Arsonic 00:14:23
Generally the process, I will get that crazy idea out of nowhere. Generally how it starts. And once I have this idea, we chat about it with Sebi and we decide if it's good or not to put more time in it. And if so, I will muck up a first design on Photoshop or Illustrator. And yeah, after that we need to reproduce that on a generative script. Like you said, it's not like drawing a line in Photoshop. You need to mathematically create it. So it's all about maths. And to be honest, I don't know how Sibi is doing it is a genius. It's not that easy. It's super complex for me, even though I know a bit of programming, it's not something that I'll be able to do myself. Super glad to have him around. But, yeah, I'll drop a cop and then we can work weeks or months. Like Unigrids, I think it took us three months to produce. And after that, same thing for bead boxes that we'll talk after, probably around maybe even more, I think six months to produce the Beat boxes. So, yeah, it's not a quick turnaround thing that you draw one night and you send the other day format.
Mikey Piro 00:15:52
So let's elaborate on Beatboxes and synthesia. Beatboxes, as I understand it and have looked at it, is a metaversal version of Unigrids in a certain sense, in that it is a 3D environment that also has, in that 3D environment, sound and music and then synthesia, I'm less clear on, but tell us about those two projects and what your goals are for those.
Arsonic 00:16:26
So, yeah, Beatboxes, what's unique about them is they are the first immersive generative hearts, which means they are VR. What we did is kind of a cube that you can go inside with your Oculus and move around and there's shapes in it moving. And there's also beats. I think the beats that we created with them are a lot better than Unigrid. Universe was our first, but the beats in the Beat boxes, I think, turn out very well. It's not that easy to make generative music. That sounds like something. So, yeah, having the VR and those beats was exceptional at the time. I think maybe too early for the time. Minive versus were just starting, so people didn't I would say people didn't catch what we're trying to do back then. It went super well. The mint went the beer market after, so people kind of forget about them. But it's still one of my favorite project that we did in terms of technology. I think we did a great job there and sincere, it's still around music. It's a subject that came around a lot. I'm not saying it was still doing that in the future or not, but we like playing with it. It's another dimension that we can bring to our Nfts. So Senstasia is an audio sensible NFT which means it will take the ambient music or sound that you have in a room or in a club or whatever and the NFT will move around that sound that the device would catch. So it's like a visualizer but from the NFD on chain.
Mikey Piro 00:18:26
Have you ever seen the movie Tron?
Arsonic 00:18:28
Yeah.
Mikey Piro 00:18:29
Is it like a bit from Tron where it sort of like reacts in that sense?
Arsonic 00:18:33
In that sense, yeah, I would say yes. It's very similar to that. The idea was to wanted to create something because there's more digital screens that are coming. So we're hoping to have something that is nice to hang on the wall. But then let's say you have a dinner with people, they just start moving when people talk. Or if you put some music it will vibe around the music that you put in the house. So that was the idea around synthesia.
Mikey Piro 00:19:05
Somebody brought up to me the other day about early days where Bill Gates invested in his home and having the walls covered in flat panel displays so that he could change his environment and I think he's a billionaire so clearly there's a lot there. But I think the emergence of this connected world we live in and then being able to set mood the basic version of that is probably using your lights to change colors at your command. This is extremely creative in that you have an NFT that you own that also synthesizes the environment around you. It's fascinating to think about where that could go and how it could be leveraged. And for Z Blocks, so you've had unigrids was your project for Art blocks. You have beat boxes there. Tell us a little bit more about what's coming up for Z Blocks.
Arsonic 00:20:04
Yes, we have something big coming up actually. We are dropping a project with the Marilyn Monroe estate probably around the end of the month, I would say. I don't have an exact date but yeah, that's something huge for us as well. I would have never imagined working for someone like Mariyln Monroe besides like the indie world of this world. So yes, that's pretty exciting. It's something that come out of nowhere when they reach out to us and ask us if we will be open to work with them on. Something we're very grateful for that we'll.
Mikey Piro 00:20:51
Include in the show notes all the links to all of this information because I think it will be important for folks to be able to dig in and click on links to understand the breadth of it. Let's turn our attention to the Memes. I have this really interesting relationship with memes personally and I'm going to elaborate on it a little bit before we get into your current and other adventure with them as a cofounder. So I went through this crazy divorce and as part of, like, transitioning with my kids. Every Wednesday, my boys come back to my house by the time I get my daughter to bed. Our routine for winding down the night is watching this YouTuber who tries to look at memes and not laugh. He's pretty famous. I don't need to mention him here, but we have been watching him for, like, over a year and a half. And I have two teenage boys. They are 16 and 13. And we try not to laugh, but we invariably laugh. What's fascinating to me about this as a parent is, like, I'm trying to connect with my kids and meet them where they're at. And meme culture spans, like, folks that are way older than I am and all the way down into the youth of things. I think it's impossible. It probably was called something before meme culture, but memes themselves have this really interesting transformative property where they can be really front and center in larger popular culture, but also have these small derivatives in close settings that take on interesting meaning for your group or your chat or your group of friends or whoever it's with. And you've latched on to this. You have Sergeant Pepe world, and you had mentioned you were like the meme generator for top shots. Tell us about Sergeant Pepe world and what you have going on there in that project.
Arsonic 00:22:59
Yeah, first of all, like you said, it's for all age. Like, when people first meet me or saw me, they always tell me that they imagine me a lot younger. I'm 42, doing men's for a living. So, yeah, that's something I've heard a lot, like, people get.
Mikey Piro 00:23:22
You are like the youth dream right now. Kids are like, how do I become you?
Arsonic 00:23:29
It's a funny thing that I get a lot when people know my age. So, yeah, memes, I've been doing some just for the fun of it forever. I've been on Twitter, on crypto Twitter, since 2016. So even back then, Paypay was around. PayPal always been around the crypto world, crypto space, actually, more recently with the Six Five to Nine collection. It's where it all started. Actually, the story behind it is that I reach out to six Five to Nine because I knew him from something else around the Unigrid times. And I reach out because I wanted to do a generative heart for the project which we are working on and the Series One holder will get eventually. That's how it started. And then while we were chatting, I decided to draw something just for the fun and show him. And then he said, oh, let's make a car with it. At first, I did only the patch on Sergio Pepe. That was my first heart. And he said, can you elaborate a little more? Can you make something else run it, start thinking, and come up with Surgeon Pepe, which is kind of a top Gun guy with the patch and the Pippy face. And luckily, or I don't know how it happened, people really liked it and I think it started the run a bit on the 6529 memes and here I am right now. I decided to with the success it had, I decided to elaborate the whole world around it with many more characters, many more memes. The project is more around the heart. At first. I really want people to enjoy the heart that I will be dropping, but on top of that, we want to create a little word on real engine for people to have fun around. We want to create a little games. There will be leaderboards, there will be rewards, there will be physicals, there will be a lot of stuff, but the center of the project is really hard. We don't want people to think that we'll be building a three a game from, I don't know, like forehead barking to do right now. It's not the goal, but we want to create entertainment and fun around the projects and the hand goal is to bring a lot of that to open metavers and we want to try and help six, five to nine ecosystem to grow. I think it's a great opportunity using the memes like he's doing right now, to bring a lot more people together into one meteors and explore where we can go.
Mikey Piro 00:26:33
So previously, Pepe has this kind of interesting arc and we sort of touched on it early and it sounds like that's not the original intent of yours because I think, look, Sergeant not Sergeant Pepe, but Pepe was used as a symbol of hate for a little while. It then sort of got reco, opted back to the fun part of it. Can you just clarify your stance on what Pepe means for you and how you want to see it move forward?
Arsonic 00:27:05
Yeah, for me, Pepe always been a fun character, character that's out there to bring fun or less fun messages, not hate message, but it's always easier to use an image than words. So when you browse a timeline on Twitter and you see a Pippa doing something, you get it. I mean, you know what it's all about. Like you said, Pippa started as a symbol and got cowped by some fascist group. But for me it's not that at all. I think the web tree crypto people used it in a fun way to regroup, to connect with people, and I think it's working amazingly. Everyone lately are doing Pippa stuff. You have seen Cozomo doing something with the checks and everyone using Pippa right now. If it will be a fascist symbol, I don't think it will be that popular. So no, for me, it's a tractor that is easy to meme and have to crazy stuff and bring crazy messages.
Mikey Piro 00:28:28
It does bring up this interesting Creative Commons and the memoication of things. CC Zero. Really? How important is CC Zero and what are your thoughts on that in terms of building community and how folks can really derive other work is, I think a big part of communities these days is taking something and twisting it a bit and shaping it a bit and moving it on their own. What were your thoughts about that for Sergeant Pepe world? And what's your thoughts on CC Zero? Just in general?
Arsonic 00:29:10
Yeah. For me, CC Zero is amazing. I know there's a lot of artists that don't like people to use their work, or I would say IP, but for me and crypto, I haven't seen any IP reselling anything yet. Maybe the punks, I've sold their IP, but in general people don't buy IPS at all. For me, it's not something that it's important. I would rather have people using my heart and bring derivative. I think it's an amazing way to have free marketing online. The more people use your heart, the more people will try to dig with the origin of it. So it's really free marketing having everyone using your heart, and it's also touching. I mean, if they use your heart to do something, to spend some time making something else, it's because they like it at first. So it's always nice to see someone coming up with the derivative and I always try to support as many people as possible there. So, yeah, CC Zero, I think it's an important thing for development of surgeon paype and communities make it a lot easier than restricting everyone in what they can do with their NFD.
Mikey Piro 00:30:41
Anybody who knows my Web Three journey understands how much I love both pixelated art and CC Zero. At some point in the future, I will get a noun. I don't have one yet, but I love the derivatives that come from that. And the CryptoAds, I think, is another wonderful project. Moonbirds all of them leaning into that CC zero and allowing derivative works. I think, as you said, not just of free marketing, but the feeling that is generated around it, where you can take the meta of what is being put forward and create an interesting flavor of it that you put your own heart on, I think really becomes a powerful expansion of what the original idea is. Because you have the original idea and then you have like, this is my take on it. I think as an artist, it's an important piece of moving forward, both discussions and also just getting the brand widely adopted. One of the pieces of NFT diaries that I am in awe of your expertise in is really looking at trends. You seem to hit early trends. I mentioned that you were a D generally, I think that's like a very broad categorization of folks. Where are you in terms of what you're seeing in the current kind of zeitgeist of Web Three? We've seen like, PFPs start to come back around. We had checks just happen, which was another, I think checks burn. What tomorrow or yesterday or they burned. They burned yesterday, yeah, no, that's right. Checks burned yesterday. So where are you finding the pulse of things? I also find that like, people's brains operate really interestingly and that's sort of like I'm not going to ask you to explain your brain, but what are you thinking about in terms of where web three is going now and what trends have excited you or what trends are like, maybe not going to be that good.
Arsonic 00:33:04
So yeah, inspiration wise, twitter, I would say twitter is my primary inspiration. Like you said, I'm catching early on, let's say, stuff in the actualities, like when people talk about the Porsche NFD, I did a piece with it with Pepe that's saying this is fine because the Porsche was dropping a lot. So yeah, I've been grabbing a lot of inspiration last twitter and everywhere else. When I do my surgeon pippy world, I'm trying to build new characters that will be able to interact in the world and eventually maybe make comic books out of it and stuff like that. I mean, I want to give more tool possible for the people to create around it. So if I give them characters and if it gives them elements like airplanes or cars or, I don't know, they can build more stuff around it. So that's my goal with surgeon Pepper, to bring as much stuff as possible for people to create. In terms of trends, I don't know. I don't know if I can say that I've never been a big fan of PFPs. Well, at least not the latest one. Some work well, many don't. In terms of pfp, I'm more an art guy. Of course. I think art is easier to stay in time because there's a lot of people that collect just to flip it and make money and that's normal. I do it as well. It's a normal process. But when you collect some hearts that you like, I think it's easier to hold long term because this is what you choose to get. I don't think you can attach yourself or maybe it's me the same way to fpfb of an ape or anything else. I don't know. That's probably the artistic side of myself. So I think art will always be better over time. It's super cliche to say, but at the end of the day, you still have your NFT, even though if it's worth running, it's sad when you pay thousands of dollars for it, but at least you will have a piece that you like in your wallet. And whereas going webtree I think has crazy, I have no limits right now. I think in terms of metaphors and I think in terms of fashion. And the dow called webdow, which is a fashion dow, it's a branch of flamingo dial and all we do, we invest in fashion, fashion nifty with bouts of torchemana nifty's. And I think it's something that will be coming when. There's a good metavers that incorporate many people easily. You flex in real life, people flex in real life, they will flex in the metiverse. So fashion watches or whatever NFT will be will be a trend as well. Yes, that's probably one aspect I could go on for today on what I think Metaverse and webpree will be.
Mikey Piro 00:36:46
I want to pull that thread before you go there. As an artist, you have an art block generative art project. What do you feel about and what are your thoughts on the open editions that have been sort of making their way through more recent history?
Arsonic 00:37:06
It's not for me. Let's say that I think there was good use of it, but people have been making it lately. Everyone's doing an open edition and after that you need to do some burn mechanics and do crazy stuff around to maintain the price and try to maintain the price. And I don't think it's what it's all about. If you're going to need to do an open edition, it's probably best to set it free and let people collect it and don't have anything to do anything to say. We haven't paid anything, so it's what you get.
Mikey Piro 00:37:50
You mean exactly what CPG did for our burner?
Arsonic 00:37:53
All right, cool. But yeah, it's probably not bad to like you said, for community, everyone meant a free open edition and you can start building around it. But yeah, for me there's been a lot of not money grabbing. I don't like to say that, but opportunist people using it and I think at the end of the day, it might hurt their their brand, because eventually OpenEdition might not be a thing. And people will look what this guy has and then you have 20,000 of one, one in 50. And if they want to collect something from that guy specifically, they will probably go for that one as it's cheaper than a more limited edition.
Mikey Piro 00:38:51
Yeah, I do think when we looked at it, we really did a lot of investigation around what the trend was. I think there's a common unintended consequence trap that lots of folks fall into. And I think it speaks back to your earlier point of you spent months working on pieces of each of your projects. And I think part of the value of like, you're moving very fast in certain respects, but you're also moving deliberately in others. That's a key piece of understanding what you offer and not painting yourself into a corner is really an important piece of being able to leverage what's happening quickly, but also understanding that it's very permanent when you put things out there on the blockchain.
Arsonic 00:39:48
It is, yeah, definitely.
Mikey Piro 00:39:51
When you think back on your career to this point, we're pretty much the same age. And I think my therapist has told me I'm firmly entrenched in a midlife crisis. I've said this to Bobby hundreds he left, but I'm unleaning into it. When you think back on your career and the pivot into web Three. What are some things that you reflect upon more commonly if you do or you would just give a piece of advice for folks that are looking because we have a lot of folks, I think, that want to move into web Three more full time. What are the things that you can sort of, in hindsight, considered or would put forward now of like, hey, you should really think about this before you move, before you leap into it?
Arsonic 00:40:36
Yeah, I'm probably a good example for that. In 2018, January 1, it's when I decide to let go of the agency to go full time crypto, and then we hit a two year bear market. So the timing was just perfect. I left the administrato and then decided to go full time crypto. And temperament, I was lucky enough to have enough fun to go through it. But it was stressful because you just left your building, that company for 15 years, and you just decided, okay, that's enough. Let's move to something else. So, yeah, you need to be prepared to have a lot of stress. Web tree is very stressful. It's not just a fun ride. People see only the success stories, but they don't see the back stories. When you see a good timing, there's a lot of hours coming in. You can be not working for four months, and then you need to do 90 hours a week for the next couple of weeks, more months. That's how you succeed in whiptree. You need to put the hours in when it's time, and you need to stay active even though there's nothing happening. That's how you also cache the next wave. Yeah. It's not something that you need to think through and be certain that you have at least some fun to go through it at first and see if it works or not for you. And yes, I love what I'm doing. I would not change anything in the world, but I had some rough days as well.
Mikey Piro 00:42:25
That is the plight of entrepreneurs and builders. I am not a hustle culture proponent of the theatrics of showing your hustling. To me, that proof is in the receipts, not in what you say is in the receipts. And it takes time, and it takes that. I've described it to people as a crucible, and they're like, yeah, that's pretty spot on. You're getting forged every day with what you choose to do or not do for the longer term. What projects? I mean, clearly, besides the box and Sergeant Pepe world, what are you excited about? What is something that you and it could be something that doesn't exist. It doesn't have to be a project, but what about the tech excites you? And what are some things that you're looking forward to in web three?
Arsonic 00:43:20
So in web three, I would say personally, I'm excited about maybe some kind of membership NFDS like links are trying to do. I would say links down or something attached to real estate. I want to see more merging from DfT to the real world. That's something I'm very excited about, something I will probably develop around as well in the future. I'll probably be able to tell me more in the next year or so. But yeah, it's something I'll try to push and something I think we'll see a lot more. People will get to know NFDS a little more and to understand them a little bit more. And when that happens, I think, let's say, I don't know, theaters will be able to use maybe in the theaters, but shows. So you can keep a little souvenir of your show in NFT that will be also your ticket and stuff like that. Right now people are not ready for it and the infrastructure may be too hard for the current people to use, but eventually I think that that will come and everyone will be using the NFD without knowing it at some point, I think. So that's something I'm very excited about. I can put my finger on something. We will see new trends and they will probably jump on something when it happens. That's where I'm good at, to get early on something. Yeah, AI for sure will be around and stuff like that.
Mikey Piro 00:45:09
Can you give us some alpha for Sergeant Pepe world?
Arsonic 00:45:13
Alpha for Sergeant Pipe world. Some alpha? Let's see. Yeah, I would say early on I would probably have something different, a drop with partnership with a platform around that is coming. I also want to attach, like I was hinting before, maybe an NFT with something physical that you can enjoy events or places. Yeah, I don't want you to say too much right now, but there's a lot coming around Sergeant Pipe and I hope people enjoy it.
Mikey Piro 00:46:07
To be honest, I'm excited for it. I have to do a little bit more digging and kind of retrace because I think I caught up with Sergeant Pipe worlds. I missed the snapshot, so I got to figure out how to get around that. But we have a couple of minutes. I want to leave you the last word on anything that you want to cover. And really the question that I'll pose for what you want to cover is circling sort of back to how people are thinking about getting into Web Three. What is something that is unexpectedly surprised you about this Web Three community that you would say keeps pulling you forward and keeps you excited about it on a day to day basis? Because I think we talk about getting taken. The LS, which is like the bear market, comes frequently, but what are the things that really keep you moving forward that maybe are not apparent to folks that are in it?
Arsonic 00:47:15
Like I said before, web Three sometimes really hard. But I think what's special about Web Three is all the connection you can make. I've made connection with people I've never been able to in web two. You just don't reach out to CEOs of multimillion company like that in web two. But in web three, you know someone that knows someone, and the next thing you know, you're in a chat with those guys and you joke around. I mean, they are all normal people, regular people, and you have fun with them. Web three, for all the connections you can make and all the support you get from those guys as well. Web three community tends to stay very friendly and have helped a lot of people, and a lot of people have helped me in the past. And I think those are relation that stays in time. And that's probably what I like the best around.
Mikey Piro 00:48:18
The web three ecosystem I can certainly empathize with. Moving from a place of how can I help you? Is the starting point that unlocks how other people can help you. Back certainly been one of the more fun things to help people in small and large ways. And I think, like you highlighted, there are folks that you would just have never crossed paths with that this interesting part of the Internet really facilitates 100%.
Arsonic 00:48:54
Yeah.
Mikey Piro 00:48:55
Well, we are at time. Arsenic. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you so much for sharing your experiences and your knowledge and your perspective.
Arsonic 00:49:08
Awesome. Thanks, Mikey. Anytime. If you want me around, I'll be available for you guys.