The Polygon NFT Ecosystem with Frank (DeGods), Zhuoxun Yin (Magic Eden), & Stani Kulechov (Lens)

Welcome to Say the Nation, guys. We've got a special episode for you talking about the Polygon NFT ecosystem. Okay, our panelists today tell us that this is the third largest ecosystem for NFTs in crypto and one worth paying attention to. David, who do we have on? What are we gonna cover today?

First and foremost, we got Frank D Gods from the D Gods Project, which is an NFT project spawned on Solana, currently migrating to Polygon. So we will talk about some of those decisions and why they decided to move over to Polygon in this day and age. And then second, we got Z, the co-founder and COO of Magic Eden, which is an NFT marketplace also on Solana, and recently migrated to Polygon. So we'll and we have two perspectives like this. Last up, we got Stani Kulikov, who is the founder and CEO of the Ave Companies, which is Bootstrapping Lens, a social media ecosystem on top of Polygon, where your profile is an NFT, your content is an NFT, loss of surface area for NFTs. And so just to recap the projects, we got D Gods, which is a PFP NFT project that is in process of migrating to Polygon. We have Magic Eden, which is an NFT marketplace that is also recently migrated to Polygon. And then we got Lens, which is a social media platform where your profile is an NFT, all the content that you make is an NFT, your tran your interactions or transactions on Polygon. And so we're gonna ask all of these uh participants on the Polygon ecosystem why Polygon? What about Polygon brought them there? What about Polygon is is unique and different? Is Polygon really the third largest NFT ecosystem after Solana? Uh so these are some of my questions. What what do you want to know in this in this interview, Ryan?

Yeah, I think I have those same questions. And particularly for these two projects, um, let's uh remember Magic Eden and D-Gods both migrated. They're massive projects in Solana, huge successes, and they are migrating and moving to uh Polygon. And I shouldn't say full migration because they're continuing to support Solana, but at least um the D Gods Ute project is doing a full migration over to Polygon. So the question is why? Um is there something, are there greener pastures over in the Polygon side? What are the cultural differences between these projects? That's a big topic today as well. One disclosure before we get in, I am an advisor on the Polygon project. I have material exposure to the Matic token. David is not an advisor, but he also owns some Matic. And Polygon has also been a sponsor of the Bankless podcast in the past. We take disclosure seriously at Bankless. We think everyone in crypto should. And so that's why we we are mentioning these at the top of the show. You can always find our disclosures at bankless.com slash disclosures for more info on that. We update that monthly. All right, we're gonna get right into the episode, but before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this possible, including

Welcome back, Bankless Nation, to our NFT ecosystem on Polygon Show. In the top left corner, we got Frank D Gods from the D Gods Project, which is an NFT project. Recently migrated to Polygon. Well, it seems like D Gods might be his last name. It's not, but it might as well be Frank. Welcome to the show.

Yo yo, super excited.

And then in the bottom left corner, we got Z, the co-founder and COO of Magic Eden, an NFT marketplace, also on Polygon. Z, welcome to the show.

Yo, what's up, fellas? Thanks for having me.

And last but definitely not least, in the top right corner, we got Stani Kulikov, founder and CEO of the Ave Companies, which is Bootstrapping Lens, a social media ecosystem on top of Polygon. Stani, welcome back to Banklist for like the fifth or sixth time, however time number of times it's been. It's good to see you again, Stani.

GM, GM, happy to be back again.

So we really want to take this opportunity to really explore

why your guys' projects chose Polygon. How has that experience been? What is the NFT ecosystem like on Polygon? And really just get a snapshot, a flavor of the Polygon NFT ecosystem. So we'll start with that very basic question why Polygon? And we'll go in the order that I introduced you guys in. So, Frank, we'll start with you. Why did why did uh the D Gods uh project choose Polygon of all of all chains to pick?

I I think that there's like a clear traction with uh consumers on Polygon. And so we it's something that we're just excited about being an NFT project. I always, and I might be more controversial in this take, but I just look at all the blockchains as different databases with uh you know different trade-offs. And so for an NFT project, right, like being associated with a lot of really cool brands, a lot of really smart builders. Um that that just excited us. And I'm sure I'll get more into details there, but at a high level, like keep it simple, stupid, like it's uh kind of a no brainer in 2023 to be launching on Polygon.

And we're gonna take a moment to dive into each of your guys' respective projects and the details behind e each one of these. But uh Frank and and Zee from D Gods and and Magic Eden, previously were both projects on Solana, uh and so we have some diverse perspectives to bring to this conversation. Uh Frank, when did D Gods come to Polygon?

Yeah, so to clarify, D Gods are going to mainnet ETH. We have two projects. Uh Utes is our second project, and that's the one that's going to Polygon. So we

have announced that we're migrating in Q1. So we're looking at around end of Q1 for the actual migration and you know, working on some pretty cool tech to do it in a unique way that hasn't been done before. Um so yeah, and like around end of Q1 is what we're looking at.

Beautiful.

The actual migration. Yeah.

And Z, uh question to you and Magic Eden. When was it decided that Magic Eden would uh onboard so long um excuse me, uh the Polygon network and and why Polygon of all chains?

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

Frank, I was expecting some spicier takes from you to kick off, man. Come on.

Oh, I'll get into it. I'm learning. You know, you keep it simple, lure them in, and

we start giving the hard-hitting controversial takes.

Yeah, we'll uh we'll warm up.

Um so Magic Eden, uh, yeah, as everyone knows, we started on Solana. We we actually launched a polygon in December.

And

the thesis for us is really around two things. One is that

we can we can uh we want to serve the gaming ecosystem really, really well.

And um clearly

Which we can get into as well. It's it's not like a one chain rules them all from a gaming standpoint. It's clearly there's some fragmentation uh uh across the ecosystems.

And there's some some good traction in terms of uh Web3 native games, but also like traditional game studios that have been been been working with Polygon.

Then the second thing is

obviously, you know, an NFT community needs a lot of different things. One is you need some really crypto native web three native creators, like amazing ones like Frank.

You also need experimentation from

uh brands, you know, influencers, whoever else that's in that ecosystem.

And

that there's clearly some movement and traction that Polygon is making around trying to sign up a lot of those guys. And I think that us being a very, very community centric and grassroots uh NFT platform,

um, we saw a pretty cool opportunity to work with

like many, many sides of the market. And that's what got us excited to go to Polygon in December.

So we launched then. We've been doing a lot, um,

a lot of like uh uh a lot of our focus has been on launchpad and obviously our marketplace, which is

sort of tied in together. It's like we help launch projects and then they obviously are available for trading on Magic Eden.

And we have like a massive

uh March coming up in the theme of general March Madness for those of you that are in the US. We have

I think like 17 launches lined up in in March. So it's gonna be a huge, a huge one. So

Working with guys like like Frank and the D God team, and there's many others in the ecosystem that I think are feeling pretty bullish. And

um, yeah, we're pumped. It's it's a fun place. Honestly, it's a it's very different vibe, which we can get into as well, some of the differences that we've noticed between some of the different NFT ecosystems.

Yeah, that's definitely a line of uh question that I have is what is the specific culture that has arisen on Polygon? But before we get there, we gotta, of course, talk to Stani. Stanny, I'm sure that you're connected to all of the layer twos in the space, and so I'm sure every single layer two would have loved to have hosted Lens. Uh, what about the architecture or design choices or relationships with the Polygon team? Made the Polygon network specifically the right network for Lens. Can you talk about that for a little bit?

Yeah, definitely. I mean, um

we've we started to build uh originally on the um Ethereum community and and we we feel that we we're kind of like a heavily part of uh uh that community and and that's also where uh Polygon has its roots as well. So very early upon um

uh Polygon was the network where you know a lot of the uh bandwidth from uh Ethereum was was uh actually happening um in specifically

Polygon had the gaming community very early. So that was happening before the NFT boom. So there's a lot of NFT activity before we saw the NFT summer.

And obviously, something that is very valuable for

a social layer like lens is that you're able to do a lot of transactioning.

And

One is that the way Polygon is constructed today, it allows that

capacity to transact on a lower transactioning cost.

But more importantly, what is valuable is that the team and the ecosystem has this kind of like a bigger vision of how

actually the scalability will happen.

um and and you can go beyond what what is the limits of today that that polygon um has and also i i like the the uh the the the blue color uh as well so my my first call car was uh uh blue colored so you know that's something that dries attention as well for me