Web3 Galaxy Brain 🌌🧠

Nicholas: Welcome to Web3 Galaxy Brain. My name is Nicholas. Each week I sit down with some of the brightest people building Web3 to talk about what they're working on right now. On today's show, I'm joined by Maria Paula, Trent Elmore, and Sam Spike to discuss JPEG. JPEG, or Juried Protocol Galleries, is an evolving set of experiments that seeks to bring curatorial memory to the NFT art scene. Often contrasting themselves with a highly financialized speculative art market for which NFTs are well known, the JPEG team is dedicated to bringing art appreciation and long-term curatorial memory to the decentralized art world through on-chain interventions. JPEG's latest project is Canons. Canons are token-curated registries. Holders of the Canonicon non-transferable NFT vote to elect NFT collections to Canons, which are lists of NFTs on a particular theme. Votes are stored on Arweave, and a mathematical formula rewards JXPG, the protocol's reputation token, to voters whose taste is confirmed by their peers. It was great chatting with Maria, Trent, and Sam about the origins and evolution of JPEG's gallery, exhibitions, and new TCR project. I hope you enjoy the show. As always, this show is provided for entertainment and education purposes only, and does not constitute financial advice or any form of endorsement or suggestion. Crypto is risky, and you alone are responsible for doing your research and making your own decisions. Hey Maria, how's it going?

Maria Paula: Hey, how's it going?

Nicholas: Good. Actually, how do I pronounce, is it Trent-ay? How do you pronounce?

Maria Paula: Trent? It's Trent.

Nicholas: Trent, okay. I've never said it out loud.

Maria Paula: Just Trent. He's American.

Nicholas: Okay.

Maria Paula: But that was very, that's going to make my next week, actually. Oh, great.

Nicholas: Oh, perfect.

Maria Paula: That's the funniest.

Nicholas: How's it going, Trent?

Trent Elmore: Hey, nice to be here. Yeah, the E is just my last initial. But Trent Van Epps had stolen the Trent.E, so I had to add another letter in there. It's also like, it's a little pseudonym, but you could figure it out with Google. But I'm trying to thread that line.

Nicholas: I got it. I thought it was style points. It is a little European or something. I don't know. It's got some style.

Trent Elmore: Just a little flair.

Nicholas: That's great. Well, thanks so much for coming out today. I'm excited to talk JPEG and especially Canons. I'm very interested. And as far as I can tell, Canons is, I mean, maybe you have some references, but maybe the first NFT TCR kind of thing. One of the first, for sure.

Maria Paula: We're not going to claim first because that's a really big flag, but we have been early enough to not be last.

Nicholas: Yeah, definitely. I'm excited. Okay, so before we get into it, I guess let's lay the groundwork. So this will be a podcast also. So people will be listening to the recorded version. So for the people who aren't familiar with your work, maybe could each of you say, Maria, you could go first. What was your background before starting JPEG?

Maria Paula: So, yeah, I've been in blockchain since, and I always tell the same story. Yeah, I've been in blockchain since 2017, started working for Polkadot and very quickly moved to the Ethereum community because I was like, oh, this has something that Polkadot doesn't have at that time. I don't want to disparage them now. But, you know, saw NFTs when they were born with CryptoKitties. And in 2018, I met Matt Condon very, very early as well. And somehow we started talking about NFTs and he doesn't remember me. But of course, I do remember him because after that, you know, I had already started an organization in Berlin, Berlin Department of Centralization, and I integrated NFTs and art wherever I could. And yeah, I kept working in Web3 ever since then. And in 2021, second lockdown in Berlin, I just finished writing a second paper related to NFTs, but not like truly NFT. And the whole like boom started. And then I was already in the arms with Trent and he was like, hey, how about we start something? and then we got into a Discord, also met Sam. that's listening here. And yeah, then we decided to launch TCRs from everything that we could have launched. Awesome.

Nicholas: And Trent, maybe you want to give a little background on yourself. I know you did DeFi stuff before, right?

Trent Elmore: Yeah. So I did have a nice little early DeFi career. And I actually studied art history in school. So I had some of that background. But then when in advertising, I've really been always interested in like where kind of like the economic and cultural layer of society meets. So like advertising was kind of an interesting, you know, visual media, visual culture, economics area to work in. But in like early 2019, I've been following crypto just on the side since 2017 or so. My brother Brock and I decided we were going to just go, you know, do rogue DeFi stuff. So we worked on a yield optimizer at one point, kind of in the pre-Yearn days. We did some MEV back running block stuffing type stuff, arbitrage. And then also launched a algorithmic stablecoin called Yam. that kind of kicked off DeFi summer back in the day, along with Dan Elitzer, Will Price, Clinton Bevery, who all continue to do really, really dope stuff in the space as well. But that was like a whole clusterfuck, more or less. So I stayed on with that project for like seven, eight months, just trying to like, write the ship or like get it into a self-sustaining model of some sort. I feel like once I kind of had accomplished that initial goal, started to look around and see, you know, take a breath of fresh air and figure out kind of like what was going to be next for me. And right around that time, I had been following the NFT space, but it was a lot of like trading card stuff related to like DeFi, like bull babes run and like all of that kind of weird, weird stuff happening in DeFi. But I...

Nicholas: Yeah. And like that was... I remember it. Yeah.

Trent Elmore: And like not super interesting.

Nicholas: That was a moment.

Trent Elmore: Though it was like an interesting early signal to the memes and like the altcoins, the pictures type stuff that was going to happen. But I came across a project by Poc that was the title drop, which was very like Yves Klein, Epoch Blue, like identical IPFS links, but different tokens. And so it's like interesting conceptual questions about like, what are you buying when you buy an NFT and kind of all of this stuff that just showed me that there was actually a lot of conceptual depth and like interesting technical things to play with in this space. that really got me interested. And so then I went really deep into the NFT ecosystems. Hashmask was like the one that kind of on the PFP side got me really excited. And so yeah, I just started thinking more and more about this stuff as it related to some of my prior kind of like modern and contemporary art theory and training. And P and I had been in DMs. It was actually that piece she was referencing is called, There's No Such Thing as Blockchain Art, which is like a really, really amazing piece of academic style writing about early conceptual NFTs and like the contemporary art scene and all of this. So we started chatting more and more on the NFT side, got connected with Sam. And then yeah, we started JPEG out of just kind of an inclination that decentralized art ecosystem should have a kind of like decentralized taste making apparatus and like trying to think about ways in which that taste making apparatus could be separated from the big auction houses, aka like primary market platforms or the big collectors and just different forms of consensus around taste and culture.

Nicholas: So that's kind of the genesis of JPEG to try to create a space that's curation separate from the primary or secondary market players who typically control the narrative?

Maria Paula: Initially, actually, we started thinking of a decentralized gallery, very cringe name. It's Nakamoto Gallery.

Trent Elmore: Amazing.

Maria Paula: We've come a long way. Ah, very nice. Very nice. You know, JPEG. But like the notion and the notion of, yeah.

Nicholas: Jury to protocol galleries, right?

Maria Paula: Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I think the idea of a decentralized gallery, a decentralized experience was really, you know, like that was truly where I was coming from as well and where Trent was as well coming from. And yeah, I wasn't really happy already, at least personally, with the way that, you know, back then marketplaces were like, oh, a share, like you can invite three people from your network or like Super Rare was always doing, you know, like lengthy approval times. and then OpenSea was the zoo and we only saw it as the zoo back then. And I never thought that was like how decentralized culture should behave. So anything that we would create, that was open and decentralized, I would have been happy. But yeah, this product is something else. I'm extra happy because the community is, you know, truly the driving force as well.

Nicholas: So in the first iteration of the product, I remember the salt collection drop, which was around the launch of JPEG, right? What was the very first product or maybe product isn't an appropriate term, but the first curation feature that you had? and how has it changed? Because Canons is relatively new, right?

Trent Elmore: Yeah. So originally we were doing actually kind of like all of the exhibitions fully on chain, which, you know, at the time was important to us for this idea of kind of permanent provenance and the idea that if you got all of these exhibitions together and had a way in which they were all kind of like stored decentrally, you could really start to map out this cultural network in which you can look at the relationships between curators and NFTs, NFTs and NFTs, curators and curators and really build out this really interesting cultural network. Ultimately, especially kind of as gas prices were going crazy, it was just like, this is kind of obviously not sustainable. And it really got us thinking just about what is important about being on chain and what should be going on chain. And ultimately, we came down to the fact that if you're putting something on chain, whether it's data or images, whatever, you can be doing it with the intention that someone else is going to want to directly interact with that data on chain. And ultimately, we couldn't think of a ton of instances in which in those early days, putting an exhibition on chain was going to prompt all of this activity and composability on top of that exhibition. But we didn't want to give up the provenance and immutability and verifiability of that data. So we still have ideas and think a lot about what this could all look like on an L2. And with lower transaction costs, actually, what could you do? that's interesting with that data on top of the exhibitions being on chain. But I think the more interesting thing for us right now is more actually the governance piece and the community curation as opposed to putting the individual personal curations on the blockchain.

Nicholas: Got it. The personal curations. in the initial version, was it curated by the JPEG staff or immediately anyone was able to create their own gallery? How quickly did that become available?

Trent Elmore: Yeah, so Deep Time, the first one was curated by us and largely Sam, we did an open call for that exhibition. And then kind of in the weeks following that, we tapped a number of interesting collectors and curators to come on and do additional on-chain exhibitions. But we've been really slow to fully open up the platform. I think after that initial on-chain experiment, we said, okay, let's go rethink our architecture here and get this to be a little bit more scalable. So we kind of went dark for a couple months where we reworked that system. And then we had an allow list for quite a long time. The exhibition portion of the platform fully opened up. We're doing a similar thing with the canons right now. And to govern, participate in the canons, you have to have the Canonicon governance NFT, which is allow listed. Anybody can essentially just come and join the Discord to receive that allow list. But in the near future, we will be opening that up as well. But I think it's just about for us, especially with governance, just making sure that the system works correctly, stress testing it a little bit, making sure that we don't get overrun with spam and all of this sort of stuff.

Nicholas: Got it. So I want to get into the details of how the canons work at a technical level. But maybe what is the theory or evolving theory since the start of the project? You explained that basically, if there's no demand for having the on-chain availability of the curated artworks yet, then there's no need for that data to be on-chain right now. And it can be on our weave. But what is it like the overall philosophy that you're trying to test here? Trying to separate things from... trying to separate the art appreciation from the market? Is there some guiding principle behind the product development?

Maria Paula: Well, a guiding principle would be that a cultural value has the same value as a monetary value that people give to our pieces. And of course, we've always thought... Whenever we were developing some part of JPEG, we've always had in mind the notion of provenance and how provenance is actually built in the traditional art world. Someone says, okay, this artwork is by Picasso and it looks like Picasso. But then you need to know a friend of sold the painting at Picasso's and then an institution will certify that what they're dealing with is original. And then there will be as well a different layer of analysis, different analysis with pigments, but also it's very social because everything can be refuted. So this web of cultural value transfers can be replicated in a way or the other, conceptually at least on the blockchain and for NFTs. So yeah, that was sort of the guiding light. And coming from the TCRs, we've always thought that TCRs, of course, didn't take off for many reasons. Maybe Trent can explain them later. But NFTs are different than sets of data as TCRs were originally created for. And we believe that could be actually the use case that could really make TCRs happen, whether a meme or not. It's sort of working right now.

Trent Elmore: Yeah. I think building off that idea of provenance, it's also like the provenance of a piece is not just who has owned it and who made it. It's also who's written about it, where has it been exhibited? It's all of this kind of context that surrounds it. And not only who has written about it, but what was written about it. How much cultural understanding and cultural labor has been put into increasing the understanding of this object. And I think for so much of NFTs, it's memes and just kind of social vibes that often really kind of flatten a lot of NFT projects, artists' works, whatever. And the finance element ends up being the kind of most dynamic and most interesting part of a lot of NFT works. And so that financial value, though, is in some way, at the end of the day, eventually going to rely on some core cultural value that resides within it. And I think one of the things we think about a lot is that in the traditional art world, it's like you've got these galleries and these museums and everything that release and show work. And it basically puts the context and the cultural value up front and then the financial value comes in afterwards. And for at least the last few years of NFTs, we just went straight to the financial value. And now we're kind of scrambling to post-fact justify the cultural value. And that's part of the role that JPEG wants to play, right? Is that we want to, we believe that these things have immense cultural value and are massively interesting from a technical perspective, social perspective. And so how can we

Maria Paula: help

Trent Elmore: actually generate and provide that context that gets to the substance of what these projects are trying to do and trying to convey and just assisting in that process, which I think is going to be super, super important in the long term, especially to get out of some of the hype cycle dynamics that end up occurring.

Nicholas: Yeah, it's interesting what you say. It reminds me of a bunch of different things. One thing, the original Zora like sell-on fees and the way the kind of provenance of ownership could be potentially even financialized didn't turn out to work as far as I know. But the other thing, what you're saying is reminding me a lot of is, do you know Brad Trammell's NFT report? Did you, have you seen that?

Maria Paula: I saw it.

Nicholas: I don't know if I did. I think it was paywalled. So I don't know how well it was distributed. The first half of it I thought was really, really good. The second part where he talks about crypto is not as good, but his analysis of the art market, and maybe you can correct me, but from what I remember,

Trent Elmore: he

Nicholas: basically argues that the institutions like the museums and galleries were tastemakers for the nouveau riche

Trent Elmore: to

Nicholas: define what kind of art was meaningful and canonical. And as the rise of the kinds of artists that he hates like cause and this kind of graphic arts that is lacking in substance, or maybe art historical relevance or something like that, very productized kind of art. The galleries have come to listen to the consumers tastes, which are very market sales oriented, like, I don't know, Nike and Virgil Abloh and cause and this kind of art, rather than defining the program for arts in the current decade or period. Instead, the galleries and museums are listening to what the consumers want. And this has kind of hollowed out the role of the tastemaker position that they occupied previously, which he then subsequently argues. And I don't know that I really agree with the rest of what he says about how NFTs kind of fit into that, into that scheme. But it does seem that NFTs have emerged in a very odd order, like typically subcultures don't have. the cultural issuance of a subculture is not valued. Whereas in crypto, the NFT artworks, although there was a long period where they weren't really cared about by many people, have kind of zoomed ahead in terms of speculative potential, far ahead of their actual cultural broad based cultural relevance. So it's interesting that we don't really have those institutions. And yet constantly we're reaching for, oh, well, maybe Reddit NFTs, or maybe somehow Polygon L2, somebody is going to make these things actually popular with the culture beyond the like 10,000 people on crypto Twitter. So it's interesting that you're trying to fill that kind of position through curation based protocol. that doesn't attempt to be like a gravity well for market activity, particularly, but instead for cultural relevance. Am I understanding the idea?

Trent Elmore: Yeah, I mean, I totally agree with you. And I think, you know, one of the things that we've tried to do is try and fill the gap in terms of like where we really see the conversation is not happening. You know, we haven't really done a lot of work to try to like bolster the narrative around generative art, for instance, not because we don't love and appreciate generative art, but mainly because it's like there are a lot of people doing that, that work to tell the generative art story and the same thing with, you know, PFPs or whatever. And same thing with the more digital painterly type stuff. I think one of the areas where we really see a lack of the discussion being oriented is towards more conceptual works, more technical and really just blockchain-based work. Obviously, Fingerprints does a lot of work with this kind of narrative. But I think the stuff that gets us the most excited, so it's kind of twofold. Like one, the stuff that gets just the JPEG team the most excited is often, you know, software-based work, dynamic NFTs, things that are really kind of pushing the technical and conceptual bounds. So we get excited about that. Crypto-native, exactly. And it also feels like the area that has been, you know, has yet to really get a ton of attention and focus from the broader NFT community.

Nicholas: Yeah, those are not typically the most in the bull market, the most profitable speculative plays are not usually the most technically interesting ones. And there is this whole niche of like, especially on-chain art, which is really, really a small group of people who are not particularly skilled, it seems, at convincing people that, you know, they should get on the allow list or whatever. They don't seem to have much connection with the kind of board apes. Not a lot of overlap.

Trent Elmore: Yeah, which is interesting, because like, one thing that I think we see in, we're seeing in just the economy in general. I mean, I was talking about pickleball with some people last night. And it's just like, there's always like the market, especially in a bull market, always needs a new narrative to pump. And so, you know, it was PFPs, it was gen art, like, it's some various crypto artists, like, there's always, the market loves to find a new narrative. And so, you know, there's some bubble elements of that, which is unsavory. But, you know, I would love if at some point, some of the deeper conceptual stuff that I think the traditional art market has some real stake in, in various ways, if that ended up really gaining some more mainstream attention. Now,

Nicholas: I'm curious, does the traditional market, because I'm also reminded of that David Bowie, Charlie Rose clip where he's like, Basquiat was selected from amongst a plethora of amazing graffiti artists in New York, and they chose to elevate this one person who is great, but could have easily have been other people, in order to establish a kind of elitism for analyzing that art scene, that to make this one person into a celebrity was like, I don't know, I don't know if his point is exactly that it increased the legibility, but at least that was how the like art institutions operated by separating a person from the environment in which they emerged, and all the other artists who were part of that scene also. Do you find that the traditional art world is capable of appreciating, like what really matters on some level? Like, for instance, the way on chain art is not particularly appreciated by the NFT art market? Is the traditional world actually better at appreciating these more deep or rich artistic works?

Maria Paula: Oh, hell no. I think, yeah, honestly, from what we have seen so far, I really think that the true experts on NFTs and the intricacies and the technicalities of a conceptual art NFT and on chain versus in chain and, you know, all of the different like strata of on chainness are, you know, the experts that are within our community. There's just a few experts in the traditional art world that have the necessary tools and because there are a lot, right? You know, I'm basically a crypto native, so this is, you know, this is my realm, but I don't know art history at all. So it's understandable that, you know, they're not expected to understand everything about on chain art or, you know, even conceptual art. I do think, however, that, you know, conceptual art NFTs, for example, like Great Myers, should be super readable and super valued by traditional art critics. It's not always the case. You know, we are seeing as well a lot of, you know, seeking to go for like the non-challenging ideas for the comfortable part of the NFT art, you know, for the people, for the Refik Anadol.

Nicholas: Why was PAK so successful? It seems to be a real exception to the general rule of NFTs.

Maria Paula: I think it was a great marketing campaign initially. And of course, it was the first glimpse of sort of mainstreaming conceptual art on NFTs behind a very charismatic personality that, you know, knew how to work an audience.

Nicholas: And very social media compatible as well, I guess.

Trent Elmore: Yeah, totally.

Nicholas: Fascinating. Sam, welcome. Thanks for joining.

Sam Spike: Hey, I'm here to crash the party, guys.

Trent Elmore: Get off our stage. I did not.

Sam Spike: For the record, I did no requests.

Nicholas: No, no, no. It's my fault. It's my fault. I invited Sam. Any reaction to anything we've been talking about? Just off the bat?

Sam Spike: Yeah, I mean, I agree with what MP says. I mean, I definitely don't think the traditional art world, my background is in the traditional art world. I don't think the traditional art world is any better at recognizing work of significance. And actually, the way that the sort of top end of the contemporary art work, or the contemporary art market works is really just the same sort of flipping a shit coin style thing as anything else. I mean, it's like, from year to year, you know, these big galleries go and they basically find kind of young artists, normally sort of figurative painters, people who make work that's very scalable, very easy, easily digestible, very easily transportable, and has something kind of, you know, vaguely cool about

Maria Paula: it.

Sam Spike: You know, often these are people who are like coming out of their MFA or whatever, in their early 20s. And they start kind of like pumping them basically. You know, they show them at Art Basel, they show them at big art fairs, they sell their pictures for six figures, people buy the top. And then in two years time, basically, that artist has no real market, they can't sustain those prices. Everything got kind of instantly flipped at auction, people get wrecked, and then the artist has to kind of put the pieces back together of their career. And it can be very predatory and very unhealthy. But it's also very not unlike what happened in the NFT art market in the last two years. And I think that the sort of the more successful artists in the space have also I think, begun to realize that, you know, it was great that they were cashing in big time. But also they need to manage their markets carefully. If they want to have a long lasting kind of career in the market.

Nicholas: It sounds a lot like the treadmill that sort of startup founders get on where they have to continue increasing the valuation of the project that they're working on. There's like a whole pedigree of you should go to YC, you should drop out of your college, you should do all these different steps. And then ultimately, a lot of people find that they're just kind of cosplaying, I don't know, Mark Zuckerberg or something. But there's no, it's a whole game that they're involved in where they're not actually the star.

Maria Paula: Right. And there's actually, you know, that's not. that's the same, for example, in, you know, like manufacturing of the new Starlet, of the new Eat Girl, you know, coming from Hollywood. It's, you know, it's always the same notion of, you know, creating a new celebrity. And I think it was I think it was Warhol as well that, you know, sort of came up with like a more like tongue in cheek creation of the Eat Girl in, you know, for like a purely like conceptual, you know, reason of like proving that this was happening. I don't know if it was like so intentional, but yeah, this happens on every industry, you know, people like the new.

Nicholas: So it's interesting then, maybe is JPEG like an earnest posting like alternative to that, rather than leaning into the machine? It's not like, you know, like the coin drop protocols.

Maria Paula: We just like the things that no one will buy from us on secondary.

Trent Elmore: Yeah, we when we were doing the conceptual and we had a joke that to be on the conceptual canon, it needed to have no volume and no listings on secondary. Just like a very small group of people who held them very dearly, but no one else. No one else wanted them either.

Maria Paula: I just want to shout out Zero Beta that came up, like actually like voiced that. But of course, we all know that's like the thing we all share. But he was the one that wrote that comment.

Nicholas: But do you think that there's I mean, I assume that part of the reasoning for creating and we should get into how canons work. But part of the reasoning for it is that there's the potential for creating the actual cultural connection with a growing group of people, so that the things that matter become more popular than the things that are just like immediate speculative opportunities. So there must be some, I guess you have faith that through enabling people to do this kind of decentralized curation, you can create the opportunity for culturally relevant art to bubble to the surface.

Trent Elmore: Yeah. And I mean, the interesting thing about this space as opposed to the to the trad space, right? It's okay. It's not like this. It's not this kid coming out of MFA that I could go see and decide is good and then like, we'll sell and like, whoever, whatever, right? It's like there's actually this whole other dynamic of an already kind of decentralized apparatus of social media and kind of bottom up discovery that occurs that then eventually, you know, some big whale comes along and figures out like, oh, this is, you know, this artist is at like seed stage and I can, you know, I can take them up to, I can invest now and get them up to series A and then have a nice exit or something like that to continue that analogy. And so, you know, I think with the, with the canons, you know, again, it's not about like, hey, can we put some people on that then get like pump and dumped. But I think it is about aggregating information that currently lives in a bunch of different little pockets and like corners of people's minds that, you know, they don't often actually go, go visit. And how can we actually think about the canons

Figure: as

Trent Elmore: not so much this, you know, end curation initiative where it's like, okay, we have the canon and our work is done, but more the canons as this starting point where we can say, okay, here is this kind of interest segment or vertical, here's all of the prior art that has been done in this regard. How can we start to analyze the trends and figure out, you know, what's being experimented with, who's doing it really well. You know, if I'm an artist that wants to work in that, having a good understanding of what that landscape, you know, for dynamic NFTs, for instance, I mean, good understanding of what's possible and what's been done with dynamic NFTs is really helpful. So there's that kind of research elements, as well as potentially the attention and kind of buying element. But I think it's also a process of, okay, now that we have all of these works together, how can we start to create exhibitions with those work that actually put them in a more deliberate context than just like dynamic NFTs and really just kind of start that process of paying more attention to these works in a deeper way? that's not just, oh, hey, I bought this thing and post its image to Twitter or something, but just that deeper level of engagement.

Nicholas: Yeah, it's interesting that for a technology that has, in a sense, perfect historical records, the memory span of crypto Twitter is like almost nothing. Everybody's ready to claim that they're first. And the only reason that people seem to do research into who actually is the first is to pump their own bags. So I understand the need for a place where that information is kept in a kind of reliable environment for cultivating an art historical knowledge within the space.

Trent Elmore: Yeah. And I mean, one of the things that was also part of our initial founding, kind of like mission or frustration was just the hype cycles of this market and the degree to which the memory in NFT land seems to be like one week where everybody's posting about this project, everybody's buying it. And then the next week, nobody's posting about it, nobody's buying it. And every NFT project chart is like this spike up and then just like flat for the rest of its existence. And it's like, how can we start to alter that attention landscape such that you're not just getting exposed to whatever the newest thing is, and then like it's always another new thing and another new thing. But how can we actually start to categorize things such that people like reference things more often and more frequently, regardless of kind of like when they were minted, but actually having a little bit more of that historicity in the conversation around certain elements of the space.

Nicholas: Yeah, it's interesting. The NFT collections look a lot like the DeFi tokens on a chart often. But I guess one difference about NFTs is that there is the possibility of having more than just this fungible token. There is a unique artistic instance that can be talked about, analyzed and become culturally relevant. I mean, maybe Yams can too. It is an artistic happening. But maybe there's something about NFTs that makes them more open to this kind of historical curatorial work.

Trent Elmore: I think part of it is also a little bit like shifting some of the motivation for why people are collecting in the first place, which so often is like pure social thing or pure momentum, FOMO sort of thing. But there is, I think, definitely a segment of collectors out there who really do collect what they like and have like certain theses and stuff they're interested in in this market. But even for those collectors, the only thing that's ever getting put in front of them is the new flavor of the week. And so how can JPEG build relationships with those kind of collectors who really do have their kind of like interest verticals and want to support and get to know and become experts in a certain vertical? And how can we then show them more of that type of thing such that they can build collections that actually feel personal and meaningful to them?

Nicholas: So let's jump into Canons. But first, I have just one question. Can an NFT make a person cry? Can they be as emotionally powerful as, I don't know, I guess the gallery experience is the closest parallel to at least the way the website looks today. Do you find that they have this emotional power?

Maria Paula: Well, when I'm losing money, of course.

Nicholas: Very effective then.

Maria Paula: No, but, you know, like, honestly, I think that, you know, I've never cried at an art show or a gallery. Yes, I have been, you know, quite, it makes me very happy to see good art. You know, it makes me truly, truly happy. Like I'm having the time of my life. So maybe that's a good parallel. And, you know, in NFTs as well, you know, being vibing, like I think it's, there's like an interesting parallel. Like, you know, I also usually enjoy art, you know, preferably on my own because, you know, galleries are not going to make anyone cry as well, maybe because of, you know, like anxiety, but not because of like the experience, but experiencing actually an NFT or, you know, a meeting and, you know, just like in like coming up with a narrative with an entire community. That's a pretty emotional experience. It's hilarious. It's the time of your life. It lasts for sometimes weeks. And I think that continued collective emotion is, you know, even stronger than, you know, like for a particular isolated experience.

Nicholas: Yeah, I definitely I know what you mean. I have had the kind of inspiring experience from seeing things like even just going through crypto zombies to understand crypto kitties or loot or terraforms or even Adworld just put out a video today promoting something and just the energy, the creative artistic energy is very inspiring, gets you up and want to do something like, you know, it makes you believe that things are possible, that you can be creative and actually create something exciting. So I definitely have had that experience around NFTs. I don't know if anyone else wanted to jump in on that topic before we jump into canons.

Maria Paula: If not, Trent has a very interesting thesis on how to experience NFTs properly, actually.

Trent Elmore: Well, I was thinking about that, that pudgy penguin holder. I think it was they cried on his faces. That was an iconic, iconic moment.

Nicholas: What about the board? You guys not remember the video clip of the board ape proposing to his girlfriend?

Maria Paula: Oh, that's amazing.

Trent Elmore: Yeah. And I'm sure there's some board apes who cried after getting their apes stolen. I mean, for me, like I really like when digital art and like web based art is really about like what it feels like. We live, you know, 10 hours of our day online. I like when digital art really makes me aware of and feel that fact. But that often ends up not being like a super kind of sad or emotional thing. A lot of times my experience of art in general is probably a little bit more intellectual than emotional. But yeah, I mean, speak to M.P.'s point. My theory about the most appropriate way to experience digital art is, you know, on a 13 inch MacBook with, you know, DoorDash next to you and at least three undrinkin beverages.

Nicholas: Music screen, sure. Yeah.

Trent Elmore: Yeah. Oh, for sure. Like that is, yeah, that's the essence of like what the digitally native experience really is, is to me, which is sad, but not sad in a cry way. Sad in a. I should go get another beer sort of way.

Nicholas: Yeah, I feel like a big part of NFTs. I mean, definitely I have more experience in the sort of collectible side than in the one of one side, but that experience of going through the secondary marketplace filters and learning about all the traits and all the different possibilities within a sort of verse, I guess, in the kind of collectibles genre, that sort of Kremlin ology, like just getting really into it and becoming deeply familiar with it. Or I think for a lot of people, it wasn't my personal experience, but like the CryptoPunks discord at a certain point in time was a kind of social art environment where people were both like coming to terms with and hypothesizing about this art scene. that was quite different. So yeah, I know what you mean by that. So let's jump into Canon. So okay, so you need an NFT in order to be a curator. Maybe you can walk me through, someone can walk me through what the experience is like and how Canon is created, and then how people are able to express their opinion on what should be a part of it.

Trent Elmore: Yeah, I'll give you the quick rundown. So I mean, TCR is Token 2017-2018. It was like what the blockchain was going to be used for. And so like there was like AdChain and like FOMO, all of these like really kind of complex economic systems that were used, going to be used to crowdsource this information. They never really took off, I think for several reasons. Like one is that they were, again, kind of economically complex. Some of the economic assumptions were a little weird. They were all replicating the data, kind of, they were replicating data that already existed in a better form someplace else. So they never really got traction. We thought in kind of today's NFT market, there was a really interesting opportunity to bring TCRs back into existence, largely because one, this kind of, this data that we're creating really doesn't exist anywhere else. If you want to go research dynamic NFTs, like there is no better place than the JPEG NFT canon, dynamic canon. And so that creation of new data really felt valuable and interesting, something in between, you know, an individual recommendation on Twitter and like really broad art collectible gaming categories on the marketplaces.

Nicholas: I'll shout it out in case anyone wants to go. take a look while you're talking about jpg.space slash canons slash dynamic, if you want to see what Trent's talking about.

Trent Elmore: Yeah, thank you. It's like 100 and I think we have probably about 150 dynamic collections on there right now. The current canon derivatives is also super interesting. The derivatives are from a recent canon, which I'm really excited about. I think just because that is such a pervasive element of the space that hasn't been chronicled anywhere, it's super hard to study and research. So I think we're going to commission some kind of like trend research or statistical analysis, something once we kind of have this initial list created, because I think there's some really cool insights that could be pulled from there that won't have been able to be pulled until someone actually aggregates all this data. So it's really focused on the creation of new data, as opposed to in the old TCRs, like mostly copying existing data solutions that are already way better. I think the second thing we've done is move from this economic model to a much more reputational based system that's not as adversarially resistant, but is more of a Wikipedia model of self-moderation. And so the process is basically that you go into the Discord, you verify your wallet, we get you on the allow list, and you go mint this NFT, which is designed by a really fun artist, ZeroXStardrop, who did a great photography collection and has a really big TikTok following using older technologies to create digital paintings. And so they created this kind of membership token that is this illustrator, Microsoft Paint style interface that tracks kind of things you've recently exhibited within JPEG, your level and your XP and also kind of this landscape photo, landscape illustration that you kind of select characters and kind of basically assemble this little drawing. And so that ends up being your membership governance NFT.

Nicholas: And that was non-transferable as well.

Trent Elmore: Non-transferable. Yeah. And so you start off with a certain number of potential compositions locked and unlocked. And so as you vote on things in the canons and propose things to the canons, your participation increases your JXPG level, which increases your voting power. So the more you participate, the more kind of power within the canon governance process you have. And you also unlock more fun little features for your illustration in your NFT.

Nicholas: Could you just explain a little the, you said XJPG, the sort of reputation system, how that works?

Trent Elmore: Yeah. JXPG.

Nicholas: JXPG.

Trent Elmore: JXPG. Yeah. So essentially, we've tried to really make that incentive aligned on a couple different factors. So basically everything you do, any participation you have in the canon creation process as it's currently set up, will get you JXPG as long as you don't spam. If you propose something or vote on something that gets voted as spam, you can lose points. But we really wanted to encourage people to interact. So the amount of JXPG you get is dependent on a few different variables. The first is the order in which you vote. So earlier voters earn more because there's less signal to go off of. The difference between the minority or whether you voted in the minority or the majority. The majority voters get more JXPG because they were quote unquote, right. And then the third factor is the difference between the majority and the minority. So if it's a really tight vote, everybody gets a pretty similar amount of JXPG. If everybody except you voted yes, and you voted no, you're going to get a much lower amount of JXPG than everybody else because you probably were just like spam voting, kind of farming the XP points.

Nicholas: Got it. Okay. So there's a kind of reward for being with the winning crowd.

Trent Elmore: Yes. But it's set up such that if you have a contrary opinion, you're not going to be penalized for that.

Nicholas: I see. So you can only accumulate?

Trent Elmore: Yes, unless you're voted as spam. So if you go up to the derivatives cannon and you put like, you know, bored apes or something, and it feels like you're just like, or you put up like 10 different collections that have nothing to do with the derivatives cannon, then people can vote spam on those proposals. And then you will actually lose XP points such that then your voting power will go down, we may bring zero, all of that sort of stuff. So there's just some moderation controls built in there. But thus far, we've had like, no issues with that, probably because of the allow list and the self selection of the group and that sort of thing.

Nicholas: So the idea is to create an incentive scheme where the wisdom of crowds creates also an information repository that is useful for, I don't know, further establishing that tendency or understanding that art historical tendency within NFTs.

Trent Elmore: Yeah, 100%. And so there's very much a public good vibe to it, right? This data can be really useful for various, you know, research opportunities, potentially, you know, even tagging things in other marketplaces at some point in the future. Like this is open data, verified the voting, kind of, we built a system similar to snapshot where, you know, you sign with your wallet and that signature is stored on our weep. And so this data is, you know, open and verifiable. We would love to see it, you know, integrated in marketplaces at some point. I think we've got, you know, a little ways to go until we've got enough of a repository of interesting tags to take that step. But yeah, very kind of like public goods focused right now. I think one of the things we're really interested in over the next couple months is just like how we can make the single player experience more valuable such that you show up and you participate in these canons and you earn this JXPG. But it doesn't feel like, oh, I'm just doing this because I'm contributing to a public good. But like, there's more kind of personal payoff in some way to you for that activity, as in, you know, you discover something interesting and we make it easier to kind of like track and follow up and learn more about those things. Just a more kind of personally satisfying experience in addition to the creation of this interesting information repo.

Nicholas: And I guess the idea of giving people reputational rewards associated with their wallet through voting off chain via this JXPG is to allow people to have by establishing their reputation, allow them to sort of champion artworks that maybe aren't understood by a large number of curators yet?

Trent Elmore: Yeah, I think so. And it just it gives you more, fundamentally, it gives you more power within the within the system. So your voice is is heard more by the protocol. I think we're also, you know, in the next week or two, going to start having a nice like little curator leaderboard, which hopefully also provides some nice social clout bonuses to the people who are really participating strongly in the ecosystem. And just really trying to do a better job of championing the people who are contributing a lot to this to this infrastructure.

Nicholas: So do you see the value for someone participating as being the ability to establish this reputation and whatever non tangible benefits one gets from being a well reputed curator? Or is there something more specific? Do you worry about people? I don't know getting paid off to curate some not so great NFT? Or how do you think about the game theory of it?

Trent Elmore: Yeah, I mean, so the the algo, the process for generating JXPG is really is valuable. So like, and open source, so it's in our, it's in our docs. And like, we can change that at any time if we start to see kind of a concerning behavior that that makes us think, okay, we've hit a point at which we got to, we got to rethink this. But I put that in the category of kind of like good problems to have. If we ever are in a situation where someone is buying off one of our curators to promote something, I think that would be really fascinating because it essentially means that, you know, our community and the things that they're doing are having a really significant impact, which ultimately I think is really good for the space because at our core, the entire community I think is really interested in promoting deeper substance, deeper context, all of that kind of stuff. So we'll see. I mean, so for the time being the two major benefits of accruing JXPG are increased power within the system and kind of increased notoriety within the ecosystem, specifically the JPEG ecosystem.

Nicholas: Do you think it's valuable for the art projects themselves? I mean, it seems like it would be, that NFT collections would desire to be well curated so that they're included in the canon and not forgotten. Do you think it's something where they'll be encouraging folks to curate them?

Trent Elmore: I think so. I'll let MP answer this one if she wants. I'm just sorry, I've been just rapid fire responding here. But I know MP has a lot of thoughts on canon. No, no, go for it. Yeah. You want me to go? Okay.

Maria Paula: Yeah.

Trent Elmore: Yeah. I mean, it's totally our goal. Part of the flywheel is that being on a canon gives you a part of this category. And if that category kind of becomes the canonical resource for understanding that category, I'm launching a project, I need to go propose myself to get on that category, which then further solidifies that category as the canonical resource. And so we're super interested in having artists, creators, project managers, whatever it is, participate and really have an active role in submitting themselves. But I think we have definitely seen that there are benefits of getting on the canons and just getting exposure to the JPEG community. I think we have a number of different testimonials of collectors saying, oh, I discovered this project or I discovered this project. Oh, this wasn't minted out. I went and just minted it and ended up minting out. And so I think there's a really interesting discovery component. And a discovery component to what is currently a community of, I think, very high expertise collectors and artists that are kind of like grade A collectors in a lot of ways. So I think it's really compelling for projects to want to kind of get on the canons and get on the canons in a way that they then follow up and say, hey, you saw me on the canon, here's some more information on why what we do is cool and interesting.

Maria Paula: Yeah, we also love the canons as well. And of course, we brought these up throughout the spaces, but we would love the canons to be a point of reference, for example, and talking about how the value of NFTs. We would love if they could go to a canon to see what on-chain art really means, what a dynamic NFT really means, what are the conceptual NFTs that have been the most praised as well. So I think the whole experience from wanting to be included in a canon, not to be considered as the top, but to make it possible to be discovered and also to make a source of reference. Sorry if I'm not making a lot of sense. It's like 11 p.m. for me. So I'm a little bit loopy.

Nicholas: No, no, it makes perfect sense. So canons is just like one part of JPEG and there is this community. I'm curious. It's not a community I'm a new member of. So what is the vibe inside of the JPEG community? Whoever wants to jump in on that.

Maria Paula: Oh, it's quite incredible. I've never seen something quite like that. And it's not because we started that discord, but because I think the aha moment was actually when we launched the conceptual canon. When we seeded the idea of launching a conceptual canon, and we already had a strong community around conceptual art because that's basically the art that we like. And the context that we had came more from that appreciation than a piece or something else. And to see people trying to define what was considered conceptual art, what was considered an art with a concept and started diving into art history. And it got so multi-layered. And of course, artists got very enthusiastic about the art that they were making. Figur is here. He was one of the protagonists from that thread as well. And started explaining their own pieces as well. So it was just such a fantastic experience. And from then on, actually, the JPEG community likes to discuss, likes to learn from each other, likes to ask directly the experts and the artists, and everyone recognizes each other in a very respectful way. And as equal experts, it's a really good vibe. There's also a lot of discussion. We just released a comment function and I got a little bit hung up during those phases because one of our users was explaining how instinctively he began to use the comment function on the canons. And it was to actually inform his decision while the team was intending for having a more social and more expert experience on each proposal. So it's really interesting because everything that we ever drop, every bit of information that is ever dropped in the JPEG Discord is treated with such seriousness, but also with a lot of, you know, like there's a lot of honesty, there's a lot of candor, there's, you know, there's like a little bit of everything truly.

Nicholas: Sam, we kind of left you out of this so far. I don't know if you have any reflections on what the community's strengths are or on canons.

Maria Paula: Did you kick out Sam to bring Zero Beta? Is Zero Beta now a co-founder?

Nicholas: It's a big family. I'm curious because Zero Beta is also part of the community.

Sam Spike: Zero Beta is the spiritual leader of every great community. But I'm sorry, I've been listening instead of my phone was like across the room. And I have it on mute, obviously. I mean, yeah, my view on canons is kind of what you said at the very beginning, which was like the irony of, I remember when we were first speaking about JPEG and we were speaking about kind of like the main value proposition of NFT is sort of communicated to the art world a few years ago was twofold, I suppose. One was the royalties thing, which obviously has gone through its own sort of trajectory. And one was this idea of sort of provenance. And, you know, having this kind of like certifiable provenance, we call it on the blockchain, which obviously implies the use of the blockchain as a historical record and as a form of sort of memory. And that is just so far from how it has ever been used with regards to NFTs. Nobody, you know, other than people, as you say, other than a times dubious collection of some archaeologists going and like scraping data and trying to find, you know, old collections and pump them historically significant in some way. They're just the space collectively had no memory. It was their collective memory for what had happened and no way of piecing that together. So I think what's exciting, what always excited me about the idea of JPEG and as very much manifest through canons is, you know, recovering that and aggregating that and putting it in one place and kind of being a place of memory and a place of just a really valuable resource for that kind of stuff. So that's why I love it. And I've had a lot of fun proposing stuff. I've been, you know, really, really amazed and happy about the conversation and the level of conversation that's been happening in the community. It's definitely the most earnest place in NFTs, but I think it's the highest concentration of expertise on the kind of art and culture front in NFTs for sure. And that's a very exciting place to be. Awesome.

Nicholas: Do you want to jump in?

zerobeta: Yeah. So I'll give a shout out to Cynadel. So I think what to me, at least when I saw canons, I've always had a thesis that the blockchain needs to know you exist. There's two ways of knowing, right? You can trade and you can transact. And I think that's very much a fast NFT, right? And we saw a lot of that during JPEG summer, but you also have, you know, the slower process, the process by which consensus forms on a slower basis. And I think why JPEG canons is really interesting to me, at least, is that it can do that, right? It can do that potentially without transacting. And to be honest, you know, as autoglyph price goes up, it's going to transact less and less. Right. And I think it matters to put that information on chain because, yeah, we're going to lose that moment on Twitter. We're going to lose that moment on Discord. But to put those feelings that this is important, and this was important now, and this is important maybe, you know, in five years, it might be something different. But that chronological history of the project will become increasingly important because, yeah, we're going to get stuck in the stuff that goes from, you know, 0.1 ETH to 1 ETH. And I don't know if there's any stopping that. But the stuff that's already, you know, sitting at 10 ETH and might not transact, the chain needs to know about it.

Nicholas: Interesting. And does the community come together mostly in Discord? And if so, what's the other, is it mostly text chat or are there different channels? How do people relate to the communication about the art?

Trent Elmore: Yeah, so currently, it is mostly in Discord and kind of for each canon, we have a forum post that people go in and chat about the creation process and things that are submitted. We're currently in the process of trying to move some of that conversation into the app itself, such that it's a little bit more discoverable, serviceable, all of that kind of stuff. And so that's going to be our kind of big initiative over the next month is like, let's get all of this great context and discussion and discourse that's happening to be surface better so that newcomers don't have to go like three levels deep into our Discord, but can instead just go to the website. And obviously, you know, a lot of great stuff is going to continue happening in the Discord itself. But, you know, as Zero Beta is saying, it's like when this stuff lives in these ephemeral platforms, and isn't like directly tagged to the assets themselves. It's just like, you just, it's really hard to track that kind of dialogue. And so yeah, getting that discussion and having those reference points that can last for, you know, perma-internet history, I think is going to be super important.

Nicholas: Awesome. So we reached the end of my list of questions about JPEG. Is there anything that we haven't covered that's important or that's relevant to your experience of the community or the curation protocol?

Maria Paula: Maybe just make an open invitation to you, everyone that wants to join as well. All 30 listeners, although a lot of them are actually, you know, within the platform, but truly we are, you know, we really want to build a community of experts, but we start from the notion that you can actually build your expertise together and it's super fun. So, you know, if anyone here listening wants to join, you're very, very welcomed. You just have to reach out to us, drop us a DM with your e-address or just pop by the Discord, which is the easiest way. And it's obviously where the magic happens. And ask us as well for access, because we really want everyone that's interested in culture there. Yeah.

Trent Elmore: I mean, totally, totally echoing that. I think it is just important to know that, or I guess just reference the way in which I think that this ends up being a really important resource, you know, created by experts, created by newcomers, but also for newcomers and experts alike, whether you're someone who is deeply, deeply knowledgeable about dynamic NFTs or whatever interest segments and, you know, want to make sure that in your latest research or trends article or whatever, you're like having a comprehensive view, or you're just someone who's getting into NFTs and heard that JPEG is a place to, you know, figure out what's going on in this space other than, you know, the board, the board apes, I think can really be useful for just kind of like the whole gamut of experience level in this space. And I'm really excited to kind of see how that plays out over this next year. Awesome. Hey, Figure. Nice to see you.

Nicholas: Yeah. Hey, welcome, Figure.

Figure: Hey, what's up? Good afternoon. I was listening to this space. I shared it a bit with others. And it's funny because whenever new people trying to get into NFTs, I mean, from the art crowd, mostly from where I am in Montreal, I always send them like the JPEG.space website. To me, it's like, it's as fundamental as like sending them the OpenSea link, or I don't know, the gallery, the gallery links. It's just like a fundamental piece of our, of infrastructure of our space. And I wish they would be much more popular because I think there's a lot of potential for JPEG to help to guide the people. And I don't say this in like a fascist way. I mean, it purely as in like, we're in an economy of attention most of the time, and we need to know where to look on certain things. And it can be a bit hardcore to like try and find a good project or try and like find your footing in the space when there's like new projects every week and etc. And it's not necessarily easy to find like historical piece. It's not necessarily easy to know where to look always at the right time. And I think like JPEG service sort of this flag in the middle of our space in a way to like help us look at the right things. But even if it's not the right things right now, I think there's a lot of space for growth at JPEG. And maybe a comment or a question I'll redirect towards the JPEG team is like right now. the cannons are fairly tight. So there's like four of them. Any plans to like expand them a bit more to like try to like push them, push different teams forward? Because it seems like we're looking at very specific things from the like cultural NFT space right now. And is like mass adoption even like something you guys are looking into? Or is it more like you're trying to stay focused on the cultural production that comes out of the blockchain? Because it's funny because the people in the JPEG Discord, I would not find them in like the Borda Discord or like any other more like collectibles Discord server. It's like there's this decision between communities right now.

Maria Paula: Fantastic question, Fig. Thank you so much. You might collect your payment later. I'll make sure that it reaches you. No, actually, he just described one, you know, a really big step for us, which is, you know, to have community proposals for cannons. So very soon you will be able to propose your own cannons and have them for community, have them up for community vote. And if they make it, then people can start contributing. And that's when, you know, like the truly decentralized tastemaking apparatus that Trent has been mentioning will become a reality. So far, you know, like we try to do everything by consensus, but there's also, you know, a priority in the JPEG team that we really do want to make this a little bit, not, I wouldn't say mainstream, but a little bit more popular like Fig well said. So in order to get traction, we need to work first of all, with what our community is an expert about. So launching, for example, the conceptual cannon was a very intentional move because we knew that was where the real expertise and the real interest of our community was living. And then launching crypto social, which are NFTs that require on-chain or off-chain interactions as part of the piece was also a little bit of a gesture, but with a completely different scope, because we were doing it for, for an NFT Paris exhibition. And then with derivatives, we really made that very first baby step into launching a category that could onboard more people into JPEG. Hopefully the next time we launch, well, the next time we launch candles, they're probably going to be also, you know, decided by rough consensus, but, you know, in the very near future, we're going to have proposals.

Figure: That's really good to hear. And maybe something else, if you let me speak, Nicolas, on this. Yes, right now, the curation in our space is very strange. Like if you think about it, it mostly happens through like accounts with a lot of followers. They sort of curate the attention of the participants in the market, in the NFT market, and they sort of redirect the gaze towards like certain projects. But I think JPEG, what they're doing, it brings a chance to have like a more public or more open and maybe a bit fairer approach, like curation of attention in our space. And I'm very much looking forward to that.

Nicholas: Yeah, I'm curious if you're going to also include, you mentioned in the earlier discussion, the writing and cultural production about artworks is also an important part of the canonization of art. Do you think that's something that'll be included going forward beyond the descriptions and the proposals that people make?

Trent Elmore: Yeah, I think one of the things that at least I've been thinking a lot about lately is just, again, this idea that the canons are really a starting point. And so what can we do to start help facilitating the building on top of it, right? It's maybe not those on-chain composability stuff that I was talking with the on-chain exhibitions earlier, but like there is building on top that needs to happen with these canons. And I think one of the really interesting avenues to go with that is kind of commissioning research or articles or exhibitions like we did with NFT Paris and the Crypto Social exhibition. that goes a layer deeper into, okay, why does this canon exist? What's some real analysis about the projects that exist here? What are the trends? All of that kind of stuff. Because I do think that that's a really critical piece and a layer that we need to make sure we're facilitating and not feeling like the job is totally done once we've got the list.

Nicholas: Makes sense. Awesome. Did anybody else want to jump in with any final comments? If not, we just direct people to jpg.space to hang out, learn more about the community, join the curating team.

Figure: Yes, I have something to add to the JPEG team. Please add some Dune Analytics dashboard for the canons because I want to see the visual impact from a data perspective of what happens when an artwork gets canonized. Is there even an impact? And maybe that can lead to more impact. And so I think there's really a possibility there to make more out of the canons than simply curate it and it's stored there and we don't necessarily hear from it.

Maria Paula: I also really want that one. We've thought about it seriously and if we didn't add it, it was not because we don't want it or we don't want to or because we think it looks bad. But just because we are a small team trying to make all of this happen. But I really, really want this to happen. And I know Trent does too.

Nicholas: Maybe also I'm noticing on the canons page there, there's a little bit of a bonus if you're included in the canon and your collection sorts well alphabetically. I assume there's a difference in how much support each of the canon items received. So maybe ranking them by that amount of support.

Maria Paula: Yeah, some kind of ranking is coming. But that is actually an excellent point because it was never very easy for us to decide how we should order the proposals. And in the end, we ended up with all the alphabetical. But I can see now how it looks and that people just don't scroll all the down. So that's definitely excellent feedback.

Nicholas: Props to the Reliquary. Number one. Great. Well, thank you so much. MP, Trent, Sam, Figure, Zero Beta, everybody for coming through. This is great. I'm really happy to learn so much about JPEG. And I'm really excited about NFT, TCR. TCR is for NFTs. I think this is a very powerful idea and not yet fully explored and frankly not understood by most people. So this is a great project that's teaching people the power of curation for a good cause.

Maria Paula: Thank you so much for having us.

Trent Elmore: Yeah, seriously, this is a fun conversation. Really appreciate the support and engagement with what we're doing. And thanks for Figure and Sam jumping up on here and giving some thoughts as well.

Sam Spike: Of course. Thanks so much for having me.

Nicholas: Awesome. Well, I look forward to talking to you all soon. And Figure, let's hang out. We're both in Montreal. Let's do something. All right. See you, everybody. Thank you for coming through for this episode. And as always, another episode next week, next Friday at 5pm. Same time, same place. Next week, it'll be a chat with people from PurpleDAO, the Farkaster dedicated DAO. Thanks for coming through and see you around. on Twitter spaces. I look forward to seeing you there.