Wizard Wednesday Recap, 2023-05-10

As the meeting starts, Dotta speaks about attending the wedding of Artis Rock and Magus Wazir. He said it was a beautiful wedding, and that there were a few other Wizards in attendance. The couple even rang a Bell as they left the chapel.

"It feels like everywhere you go and you meet a group of Wizards, they're just such good people, and that was totally the case there. There was 5 or 6 Wizards there and it just felt like...just this built-in friend group that made us feel super-duper welcome."

Elf notes that TheOneWhoRings is already back to work as he and Dotta highly encourage Wazir to take a break and have a honeymoon.

Cult Questions

Forgotten Runes x Ledger

The team receives a question regarding updates on the Ledger x Forgotten Runes collaboration. Dotta says he doesn't even know and that Ledger has just said they are waiting on their suppliers. Bearsnake jumps in to note the recent Deadfellaz' Ledger reception and reminds that the Deadfellaz Ledger was 2 or 3 months before the Forgotten Runes collaboration. He says it's always been the case that there has been a production timeline. "It is absolutely happening. Of course it is."

Bear says as he reminds that these are physical items and are also being packaged with stickers and comic books for an extra cherry on top. Dotta gives a general thanks to Ledger for including Forgotten Runes in the process, and says he thinks the team could have done better getting expectations from Ledger on the timeline.

Goblin Town Update

The team receives a request for an update on Goblin Town ("Wen screee?") Dotta says, "Oh, you know. You'll play it when you play it."

Bear elaborates to say the team is working hard and says he knows it's taking longer than Dotta thought, but he thinks it looks incredible. Dotta says they're getting great design work help from Sumiez and Pixelshop. He speaks about the difficulties of the designing game interfaces and iterating on the UI in order to optimize the experience. He also says he would be happier to see the mint when the market would pay more attention.

Dotta wraps up his answer by saying, "Let's get the game working and then we'll talk about when the mint is going to be."

3D Update

Elf follows this up by saying he will take the heat for the 3D timeline, since Dotta and Bear have taken the heat for the Ledger and Goblin Town timelines. He says the team is still working through bugs of the model generations and the 3D website is still under construction. He also notes that a trailer for the 3D launch is also in the works.

"If there's anything Forgotten Runes could work on, it's not that we don't ship enough, it's that we don't talk about all the things that we ship enough."

Dotta says, "As we start running each one of them through animations, you see bugs or filenames that were named improperly or skin tone mismatches...so we're basically going through our phase of making sure that works." Dotta also mentions that they want to make sure the rigs work in different metas, which each have different requirements for 3D models. The team says that if anyone wants their specific Wizard, DM Elf and he will put it in the queue.

Runiverse Wars

After the 3D update, Elf is asked if there has ever been a war between the Wizard factions? Elf says yes, but nothing that has been documented in the Wizzypedia. He says the map was designed to inspire inherent conflict between regions. "While I have not taken the time to spell out any inherent conflicts, they are sort of sitting there for anyone to write lore upon."

The Large Lore Machine, Lore Mining, & the Apex Rocket Company

Dotta jumps in to say he is realizing the team should work to get Wizard Wednesday transcriptions into Wizzypedia to capture all of Elf's lore. He says that he has been exploring the idea of using LLMs with the Book of Lore to build tools that create storytelling elements, particularly around the Runiverse map. He relays an anecdote about the Apex Rocket Company where the LLM began creating content around that locale. At first, he thought the AI was going "off-the rails" when it started generating lore and connected locations to the Apex Rocket Company Headquarters. However, he later realized, "The tool was working without my knowledge." Pyromancer Calista of the Citadel (#3344) has an entry in the Book of Lore that describes her attendance of Engineering University and founding of the Apex Rocket Company.

Dotta then goes on to say that the LLM was generating locations consistent with the owner's lore. Elf says this is leading into a longer conversation that they might save for later but points to the massive dataset that is the Book of Lore, created by the entire community, and encourages the Cult to keep creating. Dotta shares a few more words on the topic.

"For me to say, 'When you write lore you're contributing to this dataset that then we can mine,' to me sounds so stale...how I view it is actually in this positive aspect: When you write lore...you're actually manifesting this worldbuilding with your words that now we can make inferences about to build these other stories. It's almost like we woke up as this baby and our eyes haven't come into focus yet...You're technically right, when you write in the Book of Lore, you're submitting to a dataset that can be mined, but it's so much more than that. You're worldbuilding...this environment we can all collaborate with."

Elf agrees: "Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying."

Is the Quantum Shadow Artificial Intelligence?

He then launches into a community question concerning lore: "Is the Quantum Shadow really Artificial Intelligence?"

Elf says this is a really fun question. In the past he has said the Quantum Shadow is a placeholder for the Unknown. He refers to the book The Cosmic Jackpot. He speak about a theory that the universe only exists because in the far future, every single particle in the universe will be observed. He says this only seems possible by a superintelligence.

He says, long story short: Yes, the Quantum Shadow might be AI.

General Climate of NFT Culture

The next questions concerns the general climate of NFT culture with a few keywords to stoke the conversation and few names like Yuga and Milady. Elf starts off and says that he is not a fan of Milady. He says nihilism is not his cup of tea, "but if that's your thing, go for it."

Dotta says he's of a few minds about Milady. From the first time he saw them, he could see that they would do well, but he wasn't a fan of the art for reasons he couldn't put his finger on. He didn't like it and didn't want to participate. Then he said there was a time when it was very representative of counterculture and even a cancelable offense to wear a Milady, but he thinks it has lost that somewhere along the way.

Dotta turns to speak about the projects in Blur's Top 7-day volume. He names Azuki, Mutant Apes, Milady, Punks, Bored Apes, DeGods, Remilios, Pudgy Penguins, and Captains "Without criticism to those projects, I look at that and I see a certain mood. You can see the market mood reflected in that."

He says you clearly have a group of what he refers to as Neutral Mega-players, like the Yuga projects, but then he turns to Azuki, DeGods, Moonbirds, Pepes, and Milady and says that's a mood that reflects the grit you have to have to stick around in a market like this. Elf says there is a strong doomer culture that's gripping the market. Dotta also say he's not trying to paint a broad brush around a group of people by association, but he thinks it exhibits a mood pattern. Elf thinks that it's just the current cycle and bear market blues.

Special Guest, SΞb from Zapper

With that, the team introduce special guest, sΞb from Zapper. In his welcome, Seb says he has been a fan of Wizards nearly since the beginning and laughs that the conversion rate to Wizards at Zapper is probably about 75%.

He says people relate a lot and he personally gravitated to Wizards as he has read a lot of Fantasy since he was very young. Elf then invites Seb to explain what Zapper is in his own words.

What Is Zapper?

"At Zapper, our goal is to make the blockchain readable for everyone."

He explains that Zapper began as a portfolio tracker, but as they were building, they realized they were actually building an account profile and just happened to be surfacing DeFi assets. He says that realization came from seeing how many users were looking at other accounts. This helped pivot Zapper from a portfolio tracker to focus on exploration. "Our vision of the future for Zapper is building a retail Etherscan. A block explorer that anyone can read." He says the way most people find out about what happens on-chain is through web2 products.

The Distance Between On-Chain Transactions and Signaling

Seb goes on to say the problem with this is signal distortion. He says the distance between what happens and how it's being relayed is so wide. Elf describes it as Twitter, but all the posts of your timeline are blockchain transactions.

Seb says the fact is: the blockchain is transparent, and he says in the future, we will be confronted with that fact. He believes this will change our behavior. He says most people that come into the space aren't confronted with the transparency of the blockchain. This is because it feels like everything on-chain is happening somewhere else. It's abstracted away as we go through web2 motions.

Transparency of the Chain

Seb believes this unveiling of the blockchain will make people have a more conscious decision with regard to the choice of their identity. He says he thinks this is important to build a trustless economy of anons and pseudo-anons in the future.

Dotta's Thoughts on Follow-trading On-Chain

Dotta mentions this is something that he tweets about a lot: Follow-trading on-chain rather than from Twitter.

"If you buy based on what people are tweeting...you're going to lose money almost every single time. You have to have an edge to win more times than you lose, and by following tweets, you don't get that. On the contrary, following on-chain, you absolutely do."

Dotta then hypothesizes within the next 5-10 years, there is an opportunity to "sit over the shoulder" of some of the best traders in the world. He says this window will close when on-chain privacy becomes more possible. He notes this is also an advantage the Zapper offers.

Identity Flippening and Other Possible Social Additions to Zapper

Seb says he believes there will be a "flippening" of identity where reputation will be based on action on-chain. He also talks about how the social side can also become much closer to what's happening on-chain as the blockchain becomes more readable. Elf asks if Zapper is thinking about adding additional social features, like DMing on the blockchain, or posting things other than transactions on the feed. Seb says it's something they're really thinking about. A retail block explorer is social by nature. "In terms of social, we're still ideating a lot into what it looks like."

Elf notes this is not a sponsored Zapper Space, and that the team just genuinely enjoys the product. He encourages everyone to try it.

Outro and Cult Content

At the end of the conversation, the team thanks Seb for coming, and as the music plays out, Dotta thanks Tania Del Rio for putting together this week's Cult Content Chronicle.