[00:00:00] Joe Benso: Bonjour degens, art collectors, and Web3 pioneers, and welcome to the Casper Podcast, where we take a deep dive into blockchain technology and speak with those who are building the future of the decentralized web. I'm your host, Joe Benso. So, the Casper Association was recently at NFT Paris, meeting with builders, entrepreneurs, and influential members of the NFT community.

The event was absolutely amazing, and it gave us some deep insights into the current state of the global NFT market. One of the coolest things that happened over the two days was that entrepreneurs lined up to pitch their Web3 business ideas for a chance to appear on season 2 of Killer Whales. For those of you who may not know, Killer Whales is Shark Tank for Web3.

[00:00:49] Joe Benso: Since Casper is the official blockchain sponsor of the show, we decided to take pitches on the spot and send those videos to the Whales for season 2. We had the chance to chat with Illa, one of the Whales for the show, and currently the Community and Partnership Lead at none other than Yuga Labs.

[00:01:08] Joe Benso: Amazing to run into you, Illa, here at the booth of Casper. We're partnering with Killer Whales. It's amazing to see what you've done in season 1 already.

[00:01:17] IllaDaProducer: Yes, sir.

[00:01:18] Joe Benso: We're excited for season 2. People are stopping by the booth, pitching for season 2. So, tell us about your experience at Killer Whales.

[00:01:24] Illya Fraser: If you're part of Web3, you already know that we have our own reality show. Every single day, there's something happening in our space. I think the Killer Whales really captured that, captured that energy. They have really respected the guys from the crypto media, guys like Ran, guys like the Altcoin Daily twins, Wendy O, who was my favorite judge.

[00:01:44] IllaDaProducer: Then you have the degens, represented by myself and KMoney. And I think with that mix of talent as the judges, it makes for a really great show, makes for really great TV. I feel for the people who come up there and who are pitching their projects every single day because it's a tough panel.

[00:02:00] Joe Benso: You classify yourself as degen?

[00:02:02] llaDaProducer: Oh yeah.

[00:02:03] Joe Benso: You're also well known in the space as a Bored Ape holder and now with Yuga. Tell us a little bit about your role at Yuga Labs.

[00:02:09]IllaDaProducer: I'm the Community and Partnership Lead over at Yuga Labs. I focus on all things communities. People call me the community champion. And then when we think about partnerships, we think about strategic partnerships. But for me, it's more about making sure we do culturally relevant partnerships to shake up the game.

[00:02:24] Joe Benso: When you talk about partnerships, the collaboration that takes place in Web3, and the fact that blockchain enables ways to incentivize people to collaborate on shared goals. What are you looking for for mass adoption into this space? Where do you think the space is going?

[00:02:39] IllaDaProducer: I think the space was founded to mean creativity. So, I think for mass adoption, it's some of the world's greatest creatives, whether it's digital artists, musicians, photographers, people that can come in and see this space as a blank canvas and come and paint the most vibrant landscapes.

[00:02:55] Joe Benso: Well, we appreciate you taking the time to speak to us about Killer Whales. Love all the work you're doing in this space and pushing things forward. Illa, we're gonna see you in season 2.

[00:03:04] IllaDaProducer:  Season 2, season 3, season 4…

[00:03:09] Joe Benso: So, a big thanks to Illa for stopping by our booth and taking a few minutes to talk with us. The Casper booth had a great location this year right in the middle of the floor, and traffic and interest in Casper's NFT standard was pretty much nonstop.

By chance, the group next to us at NFT Paris was the highly successful NFT project Chimpers that achieved great success in the past two years. We had a chance to hear all about how, despite launching in a bear market. We're here with Jacob, otherwise known as Insights. One of the co-founders of Chimpers. An NFT project that many of our listeners will know if they have been in the space for any time.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to us. What you guys have done over the last couple of years has been extremely impressive and I think a lot of NFT projects are looking at your model for a model of what is working. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about Chimpers and the journey so far.

[00:04:09] Jacob (Insight.chimp): I started with Timpers with my twin brother, he's an artist and he came from the YouTube gaming scene. He had a YouTube channel teaching pixel art. He used to create packages for streamers and gamers like Pokimane, Tfue, et cetera, and FaZe Clan. I think it was in 2021, he stumbled across NFTs on Twitter.

He dove in as an artist and was like, “How can I get involved?” He purchased a few NFTs early on. He joined, the Bored Ape Yacht Club when they minted, and he was just there at the right time. And that was his first touchpoint with communities and NFTs itself, and he fell in love with the Bored Yacht Club and started creating art about the Apes.

At the time, there wasn't any way for people to bring the Apes and IP to life. So, he created an artwork, and it was just going to be a homage artwork piece. But, the community loved it, all the Ape holders, absolutely loved seeing their profile pictures in his artwork. He decided, “Okay, this needs to be a bigger campaign,” like, a vision, and he created an artwork series, and at the time, I had just graduated from university as well, studying English language.

[00:05:20] Jacob (Insight.chimp): I thought, why not start creating an NFT account on Twitter, create a Substack newsletter, and start writing about NFTs? I just dove in, and started interviewing people, writing, and being amongst the community that Timpers was building with the Bored Apes, we had a Discord and I was in there every day and slowly I just got more and more roped in by Timpers.

[00:05:43] Jacob (Insight.chimp): We built a really cool project with the Bored Ape Chronicles, which that artwork series was first. It was just a small 100-edition artwork series per episode. We built experiences around it, we wrote a whole story around it. We built a gamified series of mints. That was like the first kind of introduction to Chimpers, really, because at the time, we were working with like the Bored Apes IP.

[00:06:09] Jacob (Insight.chimp): But for Timpers, he always had a vision of creating his own character collection, like for himself, and that kind of was a springboard of building that, so that tight-knit community that we built with the Boring Ape Chronicles were the foundations of Chimpers, essentially. You know, that was in 2021 up until 2022.

[00:06:28] Jacob (Insight.chimp): It was in May 2022 that we launched Chimpers. It's a 5,555-character collection of Chimpers, pixelated monkeys, I guess. You know, you see some NFT collections from regurgitate trades for Timpers, everything was completely fresh So I think it really makes Chimpers stand out as an IP itself because you spent so many many months of creating it and generating it.

[00:06:51] Jacob (Insight.chimp): It was a very fresh NFT collection that launched in May for Chimpers we're all you know, heavily focused on art storytelling and experiences Those are like the pillars that we took from that early artwork series into Chimpers As we've developed and grown Chimpers, we're now, you know, heavily focused on growing the IP through products, and also gaming as well, through mobile games, desktop games, and also, social media building, so we have an Instagram and TikTok we've taken the Chimper's lore and story and kind of packaging it into, a really easy to understand.

[00:07:28] Jacob (Insight.chimp): Touchpoint for people who just enjoy scrolling, and surfing on TikTok and Instagram through short-form content all around the Chimper's IP. And we've grown that to just shy of a million followers in the past year. The broader vision is to continue growing that through animations, longer-form content, and also all of the products that we're creating in Web3. We want to bring them to life and bring beholders on the journey as well through products and experiences.

[00:07:56] Joe Benso: You're a small team, and it's been amazing the progress and the traction that you've had in this space. Is there something that has surprised you about your growth, also through the bear market? And what is it that you think is driving those large numbers of followers across other social media accounts that may not necessarily have that touchpoint to Web3?

[00:08:18]  Jacob (Insight.chimp): Like you say, we're a small team. And we're in the trenches every day, we're on Twitter, we're in Discord. That's the connection that the community needs to be able to actually realize, okay, “I'm a part of a community here and I feel that I want to be involved in growing it together.”

[00:08:33] Jacob (Insight.chimp): In terms of the Web2 following, et cetera, I think it's a completely different realm and the whole purpose behind that is not to throw the Web3 world into their faces, it's more so how can we take our IP to a brand new audience and begin to reel them in to learn more about the story itself and the foundation of the IP, which are the characters.

[00:08:54] Jacob (Insight.chimp): But yeah, I think that kind of growth that we had, it was quite unprecedented. It started out with that vision, how can we take Chimpers to a broader audience? We don't want to just keep it in this Web3 bubble. The way people consume content nowadays is through Instagram and TikTok and short-form content.

[00:09:10] Jacob (Insight.chimp): It was a grind at first, you know, not many videos had traction but, you know, some hit the algorithm, people started to love the videos and just from there it's kind of spiraled into more and more people following us and growing the account.

[00:09:24] Joe Benso: So, for projects that are launching today, who don't have the community, who want to follow in your footsteps, what would your advice be, now that you've been in the trenches, and you've gone through the bull and the bear cycle, and you've maintained a huge level of credibility and visibility across the space? So, what would your advice be to project founders launching today?

[00:09:47] Jacob (Insight.chimp): In terms of approaching building the NFT community itself, you do have to be in the trenches every day, and you do have to be visible and transparent about what you're building and you've seen a lot of communities become a lot more corporate and lose the touch of the Web3 ethos a little bit, and you see that the communities start to decline. So I think keeping that core ethos of Web3 at the core of what you're doing and being open about building community in the right way.

[00:10:17] Joe Benso: What are you most excited about going forward now with what's on the horizon?

[00:10:21] Jacob (Insight.chimp): Ever since we launched Chimpers, right from when Timpers was creating the art, he saw the collection and said he wants to build this into a multimedia brand and, you know, we signed with a licensing agency in the US and they're helping us to kind of bring the Chimpers IP into different products, different categories, gaming, merchandise, apparel, and all of these awesome things and we have a lot of great things in the works like plush collabs and mobile games. Those things are really exciting because we can really see the potential to grow Chimpers beyond Web3 and grow it into an amazing brand while keeping the character collection at the core and bringing value back to the community.

[00:11:02] Joe Benso: Congratulations on all the success that you guys have had. It seems like you have a lot of opportunities ahead and congratulations.

[00:11:08] Jacob (Insight.chimp): Thank you for bringing me on and I loved chatting.

[00:11:13] Joe Benso: Well, that's a wrap on NFT Paris for this year. We'll be back for Paris Blockchain Week in April. And if you have a Web3 project and are interested in pitching to the Killer Whales judges for a chance to appear, On season two, send us a message, or if you're interested in appearing on the Casper Podcast, drop us a line, let us know who you'd like us to speak with. So, that's all for now. Keep building, and we'll see you on the next episode of the Casper Podcast.