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“It’s a wild time to be building in crypto,” says Josh Cornelius. “The macro environment is obviously horrible. Twitter sentiment is horrible. NFT volume is horrible.”
“But then you look at some of these new tech stacks that are emerging — and it’s just such an exciting time to actually be building in consumer crypto.”
Speaking on the On the Other Side podcast (Spotify/Apple), the Seed Club incubator partner explains that the program is focused on supporting the development of consumer-facing Web3 apps. “We ended up selecting 10 [projects], all pushing on interesting and weird edges of consumer crypto.”
These aren’t your typical DeFi or DAO-tooling projects, Cornelius insists, saying the new projects are focused on the consumer experience “through and through.”
As most crypto investors fled to the relative safety of building infrastructure during recent bearish conditions, Seed Club founder Jess Sloss says “the world never looked better for building consumer experiences in crypto.”
“The infrastructure had never been better.”
“What we’re hearing from builders,” Sloss continues, “is that they had the tools to go do interesting things, but that maybe the interest from the money wasn’t quite there.” Sloss says he observed a “mismatch” between builders and money, giving Seed Club the opportunity to “step in.”
“We have deep belief in this stuff. And we believe we can find some incredible teams who are pushing it at new and novel edges.”
Feels nothing like Web2
The Seed Club incubator program’s most recent cohort saw nearly 300 applications, from which they chose 10 to support, Sloss explains. “What’s interesting from that experience is, you get to see a wide selection of the visions people have out there in the space.”
“We have 10 teams of incredible builders with big visions and over the last two and a half months, we’ve seen them just run at it very, very hard,” Sloss says, adding that he’s excited to “open the doors and let other people see what we’ve been seeing for the last few months.”
Sloss explains that the new projects will tap into “new potential mechanisms for value creation that exist in the Web3 space.”
“We’ll see which ones are enduring and create lasting value. But at the very least, we’re running at new, interesting opportunities rather than the sort of the very thin games that exist today.”
Cornelius says the current cohort of Seed Club’s developing projects consist of “novel consumer experiences that feel nothing…like Web2.”
“We have a project called Sofamon, which is hard to describe,” he says. The app is a browser extension that acts as a wallet interface, he explains. “It’s this cute little bunny that reacts to all of your on-chain interactions. If a friend sends you tokens, if something happens in your wallet, it reacts.”
“Your friend can jump onto your screen and, you know, slap you if you did something dumb on-chain. They’re building this completely new social layer to on-chain experiences.”
Cornelius mentions a few other projects that focus on building a “lifestyle culture layer” for IRL experiences and “ephemeral art installations” that enrich the experience and “make it fun to be there.”
Sloss then details another project dubbed SenSpace. “They’re being very methodical in building their core community of creators,” he says. “They’re not running at the 10K PFP, not running at the speculation side, but using these NFTs as a way of really bringing those creators into this world of SenSpace.”
“Each entity is a soulbound token, but more importantly, each one is a character and a world that is designed specifically for that creator.”
Sloss explains that the tokens act as a means to encourage buy-in to the community, where the creators then collaborate with others in the network. “You start to see the compounding effects of that, even over the last two months that we’ve been working with the team.”
It’s an implementation of NFT technology where the “asset ties a group of people together,” Sloss says, “but speculation isn’t the core incentive.”
“It’s going to lead to new, interesting opportunities — and we’re seeing the early stages of that already.”
“At the core,” Sloss says, “is this novelty around what a token can be used for and how it can bring people together, coordinate people and create value together.”