Feb. 8, 2024

Living the dream with Web 3 expert Eric McHugh

Show Notes
Transcript

Send us a text

Dive into the future of the internet with 'Living the Dream with Curveball' as we unpack the mysteries of Web 3.0 with Eric McHugh. Eric, a Web 3.0 aficionado, shares his journey from the hustle of Silicon Beach to the frontlines of the next digital revolution. Discover how Web 3.0 is transforming e-commerce, loyalty programs, and even the dating scene with Eric's groundbreaking projects like ShopX and the AI-powered matchmaker, Dataing. Tune in to explore how Web 3.0 is redefining ownership, authenticity, and value in the digital age.

WEBVTT

00:00:00.569 --> 00:00:09.710
> Speaker A>Welcome, um, to the living the Dream podcast with curveball. Um, if you believe you can achieve, cheat, cheat.

00:00:18.769 --> 00:00:52.939
> Speaker A>Welcome to the living the Dream with curveball podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate, and inspire. Today we're going to be talking web three entrepreneurship, as I am joined by web three expert Eric McHugh. He has done a lot as far as research and helping the industry with solutions and challenges that the industry might face. So we're going to be talking to him about what web three is and everything that he's up to. So, Eric, thank you so much for joining me today.

00:00:53.310 --> 00:00:58.506
> Speaker B>Hey, Curtis, honestly, I'm really grateful to be here. Thank you so much. And I'm looking forward to this conversation.

00:00:58.698 --> 00:01:01.789
> Speaker A>Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

00:01:01.939 --> 00:01:40.266
> Speaker B>Sure. Nice to meet everyone. My name is Eric. I'm 30 years old and blessed to be living in beautiful southern California. My main hobbies are chess, moitai, reading, anything under the sun, m and meditation. I just got back from a ten day vimpossa meditation retreat in Joshua Tree, California. That was a beautiful, transformative experience that I highly recommend everyone check out. In terms of tangible benefits, business benefits, there's an infinite amount. Went to school at the University of California, Irvine. I interned in Washington, DC and Barcelona, which was pretty funny considering how opposite those cultures are.

00:01:40.287 --> 00:01:48.445
30 a.m. Full m student tie, dealing with that humidity, and I'd be the last one there. Whereas in

00:01:48.468 --> 00:02:16.401
00 a.m. Wearing sandals and, like, a t shirt, I'd be the first one there. So I found that humorous. My first job out of college was at Snap Inc. Helping craft their ad algorithm. So I chose that position because, um, their location was in Venice beach, which was awesome. And they were about to go through an IPO, which I wanted to be around that energy just to see what it was like. And again, it was a fun learning experience. From there, I joined.

00:02:16.466 --> 00:03:05.734
I'm like, okay, I need to get a nine to five job. So I joined as a bankruptcy consultant for Fortune 500 companies. Going through the bankruptcy process. Long story short, when a company goes bankrupt, they have a lot of debt, they have to move around, and the consultants work with the courts and the lawyers to make sure everyone gets paid appropriately. But that didn't really align with my calling when I started looking into bitcoin and cryptocurrency. So around that time, I was doing the deep dive into bitcoin. Why? It's important. And that, uh, didn't align with the rent seeking behavior of the consultancy firm. So the reason for that was the firm itself. Don't get me wrong, it's like everyone was kind, everyone's smart, everyone's intelligent. But there was a systematic error. And that systematic error was there are tiers of creditors. So tier one, tier two, tier three, and tier four. Tier one gets paid first, then tier two, then tier three, then tier four gets paid out last.

00:03:05.931 --> 00:03:11.337
So the normal people, like me, you with mom and pops, are often in tier four.

00:03:11.424 --> 00:03:31.102
So they get paid often pennies on the dollar. And as a consultant, we're billing out a company. They usually pay from their revenue or their profits, but in this case, the companies are going through the bankruptcy process, so they have limited funds available to pay out their creditors. So I thought we were actually just taking money from there. So I quit that job. I'm like, okay, I'm going to work in web three.

00:03:31.156 --> 00:03:31.500
> Speaker A>Crypto.

00:03:31.500 --> 00:03:57.126
> Speaker B>Uh, before I was called, uh, that, I started going to cryptocurrency meetups. And that's where I met their original Shopx team. We founded Shopx, and in the meantime, we also created a spinoff SaaS platform called Cartrev or polyme that different names. What that did is replaced affiliate codes for e commerce brands on Shopify. So if you're a Shopify brand, you can upload your products to our database, and then any one of our users could sell any product.

00:03:57.307 --> 00:04:22.480
> Speaker B>So if I like this Nike shoe, this Reebok hat, this adidas shirt, I could add all three products to a singular link, and then you or any of my friends, my followers, can make that purchase. I will get a commission. Brand gets a sale, customer gets a discount. So everyone wins. Honestly, dealing with ecommerce brands and the knowledge we gained from that was invaluable with dealing with ShopX, because at its core, ShopX is the Google or Apple web three.

00:04:23.250 --> 00:04:34.019
> Speaker B>Long term, we're a suite of solutions for an ecommerce brand to download an app and then interact within web three and gain different benefits depending on the product and the brand's business need.

00:04:34.709 --> 00:05:21.170
> Speaker B>Right now, we have two products live. The first is reservex, and that's a NFT powered loyalty program. So if you're a brand on Shopify, you can download our app, get the right amount of tokenized software licenses, and then directly within the app, you can launch an NFT collection and then program an e commerce benefits to that NFT collection. So what's cool about that is when launching your NFT collection m we've simplified the process so much that you don't really need any technical help. You really just need to fill out a form with like a a ah description, a price um how many passes you want created, click create and then it creates it for you on the back end and then your NFT collection is now created and you can add ecommerce benefits to those passes.

00:05:21.990 --> 00:07:05.805
> Speaker B>For example if Nike were to launch a pass they create a gold silver bronze style pass collection. The gold holders could get product a for free. The silver holders could get product a for 50% off. The bronze holders could get product a before everyone else. So the brand gets to decide what ecommerce benefits are attached to each individual pass. This leads us into our second product which is SquadX and that's the first ever blockchain based ambassador program and it's related to reservex. So just like Twitter uh pays its creators and revenue from Twitter pays its creators from their ad revenue. ShopX pays our community for helping our ecosystem grow from our reserve x revenue. So in our Nike example when a customer, let's say one customer purchases one um$100 pass Nike has control over 95% of the fund. So if they're working at an influencer agency everyone's incentivized to sell a product. ShopX earns 5% so Shop x earns $5 and we share 2.5 of that. So half of that with our community for helping our ecosystem grow. The logic behind that is honestly dude it's just much better to give than receive. Like if you give someone $20 versus asking someone for $20 you'll just feel better on the inside. And we also believe in powerful relationships, not forceful relationships. The difference between a powerful relationship and a forceful relationship is forceful. One party wins, one party loses. So it's not sustainable because eventually the losing parties would be like nah, I'm out. And a powerful relationship is when two parties are both winning. So uh this podcast is actually a really good example. We both win therefore we're going to do that.

00:07:05.927 --> 00:07:11.473
> Speaker B>So when architecting the Shopx ecosystem we thought about okay who's involved with the sale?

00:07:11.601 --> 00:07:20.213
> Speaker B>Ecommerce brand, e commerce brand customer Shopx. So e commerce brands, customer wins because they get e commerce benefits. They wouldn't purchase the pass if they didn't win.

00:07:20.411 --> 00:07:30.829
> Speaker B>The brand wins because they get higher customer lifetime value, lower customer acquisition costs and a lot of word of mouth marketing. ShopX wins because we help onboard um people into the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

00:07:31.250 --> 00:07:36.589
> Speaker B>And the customer and our community wins because they get paid. Ethereum.

00:07:36.930 --> 00:07:54.733
> Speaker B>And this also generates a positive, I believe in energies. I believe positive energy is contagious, and I believe negative energy is contagious as well. So this creates a lot of nice, positive energy spiral for ShopX. So as ShopX gets more and more brands, our community, they get paid more and more eth.

00:07:54.781 --> 00:09:22.761
> Speaker B>They're happy, they're posting about it more. They're recommending ShopX to more and more brands. ShopX is then getting more and more brands because they're recommending them. Thus they get more and more e. So it creates a nice little, nice little cycle, uh, where everyone wins. That's Shopx. And I also have another company, which is, uh, data ing, and that's the first ever aipowered matchmaker. So it beats Tinder for three main reasons. The issue with Tinder and all other dating apps is first 90. The, uh, top 5% of the users get access to 95% of the user base, creating a skewed marketplace on dating apps. Right now, it's all physical based. So it's like, hot or not. Find them hot, swipe right, find them, not, swipe left. And the third and most important reason is dating apps rely on something called churn marketing. So if, let's say, Tinder matches a happy couple, that couple goes, Tinder. Tinder then loses the paying customer. So what they want is people coming back to that over and over again. So if you ever heard of someone saying, oh, I downloaded Tinder, deleted it, I downloaded again, I deleted again. And it creates a vicious cycle that way. So what data ing does is we would create a profile for you based on your digital footprint. So you'd connect with your Instagram, Spotify, LinkedIn, and then it'll match you with users based on their digital footprint, with the goal of helping someone, putting them in the best position to succeed. So I could get three matches. Ashley, Kimberly, jane. I think Jane catches my fancy.

00:09:22.905 --> 00:09:28.381
> Speaker B>I say, can you tell me more m about Jane? It's like, oh, yeah, she went to Ford University based on Instagram. She's billion to nature.

00:09:28.525 --> 00:09:42.785
> Speaker B>Oh, she's the youngest of her family. You're the oldest. You might get along. Oh, did you know that both of you and your Spotify playlist listen to this one artist 25% of the time? Did you know this artist has a concert coming up around both your areas?

00:09:42.898 --> 00:09:53.129
> Speaker B>Would you like me to suggest this, David? Jane, then I would suggest this for us, and then we can plan it from there. Do you have any questions? I know I just laid out a bunch, but, yeah, um, that's a brief little summary.

00:09:53.629 --> 00:09:59.865
> Speaker A>Well, what I actually want you to do is explain to the listeners what web three actually is.

00:10:00.048 --> 00:10:22.100
> Speaker B>Yeah, sure, I think I'm happy to. And honestly, I'm, um, in a really good position too, because, again, what Shopx does is we onboard, uh, web two brands into web three. So a lot of the people we talk to really have no idea what web three is. So let's do a brief breakdown of what web one is versus what web two is versus web three and why it's important.

00:10:22.870 --> 00:10:42.490
> Speaker B>So, in web one, I want you to think of read only. So on web one, we could go online, we could read content. Web two, let's think of social media, like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, all that stuff. So you can read and you can write. So I can write content by creating an Instagram post.

00:10:42.639 --> 00:11:13.169
> Speaker B>You can read that content by viewing with it, interacting it, liking it, doing whatever you want. The only issue is we don't own the content. So in this example, Instagram owns the content. They could sell your content, they could sell your data, they can do whatever they want for nefarious purposes, and they could also delete the content or cancel you. Like, for example, we could say something as podcast. Ten years down the line, it's no fly. And they could cancel us both. For that reason, in web three, it's read, it's write, and it's own, the keyword being own.

00:11:13.320 --> 00:11:30.730
> Speaker B>So, in web three, you can read content, you can write content, but you also own the content. And this is powered by an NFT, which is a non fungible token or just something scarce, a digital scarcity on the Internet. So, if I were to create an NFT collection, I own the NFT collection. Let's say you purchase one of my nfts.

00:11:31.149 --> 00:11:36.597
> Speaker B>Now, there's a connection between me and you forever, with no third party interrupting.

00:11:36.774 --> 00:11:59.662
> Speaker B>And whatever benefits I want to give to you through that NFT, I can totally do. So. It creates a stream of value between me and you. My area of expertise is e commerce. But, for example, an artist could give you exclusive content access, um, to shows in real life, autograph, merch, or whatever they decide. And the cool thing is, once you own the NFT, Curtis, you own the NFT.

00:11:59.725 --> 00:12:08.529
> Speaker B>I can't take it back from you, which is an issue like Amazon taking back their credits. Facebook or Instagram or whoever runs it can't just cancel you and just take your NFT.

00:12:08.690 --> 00:12:12.840
> Speaker B>The NFT is yours to do with what you will and no one can take it from you.

00:12:13.610 --> 00:12:20.919
> Speaker A>Okay, well, explain to the listeners how to onboard, um, a company into the web three system.

00:12:21.629 --> 00:12:49.214
> Speaker B>Yeah. So the issue right now with the web three system is for web three to be successful long term, people, uh, have to be using web three without even knowing they're using web three. And that's, uh, a ways off. So the big reason why people aren't using web three is for two specific reasons. The first is user interface. So as a person using web three, you have to be very technical, savvy. You have to figure stuff out on your own to enter the space, which honestly isn't for everyone. And the second reason is incentives.

00:12:49.341 --> 00:13:03.957
> Speaker B>So for a lot of people, there's really no reason to interact with web three space, which is what Shopx is trying to help. So for the shop x case, um, and I can give you a live example. I'll just give you, um, an example from our first case study.

00:13:04.124 --> 00:13:12.361
> Speaker B>This guy named Mickey, um, he owns a hat store in LA. It's called the mag park. They sell hats, hype, wear and all that stuff to customers.

00:13:12.416 --> 00:13:20.139
> Speaker B>And it's a hometown shop type thing where he's like an la hero. He has like a basketball hoop within the store. The kids come and play.

00:13:21.070 --> 00:14:04.220
> Speaker B>It's a really good vibe, to be honest. So his biggest issue was bots would come in whenever he launched a new product, buy his inventory less than a second resell on the secondary market for ten times the profit, and then his core customer base wouldn't be able to purchase a hat and he'd lose out on money. So what he did is he launched a gold silver bronze style pass collection where his pink mocha holders, they purchased the pass. Now his pink mocha holders, they get access to specific products. And this 100% protects from the bots. You also create a discord channel for pink mocha holders. So now they get access to the brand owner, they get help with designs, they get to do a bunch of fun stuff. So, yeah, to onboard a brand into web three, we've simplified the process so much.

00:14:06.509 --> 00:14:19.039
> Speaker B>Just how you or any of your listeners want to download an iPhone app for Shopify brands or Woocommerce brands, you just search up the ShopX app, you download the app, and then you can create a past collection within less than five to 10 minutes.

00:14:19.809 --> 00:14:22.639
> Speaker A>Or what do you feel like the future of web three is?

00:14:22.639 --> 00:14:44.919
> Speaker B>Uh, so I think the future of web three ties in very well with the metaverse, if that becomes a thing. So I like to joke we went over the web three like web one, web two, web three versions. I would say web four is like a combination of web three benefits with ar, with VR, with metaverse, with AI. And I think web five is everyone just gets kind of over it and just goes back outside.

00:14:45.289 --> 00:15:04.830
> Speaker B>But in terms of the future of web three, uh, there's plenty of ways we're going to do this. So there's plenty of companies solving different needs and they're going about it in different ways. So Shopx, we have the loyalty programs down pat. Long term we're going to attach an enft to each individual product.

00:15:04.899 --> 00:15:16.402
> Speaker B>Sku. So let's say hypothetically Nike were to launch, they attach a enft to 1 million of their products. So whenever that product gets purchased Nike can track that data.

00:15:16.456 --> 00:16:09.341
> Speaker B>So they can say okay, this product was purchased once, twice, three times for this amount of money. And they can program in um, what's it called? They can program in a cut every time it's been sold. And the benefit from the customer side is let's say I'm the customer. I purchased this Nike product, has the NFT attached. I'm the fourth purchaser. I can trace it back to the brand to ensure its authenticity. So that's powerful. When it comes to art or products that have dealings have issues with counterfeiting. And this also plays very well into the metaverse. So let's keep our Nike example. If I were to purchase that Nike product, uh, it has an NFT attached to that. That means there's a digital scarcity attached to that. That NFT is the perfect thing to transfer over to the metaverse. So my metaverse avatar could get the product I purchased in real life. And on top of that the reverse works. So in the metaverse I could purchase a digital project in the form of NFT.

00:16:09.485 --> 00:16:23.559
> Speaker B>I now own the NFT in the physical world and that NFT could unlock a physical product. So you can claim, so you can do it both ways. In terms of where web three is going, it's just going to be something that's running the back end.

00:16:23.929 --> 00:16:35.542
> Speaker B>I can see my mom using an NFT thing where she goes to Sephora. She just kind of scans her phone. She gets a discount, she gets easy products but she doesn't even need to know it's an NFT. It's just, okay, this Nft is hers.

00:16:35.605 --> 00:16:38.474
> Speaker B>But she's like, oh, um, I get discounts, I get products.

00:16:38.591 --> 00:16:38.970
> Speaker A>Cool.

00:16:39.039 --> 00:16:40.830
> Speaker B>Don't need to know what's happening in the background.

00:16:41.730 --> 00:16:44.618
> Speaker A>Okay, well tell us a little bit about crypto.

00:16:44.714 --> 00:16:48.000
> Speaker A>Why do you feel like crypto matters, and why is it so important?

00:16:48.690 --> 00:16:57.597
> Speaker B>Yeah, um, the why behind my shopx is. See, overall, Curtis, I would like to live a nice, peaceful life. That's my goal. I think a lot of people share in that goal.

00:16:57.614 --> 00:17:19.925
> Speaker B>I don't think it's too much to ask for, but, um, I feel that's hard to do if the money system is getting corrupt and taking from you every second of every day, making you poor, while funding corruption and wars and all that stuff. So I view cryptocurrency. I, uh, first viewed, uh, gold and silver as the answer to that, and that eventually led me to crypto. So just think of it this way.

00:17:20.107 --> 00:17:25.577
> Speaker B>If money is what we trade, so money is what people trade their value for, what they trade their time for.

00:17:25.743 --> 00:17:54.273
> Speaker B>If the federal government can just print a trillion dollars, and let's say the average american salary is 60,000, a trillion divided by 60,000 is a certain number, that's how many years of life that has been effectively stolen from cryptocurrency, from the population as a whole. And not only that, that money is often then used to funnel into the friends of the rich politician, making them richer, then fund wars across the world, just scaling people. So the main issue that crypto Solves is the incentive structure of that all.

00:17:54.392 --> 00:18:05.480
> Speaker B>So, right now, unfortunately, the best way, or the easiest way to make a lot of money without producing any value is to place yourself near the source of the money printing. So it's like, okay, how do I gain money?

00:18:05.640 --> 00:18:50.680
> Speaker B>Um, okay, let me just put myself in a position that's right near the printer, and I can just take what I can, which is effectively taking from everyone else. Whereas in a crypto based world, let's say, if I want, in a crypto based world, where bitcoin is the standard, how do I make money? Well, I can't just print it. I can't really just take it. Oh, I have to produce, like, let's say, curtis, I wanted your bitcoins. I would have to produce a product and service that Curtis voluntarily wants, thus, and then he would give me his bitcoin because I added value to his life. So it creates a system where instead of just rent seeking is rewarded, rent seeking is basically just them taking money without adding value or extracting. It creates a system where value creation is rewarded, which in then helps everyone as a whole.

00:18:51.609 --> 00:18:56.839
> Speaker A>Tell us about any current or upcoming projects that you're working on, that people need to know about.

00:18:57.289 --> 00:18:59.509
> Speaker B>Yeah, so the first one is ShopX.

00:19:00.250 --> 00:19:40.137
> Speaker B>That is pretty much just onboarding, um, the world into web three, one ecommerce brand at a time. The logic behind that is it creates a zero to one moment for a lot of people to interact with the space. So, for example, in the mag park example, over 50% of the users were 100% branded to crypto. This created a but I want this ecommerce product. I have to learn the system, and they did for the ecommerce product, so that's going extremely well. We have major brands like Fox using this, too. But if you want to get involved, we have a cool way to do that. So our tokens function as a tokenized software license. So as a brand wanting to enter ecosystem, you have to acquire surround tokens. We also have the first ever ambassador program that pays in ETh.

00:19:40.253 --> 00:19:58.569
> Speaker B>So if you want to get involved with ShopX, just go to ShopX Co, look up Squadx, and then you can start getting paid in Ethereum as an ambassador, which is cool. And the second project I'm working on is dating, which is the first ever AI powered matchmaker. The goal is to spread as much love as possible. That launches on Valentine's Day, which is obviously just cute.

00:19:59.309 --> 00:20:05.566
> Speaker A>All, uh, right, so throw out your contact information so people can keep up with everything that you're up to.

00:20:05.748 --> 00:20:11.662
> Speaker B>Sure. So if you want to learn more about Shopx or web three, the best place to do that would be Shopx Co.

00:20:11.715 --> 00:20:29.539
> Speaker B>Shopx co ing will be dataing IO, and my personal Instagram is Eric DmcHugh. I love meeting cool, interesting people. So if you just want to chat, have any questions, or just honestly just want to chat, just shoot me a DM and I'll get to those as quickly as I can.

00:20:30.069 --> 00:20:37.250
> Speaker A>Well, uh, that was some final thoughts. Maybe if that was something I forgot to touch on, that you would like to talk about it. Just any final thoughts you have for the listeners?

00:20:37.410 --> 00:20:46.122
> Speaker B>Sure. So, um, the best advice I can give you is to be our authentic self. And the reason is, I think people are happier when they're serving people in a positive way.

00:20:46.256 --> 00:20:57.054
> Speaker B>And I believe that God, uh, the creator, the universe, whatever you want to call it, I think he blessed each individual with very specific gifts specific to them.

00:20:57.251 --> 00:21:03.178
> Speaker B>So, in terms of, like, if Curtis, if you tried to be me, you wouldn't be able to be me, because I'm the number one, Eric.

00:21:03.273 --> 00:21:45.614
> Speaker B>So if I'm authentic, I'm number one in the world. Why would I not do that? And on the flip side, Curtis, if I try to be you, I couldn't be you because you're the number one curse in the world, and the same applies to listeners. So if you're authentic and following your intellectual curiosity, it'll lead you to your natural talents, and then you can use those talents to benefit the collective as a whole. So I also view everyone as a conscious creator, whether they know it or not. And I like to follow two rules. Don't harm anyone and don't take anything away from anyone. And you're usually good to go. And I also believe in karma. So if you're just going around doing good in the world, I think you'll be rewarded. So, yeah, just keep that up. Uh, I view everything in terms of energy, frequency, vibration. So that's why sad people attract sad people.

00:21:45.652 --> 00:22:02.930
> Speaker B>Angry people attract angry people. Loving and happy people attract loving and happy people. So if you walk around with a loving, positive mindset, wishing everyone the best, I've noticed that people also wish you the best, which is both good for you and good for everyone. Just, yeah, just walk around, know everyone's trying their best.

00:22:02.930 --> 00:22:09.160
> Speaker B>Um, be helpful when you can, and just be an overall kind person, and it usually just reflects back on you.

00:22:09.690 --> 00:22:15.013
> Speaker A>All right, ladies and gentlemen, there you have it. Check out Eric McHugh, everything that he's up to.

00:22:15.211 --> 00:22:36.480
> Speaker A>Check out that, uh, dating service that he's going to be creating. If you need to follow rate review, share this episode to as many people as possible. If you have any guest or suggestion topics, Cjackson 102 at Cox. Net is the place to send them. As always, thank you for listening. And Eric, thank you so much for joining me.

00:22:37.089 --> 00:22:42.319
> Speaker B>Honestly, thank you so much. Uh, I really do appreciate it. I hope you and your listeners have an amazing life.

00:22:42.849 --> 00:22:50.846
> Speaker A>For more information on the living the Dream podcast, visit www.djcurveball.com.

00:22:51.028 --> 00:22:55.809
> Speaker A>Until next time, stay focused on living the drink. Drink.