[00:00:00] Donny: Brands are navigating the new Web three world, and with it comes an opportunity for experimentation, innovation, and engaging consumers in entirely new ways. But where do you start and when? In this new season of the Brave Marketer Podcast, we’re talking Web three marketing and how to market in the Metaverse.

[00:00:19] You hear from marketers, from top brands and agencies who will help us leverage this exciting moment in. And take our brave marketing moments. The next level hosted by Brave Software and me, Donnie Devork. You’re listening to a new episode of The Brave Marketer Podcast, and this one features Hugo Fler and he’s the co-founder and c e O of Minia, the world’s only mobile native blockchain.

[00:00:41] Prior to launching Minia, Hugo spent two decades in marketing communications. He’s co-founder of London-based creative agency, alpha Century managing director at Gray London, and there he created global campaigns for brands. I. Vodafone Shiba and Sony Electronics.I think you’re really gonna like this episode because we [00:01:00] discuss why a mobile native blockchain is so important for Web three. We talk about the meme competitions they’re running with community to both grow audience and awareness of their brand and the role the creators will play in the adoption of Web three in educating the masses.

[00:01:14] And now for this week’s episode of The Brave Market.

[00:01:17] Hugo, welcome to the Brave Marketer Podcast. How are you

[00:01:24] Hugo: doing today? Hi, Donny. I’m doing very well. Thank you very much for having me. Yeah, we’re excited to have

[00:01:29] Donny: you on. So for those who don’t know Minia, can you please give us a general overview?

[00:01:33] Hugo: Yes, Minia is a layer one blockchain protocol like Bitcoin or Ethereum.

[00:01:38] But rather than using, huge mining farms or powerful computers, mini is first blockchain that runs in full on mobile devices. This means that, you know, via a simple app download from Google Play Store, everyone can run a full node and have complete control of their identity and their data and their coins and their token.

[00:01:57] It’s

[00:01:57] Donny: amazing. So can you only access it from a [00:02:00] mobile device or from a

[00:02:00] Hugo: desktop as. No, you can also access it from a desktop as well, but it does also work in full on a mobile device. And in fact, because of the way it’s been designed, it can actually also run on IOT devices. So you know, from cars to fridges, to washing machines to traffic lights and everything like that as well.

[00:02:18] And how did you decide

[00:02:19] Donny: to go build it on mobile first versus everything else I’m assuming

[00:02:24] Hugo: is, desktop first? Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, I mean, it, goes back to the reason for a blockchain, you know, the reason for a blockchain is because decentralized. And so, you know, the devices or the people involved are distributed across a large number.

[00:02:40] And so what we’ve seen in, in the past with Bitcoin for example, is because it’s done on computers and there’s a competition, then you really, you need to have a bigger and bigger computer. In order to be a minor on Bitcoin. I mean, that’s actually sort of tends towards centralization. And what we wanted to do with Minia is create a completely decentralized network.

[00:02:58] And the only way to do that is [00:03:00] if everybody is an equal on the network. And everybody’s also sort of running it in the same way. And obviously not everyone has a large computer or a laptop, but most people, vast majority of people have a mobile device. So we wanted to make it so that it was completely accessible to every.

[00:03:15] And

[00:03:15] Donny: so what have you found so far as like the key advantages to. The end user. And by the way, there’s no crypto. It’s just

[00:03:22] Hugo: the blockchain itself, right? So I mean, it is a blockchain, but it has coins and it can create tokens. So there is a, currency on the blockchain then I guess there’s two main benefits.

[00:03:32] the benefit from a sort of macro level is that it’s completely decentralized, so it’s. Resistant and it’s makes it very, very difficult to hack from an end user perspective, because everyone is running the full blockchain. It means that they have complete self-sovereign ownership of their data, their identity, and their coin.

[00:03:50] They don’t need anyone else in order to transact or decide. No one can tell them what to do or to censor any of their transactions basically. Got it.

[00:03:58] Donny: And so big [00:04:00] differentiators between Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains is that you’re native to mobile, but it sounds like you do have smart contracts, which makes it different than Bitcoin and more like

[00:04:10] Hugo: Ethereum.

[00:04:11] Is that right? That’s right. I mean, I guess we’ve had the benefit of hindsight and we’ve sort of got the, you know, the good bits of both. So we use a proof of work like Bitcoin, but everyone, instead of doing the maximum amount of work in order to secure the chain in competition, everyone does the minimum amount of work, I guess, then added together.

[00:04:29] So it’s a bit like a lottery where, you know, if everyone puts a dollar in, then suddenly you have a million dollar prize at the end. So it means you’ve got lots of people doing little amounts of work that then create the security. But then also obviously, you know, we’ve learned from, the really exciting things that Ethereum has been creating with smart contracts.

[00:04:46] So that has been added a two. So we have a scripting language means that we can create smart contract as well as having a coin that’s completely distributed as well.

[00:04:53] Donny: So what’s the most exciting thing that you’re working on right now?

[00:04:56] Hugo: The most exciting thing from our perspective is, I mean, we’ve been in Testnet for the last [00:05:00] 18 months and we are now going to main net the end of February, beginning of March.

[00:05:04] So that’s making everything very real. You know, we have hundreds of thousands, you know, over 250,000 people running. The network and nodes across their mobile devices and laptops across 187 countries. So that’s the thing that we’re completely focused on at the moment. At the same time, we have a number of very exciting projects that we’re working on, we’re collaborating with, we transfer, to deliver an N F T marketplace.

[00:05:28] And the thing that mini. Delivers is that because everyone runs a full node, they can mint an NFT directly on their device, and so have complete ownership of those NFTs. And then on the other end of the spectrum, we are also excited to be working with, mobility X Labs, which is a, sort of a group of sort of leading Swedish firms like Volvo, Erickson, and Pole.

[00:05:52] We are creating peer-to-peer communication network between vehicles. So every vehicle runs a node on the vehicle so that they can then communicate [00:06:00] securely with each other as well as you move towards autonomous driving and everything like that.

[00:06:03] Got it. What’s the incentive for the nodes right now?

[00:06:05] Why, do you have so many, you know, hundreds of thousands of, people running?

[00:06:09] the incentive is, we’ve been paying people a minimum, a. I mean, the point of that was was to sort of a show that it’s possible, a lot of people didn’t believe that you could actually run a full note on your device. But actually we’ve now shown that that works and we’ve had a sort of an interesting journey and campaign of ringing communities on board and then also through sort of member get member incentive programs as well, invite programs to bring people on board as well.

[00:06:35] So people have been earning. tokens on a daily basis in order to help us build up the network, prove that it works and sort of we can then test it and get stress test as well.

[00:06:45] Donny: Cool. So this podcast is all about people sharing their brave marketing moment. What would you say your brave marketing moment is?

[00:06:53] Hugo: So, I mean, I think in many ways it’s actually been, you know, marketing and building up our network of users. I mean, as [00:07:00] I said, minimum needs lots of users because everyone does a little bit of work.

[00:07:03] They get added together to help secure the chain. We need lots of users. So we are very much, are all about bringing onboard users. So, over the last 18 months we’ve been having a sort of grassroots community building initiative through marketing. And we have put together very good community team, that starts off small and then we sort of reached out and we sort of been extrapolating out to bring on board new communities.

[00:07:27] Once we find those communities, we find sort of the leaders of those communities and we sort of create. Relationship with them. We then give them the marketing tools and the branding that they need and then they then take that out to their community as well. And obviously we are incentivizing them through sort of invite rewards and everything like that.

[00:07:46] I mean, the interesting thing is that, you know, as I say, what it allows us to do is through sort of Discord and Twitter and tele. Is to almost create sort of the bare bones of the marketing content to get [00:08:00] our method out there. And then what we find is that the communities come back and one of the big things that we’ve been doing is sort of running meme competitions and allowing the community to come up with our own ideas and start posting them themselves quite a, you know, a fun example.

[00:08:16] Was in back in October there was a, an ETH boar conference and Vik of Ethereum, VIIC, Bome of Ethereum was announcing the fact that, he hopes that in 2032, so in a decade’s time, Ethereum will be able to run validating nodes on mobile. he sees that as the end goal. Obviously that creates more decentralization and so almost without much prompting at all from our community, Suddenly all these memes came up that were positioning that speech from Vik against Minia.

[00:08:48] And a lot of, you know, amusing memes were created. I’ve shared them with you guys, so I dunno if you can present those. They’re quite amusing ones. but I think that the most critical thing about creating the memes is [00:09:00] that. It allows the community to have a voice and it’s almost a voice that as a brand, you can’t really have, it’s much more authentic when you have the community doing it.

[00:09:08] And they can probably say things in a slightly more sort of cheeky and standout way than you can as a brand. And so that has been something that we have fostered over the last 18 months. We now, as say, have hundreds of thousands. Node runners in our community, we run meme competitions on a monthly basis with certain themes.

[00:09:27] We get hundreds of memes a month. So it’s a nice way to get the best outta the community and get them sort of promoting us in their way on their channels.

[00:09:36] Donny: So let’s talk about your marketing. I know you’ve been spending time building out communities. Are you doing any marketing.

[00:09:43] Hugo: So yeah, we have started to, I mean, we have a, you know, as we’ve been building up to our main net launch, we are doing a public pre-sale in February.

[00:09:50] And so the marketing there has been on a number of levels. We’ve been sponsoring podcasts, we’ve been doing a lot of sort of, PR around the [00:10:00] projects that we are working on. We are working now with key opinion leaders as well within the industry. I mean, it’s still obviously very much focused at sort of, you know, crypto savvy.

[00:10:10] Audience. You know, I think it’ll be a while until we go out to the mainstream, but really it’s just building up general awareness. And we’ve also been, you know, attending events, doing keynotes at events, sponsoring various events. I mean, I think my feeling on events is that, you know, less is more, it’s quality over quantity.

[00:10:27] So really picking the events that have the right philosophical approach to blockchain. I mean, obviously as a layer. We are looking very much at the fundamentals of blockchain rather than sort of the sort of crypto trading side. So, you know, we pick our events carefully so it aligns with the agenda that we have and the fundamentals and the narrative that we want to, get across.

[00:10:50] Donny: Yeah. What’s your, not end goal, but like, where do you see the blockchain in use cases in the next three to five years? Is it for [00:11:00] defi, is it for like, what’s the uses.

[00:11:01] Hugo: I think Defi will still have its time in the near future. But I think, you know, the real agenda is moving it towards real world use cases for the mainstream.

[00:11:11] Obviously with a mobile first blockchain, you know, we feel very well positioned to actually be putting blockchains into people’s hands. But again, I think it’s going to be, people aren’t gonna be running a blockchain protocol on their phone. Just for the sake of it, they’re gonna be running it because of the utility that it creates.

[00:11:29] And so whether that is as a content creator, you know, I think that it, you know, you could be looking at, if you are running a node on your device, then you could now be paid for your attention. Or you can pay content creators for the contents via micropayments. Or for example, you know, another really interesting use case that we are exploring obviously with the automotive industry is, you know, if you imagine if you’ve got a new.

[00:11:51] You download the app so that you can get access control to that car via an N F T. You wouldn’t necessarily know that it’s an NF t, but that’s, they would be the technology behind [00:12:00] it. That car will then talk to other cars to explain where it is on the road in terms of, secure messaging and safety.

[00:12:07] And then when you get to an EV charging, it might be, say if you wanna charge your electric car, you might go to your neighbors who’ve bought. EV charger, but then they can actually sell you their electricity and their charging direct from their house. So it’s in it. All of these new ways of interacting, which are going to become every day, that are gonna be, drive the real mainstream adoption, but it’s gonna be very much sort of under the hood.

[00:12:32] It’s gonna be things that, you know, the blockchain has to work seamless. the user experience has to be sort of like any other user experience would be. and people are not gonna realize that they’re actually using a blockchain. That will be actually, ironically, you know, the end goal for Minia is that people are, everyone’s using it, but they don’t realize because that means that it’s just working in the background that they don’t have to worry about it basically.

[00:12:52] Yeah. Do you

[00:12:53] Donny: have any ideas for like, who we’d want to be like the first couple partners to do

[00:12:57] Hugo: that type of micro payment? I mean, [00:13:00] obviously we are working with a number of partnersin the automotive industry for effectively micropayments, for charging, and it actually for tipping as well.

[00:13:07] I mean, if you imagine you’re driving along and someone lets you in as polite to you, then rather than just putting your hand up saying thanks, you can actually tip them, cut vehicle to vehicle. So there’s a real monetary incentive for good behavior within driving that kind of stuff. I mean, obviously that’s a bit further.

[00:13:22] What we find is because you’re going from a centralized sort of Web two world to a decentralized web three world where everyone is in charge of their own data and their own identity and also their own content. I think what we’ll find is rather than having the centralized entities that sort of. Curate the content that people see and then monetize it themselves.

[00:13:41] What you’ll see is curators coming up and people will go to creators who are finding interesting content, interesting communities. They will learn from that. Positive drive of people coming together. So I think there will be lots of different areas. I mean, I think that things have come on a long way over the [00:14:00] last few years in terms of web three and everything like that, but I still don’t think it’s reached its is sort of final form yet, if that makes sense.

[00:14:07] Yeah, of course, of course.

[00:14:09] Donny: So this season’s all about the metaverse. Are you thinking about micropayments and the metaverse? Like how does minimize interact in the metaverse?

[00:14:16] Hugo: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s interesting. I mean, I think, you know, the metaverse is a huge word and it’s been misused by lots of people.

[00:14:22] I mean, my view is that the metaverse is going to exist in a much more tangible way in the future. You look at huge names in the metaverse at the moment. You know, decent land, you know, sandbox, all of that kind of stuff. And you know, they’ve raised millions, if not billions, but actually, you know, the number of users on a daily basis are difficult to tell because you can’t quite always tell what the numbers are.

[00:14:44] But you know, hundreds. Or maybe thousands, but certainly not millions. You know, certainly not on the level of, uh, Roblox or something like that. That’s the sort of the stage that we’re at. We’re sort of, you know, selling virtual land, acreage of virtual land where you can walk around you know, for [00:15:00] hours and not see anything of any interest is not actually the End result of where the Metaverse is gonna go. I believe it’s much more a sort of tangible place where people have everything stripped down to what they really need and what they really want. And then they have the ability to either, as say, be paid to be advertised to within that space, or pay for content that they want to consume.

[00:15:23] And so I think the next stage for Metaverse in the broad sense is for. Mass market adoption, but that is gonna come from. Real sort of, very sort of useful things happening. You know, even tickets, you know, tickets on a music ticket if you wanna go to a concert, you know if that’s an N F T. If you can’t go, but you know, rather than try and resell it back to the issuer, you could then either gift it to your friend or sell it to someone else via mobile and that ticket will be valid and it’ll be guaranteed that it’ll be valid.

[00:15:52] Those kind of things, I think is where the metaverse is really going to sort of take off, if that makes. Yeah.

[00:15:57] Donny: Why do you need the [00:16:00] metaverse for, you’re talking about, you know,

[00:16:02] Hugo: actual concerts. I think, I mean, I say again, it depends on the term metaverse really. I think, I mean, I sort of see it as web three.

[00:16:09] You know, I think that if you define the metaverse as these sort of virtual lands where people go, I think that for a few hardcore. They want to just sort of disappear into a virtual world. But, but as we’ve seen, you know, the numbers of people wondering about in decent land are tiny, relatively speaking.

[00:16:27] And that’s because actually, you know, there’s not much going on in there and whether or not that then suddenly becomes a hi of activities yet to be seen. I actually think that, you know, the metaverse in terms of your digital identity, Your data that you have in terms of being a sort of web three experience is more the way that it’s gonna end up.

[00:16:45] Where

[00:16:45] Donny: do you think we are in Web three’s evolution? You know, beginning, middle, you know, how much more work do we have to do until Web three becomes

[00:16:54] Hugo: web two? So, I mean, again, I mean how long did Web two take? 20 years maybe? I think [00:17:00] probably not gonna take that long as much. I was, working in advertising back in the early two thousands and I remember that, you know, webpages then.

[00:17:08] The whole thing was trying to make the most immersive experience you possibly could, and it was like amazing experiences that, you know, people were testing what the possibilities were like. But then actually, you know, the winners at the end were the ones that were the Amazons and the Googles that actually stripped everything back and just gave people a useful experience because, you know, people don’t want to try and get into a sort of a computer game.

[00:17:31] Some people do, gamers do, but you know, the general public, you know, moms and dads and uncles and aunts and brothers and sisters don’t necessarily want to spend time trying to immerse themselves in a whole new world. And I think that that process we’re going through a similar process with web three, you know, all the potential opportunities.

[00:17:49] I think over time will be paired back to just really useful things that people can really benefit from on a day-to-day basis that makes their life. More fulfilled, more interesting, [00:18:00] but also, you know, everything at their fingertips, Rather than being drawn into some, you know, sort of very, very sort of out there artistic world that is a sort of distraction from life, if that makes sense.

[00:18:12] Yeah, yeah, it

[00:18:13] Donny: does. It does. What do you think is the biggest opportunity for marketers that are marketing crypto brands right now? Like if you were to devise a marketing schedule, you know, and you have your background in advertising, what would that look like?

[00:18:27] Hugo: I mean, I think there’s still two audiences.

[00:18:30] there’s the crypto savvy and then there’s everyone else. And I think that, you know, the crypto savvy are wanting the next exciting development, the next big thing. And so it’s really about sort of bringing those to the audiences. But obviously, you know, the rest of the world and the mainstream adoption is a long way away.

[00:18:49] And I think that it’s sort of recognizing how to place that in many. The non crypto savvy, it’s about actually what are the benefits to them? So finding actually new, [00:19:00] discovering what, sort of micropayments what, you know, control of your identity really means to people in the real world, and how does that make life easier?

[00:19:08] So, I mean, again, like tickets, if you can suddenly now give your ticket to a friend of yours without having to go back to. The ticket issuer or having to deal with ticket outs, that is something that makes total sense to people because it’s like, okay, well thank goodness for that. I’d like to do that.

[00:19:23] Or for example, you know, loyalty points. Why can’t you actually save up loyalty points with one airline and swap them for another airline? That kind of stuff. That kind of interoperability and flexibility is something that I think consumers sort of would love to. It’s a mindset for brands. I think, before everyone and, companies have always wanted to sort of keep hold of everything, and keep control of everything.

[00:19:46] I think what blockchain, crypto does is make it much more interoperable, and much more flexible in terms of how value is. Transmitted between people or, transferred between people. And that is something that [00:20:00] people really like and will really like and they will actually really appreciate the brands that allow them to do that, faster than others, if that makes sense.

[00:20:07] Donny: And I think that is something that, I think that is a mindset change for brands to realize that actually they give more power to their consumers. Their consumers will reward them with loyalty, Absolutely good. This has been, really informative.

[00:20:20] Hugo: And so how can our users get in touch with.

[00:20:22] Basically if you go to a mini global is where everything happens on Mini I’m, Hugo Fler at on Twitter. so yeah, I mean, mini Global is the best place to look us up. We have a very vibrant Discord channel as well, which is mini global. So yeah, it’d be great to have people come on board and find out more.

[00:20:40] Thanks

[00:20:41] Donny: so much for listening to another episode of The Brave Marketer Podcast. Four quick things before you go. Number one, if you like what you’ve heard, it’d be really awesome if you’d rate us or write us a review on your podcast player.

[00:20:54] And if you didn’t like what you’ve heard, then don’t worry about it . Number two, if you would like to [00:21:00] advertise to Brave’s 60 million users and have a budget of $10,000 or more, simply email us at. sales@brave.com. That’s ad S A L E s brave.com. And let us know you’re our podcast listener for 25% discount.

[00:21:16] Number three musical credits. Go to my brother Ari Devork. And finally number four, go use brave@brave.com and we will see you next time on The Brave Marketer.