 Welcome to the second talk. This morning, with me is Nick Weiser. He's going to explain to us what WordPress, WAPUs and Web3 have in common or don't. For those who don't know yet what these things are, except for WordPress, obviously you're at the WordPress conference. Give it up for Nick. Good morning. Hi, my name is Nick. Today I'm going to be speaking about WordPress, WAPUs and Web3. By a show of hands, who of you knows what a WAPU is? One-fourth, maybe. So for those who don't know, WAPU is the little animal character, which is the official, unofficial mascot of WordPress. So there you see it. That's WAPU holding the Zurich Canton flag. It's a little bit about me. It's been almost 20 years since I founded OpenStream in Zurich, and I started going to meetups where I discovered my passion for open-source software. I'm involved in organizing the Zurich WordPress and WooCommerce meetups, and I'm also a regular attendee of Crypto Mondays and other Web3 meetups in Zurich. Online you can find me on Twitter, on Tumblr and Macedon, although I'm most active on Twitter, and I write about Web2 and Web3 technology on OpenStream.ch. Again, by a quick show of hands, who knows what digital collectibles or NFTs are? And who owns an NFT? Okay, that's two people. Great potential. And who owns any cryptocurrency? Okay, a little more. Great. Very cool. So the question I want to start with is, can artists, content creators and brands really do anything useful with digital collectibles, or is it just another hype? So if you ask Professor of Computer and Information Science Marcel Waldvogel, who holds a PhD from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, better known in Swiss German as Etihad Zurich, his answer is that NFTs have no real value and that as a young artist you can also become visible without NFTs, but through hype, PR and celebrities. He also seems to be a critic of cryptocurrencies and Web3 technology in general. So I agree that a web page which is ideally built with open-source software like WordPress is a great way for aspiring artists to showcase and sell physical art. In 2023, though, this is not enough and we have to acknowledge that there is also digital-only art that digital non-natives have a hard time wrapping their heads around. Many young artists nowadays showcase their art on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok because they can reach a much bigger audience, much faster than with the traditional website. Or if we take the art of musical expression, many smaller artists struggle to make a living from making their music available on Spotify, on Apple Music, because the middleman like record labels, distributors and streaming platforms profit the most. Professor Bald Fogler is very critical about the hype around NFTs and also warns about the dangers of hypercapitalism. But on the other hand, in my opinion, this new blockchain technology has the potential to disrupt many industries and cut out the middleman in favor of the artists and content creators themselves. Personally, I don't think that Web 2 will be replaced by Web 3, but I can imagine that they will both evolve and overlap in many ways that we're going to be surprised about. Initially you asked, so what is Web 3? To put it simply, Web 3 is sort of like decentralized applications. Web 2 is centralized applications that you host on a server, on a web hosting, and Web 3 applications, they are decentralized, meaning they don't live on one single server, they live on a network of computers and therefore they are more resilient. Decentralized applications don't make sense for all use cases, but when it comes to digital art, I think that NFTs are a very fascinating playground. Yeah, here's a list of different projects I'm going to quickly explain. There's many more, as you can see, but I want to start off with Quantum, which is a digital-only piece of artwork created by Kevin McCoyne. It consists of a series of algorithmically generated images that are stored as an NFT on Namecoin, which is a pre-Ethereum Bitcoin blockchain. It consists of a series of algorithmically... I said that already. I'd like to quickly show you the artwork followed by a two-and-a-half-minute video of the artist himself explaining the meaning behind it. So I want to let you get hypnotized by that for a second. I've been doing this kind of work, digital work, media work for a long time, probably 25 years. My work's been in the collections of museums like MoMA, the Whitney Museum, the Metropolitan Museum, as well as other institutions around the US and Europe. I've always worked with media in one form or another. Sometimes that work takes the form of video installations. Sometimes it looks like kinetic sculpture. And sometimes it's code-driven works. But throughout all of those different forms, it's always been a question of looking at how meaning is put together, how things come to mean what they do mean, and the role that technology and code-driven systems plays in that process, in terms of creating the meaning of words, the meaning of memories, the meaning of experiences that we're all living with right now. The work in the show is called Quantum, and it's from 2014. It's an animation that's made entirely out of code. So in that sense, I'd call it generative work, generative artwork. But it's also an optical work and a process-oriented work. And so in that sense, it draws from earlier efforts from artists like Saul LeWitt, like Victor Vasserly, like Bridget Riley. But the effect of it from a kind of experience level is more mysterious than that. And so that pulsing light, that kind of hidden world that seems to be being born endlessly with that piece, really is inspired by the work of science fiction writer Philip K. Dick and how in his book, Valles, the role of the pink light to create this experience of memory and this experience of information. That's something that I was thinking a lot about in the creation of Quantum. Quantum is the first autonomous work, the first artwork that was inscribed into a blockchain. And that happened in May of 2014. And that traces back the previous year, in 2013, when I discovered Bitcoin and blockchain technology. And I thought about how the scarcity mechanism that Bitcoin presented could be a way for digital artists to create provenance and ownership systems around digital works. It was a pretty abstract idea at the time and no one really understood what I was talking about. But when I finally put the pieces together to do an initial effort with that, Quantum seemed like the perfect piece to do that with. So one could argue that like Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon marked the beginning of the era of Cubism in July 1907, McCoy's Quantum minted on the blockchain on the 2nd of May 2014 at 9.27 p.m. and 34 seconds marks the beginning of the era of Anoptism. It stands alone in the precision of its timestamp, immutably, verifiably, trustlessly pure. Blockchain, when stripped to its bones, could be described as humanity's latest innovation in the humble art of record keeping. I'm not going to go into the details of all these projects on the left side. So just two more that are historically important. And then back to the WordPress metaverse. Cryptopunks is a series of 10,000 unique 8-bit style pixel art characters that were created and released as NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain in 2017 and became one of the inspirations for the ERC721 standard. Each Cryptopunk has its own distinct combination of attributes such as hairstyles, accessories and facial expressions, which are randomly generated. Cryptopunks quickly gained popularity within the cryptocurrency and blockchain communities and have since become highly sought after collectibles. Due to their limited number, unique characteristics, perceived value, and the ability to verify ownership on the blockchain, some Cryptopunks have sold for millions of dollars at auction. Talking about hypercapitalism. Some of the most notable dropped in 2021, the board AB Yacht Club is a collection of unique digital art pieces in the form of 10,000 cartoon style apes, each with its own distinct attributes and personalities. The board AB Yacht Club has become a highly popular and valuable NFT collection with some individual apes selling for millions of dollars. The club has also spawned a vibrant online community of collectors and enthusiasts who create and share art, music and other content inspired by the board AB aesthetic. As a board AB Yacht Club NFT holder, you're also entitled to several perks and benefits. Some of the most notable are, first, you have access to members only events, merchandise and community chat channels. Second, there are occasional parties on yachts, gatherings and meetups. Third, there are air drops with additional tokens for existing NFT holders. Fourth, exclusive partnerships and collaborations with other brands, artists and creators. And fifth, participation in governance decisions to shape the future of the community. So now let's get back to what all this has to do with WordPress. In 2021, Web3WP built a generative art project of 2,222 unique vapus that can be minted as an NFT collected and traded by the WordPress community on the Ethereum blockchain. So you can collect your favorite vapu for fun, or show it off, or show your collection to your friends in the WordPress community, make your favorite, your profile avatar, and are the provable owner, so you get the bragging rights. And every time they are traded, half of the royalties go to the WordPress foundation, a charitable organization founded by Matt Maumweck to further the mission of WordPress. Anybody knows what the mission of WordPress is? Nobody heard that. To democratize publishing through open-source software. The first NFT that I personally minted in 2021 was vapu number 693 called Vapusher. It came with a secret one-time use code for a one-year free WP pusher membership. And WP pusher lets you deploy your plugins and themes directly from GitHub, Bitbucket, or GitLab and never again copy files over FTP. Web3WP collaborated with various companies from the WordPress ecosystem in order to generate brand excitement. Some Web3WP vapus contain unlockable content that only the owner of the vapu NFT is able to unlock by signing with their Web3 wallet. So in 2021, Web3WP set out to build a programmatic generator that creates completely unique vapu characters based on a random set of more than 100 trades. Very similar to what the Board Ape project did and the CryptoPunks. And also similar to what McCoy did when he created this animation from code. So the trades are weighted to have various rarities which makes the rarer vapus highly collectable and more valuable. When you mint your vapu, it is completely random. You may get one with a common or rare combination of trades. And if you are really lucky, you might be the proud owner of a special edition vapu from one of their community sponsors. Around Christmas 2021, inspired by the Web3WP vapu project, I had the idea of creating a Swiss vapu NFT collection. I started brainstorming ideas of various Swiss city vapus together with France, a designer from the Philippines, and the Swiss WordPress community on Slack. So based on this beautiful logo which is worked by Claudio Riemann, we started developing a new Zurich vapu. We added the landmark of Zurich, the Gross Münster, and converted the lions into vapu-like cartoon characters. So the initial idea was to create vapus for those cities in Switzerland that have an active WordPress community and an active WordPress meetup. This is a sketch of the Bern vapu with a Bundeshauskuppel on the head, the Kentons flag and other properties associated with Switzerland's capital. Here an early draft of the Ticino vapu that we didn't complete yet with a Bellinzona castle and an Italian-ish moustache. When we started organizing WorkCamp Switzerland 2023, I volunteered to create a new conference vapu. This is the WorkCamp Switzerland 2014 vapu, also designed by Claudio Riemann. Since it would be taking place here at Lake Morton, we thought that it could be a fisher vapu holding a fish. Then Michel or Mark, don't remember exactly, suggested that since it's taking place on April 1st, it could be holding red herrings because in English you can see April herrings for April Fool's pranks. We also thought about integrating Claudio's Swiss army knife blades, but I dropped the idea because it sort of was too noisy. This is the final version that we agreed on that you can see on the Switzerland, the WorkCamp Switzerland website, on the t-shirt and on the stickers. So back to the NFT project. The initial idea was to create a generative NFT art project with different Swiss items and trades to programmatically generate different combinations of vapus. Web3WP published their trade generator and all the code they used for their project on GitHub. But since I'm not writing code on a day-to-day basis, I soon realized that I'm running out of time if I wanted to release something for WorkCamp Switzerland 2023 on April 1st. We had developed over 50 unique trades for the Swiss vapu collection, so we could easily have generated a couple hundred unique vapus. Instead, I decided to start with a first collection of only 27 vapus. One holding the Swiss flag and the other holding the various Canton flags. But we also have plans to finalize the city vapus with different combinations of attributes. You can find the Swiss NFT Vapu collection at OpenSea, the world's first and largest Web3 marketplace for NFTs and crypto collectibles. On the slide, you see the eight out of 27 vapus with an active WordPress Meetup in Switzerland. They have a Meetup logo next to them. So let's do a little quiz. Who recognizes one of the flags? Any Swiss people here? Vaux? Very good. Barnia, very easy with a bear, bottom right. If you know where the active meetings are in Switzerland, you can also guess which ones they are. The top left is Fribourg, Canton of Fribourg. Then we have Geneva, Schaffhausen, St. Gallen, Ticino, and Zurich, the blue and white one. And here you can see the Canton vapus of dormant or inactive WordPress Meetups. So which are Lucerne, Neuchâtel, and Basel City. Inactive Meetup means that there was a Meetup in the past, but right now there are no active Meetups. And so this whole little vapu art project is also meant to be inspiring WordPress users and developers from Switzerland to join a WordPress Meetup in their area to help revive a dormant Meetup or to start a new Meetup in one of the cantons that don't have a Meetup yet. If you go to the detailed page of any of these 27 vapus on OpenSea, you will see that they contain unlockable content. This means that if you make an offer with at least 10 Swiss francs or 0.006 Ether for one of those vapus, you will receive a t-shirt in your size with the exact vapu printed on it. Since 10 Swiss francs will actually not cover the full expenses, you can of course also make a bigger offer. But you also have to consider that there will be so-called gas fees, which depending on the day might add another two to eight Swiss francs to each transaction. So I'd like to inspire all of you who are curious to learn more about Web3 to make an offer for one of those 27 vapus. Another idea behind this project is to onboard WordPress users and developers to the Web3 universe. And as I said before, there's a lot of potential here. Only one NFT holder so far in this room. And all attendees of work at Switzerland will have priority for the next seven days. After that, the collection will be opened up to the rest of the Swiss community and worldwide. So I have no intention to enrich myself with this project. All the profits will be used to print the t-shirts, to pay the artwork, and to ship the t-shirts. And if there's anything left, it will be used to support the Swiss WordPress community and meet-ups. If you're not familiar with using a Web3 wallet like MetaMask or have any other questions, I'll try my best to answer them in a second. But before I open up for questions, I wanted to show you another short video, a very important one about how to stay safe in Web3. To be excited about Web3 technologies like blockchain, crypto, and NFTs. But like any new technology, it's important to know what to look out for. Nowadays, we all know not to click that. You won $10,000 pop-up on the website, I hope. But in the early days of the internet, it was hard to know. Since Web3 is so new, let's walk through some tips. First, never give anyone access to your wallet. Don't share your seed phrase or password with anyone. And make sure to store your login information in a safe place that no one else can access. Second, never click links you don't fully trust. Bad actors may put unsafe links in direct messages, social media posts, emails, and websites. Only click links on a project's official social media or OpenC page. Third, if you receive an NFT for free from someone you don't recognize, be wary of it. In these situations, you should avoid engaging with the creator's links or downloading any unlockable content from the NFT. Fourth, evaluate the NFT's authenticity. Make sure the original creator of the NFT is correct. At OpenC, we've implemented technologies to reduce counterfeits. Of course, you still need to evaluate the project yourself to determine whether an NFT is authentic. Fifth, look at the activity and analytics tabs on OpenC to learn more about the price and sale history of an NFT collection. Finally, trust your gut. Navigate this space with your best judge and remember that if something appears too good to be true, it very likely is. Those are some quick tips to help you stay safe in Web3. See you out there. Alright, if you want to have a look at the slides or one of the slides again, you can find them in this address. Thank you very much for your attention. Any comments, questions? There's still time left, so if there are no questions, I can also give a... Oh, there's one question. It's a bit too far to throw. So, my name is Alexandru Filipezco and I will soon finish my master's doing computer science at the University of Bern. And I have two questions actually. I'm wondering then, you said that you can get the cryptopunks or those monkey NFTs in different ways. I'm not sure if you mind them and you get a random one or if they are already minded and you will receive a random one after you pay. But the question is, could that be considered as gambling, for example, because if you pay and you don't know what you will get? No, I wouldn't say it's gambling. Well, in a way it could be said it's gambling. I don't know exactly how they were minted, but they're all gone. They've all been minted and so you can probably buy them now on OpenSea, but the minting is only when you initially sort of get the NFT. Manufactured them, yeah. And so I would compare it with buying Pokemon cards in a little package and you don't know what's inside. So you rip it open and you have five cards and then you might have one very rare one and three other ones or football stickers and stuff like that. I'm not sure why I was thinking of the CSGO game where you open the cases with the keys and you get a random skin. And now the second question would be, I think it's a great way to use NFTs to support, for example, artists because you remove the intermediary, right? But now the question would be how can the owner of the NFT, the person that buys it, the art collector, let's say, how can he appreciate the artwork like in comparison of how it was originally made? Like with the painting on the wall, how can he put it in his house like the art that he has on the PC? Well, there are definitely traditional collectors who wouldn't want to have a digital artwork, but there's also many collectors who like digital artwork. What some artists do, when they offer their NFTs, they offer an art print. So if you buy their art, you get a special hand signed art print also when you buy the NFT. And then you can sort of combine it with physical art as well. That's one idea. Or maybe a big TV on the wall. If you have a TV or a digital frame or something, then you could show it there. And of course you have to think maybe ahead, talking about the metaverse and things like that. If you're in the metaverse and you have some artwork, it's all going to be digital. So you could show off your digital art in the metaverse, which is sort of like for the next generation. The metaverse that was made by Mark Zuckerberg, which one? Whichever one. There are so many metaverses. There are so many online games, and each online game is its own metaverse. And many of these platforms already allow you to show your NFT in that metaverse. Okay, thank you. Thank you a lot. Any other questions? More questions? What time does the next... or when is coffee break? Coffee break is at... in 10 minutes. 10 minutes. So, there's one other question. Thank you. Have a small single question regarding NFTs. Is it possible to create whole photos as NFT or just those small little tiny mappos? No, I think on an OpenSea the limit for NFTs is 100 megabyte. So you could upload an image that is 100 megabyte. You could upload a video as an NFT that is up to 100 megabyte. So, yeah, it could be a photo as well. Okay, good. Thank you. Any more questions? So, for those who are interested, I could give a little live demo since we have five minutes left. Those who want to leave already, feel free to leave. I could try to give a little live demo of how to make an offer. Or maybe also explain a little bit. What I try to do first is actually... I try to do a drop on OpenSea, which is where you can mint a Vapu, where you don't know which Vapu you will get. But since this is a little bit more complicated and you have to pride a metadata server or API, I wasn't able to finish this until today. So I just put them on there, and that's why you sort of have to make an offer and then it gets transferred on your wallet. So, what I did is... I was talking about Ethereum, but this... So this collection is actually not on the Ethereum blockchain. It is on the Polygon blockchain. So, if you go... I'd say... Jura, you go to this NFT, then on the top, you will see this is the Polygon blockchain. The reason why I didn't put it on Ethereum is that the transaction fees are very high, and so on Polygon, it's easier, it's not so high, and if you sell the Vapu later on, it won't create such high transaction costs. So this is going to be a little tricky. So before you can make an offer here, you need a wallet like MetaMask, which is a browser plugin, and you need to connect this with OpenSea. I already did this, so I can show you this, and then there's a little icon, the wallet, which shows you what you hold in your wallet. In US dollars, they don't have Swiss francs. And then you see this is Ethereum. It's a little difficult to do like that, just one second. That's easier. So the first thing, of course, you need the wallet, and then you need some Ether. So once you have the wallet installed, you can go to this wallet here on OpenSea directly, and then add Ether, which will allow you to deposit some crypto or buy it with a credit card. Then the next thing you have to do is you have to bridge the Ether from the Ethereum blockchain to the polygon blockchain. This may sound a little intimidating, but you have to remember we're early in Web3, and so it's not that easy. You need to have some basic technical understanding, but I think if you do it directly on OpenSea, it's quite user-friendly as compared to if you do it with MetaMask directly, because I got lost with that myself. So I'm going to show you, I already added the Ethereum, so I'm going to show you how to bridge that Ether from the Ethereum blockchain to the polygon blockchain. If you want to check the rates, you can go to Google, type in 20 Swiss francs in ETH, and you'll see that's currently 0.012 ETH. So that's what I put in here. And then I click on Convert Tokens. You will automatically select polygon down here. Then you'll see the amount, and below here you'll see the gas fee, which is four and a half dollars. Then you confirm. So transaction complete, transferred successfully, and now actually I have to wait a couple of minutes before, well you see there is some ETH already here, worth ten dollars, but it will take a couple of minutes before it shows up here. You can try to refresh the funds. So it takes a couple of minutes, so I don't want to keep you waiting, so I'm going to do the next step here. You click on Make Offer. This is an unreviewed collection, but you can just double check. If you go here you'll see this is the OpenStream website. There's a Discord channel also. If you have any questions after the event, you can just ask me anything you want. I'm also on Twitter. And then you put your price. I would now put the 20 bucks, but let's see, well now I have enough. Let's see. I put the duration of the offer, and then I click on Make Offer, and now you just have to wait. That's basically it. I'm going to show you. Oh it doesn't show. Well that's basically how you do it. It's two steps, or three, depending if you already have ETHR. So I hope that was helpful. And have a great rest of the conference. Thank you very much.