Stories Behind NEST® : Patricia Auer
We’re here again with Laurence and Patricia Auer, our Chief Operating Officer, for Part 3 of the Raion podcast episode! This time they are discussing NEST®. Let’s join the conversation to find out why NEST® is being hailed as the ultimate blockchain solution of all time!
If you want to watch the full conversation, check it out here!
NEST® makes complicated stuff easy
Laurence: For NEST®, I think that there’s going to be more and more companies that have a far greater need and demand for the products that you are offering.
Patricia: In terms of our product, we have our own blockchain. That’s kind of the pièce de resistance. We built three dapps on top of that.
One of them is what we call the NEST® app. That app to me is about onboarding the masses. Charles built all of this stuff from a security, user privacy, and protection perspective. What I love about the apps is the fact that they make a lot of the complicated stuff super easy.
Patricia: In the app we have an easy minting feature. During COVID, there were a lot of artists and creatives that weren’t able to work. They had to find other ways to monetize their art. The NFT space became really big and a lot of people wanted to move in. If you’re not technical or if you haven’t been in the space, it’s pretty difficult to create your own NFT collection.
The amount of things that you have to set up and do and learn and understand… and then which chain do you go on, how do you transfer, how do you even set up your wallet, how do you pay for things, what is gas?
In our app for example, as easy as it is to upload a photo on Instagram, you can mint an NFT on any chain that you want or on all chains. You have an integrated wallet housed in the security features that is the overriding principle of all of our technology.
“If you look at the process of selling your NFTs, once you’ve created them, there’s so much work!”
You have to build a community that requires several different platforms like Telegram, Instagram, Discord, Twitter — a whole bunch of them. Every day there are new ones popping up. And then you have to ramp up on the marketing and build that community, engage in that community, then figure out how to get them to buy into it or whitelist and drop it to them.
So what we’ve done in this app is amalgamate all of this. You can literally go in, set up your community just like you would a Facebook group. Again, it has the benefits of all the security housing that Charles has built, plus it has features from all of these platforms. You can chat in there, you can send private messages, and you can post there just like you would on Facebook or Instagram. Difference is, of course, they’re on-chain so no one can ever delete them. That’s where it comes to control, privacy and access, which again, are things that Charles fundamentally wanted to have within the space.
As the non-technical side and for someone who’s come into the space not being technical and wanting to be part of this, what resonates the most with me is just that it’s super easy.
I can create an NFT in a second. I can build my community, I can engage with them, I can tell them about it, I can tell them it goes straight into your wallet as soon as you create an account.
“I don’t need to create a separate MetaMask or a separate Trust Wallet, or whatever else, then try and figure out how to get all the different chains on. We have everything in one there.”
To me, it’s the onboarding of the masses, it’s bringing in what I call the crypto curious of which there are many. I’ve been in the space for a while, it’s only with NEST® that I started playing around with NFTs and buying them. Prior to that, I myself also was like “it’s so complicated!” and then if I do have a high value NFT, there’s all these hacks. This is where the privacy and the security and the control comes from that Charles is really geared and centered towards.
So that’s the app in a nutshell. Obviously, there’s more features coming as well and our token will function on that as well. It’s a reward system token because we wanna be able to reward people for contributing to our network and our community.
The Marketplace
“We have a Marketplace for not just NFTs but for real-world legal contractual Exchange.”
Patricia: So any type of service provider and seller of any goods will be able to put the entire process end-to-end on-chain, including your legal contract. You can edit the legal contract online, once you complete that contract, it turns into an on-chain asset that has a value of its own, separate to anything that you’re selling and you could sell on that contract as well.
We’ve decided to steer that initially towards what I call “building of the crypto universe “. Whenever I’m looking for services providers, marketing agencies, freelancers, KOLs, or membership clubs, you know that are crypto-specific or co-working spaces, I have to Google it. There’s no one centralized (I know that’s a dirty word in this industry) directory that I can look up. There are no reviews on service providers.
I’ve gone through a couple of rounds with marketing agencies which I wish had reviews because they weren’t fantastic. Had I been able to read those, I wouldn’t have hired them.
“So, on our marketplace, we actually have a version of an on-chain Google Maps. We built this ourselves so it looks like Google Maps but it’s on-chain. Any business or any freelancer can drop a pin, so you can set up your profile and then you can say how much you charge an hour.”
For example, if you’re a members club for crypto, (we have one out in Hong Kong) you can put your application form on there, you can pay straight through there, and then again the NFT membership will sit straight in your wallet on the marketplace.
If you’re a service provider, before anyone can contact you to waste your time, you can say standard rates or for a package, this is the price, this is my sign or contract you need to accept it before you can even talk to me. And then once that’s accepted, they can then chat. There’s a scheduling system that tracks both of you.
For example, on this podcast had this been on over our marketplace, both of us would have had to hit a button saying we were starting the podcast. Then at the end, we finish it and that then completes the contract unless there’s anything else that we’d agree to do afterwards.
“It’s making things, it’s streamlining things, it’s making things easier, it’s onboarding people, it’s helping newcomers come into the space because other industries want to come in.”
I’ve spoken to a couple of photographers and models. They’re all like, “Oh, I’d actually love to get into crypto, how do I find clients?” This is a great way from Charles’ perspective, he built this because he got very annoyed one day that smart contracts were actually just acting as a dumb escrow. He was like, “How can I solve for this?” and this is where the real-world legal contractual exchange comes from. Instead of it just being an escrow, there are specific actions that both parties need to take in order for the contract to complete or you never get paid out.
Then we have a jury dispute mechanism system which is per vertical for the community. When you sign up to our platform, you can decide to be part of the jury. For example, I’m a lawyer. If I was a freelancer, I can say these are my hourly rates, any legal disputes, I can be part of that jury. Should you and me have a dispute, we can submit it to the jury. That jury will have all of our communication, everything decrypted so to see and then we’ll vote on it and whoever they vote in favor of, the smart contract will essentially pay out whatever the rest of it is. It’s trying to streamline things, make things easier for everyone in the world.
AERIE
The last one is an institutional custody grade solution for digital assets, bulk minting, NFT ticketing, and a CRM management system. It’s a whole bunch Charles has been building this stuff for about five or six years now.
Laurence: Yeah! He’s a smart dude, he’s very dedicated. It’s going to be exciting to see what you guys do next and Patricia, great to see you. Thank you so much for your time.
Patricia: Thank you so much for having me it’s been such a fun conversation.
