We sat down with NeonLabs for some cross-marketing AMAs.
With two like-minded communities and a similar user-base, we teamed up with NeonLabs for some marketing activity to promote both projects. We have also completed a few fun AmuEvents with Neon’s community.
Amulet was introduced to the Neon community in an AMA a couple of weeks ago, this blog is from the second part, when Neon’s community manager “Venice” came to speak with AmuNation.
Conducted to a great audience, below is the audio and transcript for your reference.
Audio:
Transcript:
Rob – Amulet Awesome. Okay, cool. So what I’ll do is ask you basically to introduce yourself as a person as well and introduce Neon. And then I’ve been sent some questions as well from our community that they’d love to be answered. But we’ll start really just if you could just introduce yourself, say who you are. And basically, this is your moment to introduce Neon to the AmuNation. Venice – NeonLabs Sure how I’ll try to simplify as much as I can, I guess. And then if anyone needs, like, in depth explanation, then we can go there. Regarding just myself, I’m, I mean, my nick is Venice. And if you want the normal name surname, you can check on the IRS website, everything’s doxxed. I’ve been Neons, first and only Community Manager for like six months, and then we started hiring reinforcements, and they started getting some, some help there. But it’s been a rough start by monitoring all channels and setting up full community with full support with everything alone for a really long time. And now I’ve been with neon for about year and a half. And I’m actually neon has about 5050 members. And I joined I think in the whole company, and that was the first non technical recruitment. That’s roughly on me. Yeah. Rob – Amulet Our community manager, because he’s similar. He was probably the first he was the first member of the team that wasn’t there from the beginning. So So you have that in common? Venice – NeonLabs Yeah, I think it’s really good, good position, because you are one of the only people you know who can who can literally describe any major event for whatever happened. You’ve been very experienced it and you you grew with with everything. So it’s cool. Quickly regarding the and I guess I’ll just try try just to scratch the surface. So for people who don’t know, Neon is doing something that doesn’t really exist on Solana yet. So in that term there, there is no really competitors. It’s technically a smart contract that’s deployed on Solana, but will be full emulation of Etherium virtual machine. That means that obviously, everyone knows that material is the strongest blockchain in the world regarding developers or developer developer tooling. And NEON will essentially allow all those developers to utilise Solana without having to learn any of the new programming languages. So Solana is using rust for deployment of smart contracts, and the neon villa with Etherium developers who are natively developing in solidity Viper, using meta mask whatever, to essentially deployed their daps on Solana without any code changes, meaning they will be using their familiar UI while deploying and their that in the future once everything is done, we’ll be working on Solana utilising Solana speed utilising Salana transaction costs so it won’t be exactly the same but it will be obviously incomparable that theory and it will be infinite number of times cheaper and faster and not just to a theory and actually the last the last tests we did it was showing way better numbers than likes of polygon arbitrage whoever you take. So as it stands now, it’s performing quicker and cheaper than all let’s say alternatives on outside of Salon obviously and other solutions it’s always better at the moment. But as also majority might know we are not on MainNet yet. About to happen technical side is finally ready. And this was actually the first time that we decided not to go out on MainNet. For reasons that weren’t technical reasons were legal reasons were connected to a whole market situation and now we are actually finalising details with one of the major platforms to issue tokens because again, as some might know, situation is not the same as it was one or two years ago in crypto when it was way easier to play with stuff like just minting tokens out now you have American legal system that’s that’s tracking everything super tightly and there is no really room for mistakes like you’re literally risking jail time unless you do everything by low unless you I guess use loopholes where you can and and protect yourself from all sides. saw it has to be done perfectly to avoid those risks because they are getting stronger and stronger, like from starting from this year. Rob – Amulet I think not launching on the main net. Yeah, I mean, obviously is similar the market conditions make total sense. I mean, we did launch on the MainNet at the end of September. And then we had the situation where we had an amazing first month, but then the FTX crisis caused us to pause everything and go off the main net. So we really understand when things including regulatory things, obviously we work in insurance and cover regulatory stuff is something that’s high on our agenda as well. So yeah, we totally get that was to weigh in on the main net, but I thought it would link quite good because one of the questions we’ve got from our community is a bit about what you’ve mentioned, just to kind of expand on it a little bit. is basically when you do launch on the main net, the main community question is, what is the usefulness of neon lab? So basically, I guess what they’re asking is, what would a user be doing? What would the user be doing? And what would be the benefits of them using neon in that moment? And I think that’s what progress is. Venice – NeonLabs It depends. Who do you classify as, as a user of neon? That’s, that’s one thing. In my books, if you’re talking about first, I’d say first year user of neon, that’s developer right? First user who is using Neon is developer who needs neon to deploy his at Etherium smart contract on Solana and the reason why you want to do that and this is also one of the things that less technical people don’t get is that it’s not like if if you’re a theorem developer and you have your your dapp deployed on, let’s say polygon, and then if you use neon deploy and so on, it’s not your it’s not like your smart contract stops existing on Polygon is just that you’re deploying it as well to another place. And there is kind of no reason not to do it because you’re just opening your your dapp to a whole new market. As we all know that you have a lot of material max is the same way. You have Solana, Max’s, you have people who just live on Solana, they don’t know about other blockchains. And then your dapp, let’s say lives on Etherium. The Solana people don’t know about it. You deployed it on Solana, they also know about it, you expanded you up and up, and you’re ready to earn money from Solana as well. So that’s from from a developer’s point of view developer as a user of neon, obviously, accessing Solana liquidity, that’s, that’s main main thing. And as a user, if you go like wider than that, and you’re not developer, let’s say, then you have, you have neon. In case let’s say, we went with another proposal that didn’t go through yet because of Salana situation and Solana had to kind of rebuild rust, I guess in a in a lot of Etherium, blue chip size, but we will be launching with with few others. That’s kinda agreed on already. And I don’t know, let me give you example, let’s say it’s, let’s say it’s sushi swapped, whoever. So they don’t exist on Solana meaning if you want to use the dapp, or infrastructure or whatever, on Etherium, or even on Polygon, you have to pay certain transaction costs, and you are limited to some extent with speed, obviously. And then if you have same solution, natively on Solana because of neon, and you use it often, that means that you will be saving up money because you’ll be paying less and it will be going quicker than it was another change. Okay. Rob – Amulet That ya know that I totally get that I am. Would there be with obviously right now with the slot with it? Are you looking at further development into other trends as well, when that comes? Venice – NeonLabs To be honest, not at all at the moment? So the thing things that are considered now and what’s the long term plan? First of all, one thing only I know a lot of people ask me Do do neon. Do we think about going both ways? So do we allow in the future maybe Solana developers to deploy in Aetherium. And no, that’s not planned. But the only instance where we would allow, let’s say, traction would be with NFTs. So we will focus really hard on NFT support which is not yet complete. Because we do believe that Solana and you might agree on this that Solanas main kinda Long term, let’s say benefit plus whatever over competitors is that Solana has the best infrastructure to actually make web three gaming, I think, because web three gaming currently, you know, is just not there. But in my opinion, Solana is the only chain that could actually bring it as a native app to experience because of the speed they’re going for. All other chains, I think would be really limited. And I think Solana Solana could be the way to go for it. For this reason, we long term want to be supporting ERC 721 1155. So NFT’s essentially, we want to be supporting them literally both ways. So you can get anything from Solana to Etherium and other EVM compatible chains and other way around. So like full, full full support there. And besides that, we will be definitely working to do something similar the way polygon did, which is basically build your own ecosystem in the future, you know, acquire new teams who will be deploying different solutions for neon. So we are doing let’s say neon EVM. And then you’ll have we would with investment money acquire technically new team, that would be expanding neon echo system and, and build something else for neon, if that makes sense. Rob – Amulet Yeah, I mean, we definitely re so we definitely, definitely echo the gamify stuff when we launched ourselves. When we announced our project, obviously, we’ve always talked about the fact that Ico was risk based and it gives you more options and gamify is something that we want to be able to cover in the future. Obviously, when we when we when we announced it was before ust Deepak and before actually its collapse, we had high ambitions that by this time, by one year, which is coming up in a couple of months, that we’d have stuff like kind of T cover and gamify cover, and that will still come it’s just obviously what happened in the industry meant it not feasible, but we definitely believe that’s why vs has the power to do that. And we see that being loads of options from protection in gaming, especially because I played fortnight yesterday, after Manchester United. And you know, someone steals one of your assets, I’d be devastated someone stole one of my skins. See if we can provide a cover for that that’s something we’re going to be looking into. So we definitely accurate that one thing that you mentioned a lot about what you planned and it’s one of the questions that they gave me as well is have you got plans to launch a specific roadmap or something where they can see what’s going to come with a specific time period. Venice – NeonLabs Yeah, the updated website is actually I would say top priority like a lot of updates have to come there with complete redesign of the same thing and I for me to be honest, I was pushing in a way that roadmap current roadmap because it’s it’s outdated that it should get either removed unless we are ready you know if we are not ready to completely replace it updated whatever that it should get removed for the time being but I guess they’re confident that full thing will be will be ready soon and that then they can you know confidently push it out because you don’t want to be especially now in our situation you don’t want to be pushing out that and then assuming dates and not really getting them I guess they’re just taking a bit more time to let’s say agree completely on deadlines when when what’s happening. Rob – Amulet Now I absolutely get that like on our roadmap, we we didn’t put stuff in that probably should go in but we didn’t I have to produce it myself. And I didn’t want to have to lie to them. So I totally get that as well. And a little secret for people in this ama we will also be developing our website and I’ve we’ve never revealed that so I’m not going to reveal that again. Because I might get in trouble for some of the other questions that have been asked again, I’ll get to this one before that I’ve got a couple but this one is about because you mentioned the NFT stuff. I understand that you’ve got some NFT badges at the moment and we’ve been asked to ever there’s utility that’s with that Venice – NeonLabs not really love with NF T’s with the neon so far we didn’t do anything similar to some other projects in a way that that you get that we don’t really give currently pull ups or something like that. So what we did now and then with MS was be very avoiding people but It wasn’t with our own, let’s say native NFT. Because that’s not really a thing. The only the only thing regarding NF T’s what we have is on for Christmas, I think we mentored, I believe it was 200 MFDs that were like specially created it, even though it was around Christmas, it wasn’t really like Christmas edition, it was just to celebrate end of the year or something like that it was 200 NF T’s most of them went to our partners and investors. But we got very few of them actually for the community. And we gave them away I believe in some Christmas programme of ours, we had one occasion or we gave few away, and I have I think, maybe 20 left. But no, it’s not something with utility. And we are not not currently working on anything like that. Cool. It’s Rob – Amulet good to clear that up. Because that question is probably come from that little Christmas giveaway that you’ve done. That’s good, so that they’ve been able to pull it up. So yeah, I’ve got two more questions that were sent in. One of them. I think it may not necessarily be that relevant, because you’re not launched on the main net, though. But have you got projects that have already lined up for integration? I guess I’ve changed the quick view not being on the main that. Venice – NeonLabs wait, let me let me if I can pull it out from somewhere I had like actual infographic of projects that confronted just don’t don’t start remembering now and forget someone.open source whatever it’s happening on private channels with dapps over telegram so we have I think at this point more than 200 ongoing chats with Ethereum dapps. Yeah, it’s a lot of them. And and the bunch lined up. And I still didn’t find the I think I’ll find it here. Rob – Amulet If you don’t find it, it’s not not to worry. I’ve got they also our community was quite interested to know a little bit about the team at NEON, what countries they’re from etc. Probably should have asked that at the beginning. But it was the way the questions were sent to me. I’ve done in a very weird order. Right, just Venice – NeonLabs just regarding this, I’ll mention just a few that I see here. I’ll forget most but you have uniswap You have other you have curve, soluble compounds. Mix baits was doing most of the tech testings. Robert omics. Who am I missing? We are working with chainlink De Graaff. Yeah, I mean, I’m kind of just covering you blue chips. But as I said, it’s it’s more than 200 daps and infrastructure providers at this point. And in my opinion, we should actually focus more on on smaller guys. We are maybe counting blue chips too much at this point. But we did get in really, let’s say favourable position with most of them. So it wasn’t I guess, a better idea. Can you please repeat me second question now? Rob – Amulet Yeah, it was just about where where the neon theme is based? Like what what’s their situation? Venice – NeonLabs Yeah, it’s so initially it started with a team of Russian developers. So when Tim was before I think I was also the the first not just technical hire but the first not Russian hire as well. I’m I’m from Croatia. But later we expanded a lot. And now let’s say core development developer team is still mostly Russian. But if you look at marketing, for example, there you have Russia, you have Croatia, you have Spain, you have Australia. We had Belgium, India. It’s really international weekend in bizdev. American guy guy from Switzerland guy from Germany. So team is really like International. It’s not like Like we have, you know, one room where we all sit together and actually, just recently, we met in Morocco. And that was the first team building ever that we did with, let’s say, almost full team. But yeah, it’s really international besides developer team, which is I think, like 95% Russian. Rob – Amulet Okay, cool. Awesome. So, because I’m a little bit time limited, I’m gonna have to end it with a little bit of, could you maybe give a bit of a, where people can find you what people should do with regards to getting to know more, because I would open up to the audience, but I am going to have to pop out in about five minutes time. And say, Is it where do people find you? And we’ve already had some? Obviously, we’ve done this isn’t the first cross marketing thing we’ve done together. So I know people are aware, but just Could you remind them of the best places to go to be part of the neon unity as well? Venice – NeonLabs Yeah, neon, community wise, it’s definitely discord I’m there kinda 24/7. And I think it’s really pleased for everyone I focused hard on on making it that way. Because with all the delays, we had, first, the technical side and stuff, I figured that it can’t really be run as, you know, Microsoft support channel and it shouldn’t be, because that way, you don’t have any any like marketing going actually, with community or anything like that. It would literally be just a channel where people come and ask questions, and I never wanted it. So we created some sort of division of a server in a way that technical people who actually want to be deploying or who want to understand technical side, have, let’s say, their own little section on, on Discord where everything just covered, and we are replying really quickly there. And for other people who just want to come and have fun, we have a lot of people they’re throttling or whatever, we are not really removing anything, gifts are allowed, everything goes, people are just having fun. And I would say that it’s really great and fun place to be at because most of them are there daily. And we are trying to run every week. Different events for non technical community members, just some little stuff they can have fun with sometimes it’s more serious like now when we are doing a contest with Twitter threads, you have to create a nice thread about neon. And then for rewards, we have neon merch, you can also check it there in minor announcement channel, how that looks. It’s usually really, people get hyped out about it. On events where we go, because it’s different, right? It’s not just black and white, like what most people do. It’s super weird colours with with pink with purplish. And people usually like it. So we decided to start giving that away over those contests that are not technical. So if anyone wants to check that out and give that a try, you’re welcome. And I promise you’ll be received as a kings if you just hate say hi there. That’s Rob – Amulet amazing. Well, yeah, thanks so much for joining us. Really appreciate it Venice. And so we had to delay it a few times. And then sorry, it had to be me and not Martin. He’s much better. Yeah, good. But ya know, thanks very much for joining us. And yeah, have a wonderful weekend and I will be in the jungle chat to go pull up that augmented for this and also to do a giveaway and then I’m leaving everything to Meison because I have to quickly go on up. Thank you everyone. Venice – NeonLabs
Thanks for having me bye guys