Lost Worlds AMA #1 — Project Overview with Quaison (Co-Founder & CEO) (Recap)
Lost Worlds AMA #1 — Project Overview with Quaison (Co-Founder & CEO) (Recap)
On 3/22/2022 at 6:00 a.m. (PST), an AMA session was held on Avalaunch with special guest, Quaison, Co-Founder & CEO, Lost Worlds. Below we present to you an excerpt from AMA with questions and answers.
Dave Donnenfeld | Avalaunch
Hello and welcome Avalaunch faithful to an AMA that takes place from a special venue — the Avalanche Summit in Barcelona! So far so great and it is definitely passing the vibe test with flying colors. Today, we are stoked to have a very special guest from a genuinely exciting project — LOST WORLDS. Can you say geo-location based NFTs minting? I think you can. Without further ado, let me welcome Quaison Carter, the man that makes Lost Worlds go. @Quaison , you good to go?
Quaison |Lost Worlds
Yo Yo! How is everyone?! Q here.
Its a pleasure to be here and answer all the communities questions
Dave Donnenfeld | Avalaunch
Good to have you Quaison. Appreciate your time today. Let’s get into it….Can you please introduce yourself, who you are, what your role is and perhaps how you got involved in crypto?
Quaison |Lost Worlds
Hi everyone, my name is Quaison (Kwaysun) one of the founders of Lost Worlds as well its CEO. I’ve been in involced with crypto since 2013, but my main background is actually in Digital Production and Advertising. I cut my teeth as a producer and strategist at some of the top agencies in the world, working on brands like, Coca Cola, Macys, Procter and Gamble.
Like many of us, I was introduced to crypto by a friend who was geeking out and going deep in the space and eventually I got ropped in. ts been no looking back ever since. I’ve worked behind the scenes on a number of DeFi projects, while still keeping day job, which was also as an educator at General Assembly and NYU, helping people to understand the importance of Blockchain technology and its impact on our day to day.
Dave Donnenfeld | Avalaunch
Appreciated. For those watching on, the summit connection is a little touch and go but we’ll get through it.
How does Lost Worlds work? What are its pillars and differentiating factors?
Quaison |Lost Worlds
Lost Worlds is a composite of Web3 and Web2 infrastructure that allows NFTs to be geographically bounded to physical locations. Its a marketplace and platform where creators can use location as means of digital expression, and scarcity. This is simply one dynamic of our primary focus which is to create new and novel ways to drive real world utility for NFTs.
Dave Donnenfeld | Avalaunch
Lost Worlds seems to evoke quite a unique idea. Can you tell us a little bit about how the concept of bridging NFTs to real-life experiences of NFT discovery and minting came about?
Quaison |Lost Worlds
We really felt it was an inevitability. The idea of a “metaverse” where we all put on a Oculus, bootup into The Matrix, and live in a digital utopia is something that’s not realistic, or near term.
That said, we are at a place where we can start bringing more crypto focused digital interactions into our physical reality. We really wanted to be at the forefront of this idea of real world utility for NFTs. And location based NFTs is the first application that achieves this aim.
Dave Donnenfeld | Avalaunch
Agreed although I can’t hate on an oculus. This is more melding and practical by a good stretch, kudos to you all for tackling it.
NFT minting across various geo-locations is of course a core constituent of Lost Worlds. Do you envision potential challenges arising in relation to user-adoption, whereby people might feel restricted in accessing and making use of the platform? How do you ensure that users don’t feel left out because of the need to travel to particular locations to access an NFT or a collection of NFTs?
Quaison |Lost Worlds
In the near term, this is actually a feature not bug, for the user. When you mint a pfp project like Hoppers, or Chikn, the total supply, and rarity are forms of scarcity, you’re restricted in what/how many NFTs you can mint because of this. Location Based NFTs are simply another form of scarcity and rarity. That said, you can purchase and collect any NFT minted from a location, by other explorers via our secondary marketplace. That NFT is still proof that someone travelled to mint.
Additionally, in our future we have a number of new primitives to the space that actually solve for the desire to experience geo-location based NFTs no matter where you are. Currently our NFTs are bound to a physical location. In the future we will have NFT drops that generate based on your location. Meaning there will always be something near you to mint, but it could also change based on where you are. We call it Location Generative NFTs.
Dave Donnenfeld | Avalaunch
Lost Protocol is a set of tools that gives builders and creators the freedom to build their own GameFi, DeFi, and NFT Experiences. Can you describe the structural nature of this protocol and how it aims to fuel Lost Worlds’ mission?
Quaison |Lost Worlds
In short we wanted to build an open protocol that anyone could build on top of.
When building the app, we realized really quickly that we could wrap all of our tooling into an SDK and APIs that allows others to plug in and build their own World. The Lost Protocol is a heiarchery of tooling and governance that allows creators, and explorers to build on and grow the lost worlds ecosystem.
The most important pieces are the Project Builder and the DAO
The project builder contains what we call The Lost Tower which is a templatized launcher for creating your own location based NFT experiences.
The DAO is the heart of our ecosystem. Creators who build a project would have to push a proposal to the DAO, stakers on our platform are the gatekeepers of quality and demand for what projects are allowed to drop on the app. A portion of the minting fees from each project would also be passed back into the treasury, which will also be passed back to the stakers of the ecosystem, either through LOST rewards or directly in AVAX. In short its a closed loop system where creators and explorers are connected and help each other grow.
Dave Donnenfeld | Avalaunch
The name Lost Tower resonated with me for reasons I’d rather not get into ? Great answer actually — With a secondary marketplace available among the already known platforms like OpenSea, how do you ensure adoption and scalability for this integral part that makes up the Lost Worlds ecosystem?
Quaison |Lost Worlds
Its a good question, we don’t see ourselves as a competitor to secondary marketplaces like OpenSea, Kalao or NFTrade, we are a primary marketplace that supplements their supply in fact. We are lego block within the NFT ecosystem for all to build on. To that end we’ve been working closely with other marketplaces to see how we can integrate and open our offering into the larger ecosystem.
Dave Donnenfeld | Avalaunch
That’s going to be one big ass lego in due course. LOST is the token behind the economy of Lost Worlds. Where does the utility come from? How does the token contribute to the ecosystem? Can users access the platform without holding the token?
Quaison |Lost Worlds
The LOST token at its inception is an access token. Depending on how much you stake the more access to the platform you will have. This includes being able to mint projects, earn rewards and to have a say about the future of the platform. We use a tiered Bronze, Silver, Gold staking system as foundation so that we can layer on utility as the project grows.
Bronze (staking 10 LOST) — Access to the application and marketplace and “bronze level” projects
Silver (stake 100 LOST) — You are able to earn rewards, and Silver Level Achievements (including Higher LOST rewards) (i.e., if you are staking less than 100 LOST you won’t be able to earn minter rewards or dividends, but you will be able to earn bronze achievements)
Gold (Stake 1,000 LOST) — Gold Level Achievements (and highest LOST Rewards), Access to Community (future DAO which controls what projects are on the platform). Early access to new features and releases.
We are keeping it simple to start so we can layer on utility with data behind it. This includes the possibility of sharing platform revenues with Gold Tier stakers incentivizing them to vote and support quality projects that will mint.
Also note some projects may be “sponsored” (or free) depending on mint
Dave Donnenfeld | Avalaunch
So the access sets us up and the earning and status knocks it down. Well done. I’m presaged that a bit — How does the earning mechanism work? Are there limitations in the earning potential without the use of the geo-location feature?
Quaison |Lost Worlds
Yea exactly, you can consider us an “Explore to Earn” platform. By going to different locations and minting NFTs you are earning rewards. We are converting the energy of travel and movement into value. The more value you attain, the more access and opportunity you are given.
We have a number of rewards that will be live with the first NFT drops. Below are the ways you will inititally be able to earn (with more to come).
Minter Rewards — you mint on our App, you earn LOST
Minter Dividends — These in essence are location based reflections. The earlier you are to a minting location, the more rewards you can earn
Minter Royalties — If you mint and sell your NFT on the marketplace, you can (depending on the project) earn royalties from the secondary sales.
Achievements — By completing certains tasks and objectives (like collecting certain rarities and locations from different projects and creators), you can earn a big LOST reward, rare NFTs and potentially more
I’m sure you can think of 100 other ways we can add more rewards to the platform
Dave Donnenfeld | Avalaunch
There’s no shortage of ways this could be spun once it’s up and running. Pretty robust for sure. Having looked at the Roadmap, an interesting feature becomes obvious, which I’d like to discuss briefly, namely the notion of multiple projects becoming available at launch. What can you tell us about these projects, what’s the bigger picture behind this strategy?
@shahi297 save us!
Lovish Shahi | Avalaunch
We are launching with two native projects and following up with a third shortly after. The focus is on small locations as well as global access for everyone.
1. Continents NFT — A Global Minting Experience — is project that will allow you to mint NFTs based on the continent you reside. After you mint can buy or sell them on the marketplace, if you collect all 7 Continents you are able to burn them for a super Rare “World” NFT plus LOST rewards. Antartica will be only available to whitelisted people, who own earn a the explorer role in our Discord and or own one of the top tier Avax NFT projects (Apas, Apes, Chikn, etc… more on this soon)
https://lostworldsnfts.medium.com/introducing-continents-nft-24e30705701a
2. Portals — Its an experience that is focused on talking about what will happen to our world if we don’t take care of it. We dropped 6 locations across the globe of famous landmarks from Paris, New York, Singapore, Berlin, Turkey and San Francisco with NFTs of alternative realities of what could happen to that landmark if we don’t care of our world. Its a really cool concept and the NFTs are beautiful
https://lostworldsnfts.medium.com/portals-nft-on-lost-worlds-ea51d0fa5caa
Dave Donnenfeld | Avalaunch
Well said. Give that answer a pat on the back.
Impressive roadmap. A long time in the making
What are your plans for scalability, and what does security look like on Lost Worlds?
Quaison |Lost Worlds
We chose Avalanche for a specific reason…For both security and scalability; the opportunity that subnets provide open up an entire world where Lost Worlds can become “multidimensional”.
I don’t want to share too much alpha there yet, because first thing first is to get the core application right, but we are excited to watch projects we know well, like the swimmer network on Crabada closely.
Dave Donnenfeld | Avalaunch
You have chosen wisely. ?
And our final question before we move on to the twitter portion of our program. At this point, our global community leader, @shahi297 will be taking the reins. You may feel safe with him. Quaison, I will be seeing you around here shortly. As for the final question on this leg of the journey — What do you see as the major milestone in the life of Lost Worlds? What are you most excited about to see in the next few months?
Quaison |Lost Worlds
The most exciting thing we are ready for is pushing out product
We are here at Avalanche Summit deploying our soft launch (I’m sitting next to the devs right now as they are pushing a live link out in the next hour or so) ? so right now its working through bugs and engaging with the other projects IRL. It’s an exciting time ?.
After that though, obviously our IDO, but once we are launched, we have ton of features to roll out including location bounties, location generative and more! We are reaching the stage in crypto where mass adoption is on our doorstep, and bridging crypto experiences with real world use is a challenge we are excited to take on.
Lovish Shahi | Avalaunch
Ahan nicely done!
Hi Quaison , love to see you here , Lost Worlds is one of my favorites, I’m glad you came 🙂
Twitter Questions
@Wilson81947694 — Who is LostWorlds main target audience?
Quaison |Lost Worlds
To begin with the Avalanche Community. Its important for us to really build the core, the hot coal of our community and audience. They will tell us how/why and sometimes why we should be building. I can give you a marketing thesis on who our core customer is, but it wont be real, just theorhetical until the product is live and we get real users using it.
@Erul1122 — Is there a plan for Lost Worlds to migrate to their own subnet and use $LOST as the primary token to bring more utility for the native token ?
Quaison |Lost Worlds
Its 100 percent in our sites, but like I said above, one step at a time.
Subnets haven’t really been battle tested. The same can be said about the Lost Worlds protocol. Once we both mature a bit, we can finally go on some dates, maybe even get married ?
@QuNguyn61793298 — Do you already have plans for other interfaces with other companies?
Quaison |Lost Worlds
We’ve already have relationships with most of the native Avalanche projects in the space. They are all excited to deploy and have their own drops on the Lost Worlds application. I think you guys will be happy and excited with some announcements incoming for collabs.
@nicole_binuya — Who is LostWorlds ‘s biggest rival? In the future, does LostWorlds have a plan to beat your rival or cooperate with them?
Quaison |Lost Worlds
Honestly, there are bunch of potential competitors some direct, some indirect, none of them in the Avalanche ecosystem, and none of them as tied deeply into the Avax community. We see our selves as a legoblock of not only the NFT ecosystem, but also, the avalanche Ecosystem. So we are always collaborative and open with all projects. Because our focus is on building.
@Balma322 — People still don’t have much idea of how NFTs work and how to acquire them, are #LOSTWORLDS product designed to be beginner-friendly in the NFT world?
Quaison |Lost Worlds
This is a great question. Its real challenge. One we focus on everyday. In addition to just the friction of NFTs minting and crypto in general, there’s the friction of the mobile experience for crypto. We are working on many design update and UI improvements once we start getting real user feedback that will allow us to become as user friendly as metamask/trust wallet allows ?
Telegram Questions
@pearlene_welker
Are you planning to promote your project in countries / regions where English is not good? Do you have a local community for them to better understand your project??
Quaison |Lost Worlds
Yes, we are working actively on this. We’ve partnered with a number of projects and communities from countries across the world to develop their own location based projects for their communities.
@Alfredoswift1999
My question . Project names always attract attention and one wonders why they were chosen. How did you decide your project name? what is the meaning and importance of this name that defines your project in one word?
Quaison |Lost Worlds
The idea behind the name is that right now you could be standing under an NFT and its in a world that you had no idea was there. It was Lost to you, until now.
The best way to get involved with our community. is on either discord.gg/lostworlds or on our twitters https://twitter.com/lostworldsnft and https://twitter.com/portals_nft we are doing a number of whitelist for projects coming up, that you can only do through there.
@Veolamathis84
Can you please share about your burn system and buyback system? How does burn work for your token?
Quaison |Lost Worlds
Part of what we plant to do with protocal fees and revenues accrued is to lock them into very very longterm treasuries. We also will be distributing a portion of the Avax revenue we earn back to the Stakers of the platform who lock for x period of time (tbd).
@CathrineSanderson
Currently, a lot of people are looking at NFT, Metaverse & Games? What do you think your offering has that will make it stand out?
Quaison |Lost Worlds
Its funny, we are a mix of all three, while being differentiated in each category. Whether we are bridging the metaverse and the real world, creating scavenger hunts and geocaching games, as well as most importantly location based NFTs
@norafatehi03330
Sir, i am eagerly want to know about your IDO preparation. Can you explain your IDO plan? And share with us total token supply and platform link where we can buy your token?
Quaison |Lost Worlds
regarding our token supply and what we are focused on here. I will say because we are focused on building utility, we made sure that our initial circulating supply was low so its could be focused on app usage. We also worked with our private investors and advisors to have a longer lockup so they could support our long term vision.
Lovish Shahi | Avalaunch
Very much appreciate your time here today and the thoughtful answers :))
It’s been impressive and a breeze to go through.
On a final note — you have been an exceptional guest. Highly thoughtful answers and cleanly shared information. We’re happy to be hosting your IDO and wish you all the success we imagine you having. Very much appreciate your time today and look forward to your launch and beyond!
Quaison |Lost Worlds
Im happy to be apart of this chat. Im excited for the future of what location based NFTs can do, and I am most excited about working with Avalaunch. I hope you all will support us on our journey. ??
About Avalaunch
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Lost Worlds AMA #1 — Project Overview with Quaison (Co-Founder & CEO) (Recap) was originally published in Avalaunch on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
