The WLD Show
John Lee: SZNS. Cofounding a Web3 Startup to Collect and Manage NFTs Together as a DAO | Will, Lee, & Andrew Learn Web3 #76
Episode Summary
John Lee is the the cofounder and CEO of SZNs, a DAO platform that enables groups to collect and manage NFTs together. John is also the GP of NOVAK Capital, an early stage crypto fund. We explore the mindset of an early crypto native adopter and learn about the vision John has for SZNs.
Episode Notes
As the show’s listenership has grown, WLD has begun getting inbound interest to be guests on the pod - John is the first guest we have decided to bring on.
In this episode, John describes his crypto journey from being a self-described OG game forum lurker way back in the early 2010’s, to how he lead blockchain initiatives both internally and externally at Google, to how his obsession with pokemon kickstarted his foray into play to earn NFTs and laid the foundation for SZNs.
Learn more about John Lee and SZNs:
Episode notes and links:
- How John initially got into crypto through Team Liquid’s gaming forum
- Why John’s formative years crafted his Libertarian leanings at a young age
- Growing up poor, distrusting of centralized institutional power
- Johns journey into tech and crypto
- Learned programming in college, joined Oracle as sales engineer
- First exposed to Ethereum in 2015 through a crypto meetup, wrote an article on ETH mining on Bitcoinist (link below)
- How do we build trustless systems
- DApps and verifying truth through code
- Joining Google in 2017 and working on crypto initiatives
- Hosting and growing internal blockchain events
- How John facilitated engagement with Block.one and eventually leading to a partnership where Google joined as a EOS block producer
- John’s investment history in crypto
- How John initially pooled money from friends and family, began as a private investment club that achieved 70x returns
- Starting Novak Capital in 2017
- Looking to deploy majority in venture, some in liquid markets
- How John got started in collecting and investing in NFTs
- Always loved collectibles, started from collecting pokemon figures from the late 90’s
- Being ranked 130 on Blur leaderboard
- Why John is bullish on the Azuki project
- Buying a special Azuki for 2 ETH, and getting offers for over 200 ETH
- What is John’s strategy and approach in investing in NFTs?
- Sweeping the floor and unloading at the right time
- Price action similarities to ICOs back in the day
- Real investing vs riding wave of crypto in general
- How did John start SZNS?
- Working with friends from Google that wanted to do something together
- Creating a platform for Axie trading - borrow for free, earnings profit sharing
- Pivoting and joining AllianceDAO when Axie created Ronin chain
- What is SZNS? Why launch your DAO on SZNS?
- Piloting a trustless way to manage your NFTs and protection against malicious proposals
- How is SZNS different from Syndicate.io or other platforms?
- How SZNS streamlined their voting mechanism
- Allowing for arbitration periods where ppl can contest by bonding and staking their ETH via Reality.ETH module
- How SZNS will initially monitor and oversee malicious proposals, eventually will transition to DAO governance
- Private beta right now, public launch June 30th
- What is the vision of the platform?
- Not being bullish on fractionalization
- Believing that the methodology of collections/albums with a token mechanism is a better way to decentralize ownership
- Not being a platform for NFT flipping - quick buy/sell still an issue
- What happened in Beanstalk hack?
- Flash loan to buy majority of governance tokens, edited smarted contract to steal assets
- John sold some pods the same night as the hack exploit!
- Benevolent dictatorship vs fully decentralized checks and balances
- Oliver Wendall Holmes - "If my fellow citizens want to go to Hell I will help them. It's my job."
- John’s book recommendation - “The ascent of Money”
- The right of sovereignty and ownership of your own assets that have monetary value
- SZNS’ year end goal is to be number one Google search above SZNS KPOP group!
If you liked this episode, you can find more episodes at wld.show!