Launchpool AMA Recap — BLOCKS
Launchpool x BLOCKS AMA Summary
Place: Launchpool Official Telegram Community
Date & Time: Friday, June 24th, 16:00 UTC
Guests: Juan M. Hernandez, CEO of Blocks
Host: Spiderman (Launchpool Team)
Launchpool was excited to host Juan M. Hernandez, CEO of Blocks for an interactive Ask-Me-Anything session with the Launchpool Community. The session lasted approximately 1hr and consisted of questions from the Launchpool Team as well as questions from the Community.
Questions from the Launchpool Team
SpiderMan:
Hello and welcome all LPOOLers,
As many in our community already know, today we have an AMA session with Juan M. Hernandez (CEO) of Blocks. BLOCKS empowers NFT communities by giving them the tools to make custom Metaverse environments for their users. They provide “metaverse-as-a-service” tools for NFT creators to create pocket environments that add utility, drive engagement, & create additional revenue streams
As always, the chat will be muted for roughly 30 mins whilst we ask the pre-prepared questions. After this, we will open up to questions from the Community for another 15 mins. We will also enable “Slow Mode” for all questions.
Welcome Juan!
Juan: Great to be here, excited to chat with you all
SpiderMan: Great to have you here! Please tell us a bit about yourself, your background, and your involvement with the space.
Juan: I’ve been in the NFT/Metaverse space since 2020, but in the broader blockchain space since 2016.
My background is computer science and business, been working on tech start-ups largely focused on “crowd” elements — be it with crowdfunding platforms or other things like that. My last company was called OpenFinance, and we were working on tokenizing private securities and letting you trade them on-chain. That project was sold to INX Limited, and then we dived head first into NFTs and Metaverse with BLOCKS
SpiderMan: Nice to know. Could you tell us about the rest of the team?
Juan: Yeah, we have a great team here at BLOCKS, with deep blockchain, media & entertainment, and gaming industry experience.
Our team members have worked at companies like Fox/Disney, Viacom/Paramount, Cartoon Network, Konami, Bad Robot, and other media companies. For example, Sam Ellis, our CPO, was the creator of Archer (FX) and Adventure Time (Cartoon Network).
So, a lot of work on animated shows, and you can see that on our platform with the art style and the game style.
SpiderMan: I must say, you have got a great team. What problem are you trying to solve? What is the overall vision for the project?
Juan: Our overall vision is to enable ANY creator in this space to make custom Metaverse environments for their users. Right now, it feels like we’re in the AOL/Yahoo days of the Metaverse…..where if you’re not on the AOL or Yahoo homepage you technically don’t exist. I may have dated myself with that reference, haha.
The current model of Metaverse land being scarce is kind of funny, because I think we all know that new digital land can be created very easily. And so, the current value of Metaverse land is in its scarcity, and that’s a flawed model that quickly prices out most communities from participating in the Metaverse.
We provide a fully functional (live today) turnkey solution to roll out a custom Metaverse just for your community, that you can make as big or as small as you want and it has the added benefit of being able to capture new revenue in the form of land sales, where you can capture primary and secondary market fees on those sales.
You can almost think about it as a “WordPress for Metaverse”
✨ Special Announcement ✨
We’re currently running a Gleam Campaign with BLOCKS
To welcome BLOCKS to Launchpool, we’ve teamed up to give away free BLOCKS tokens! 🤩
👉 Simply fill out the Gleam form shared below for a chance to win:
https://gleam.io/Z4vI5/enter-the-blocks-x-launchpool-1500-giveaway❗️😎
📌 The secret code will be shared during the AMA so be sure you are paying attention… 👀
SpiderMan: Oh, great. This is really cool. How are you differentiated from other similar projects?
Juan: Most people reference Sandbox, Decentraland, and Cryptovoxels when it comes to similar projects but, while these players are focused on major world-building, we are taking a more focused approach and providing our partners with the tools to build their own “hyper-local” Metaverse environments.
We work with partners to create environments like Meebits Town, our NounsTown where they can create an environment just for their Hodlers, instead of trying to compete for space (and attention) in one of the broader Metaverse environments.
We also take a more collaborative approach, and revenue share back with our partners so they can benefit from their own land sales, and drive that value back into their treasury and into further community building.
SpiderMan: Where are you at in your roadmap? Could you please talk us through the next steps.
Juan: The platform is live (in beta) and available for everyone to play with now. We’re onboarding new partners and are currently in the middle of a roll-out with the Nouns community.
What’s super interesting there is we ended up forking the Nouns DAO contract and using that for our land sales — so instead of doing just regular NFT drops, we’re actually doing fully automated, decentralized daily auctions for land, just like the main Nouns NFTs!
You can check that out at:
SpiderMan: Super interesting indeed. LPOOLers would definitely check that out.
Juan: Next up we’re rolling out more environments with different partners, as well as working on cross-chain support: Polygon, BSC, Solana, Avalanche, and Theta.
SpiderMan: Nice. How was the project funded up to this point? How will the funds from the pre-IDO be used?
Juan: We’re fortunate enough to have backing from top-tier VC firms including Fenbushi Capital, Kenetic Capital, A195 Capital, Gumi Crypto, Cryptology Asset Group, Polygon Studios, Yield Guild Games, and others
With their support, we’ve been building out the core platform that is live now, and we’ve developed the partnerships we have in place.
SpiderMan: Great. Are there any strategic partners (excluding Launchpool) that you can share?
Juan: Yeah, I’ve shared some of the partners we’ve rolled out environments with so far (Nouns, Meebits) — but we also have environments in the works with CrypToadz, CyberKongz (Polygon), a couple of Solana projects which we can’t name yet and others.
We’ll also be announcing two new cross-chain integrations in the next 1–2 weeks. Along with our exchange partners 💪
SpiderMan: What made you choose Launchpool as your launchpad partner for the AME?
Juan: Honestly, it was the team. Ever since I started talking with Rich and the team, I’ve felt that you guys have been on top of things across the board with the roll-out and that level of attentiveness is something that I see translates into how you guys take care of your Community.
For us, this whole campaign is more about community building than anything else, and we want to go where we know we’ll find a strong community that genuinely cares about the projects. We want a real community and real users who would be interested in our platform, not just flippers who want to speculate on the token price.
SpiderMan: What happens after the AME? Could you talk us through the tokenomics: total supply, initial circulating supply, initial market cap, initial vesting, total vesting period (from launch until when will the last token be vested for), etc.
Juan: Yeah, to start, we do have the public sale price at the same level as the private sale price, to ensure an even playing field for the token investors. Private sale folks were able to purchase larger amounts, but their tokens come with a 6-month vesting period. Whereas public sale participants are unlocked and have no vesting.
This aligns with our goal of getting the tokens into the hands of as many potential users as possible because that’s how we’re defining success here with the token sale.
And as a whole, you’ll note in our token distribution diagrams that we have allocated 40% of the total token supply to be distributed to the community, over the course of 4 years.
SpiderMan: I like that you are here for the long run 🙌
Here is the Secret Code: BUILDWITHBLOCKS
Juan: Yes, so hopefully the community will see via our tokenomics that we are intent on using the token over the long-term as a rewards mechanism, to give value back to the users who actively use the platform and engage with the product. Our private investors all have varying degrees of vesting (up to 24 months on the highest end), so we have taken great care to protect token participants
Additionally, we are working with our exchange partners on rolling out Earning programs, to further reward our community as we roll out the broader token infrastructure.
SpiderMan: What are the use cases for the token? Do you have any mechanisms planned to support the DeFi component?
Juan: The $BLOCKS token has several key areas of utility:
First, there’s DAO governance. Token holders will be able to vote on measures such as platform upgrades, curations & moderations, membership tiers, and other key system elements.
Then there are Exclusive Redemptions. Premium features on the platform will only be made available to token holders of different tier levels. We will also be releasing exclusive NFTs that are initially only purchasable with the $BLOCKS token.
Then there are BLOCKS Land NFT upgrades, using a semi-fungible token (SFT) mechanism. These Booster NFTs are basically NFTs that can be loaded up with the BLOCKS token to power them up, and can then be used to upgrade Land on the platform and unlock new features.
We’ll be announcing our partners on this initiative soon, but it’s a new capability that we haven’t seen used much in the GameFi/Metaverse space so we’re excited to pioneer it.
Lastly, as I mentioned we’ll be working with our CEX partners on Earning programs that will be offered to holders of the token.
SpiderMan: Where can we join your community?
Juan: Twitter:
Discord:
We’ll be posting our latest updates and announcements there, and if you want early access to new features (or even free NFT drops), you’ll definitely want to be following us there!
SpiderMan: Thank you again for sharing these updates with our Community. I will now open up the Community to questions from the floor. Please be reminded that we have “Slow Mode” enabled and will only be answering questions related to BLOCKS.
The Floor is Now Open❗
Questions from the Launchpool Community
Question: When is the Token Generation Event?
Juan: TGE is planned for 24–48 hours before CEX listing, which is scheduled for the first week of July.
Question: What CEX are you planning to list on?
Juan: We will be announcing this shortly along with the Earning program.
Question: Since you stated that the platform is live (in beta) and available for everyone to play with now, can you share links to it?
Juan:Yes
Question: Metaverse is a hot trend right now but there are very few projects that actually have real Metaverse features. So, what is BLOCKS building on the Metaverse?
Juan: The big thing we’re focused on is community engagement so a lot of what we’re building is not so much “mini-games”, but rather tools for community engagement. For example, we have a live chat feature (text, audio, video), which allows people to host events in the space.
In fact, we’ve had communities host Townhall events in the space, where they invite their community to come in and socialize while they make a presentation.
SpiderMan: If the Community has any more questions or if it’s unanswered, please hop over to the BLOCKS Community to have it answered there:
Thank you LPOOLers! And thank you also to you Juan for your time in sharing all the info and we can’t wait for what’s ahead.
Juan: Thank you! Appreciate everyone taking time today to listen in!
SpiderMan: Thanks to everyone that participated!
This will be the end of our AMA.
About Blocks
BLOCKS empowers NFT communities by giving them the tools to make custom Metaverse environments for their users. They provide “metaverse-as-a-service” tools for NFT creators to create pocket environments that add utility, drive engagement, and create additional revenue streams.
About Launchpool
Launchpool leverages communities, knowledge, expertise, contacts and capital to provide crypto projects with the best possible start to life, maximising their chances for success in this fast moving & dynamic space.
