The problem is there's a lot of different wallets. They're all going in different directions. They're competitors, so they're adding new features, they want to do things different, they have different engineers.
And what Laser Eyes does is abstracts that all away and makes for a really easy developer experience to get all these wallets. What we've built is foundational because every developer doesn't have to reinvent the wheel.
[upbeat music] This conversation was recorded live at the Inscribing Conference at Bitcoin Vegas, a Bitcoin culture and arts conference. Shout out Inscribing.
Go to inscribing.com or @ordevents on X. Uh, welcome back to Bitcoin season two. I've got the one, the only OXBunzie. That's your real legal name, right? Yeah. Just don't say the first part. I will-- Okay, I won't.
[laughs] Yeah, yeah. Nobody knows that, uh, Bitcoin addresses don't begin with OX, but, uh, that the mo-the audience is here is a little less technical, but I'm not afraid to just throw them in the deep end.
Um, but before we get to that, just I, I kinda wanna pull back and like, um, you know, you've been in the space for a while, crypto, focused mainly on Bitcoin now. Um, how do you explain your job to normies?
[chuckles] Like, what do you say? That's a super funny question 'cause I kinda gave up. I honestly just say I scam people 'cause like it's- That's what they want you to tell them. Yeah.
And it's just like, it's funnier that way too. I get a good response that like, "Oh, crap." And so I just cut. I just like, "Yeah."
But it's funny you ask that because my sister, um, she has a job that Christmas and family comes in town, they understand when they talk about me, "I don't know what the hell he does."
And it's just like, um, but what's funny is my sister actually came to-- this is the first time she came to an event, so she's seeing kinda firsthand a little bit of just, you know, learning from the panels and just meeting all of us and kinda hanging out.
So that's cool. She's taking the time to like, you know, all right, I'll try to learn. So, um, yeah, I don't know. When, when people ask, um, if they're technical, um, we get into it and it's, it's fun.
But if they're not, I like to have-- I joke around a lot, so I just like, "I'm in crypto, I scam people," and it's a, it's a good laugh. So, uh, yeah.
But the, uh, the funny thing is, you know, if your sister's in marketing, like half of our business is marketing, and you have some of the most interesting marketing tactics- Mm.
And, and it, it is, uh, very much marketing, but I guess we don't have to dwell on that. Um, I think, uh, the more interesting thing is I wanna start with, uh, you've built, you and Half- Mm-hmm.
Built a number of things, one of which has become a foundational tool of the Ordinals ecosystem, Laser Eyes. Um, it's actually, I've seen it start to become used outside of Ordinals and Runes. Mm-hmm.
It's now, uh, actually just explain what it, what it is. What, what's the problem and then what does Laser Eyes solve? Okay.
So the problem is there's a lot of different wallets, and they're all going in different directions. They're all trying to be-- they're competitors, so they're adding new features. They want to do things different.
They have different engineers. So the way their naming conventions are different, and what Laser Eyes does is abstracts that all away and makes for a really easy developer experience to get all these wallets.
Because you don't want to have an app that just has X verse and UniSat, someone has a Magic Eden.
It takes a developer a lot of time to implement that, and then you have to have, you know, Oil has a lot of cool stuff with alkanes and like a fucking killer wallet, and then you have Phantom, all this stuff.
So I say that to say what we've built is foundational because it's not revolutionary, but it's every developer doesn't have to reinvent the wheel.
Because if you want to build a Bitcoin app, you know, to get all those wallets, that takes a lot of dev time.
But if you do it once, right, really well and open source it and people can, you know, audit it and then contribute, now we have one source of truth, if you will, and everyone has every wallet.
If a wallet gets updated, that gets updated, therefore, all you have to do is NPM install, you get the latest package in your app. And we did this because we create a lot of apps all the time, so we were just
so self-serving, like, "Dude, I don't want to keep..." It's, it was Half, and he was like, "Dude, I keep making, we just made a package," and H actually inspired it.
But regardless, um, it's, it's a very useful tool, and we don't have it on Bitcoin, and we want all these users, but how you get users is through really cool apps, and we need more developers.
And now with AI, you can spin up an app with Bitcoin Connect and get all these wallets, and it, it really just lowers the barrier to entry, and it's a, it's a really kind of nerdy, but not a sexy thing, but pretty, pretty fucking cool.
It, it's, [clears throat] it's not sexy. And again, I'll in normie terms, when somebody clicks connect their wallet on a website, that's what Laser Eyes allows that process to do.
It's a lot more important and foundational than I think most people realize, especially if they're coming from other crypto ecosystems. Um, were you surprised we didn't have something like this before that? Well, yeah.
I mean, it's a new, um, it's crazy. All of this is happening so fast. New protocols are coming out. They're not getting indexed in some wallets.
Like it's all very new, but for those that are on Ethereum and stuff, it's, um, you know, you have WalletConnect, you have Rainbow Kit, you have these, these toolkits, and those foundations understand they want-- there's develop, developer toolkits.
That's like how you get developers to even come build somewhere. 'Cause if you, if you're a developer and you want to go build someone, you run into a few roadblocks, you just stop. You're like, "I don't know, fuck it."
The package or like decrepit and like, um, the depen- whatever. You just give up. And if you make it super easy, now people are spinning up apps really, really quick. And, um,
I think the cooler part is like really big apps are using it.
Like we have, um, there's a pretty long list at this point of really notable apps and, um-I think what's cool is like I, I think, I might be wrong, I need to talk to Udi about this, but I think Laser eyes inspired maybe the, the Phantom, um, what they did with the Solana part 'cause like you can now do that if you connect with, uh, Laser eyes, you get Phantom, you get Experts, and you can start to do some of this crossover stuff.
But that's me assuming a lot. But regardless, I forget what the question was. We can, we can tell ourselves it is. Yeah.
[laughs] Um, I, you know, I think I may have heard it, so I'm gonna-- I'm just gonna say, yeah, we can... This podcast is- Sure. Nah, it's fact... whatever we say on this podcast be-- is, is true.
That block just got mined. Yeah. [laughs] Um, so you, you know, um, I thought it was just, again, it's kind of...
it was kinda strange that, uh, it took ordinals to happen for this particular standardization or this standard wallet- Mm-hmm... library plug-in convention for you guys to spin this out. Um, it makes me wonder
what other things are out there like that? That's a, that's a good question. And there's a lot because one thing I appreciate about Casey is he likes very clean, simple code, and that is what makes ordinals what it is.
It's, it's almost like stupid simple, but ingenious and sophisticated at the same time. So that, that's kinda just what that, that solve was. But, um, I don't know. There, there's, there's always more.
Um, and off the top of my head, I can't really think of too much, but, you know, mempool.space is another really, like, vital open source piece that is core contributor based similar to Laser eyes.
And it's-- we take it almost for granted sometimes 'cause we just go to mempool.space, but that, that's a full effort. Like, and that's something that didn't exist.
And, um, you know, I think now they're starting to adopt, you know, the ordinal stuff, but I think there's room there, like more indexing, more visualization, 'cause what mempool.space, uh, they did really well is like you can visualize everything real simple.
It makes it like understandable, digestible. And imagine like in the mempool, if you're seeing some of these ordinals and like you can snipe it, I think there's a lot of, um, innovation that can happen there.
Um, but, but yeah, I'll have to think on that a bit more. So the coolest thing you've done, the fun thing to talk about- Mm-hmm... 'cause wallet connects is it's not as sexy- Yeah... as you say.
Um, the stuff which actually is sexy is the fun culture stuff. And in particular,
um, this brings us to BeatBlox, which I think is one of the more fun, uh, projects on Bitcoin right now, and, uh, I, I'd love to see you bring it to fruition. What is BeatBlox?
And then we'll, then we'll work our way back to- Yeah... how, like what this matters, uh, with, uh, inscriptions construction. Yeah. Yeah. So BeatBlox is a way to... Well, let's start with the problem.
The problem was music, um, can technically be stored on, um, through ordinal theory and on, on Bitcoin.
But musicians had to really lower the quality and compress it, and it kinda made it like you're listening out a potato. But it still gave the provenance, it still, you know, holds it immu- like it's still immutable.
It's really cool. But it's not really a cool l-listening experience. It's more just like, "Hey, we did that. It's there, but here's a high quality WAV over here."
And, um, through like inspired by the P5 library, I was seeing like high quality visuals starting to come from, uh, Bitcoin, and I-- it just kinda stuck with me as like, why can't we get better music on, on Bitcoin?
And, um, it just kept touring me and then ran into Skrillex at a conference. He was doing-- He was talking about the same stuff, and we just kept poking at it.
And, you know, through a lot of different experimentations, iterations, file types, different codexes, like we arrived at using something called Opus, which is, um, a really efficient codex, and it compresses forty percent off the bat off, uh, MP3.
And what it also does is it's like softwares like Zoom and Discord use it for low lat- low latency vo-voice. And that's what's cool about BeatBlox, is we're basically stitching together songs in the browser.
And if there's any type of little half a millisecond latency, the average listener won't know, but they'll just know like that, that was not enjoyable experience.
Um, but through all of this, we've arrived at this really cool thing, and as of today, we inscribe something that I think like it changes the way I think about writing music now is like dynamic music, is like Bitcoin's cool, um, but put that aside for a second and just think of your favorite song.
And I have ADHD, and like I get stuck on a song and I just listen to it over and over. But imagine underneath that, there was that, that version, and then there was a dynamic version.
And within that dynamic version, the artist, say, they were in the studio, recorded a few different riffs for the intro.
Instead of picking which one that they're going to like press, they can record all three, put those files, and then every time you press play, it shuffles and changes the arrangements, pitch, like chooses a different drum pattern, drum kit.
And now you have this like generative, dynamic experience. And why are we in the digital age? Like we don't have a vinyl, like we're pulling digital files. Why aren't we like doing these live remixes?
Not like a remix in the sense of, oh, this house DJ made a net... No. It's like a rock band could write a tune and make this dynamic like,
like really immersive piece, and it, it, it really got me thinking, we only arrived there because of the limitations of Bitcoin. What BeatBlox does is it, it kind of deconstructs the concept of a song. Yes. Exactly.
It, um, and then rebuilds back up into something which is way more interactive. Mm-hmm. Yeah. 'Cause there, there's, like music has been kind of a mono-directional relationship, listener- Mm-hmm...
and the music, the piece. But, um, now the listener, it, you know, still the, the piece still produces, but like the listener, it's almost like interacts- Mm-hmm...
with it more.Which is really interesting, and, um, this can exist outside of Bitcoin. Yeah. But you've created this, packaged it in inscription form- That's the coolest part- On Bitcoin...
is like because of the limitations, and for people just to reiterate the, what it is, is like music by nature is super repetitive.
We have intros, we have these builds, we have drums, we have a verse, chorus, verse, bridge, cho- There, there's like, there's structure to a lot of- Yeah... music.
So why I say that is it's, you know, you can have an eight-bar loop that plays throughout a whole song.
There's no reason to inscribe a four-minute song when you can inscribe a eight-second loop, and then what that does is not only are you saving the fi- like the, the size, um, on the fees, but now you can place it wherever.
And the same goes for every other instrument in, in the track. [upbeat music] Hey, Will here with Blockspace Media. Did you know that we have individual feeds for all our shows?
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[upbeat music] I think maybe I'll invite you to explain a little bit about, like, how an inscription works. Yeah. Because I don't think I've had anyone explain this on this show.
People just know, "Oh, I trade these things called ordinals. They look like JPEGs."
Um, early on, it was very, very fun as we, as we imagined what you could do beyond simply just the tradable JPEG asset because these are technically any file type- Mm-hmm... that you can construct.
Any internet MIME type, yeah. Yeah. And um, uh, and I feel that there's been a bit of a loss in interest in that. Mm. And so new things, which I think revisit this concept, beatblocks. Um,
you know, for the listener who hasn't, like, followed that much at all, um, can you just explain what a beatblock looks like in their browser? Oh.
Uh, so in your browser when you pull it up, it's a recursive inscription, so it's HTML. It's pulling past or different, um, Opus files so you can have it render a P5 generation.
You can have it pull, um, any other image that you would recursively, so you can do whatever.
What we've done is for people that are familiar with the Winamp old, like, nostalgic player, within Winamp they use a library called ButterChurn, and ButterChurn is a visual library, and we've inscribed that.
So with this recent one of one that we inscribed, it plays back at random a different ButterChurn.
Um, and that's what's so cool about inscriptions is, you know, once it's on chain, anyone can use it, and I'm a, I believe in open source, and to get it on chain, you have to open source it.
Like, you can't say, "Hey, no, don't use that." The fact is it's the internet, and people can use it if they want. It becomes, like, public domain- Yes... when you put it on Bitcoin.
And I love that because what that does, you know, it pushes technology and humanity forward.
I know that sounds drastic, but it, it really does 'cause if you're a closed garden and you don't let anyone see, you know, someone can't take that and just add a little bit to it, and that, that's why some of the software like Linux, like the, these bigger examples, but there's so many examples of it and, um, I guess that's what I find really cool about recursion and repurposing and using, inscribing P5 library once and then being able to use that, and we're just starting to scratch the surface of that.
And, you know, music has never been in the crypto NFT, like, done notoriously well, but it's, to me, if these LARPs will say they care about a-art and culture, like, music is a huge part in that. It moves generations.
Like, people go weekends and sleep in tents to go experience this. No one's slept in a tent of, by the masses to go look at one piece of art. I-- Maybe, but I, I hope you see what I'm getting at. Yeah.
I know what you're getting at. Yeah.
It's a slept on, unappreciated medium that people just wanna say they appreciate art when they just wanna speculate on something that they can trade, and that's fair, but be real with what, you know, if it's a collectible and you're in it for the art, like, uh, I just, I call bull [censored] a little bit on the, on the, on that.
I know this might, you know, this might feel a bit like a tired topic 'cause it feels like we, you know, if you've been in the ordinals talking discussion groups and spaces and, and panels and all this, you've heard this type of, you've heard this topic a million times.
But a, a lot of the listeners of this are not really familiar with what we talk about in ordinals about, um, the revitalization of art on Bitcoin. Mm.
Um, I invite you to reflect a little bit on the past two, I guess now two and a half years of this emergence of, like, an art culture on Bitcoin.
Um, like, you know, assume that the person listening only knows of, like, just, like, "Oh, yeah, I can make money off NFTs on Bitcoin. What's the big deal?" Yeah.
I mean, what comes to mind for me is the friction, is to get something on chain is expensive, and I like that because, you know, it's like carving something out of marble or plastic, and if you go to Solana, you, you know, it becomes disposable.
Someone that doesn't truly care about their passion or care about what the result is, they just can turn out contracts and turn out a bunch of stuff.
Like, and if it doesn't do well, literally all they're out is a bit of time. Why ordinals is cool is if you wanna do something remarkable, typically the, the, the fee is quite high, and I think that is a good thing.
I think friction is, like, a feature, not a bug, and I think that makes people think about what they're putting on.
Yeah, we still get random [censored], and I, I think, you know-I can hear people with some of it, sp-whatever. But- You don't have to address the criticisms. People-- the, the criticisms are abundant.
I'm, I just want like, you know, the case for it because- Yeah. I mean- Yeah. Well, the biggest case in my opinion is censorship. Like people are like, "What's the killer app? What's this?" It's like,
dude, Bitcoin is the killer app. Yeah. And once people are hedging the dollar and they understand once the dollar goes away, Bitcoin reigns supreme. But the internet isn't open. Like, and it's censored.
And once people... That wave starts to come, and people wanna vocalize and share their thoughts, Bitcoin, once it's on, you can't [censored] with it, and that's very powerful.
And we're not really at a part in civilization where it's as like drastic as I think it is.
Like, but I can see in the near future a very controlled internet even more so now, and people don't know what they have until they take it away.
And once that happens, all of this becomes way more in the limelight and represented as I see it, and I think a lot of, uh, or people that are here see it because immutab-immutability [chuckles] is a, is a really powerful thing.
And like on a network that, you know, we know is going to exist for a long time historically, you know, we can get into the depths of it, and I think that it's a really interesting, interesting, um, thing.
Like we don't know much about the past, we just know stories of the victor and you know, it's like that's interest- we-- What is true? Uh, we can go down this huge- Victors cannot delete the information- Yes...
on Bitcoin. Yeah. That's a huge part of history, is not only the narrative and like, but the, the data, the information.
Video is still new too, and that's like hard proof if something existed, and now we have a way to store that, and book burning is a real thing and like you can't do that.
And that's what's very powerful about, about this, the way it's designed and the way it works is hard money you can't [censored] with and hard assets you can't [censored] with.
And Bitcoin, I know-- I don't see it as like I'm never gonna buy coffee with my Bitcoin.
Like I see it as a store of value, and that's what art is, is a store of value and a time capsule, and I think it fits perfectly in the ethos of what Bitcoin is.
That is a very good, that's a very good thought to like wrap this on. Yeah. But I want to invite you call to action or just final thoughts on, uh, things. Uh, where, where can people find you? Uh- Yeah.
Uh, just Twitter, Xerox Bunzie. Yeah.
Um, and yeah, beatblocks.io for, um, you know, anything music, Bitcoin related, and then laser eyes.build if you wanna check out the, uh, open source, um, wallet connection library if you wanna build an app.
Um, yeah, just do MPX. If you're a developer, MPX create Laser Eyes.
It spins up a whole new app and it has like a, a whole wa-wallet connect modal, and there's an AI folder in it, so you can, in your, in your ID or in cursor just start building a Bitcoin app.
And that's where I think the coolest shit is gonna start happening. Like developers make very stiff things.
Creatives now with AI and if we lower the barrier to entry, we get the weird apps, we get the things that like the hamster races, we get the fucking, the weird edge cases, and I really hope that's what Laser Eyes does, is like not make developing just for like the snobby elite developers.
But now with AI, like I really encourage, like it, it, it is, it is getting good fast, and if you have an idea and some grit, like you could spin up a Bitcoin app in a weekend. Um, and it's where the download...
Another cool, like you're into metrics. I heard, uh- I, I- Like there was a time mate, I heard you say like I s-get a sense of the ordinal market through Liquidium and- Yeah...
I get a sense of the growth through NPM installs on Laser Eyes. Ooh, that's a, i-I've got to, uh, I've got to- Yeah...
start tracking this because that would be a very good sense of dabs because like, uh, other ecosystems track like how many Ethereum devs are active and contributing, and there's probably things like that. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
That, yeah, you can really get a sense for, uh, forward-looking developer activity. Yeah.
Uh, 'cause like it is like la-we'll wrap up, but like to build, to put Laser Eyes into a legacy app like Liquidium for you, they, they build a lot of custom code and a lot of these old, you know,
it's harder to implement a new package. But if you're spinning it up from scratch, like Laser Eyes is perfect and it's still good for like if you want to implement it and to not have something to maintain.
But, um, but yeah, little side note there. Well, you heard it here first. Open source, uncensorability, immutability, Bitcoin art, music, Bunzie, wa wa wa wa.
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