Why Smart Tokens Could Bring a 'Radical New Digital Experience'

Our next guest entered web three during the NFT boom of 2021. He led Web three at sales force and now he sees smart tokens as a gateway for companies to create new digital ownership opportunities. Joining us now to discuss is Smart Tokens lab chief Strategy Officer Matthew Suzie, welcome to the show. Matthew. Hey, so good to be here. Great to have you here. It is Smart Token Labs. Sorry, I mixed up the SS there in my intro, but let's talk about smart tokens. What are they, why are they so different? Why are you so excited about them? Yeah. So I, I think if we take this from a high level, right? We've seen tokens as currencies and we've seen tokens as collectables with NFTS and with fungible tokens. And this has really left us in a place where we're looking at through the lens of D five. Really, for us to get to the next era, we really have to see tokens as something more than just currencies and collectibles and see them as experiences and that's really what a smart token allows for. So it's really powered by er C 5169, which smart token labs put forth and it allows for a token to carry executable scripts where they can now become applications themselves not requiring dps. Let me give you a really easy example. So let's say that you were going to sign up to be an Uber driver and you had to prove that you had insurance. Well, you could connect your NFT to show that you had insurance if it was a tokenized insurance pass. Now, if that was a smart token, you can connect that to Uber's website. They can prove that you have that insurance. But they could also then say, hey, listen, we notice that you don't have ride share coverage. Now this is where things get interesting with the smart token because they are an experience and we can interact with them directly. I can now interact with my insurance company through that token and up my insurance in that moment. And really what we start to see is compos and portable business services as the new digital primitive. And that's really what smart tokens are. I think your background is really interesting. You know, in the intro, we talked about you getting into the space uh during the NFT boom 2021. You were then at sales force working in web three and now you are kind of leading the charge here uh with smart tokens. What was so interesting to you about the space and particularly um with NFTS in 2021. Yeah. So I've been following this space for a long time and really had only seen, you know, web through, through the lens of, of blockchains and Bitcoin, right? Currencies. And then once I saw NFTS, this idea of we can now start to have experiences. And that's what really I focused on was this notion of how to, you know, technology change the relationship between businesses and consumers. And as I was, you know, co leading strategy at the Web three studio at sales force, what I saw was a lot of CEO S believed in Web Three. They believed in decentralization, they believed in these ideas. But what they were presented with at the time was currencies and collectibles and those presented too much risk for them, right? There's too much legal risk for a lot of companies to create tokens, at least that's what their legal departments are telling them. And then the functionality really wasn't there, but they didn't see how a currency or collectible was really going to help them create a better consumer experience or really improve business efficiencies and that's what they're waiting on. And that's why I'm so excited to join Smart Token Labs is I believe smart tokens to be that key to enable businesses to really create these next era digital primitives, the ability to have a radical new digital experience as well as then create business efficiencies that they're looking for. Are there regulatory hurdles on the horizon for those who are working with smart tokens, no, I think that's one of the beauties here, right. So a smart token can be on chain and off chain. Now, this is a hard concept for a lot of people to understand, but web three does not equal Blockchain. It's an ethos of decentralization and individual ownership of data. So we can start to expand the aperture past just on chain and we can start to look at off chain primitives that are still web three primitives such as a stations, we can start to then use technology that bypasses all of the fears that these companies have. Like here's a really big fear that a lot of companies have. They don't want to put their entire customer database in a public record, right? So they don't want to issue an NFT to everybody. They don't want on chain tokens because they don't want their competitors to come in and do a vampire attack. So when we have the ability to start to think about off chain tokens, we can bypass the notion of regulation because they're not on chain, they're not a security, then we can start to expand and we can then really get to those experiences that these companies are looking for. Given your background. I got to ask you what you make of paypal's recent announcement when it comes to stable coins. Uh What do you think that's gonna do for adoption and for getting bigger, more mainstream uh, financial and consumer brands into the space. I mean, I think the easier we can make it for somebody to get a token in their hand the better. I mean, I still, I'm still worried that my mother's not going to crypto and it doesn't matter if paypal makes a crypto coin, she's not going to crypto. I think what's really gonna drive mass adoption is when we can move past D five for the individual consumer can start to see tokens create better experiences in their daily lives. There's a lot of fear for the irregular individual to touch crypto at all. And so I think we can start to expand the aperture of tokenization past securitization and see it through the lens of smart tokens and better experiences. I think that is gonna drive mass adoption. All right. And now let's talk. I just, I want to hear from you what, what are the challenges of smart tokens? We talk so much about how it's so difficult to get users into the space um to educate them. Now, we have this whole new concept that brings us away from, from NFTS. How, how are you thinking about educating people on, on smart tokens and making that differentiation between NFTS and smart tokens? That's a great question. So there's a couple of things first off is, you know, if you want to experience a smart token firsthand, you can go to smart layer dot network right now and grab our smart pass. Over 500,000 people have done it in the past three weeks. And that allows you to really experience what an off chain token can do. And you can follow along with us for the next coming months as we will then release new quest to really showcase that experience firsthand. But the biggest challenge we have right now with smart tokens is people have the idea that a token is security. A token is securitization. They don't understand the concept of token as an experience. And so that's what we're really educating people on is er C 5169. What that enables a token to do and then we, when we start to then think of tokens as experiences. Tokens can be anything from receipts to, you know, at a station of an airline ticket. And and this is one of my favorite examples is helping people understand what we mean by tokens as a portable and compos business service. So take the idea of an airline ticket, you get an airline ticket and we, you know, issue a smart token along with that ticket and that smart token is gonna say all of the metadata about your flight, what status you're flying when you're flying, how you're flying. Now, if we then start to think about this as a new digital primitive. Now follow through that travel experience, we're now gonna go book a car and a hotel, I can plug that smart token directly into those websites and it can automatically read that data and it can see that I'm a premium flyer and this is where things start to get fun. Is now, Airbnb could say if you book through me, I'll automatically upgrade your flight and I can do that directly through the token without having to build an API back and forth to the different airlines. Or we can say further down the travel experience when my flight is delayed because that token is the central integration point for that experience. All parties can be notified of my delay and then things can be rebooked. And once we then start to see that as a new experience and not just a currency or collectible. To me, that's the biggest hurdle is really explaining that to the market. Right? Matthew, we're gonna have to leave it there. Thanks so much for joining the show this morning. Thanks for having me. That was smart token lab's Chief strategy Officer Matthew Sweezy.