Silver Surfer on Pak, MEME, and Bringing NFTs to Fantom | NFTS.WTF Interview

Apr 1

Collector Silver Surfer, a major Pak collector who leads MEME, on why he is bringing NFTs to Fantom, how gas fees scare off newcomers, and what Pak's drops taught him.

Interviewed by David Cash. Book David to host, moderate, or speak: https://davidcash.ca

Recorded at ETH Denver 2022, Silver Surfer, a member of the NFTS.WTF DAO, tells David Cash why two years of collecting JPEGs left him bored and led him to take over the MEME protocol and launch its marketplace on Fantom. He walks through what fees cost a newcomer with $1,000, his start in crypto in 2012 as a Bitcoin maximalist, why the DAO hack kept him away from Ethereum until it clicked as a platform for programmable money, and holding through the 2018 bear market. He found NFTs through MEME's collectible cards, and his first art NFT was by Pak. He explains why he called himself Pak's intern, painting in Adam during Pak's The Creation drop, the cube drop and the ASH token, why he thinks NFTs will onboard the next wave of crypto users, and the Meme VIP drop of 3,555 very important pineapples.

Watch on YouTube

Chapters

00:00 Intro at ETH Denver with Silver Surfer
0:27 A noisy ETH Denver
1:58 Bored collectors and copycat marketplaces
2:28 Taking over MEME and moving to Fantom
3:50 Gas fees and the $1,000 newcomer
5:52 From Bitcoin maximalist to Ethereum
8:23 Holding through the 2018 bear market
9:07 Finding NFTs through MEME
10:21 His first art NFT: Pak
11:08 Why NFTs will onboard the next wave
11:57 Brands, big drops, and demand
13:47 Becoming Pak's intern
16:14 The Creation drop
18:46 The cube drop and the ASH token
20:27 Meme VIP: very important pineapples
22:25 Wrap-up

Speakers

David Cash, interviewer and editor-in-chief, NFTS.WTF
Silver Surfer, NFT collector and lead of MEME; NFTS.WTF DAO member

Key topics

ETH Denver 2022
The MEME protocol and its marketplace
Fantom and lower-cost NFTs
Gas fees and onboarding new users
Bitcoin maximalism and the case for Ethereum
DeFi and NFTs
Collecting Pak
Pak's The Creation and the ASH token
Brands and large NFT drops
Meme VIP avatars and utility

In their words

"I think NFTs is very early, Metaverse is also very early, and all this stuff has tons of power that could really change the world." Silver Surfer

"For me, he's the most important person in the NFT space." Silver Surfer, on Pak

How to cite

APA: Cash, D. (2022). Silver Surfer on Pak, MEME, and bringing NFTs to Fantom [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/SlE8_b2Lcyw

Chicago: Cash, David. "Silver Surfer on Pak, MEME, and Bringing NFTs to Fantom." Recorded 2022, Denver. YouTube video, 22:43. https://youtu.be/SlE8_b2Lcyw.

About NFTS.WTF

NFTS.WTF was a Web3 culture publication and interview series edited by David Cash. It covered artists, collectors, and builders during the 2021–2022 NFT boom. It ran for two years and closed after a board decision by the NFTS DAO, which left many of its interviews unpublished.

More interviews: https://www.youtube.com/@davidcash888/playlists

Recording details

Recorded 2022 at ETH Denver, Denver, Colorado. Originally published on NFTS.WTF, April 2022. This edition: archival re-release with chapters and captions, 2026.

Transcript

Machine-transcribed and reviewed. Timestamps link to the moment in the video.

[0:14] My name is David Cash, Editor-in-Chief, and we are back with our favorite NFT artist. Today we are talking to Silver Surfer, who's actually a member of our DAO, finally getting some camera time and some FaceTime with some of the DAO members. Very excited for that. And we're here, of course, at ETH Denver. So we met up in Denver. How's the week been going for you so far, and what are you excited for? Yeah. I'm just excited to really just talk to all the different people from Ethereum, to really just talk to everyone, just meet new people, hang around, really smart people, and get a lot of work done while I'm here. That's been my main focus. Absolutely. It does almost feel like a little bit of a college campus of everybody. You see everybody running their businesses live in hotel lobbies. Everyone has something to shill, and a lot of it's like, oh, this isn't very good, and I wouldn't invest in this, but good for you. So I know that maybe you haven't been to ETH Denver a million times, but you've been in the space for a while, and I know you've definitely seen a lot of projects come through. I know that a lot of people are saying this year it's really busy.

[1:12] It feels very noisy. What are your opinions on where we're at right now in the space, maybe just from being here for the past couple days? I know you said you've seen some bad projects. I mean, there's a lot of people, there's bad projects, and a lot of people just talking about maybe bad things about good projects. It's like people attacking other people, and I guess that's just how it goes. I guess what I'm most excited really for the space is just to see Web3 grow and where it takes us. I think NFTs is very early, Metaverse is also very early, and all this stuff has tons of power that could really change the world, so it'll be interesting to see where we are with Web3 in two to three years, once things can really scale, once you get a billion users into the NFT space, and then see, okay, what it looks like then. Yeah, we're still entering the rabbit hole. It's like everybody's trying to grab a piece of the pie, but it's quite interesting. Everyone's trying to grab a piece of the pie, but they're doing it in an incorrect way, I think, and they're competing with each other, but they're not innovating, so every other marketplace does the same thing, which is ...

[2:13] You can put a random name generator and just come up with a company. Exactly, so one of the things is ... Metaverse, the plater, and like, you know. As a collector for the past two years in NFTs, I'm getting pretty bored, and it's like everyone's just selling JPEGs, and I'm like, okay. That's why I took over the meme protocol is like, okay, I'm bored as a collector. I want to have fun in this space. I have some ideas to fix a lot of the problems that I see. So that's all memes have been about is trying to push the space forward and really innovate, and we actually launched the meme platform next month on the Fantom Network. Oh, sweet. Nice, we're doing Solana. I love it. So, I mean, there's Solana. So the reason why I went with Fantom is it was actually a chain I found many years ago, and it was Andre Cronje's protocol, something he was working on. And at the time, he wasn't building DeFi. He was just this amazing guy trying to build for community.

[3:09] So I'm like, okay, this is an interesting project. And then it turns out three years later, I'm about to go, you know, actually launch a project that I knew would be successful three years ago, right? Yeah, and it's actually, you know, the other interesting thing about Fantom is, you know, the TVL for it is they're in fifth place. So they have $7 billion on chain, and number two is only at $14 billion. So they have more TVL than Polygon and Solana. So, like, yeah, they're becoming a very successful chain. And I'm making a bet that, like, they're going to be the DeFi chain, and me bringing meme to that chain, I think we can actually legitimatize, you know, NFTs on an L2 and be one of the first marketplaces to do that. I'm definitely going to pick your brain about that later. I'm writing a book trying to see every single process of minting NFTs on chains, every different chain, because it's not going to be just, you know, it can't be just a good book. Well, it can't be because, you know, the average person on the street probably doesn't have more than $1,000 to invest into anything, right?

[4:07] Let alone $200 to pay for a gas fee. Yeah, exactly, yeah. So, you know, you have $1,000, you're paying $200 for a gas fee, and then you're going to pay, like, you know, $50 to $100 just to sell the thing, or to list it. You want to send yourself money, it's $1,300. So you have to make sure, like, whatever NFT you're buying, that, like, oh, it's an actual good investment. And there's tons of rugs. So it's like, imagine you're a new user, you have $1,000, you lose it on your first bet. And then you never want to come back. Yeah, that first experience is really... And it's like, okay, if you're going to make people, and I'm not going to say, like, NFTs just cost too much for the average person. And I think a lot of people will just live in a bubble and think, okay, because we've been in crypto for very long, you know, this is how it should be. If you have thousands of ETH, it doesn't really seem very... You know, if you have a spouse, or a girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever, like, you know, and they haven't had grip, like, they haven't bought into crypto, like, the easiest thing to do is like, to get out of that bubble is like, okay, I'll send you $1,000, get into the space. And then watch them try, right? And then have them go on Uniswap.

[5:01] And then once you see, like, the fees, like, and you're thinking like, oh crap, like, and then it's like, oh, you know, I'm used to this, but everyone else isn't, and it's absurd. Yeah, I go through the process in like, a couple seconds, you know, we do it almost every day. Yeah, it's crazy, because like, you know, we'll spend like, hundreds of dollars on gas fees, and we don't think about it, or... Or we're impatient, you know, like, come on. Yeah, generally, like, everyone just generally ups it. I don't want to wait 10 minutes. Yeah, so that's the reason why we're going to Fantom. I want to make sure that like, we can actually provide NFTs at a much lower cost for anyone to come into the space. And that's the goal for me. That's excellent. Yeah. A lot of things I want to talk to you about, but let's take a step back as well for, you know, your context in the space for anybody who might not know. So obviously, we're in ETH Denver. I think the interesting thing for me that I found here is there's a lot of NFT people, but there's a lot of non-NFT people. And it's interesting to even see, like, there's so many DAOs and things that are completely non-NFT related. I'm like, oh, wow.

[5:53] But you've definitely been in the NFT space for a moment, but I'm wondering if you had a background in crypto before and just kind of curious how you entered the space and gone into NFTs and the whole spiel. Because it's a very good background. I got into crypto very early in 2012. Wow. I got into Bitcoin. I was a huge Bitcoin maxi. And at the time, you know, you would see, yeah, you would see like, you know, Ethereum had its ICO and then all the Bitcoiners would hate on it. And because, you know, Bitcoin is kind of like a religion, I believed it. Like, oh, anything else other than Bitcoin is a scam. And, you know, and they still believe that. And that was one of the things that like, I dislike about Bitcoin. Like, it's one of the reasons why I don't like Bitcoin because it's too religious in the sense that like, everything else is a scam. And- It's like that or nothing. So one of my friends who was a mentor for me at the time he was like, Chris, you have to check out Ethereum.

[6:48] I'm like, okay. Actually, let me back up a little bit. I actually checked out Ethereum. You go on the website and it was, I think it was called The Final Frontier or it was like, you know, this cowboy Wild West thing. And there was warnings all over the site that, you know, if you use this, you can lose your money. Which, you know, as a new user, right? And it's like, and like the wallet was all in like, I think Parity was just command line at the time. So it's like, okay, you had to use command line or maybe there was like other like, gooey wallets that I didn't know about. But like at the time I was like, oh, they're warning you not to use it. Right. I'm not gonna use it. Like on their website. Yeah, so I was like, okay, the Bitcoiners are right. It is a scam. If they're saying this, you can lose your money. They're saying it themselves. Yeah, so I'm like, and then I go back to Bitcoin and then there's the DAO hack. And then like further revalidated like the thought that, you know, Ethereum's a scam. And then like they rolled back or they forked the chain so they can like roll back the transaction of this hack.

[7:44] And then again, all the Bitcoiners were like, you know, we told you it's a scam. And then it's like, yes. And then finally, like one of my friends is telling me like, no, you really need to look at Ethereum. And then I did. And instantly when I compared it to like, you know, Microsoft as an operating system and Ethereum being an operating system on top of, you know, Web 2. I was like, oh wow. People are actually going to build apps with like programmable money. This is, you know, this is what's next. Not like, not like Bitcoin couldn't innovate. It couldn't do what Ethereum. There was nothing to be built. They're trying, no, they're trying to do. Counterparty everything. Yeah, they keep trying and they keep failing. But no, I immediately understood like, okay, Ethereum's it. And then I went all in on Ethereum and that was awesome. But then, you know, then like 2018 bear market hits and then, you know, Ethereum was like very close to flipping Bitcoin.

[8:37] I think it got to like that 80% ratio and then the bear market hits and then Bitcoin starts to outperform Ethereum. And then all the Bitcoiners just hate on Ethereum. And then, you know, you have to hold your position. And at the time, like 2017, 2018, there wasn't really any adapts to use. And then, you know, there wasn't DeFi. I mean, there was some DeFi, but it was very early for DeFi. I think MakerDAO just started around that time. It was very early building blocks for DeFi. But, you know, no one was actually using Ethereum. But I still believed in it and I held through it. And I got into like, what else did I get? I got into like Dogecoin day one, day two. You know, and then I got into DeFi very early. And then through NFTs, I actually got into NFTs through the meme protocol. So I wasn't the founder at the time. The founder of the meme protocol was Jordan Lyall. Oh nice, we're talking later today. Yeah, yeah, so he's really smart, he's really great.

[9:30] And he kind of, you know, had this idea of like, you know, basically instead of, you know, earning yield in the form of like governance token, just earning yield in the form of NFTs. So instead of like selling, you know, tokens, because what everyone was doing at the time was they were just buying governance tokens to stake and then to, you know, then to farm and then they would dump. But then with NFTs, you couldn't really. The moment they made their IP, why they're in there. Yeah, exactly, and if you didn't get out in time, you got wrecked. You know, everyone basically got wrecked because the whales just killed everyone. And then. 30% of the pool. Exactly. It's like, okay, bye. So then meme came out and it's like, oh, you farm this, but you don't get wrecked. You have like a cool image and a cool collectible card and I thought that was really cool. And then I wasn't really into art at the time. I was just collecting cards, these meme collectible cards, and then it turned into like collecting art on the platform. But then I started finding other artists and like the first artist I found and like the first real NFT that I found that wasn't a collectible was like Pak.

[10:29] And that was like, okay, my first real NFT was this. Do you remember what year you bought that or what month-ish? Like late 20 year? I don't remember. It was very early. It was before the bull run for NFTs. I actually think meme actually started this bull run for NFTs. I don't think it gets enough credit for that. Definitely a ton of the early NFTs were meme NFTs, like on ETH. Yeah, and it brought all of the DeFi people into the NFT space and then all of the DeFi founders like Andre Cronje, Stani from Aave, Hayden from Uniswap, they all talked about meme because they all had cards of themselves. And it brought a lot of DeFi people into the space. I think that's actually what kicked off the bull run and the Nifty Gateway went on a massive tear. And then, yeah, now we're basically here with NFTs but it's still super early because I think how the next generation or the current, how people will get into crypto is not through actual tokens. I think it'll be through NFTs.

[11:31] And I don't think there'll be a bear market for NFTs because there's not enough people in NFTs. And it's just as bigger brands, bigger companies get in and they bring their community. People are saying this is the bull market but the bull market hasn't even started. We don't have a couple hundred thousand people who are doing this. Yeah, a lot of people don't understand. Once these web two companies or brands, they come in and they want to join and other people help them get in and bring and onboard their communities. It's gonna be a massive amount of demand for NFTs. I think we got the first taste of it with the whole Coinbase thing just happening. That's already a crypto company. What if that happened with, I don't know, Apple? When that inevitably happens. Or with Adidas doing it with Bored Ape Yacht Club. And Bored Ape Yacht Club is just limited to 10K users. Imagine when maybe Adidas does a solo drop and maybe they do their own collectibles or something. And now you're already starting to see people doing 100,000 unit drops. Which Jordan did with the Matrix.

[12:29] And otherwise that would be impossible. Even like six months ago, doing 100K unit drop would be completely unheard of. Who would take it? I think from the Matrix standpoint, a brand can do it. The only artist that really did, okay has the biggest fan base, is Pak. Where I think his merge drop did 36K wallets. Wallets, not even units. Was it one per wallet or was it limited? It was like, well he created this, and this is why I like Pak because he creates interesting innovations within NFTs. He created an accounting feature for NFTs. It would be one NFT, so in your bank account you can say you have $100, right? And in this NFT you can say, oh I bought 100 mass in this NFT. It's like an accounting feature. And you can keep adding NFTs into this account and just the number would go up. So it's kind of like, I think, what he was trying to build there was an accounting feature within NFTs. And then also a game of war.

[13:29] Because there's DAOs that are attacking each other and you can kill other colors. So it's a game of resources and war and he created, I don't know. I think a game of war. No, it's dope. Pak takes things to a whole other level of communication. I'd actually love to, I definitely want to talk about meme a little bit but I feel like that's very current. So maybe if you want we can delve in a little bit around. I know you started collecting Pak. But now you're considered, I don't know if you are or how it works but Pak's intern, this term, how did that come about? Maybe tell us a little about your relationship with Pak. That was, I like and respect Pak a lot. For me, he's the most important person in the NFT space. So it's like, okay, I want to learn from this person and try to help as much as possible and build on top of what Pak's doing. And that's why I've collected his work because he kind of understands not just NFTs but really metaverse, meta anything.

[14:26] He's been in crypto for a very long time. It's next level D5. It's like always a next level of communication. So me putting, calling myself Pak's intern which I actually removed it because it's like, I kind of like self-crowned myself that I don't know how Pak feels about it. So I actually removed it today. Today? Yeah. I removed it today. But the reason why I did that is because I believe I was probably one of his most vocal supporters. I think I'm one of his biggest collectors. You know, to me, there's no other creator, artist in this space as important. So it's like, okay, I'm just gonna call myself this. Because I want- I kind of love it. It's very, it's very much three. If Pak came to me and said, okay, you can drop all your projects, come be my intern, I would do it. Like an actual intern. Like there's very few people, there's very few people that I would like just drop everything and like try it. Like to me, like Pak is this godlike character that knows everything. And I would want to learn as much as I could from Pak.

[15:27] So Pak, for whatever reason you're watching this, Chris is right here, he's ready. He's ready to come on board. But yeah, but that's why with Meme, what we're actually gonna be doing, we're also gonna be forking Meme and creating, because Meme will be on L2 and on L1, we're gonna create something called Earn. So Meme has a Meme token. Earn will have the Ash token, which is Pak's token. So it's like me trying to build on top of what I think is the most important person's work. So him building Legos and me trying to build and support other things that other people can build on top of what I'm doing. And I think it makes sense that you're really into this because obviously Meme on top of being, having this whole NFT marketplace integration, there's also, it's a protocol and there's DeFi involved. It's very much a DeFi project. So I feel like that's probably also why you really appreciate Pak's work. And I'm curious if there's a specific drop that he really loved the mechanism or what he did or something that really attracted you to his.

[16:20] There's a lot of drops. The first one that I went like pretty hard on was the creation drop, which was him. He basically, his algorithm recreated and remastered the creation of Adam by Michelangelo. And not a lot of people know that his algorithm actually remastered the painting. And so what happened was he split it into like, I don't know, like 300 chunks that collectors can go and kind of like decide, okay, I want this portion of the creation to exist. So I would, what I did was like, I basically painted in all of Adam. Cause I was like, okay, he's saying that, basically asking who's the creator of this NFT. Cause he's trying to collaborate with the collector and like, you know, the collectors are like, just like in like paint and like Microsoft paint, right? You can go in and like fill in the pixels.

[17:14] It was kind of like that, right? And as a collector, I was like, okay, you know, he's asking who's the creator. And, you know, we have, you know, Adam on one side and God on the other side. And it's like, okay, I'm painting in Adam. So it's kind of like, I'm the creator of this NFT, with Pak, right? No, I'm not saying it's me, but like, you know, like through Pak's work and then Pak basically took, you know, Michelangelo's work. So it's like, he's basically asking who is the true creator of this NFT. And that's why it's called like, you know, the creation. And that's why I went in and like painted Adam because it's like, you know, me acting as God, painting in Adam and then using, you know, Adam's face for myself, for my avatar profile since then. That's awesome. Super cool. I mean, like, and I feel like a lot of people don't even understand some of Pak's drops, but once you actually get into them and you see some, it's funny when you look at somebody's collection, if they didn't understand the drop and you look at somebody's collection if they did.

[18:08] A lot of people complained, like, they said like, oh, I could do that, but they couldn't, because they didn't have an algorithm to repaint. And remaster the creation. And then also on the smart contract side, each individual NFT is actually an ERC 20 as well. So like, I could go on like Uniswap and provide liquidity for those. I wouldn't, but like you could. So there was a lot of things behind the drop that people didn't understand. And then on top of it, it was just like in our performance in a way, because everyone's just like complaining and crying saying I can do this, but they couldn't. That also is like really preparing us for like the future of NFTs and staking NFTs and you know, having that already pre-built in to the smart contract is like really forward thinking. Yeah, that's true, that's true. That's super cool. I'm curious, you know, maybe just tying that into meme and I know we're gonna begin to wrap this up, tying that into meme, what elements of Pak's work inspires you and makes you want to do more within the NFT and like really the DeFi NFT intersection in this space?

[19:02] I think the best example of it would be the cube drop where you could basically burn the cubes for the Ash token. I thought, okay, that was really cool. You know, you burn something and you're also in a way, you know, the collectors also create. Yeah, and then collectors also creating art in that sense. And then he basically took all of the destroyed cubes and then created carbon like from the Ash, which was also interesting, but like the Ash token and trying to create like the balance of like scarcity with his works through burning his artwork and having the collectors decide what exists and what doesn't and then giving you a token in return. I thought that was very cool. Super cool. Also like very, like very, like, I think like that's definitely like DeFi in some versions because he's like, okay, you destroy this and you get a token in return, right? And it's kind of like, it's a way to create scarcity and like destroy supply. And I think it's an interesting way that he did that.

[20:01] Totally, totally. No, I mean, it's really crazy some of the things that he does and people like you who really understand and go the extra mile to actually understand the drop. I mean, there's a lot that I don't like. I mean, there's a lot of mystery, like in a lot of things, like I don't, I think only Pak understands a lot of stuff. You have your own version of the narrative that you're understanding of. And there's a lot that like, that I think a lot of people don't understand or even myself and, you know, everyone's just figuring out as- Which is kind of fun too. As Pak goes, yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. I would love to hear a little bit of what you're doing right now. Maybe some thoughts on what people can look forward to in terms of meme. If there's anything else you're working on. Yeah, the biggest thing is, you know, we're doing a collectible drop February 25th called Meme VIP, very important pineapples. And it's 3,555 unique pineapples, avatars, that people can, one, use on the website when they join, and then two, use for like access to drops and whether it's airdrops, exclusive drops, and like even some like, you know, drops that we're gonna have on the platform will be gated by these NFTs.

[21:07] So like, you'd have to own a VIP to maybe get into some of these drops. So it's just a way to provide utility, give access to users. And yeah, I'm super excited for that. Also very true to like the background of Meme, like where they used to do all the airdrops and like the newspapers and everything. It's like bringing that back to the- We really plan to like reward anyone who joins that drop, because for us, it's like, we wanna create this exclusive experience, and we want to be able to like quantify like who are the loyal community members, right? And if you support us, we'll make sure, you know, you get your reward in the end, and like tenfold or more, a hundredfold. So yeah, that's the whole goal is like, you know, trying to track who these loyal people are and giving them exclusive drops, rights, and they'll also get like full IP basically of like those specific characters too. So like, we're basically, yeah. Yeah, it's gonna be an interesting drop.

[21:58] Like a lot of collectible projects, they're not really building utility or anything into it. It's like, we're dropping this and we're gonna use it on the platform. And if you have this, you know, you'll get access to- So many projects are thinking right up until the drop, but then they kind of end there. It's like, well, that's the beginning of that. Yeah, and for us, it's like, yeah, we're not going anywhere. We're not creating another collectible drop. It's like, we're dropping these avatars and we're gonna keep adding value to it, and it'll be awesome. Awesome, well definitely check that out. I'm really happy that we got a chance to do this. Thanks so much for taking the time. We're gonna tag all of Chris's links in the bottom, Silver Surfer on Twitter. And yeah, really appreciate you taking the time to do this. Thanks again for joining us. As always, we're here for NFTS.WTF. My name is David Cash. Appreciate everybody joining. Thanks again. Bye from Denver.

David Cash https://www.davidcash.ca