Web 3.0 Innovation in the Gaming Industry with San

What is up guys? Welcome back to another episode of the Divi Crypto Podcast. And today I am joined by Santiago Portello and he is the CEO of Fitchin. How's it going Santiago? Hi Steve, doing great aren't you? Doing good, doing good. I'm excited to learn more about Fitchin. But before we get into that, let's talk about your origin story. Everybody loves a crypto origin story, but

how did you get into the Web 3 space? It's a long story. It starts basically me coming to New York from Argentina 12 years ago. I go into business school and there I met some amazing people and I kept in contact with them for some time now. And we started investing in crypto and one thing take to another and in one of our chats and get

together, we started discussing of what else we can do. And then we start getting a little bit, let's start thinking of building something. And that's where kind of everything started more specifically with Fitchin and that's I would say a year and a half ago. Got it. And let's kind of get segue into what is Fitchin and how can it be utilized? Yeah. Well it's a good

question. And Fitchin basically what we're building is a Web 3 gaming community platform that connects Esports teams and they're fans. What is this platform? It's usually the question. And what is this platform? And it's basically a really big question. And I think it's really a big question. Well it's basically four things. One is a community hub which is a dedicated site for each team with membership

passes, for fans to unlock special access, tournaments, experiences and events, polls, discounts and community treasury and much more. The second aspect is a tournament platform. We are talking about gamers. They want to compete. So it's allowing them to compete in their favorite games and win prizes. And we put that into also into the community side where you're not only playing against random people, but also you're

playing inside your community and putting yourself in the spotlight and who's the best in your community, a leaderboard and even more competing against some other teams, some other communities and putting your teams jersey and that interaction. The third thing is a digital marketplace. We're talking here about NFTs and how you mint, where you mint the membership passes in real life and experience tickets and so forth.

And last but not least, we are creating a metaverse experience. Not a metaverse per se but a metaverse experience that starts from a home base where the user can have his skins wearables and from there jumping to the different metaverse and the houses of their teams. Cool. Very cool. And I'm a big fan of NFTs and the metaverse in general. As many people know, I think

that there is a lot of room in the esports space, mainly because I've said it many times that it is ground zero for adoption here because gamers are familiar with this. They've used this since the beginning of the year. Of games in general is in game assets and it's just such a nuanced change of ownership, but it's such a fundamental one. And it's really exciting to

kind of see that this is all all coming together. Could you talk a little bit about what stage you guys are at? Is are there already esports teams using this? Is this live? When is it coming out and talk about that? Sure. It's maybe it's coming is for it to gum out. Real soon we are really talking with teams. We are close to close in two

teams. Very close. There's two others that we are working on and we have advanced pretty pretty much on them. Basically, all these four teams are in Latin America and with we are playing on closing six teams in Spanish speaking Latin America and by that having 90% of the Latin American. And from there, we move to and we have a race already discussions with some European teams.

So when this is going to go live, we expect by end of the summer, some teams participating and rolling out some parts of the platform. And yeah, that's our time frame and with the idea of next year storming into the year. We are going to be in the U.S. market. Very cool. So let's go through an example. Let's talk about how this can be used. If

I'm a let's say I'm an esports team. How could this be used and walk us through that? Yeah, sure. Let's see for white. I would say first white is important for an esport team. And this is important for an esport team because 90% of their revenues come from sponsors. They have little amount of revenues generated by themselves directly from their fan base. They do need to

change their way of how the generated revenues. So now it's okay. We are allowing you or we are telling you to come and join the Web 3. By doing that, the first thing is giving a membership pass to your communities. Given them access that right now, they don't have right now. They are passive viewers on your Twitch and your games. Now is open up. Doors for

being part of that community in a different way, such as I don't know, you have a gaming house. Given access to the members to that gaming house. So if you have discounts to the things that you generate or the access that you generate, having more special access to your players through special chats and experiences such as your coach giving some training to those followers. So there's

a lot of things there on the community website that is very much putting together these two players, the teams and their fan base. Got it. Got it. And with the community platform, can you talk a little bit about that? I'm curious of how that works where you're allowing them to connect with the streamer themselves. So like, if I'm on Twitch and I'm able to kind of

connect with people that way, what is the big kind of differentiator for how I can offer memberships? Is this just in addition to my Twitch stream or how are you envisioning this kind of working together or taking over something like a Twitch? No, no. I don't see us taking over Twitch. It's well positioned. You have the streamers got their business. You don't want to do that.

You're getting to that. But the people that are on the other side, they want more access. They want special things. And the problem for whoever is on the other side, is it a team or is it a streamer? How I differentiate the people behind the screen to give me more, to give them more. And NFTs for that is great. You can know who bought your NFT.

And in this case, it's in the form of a membership. But you can know who you are. Who's on the other side and who you will be giving more access or special things. And depending on who we are talking with, you can change that utility behind that NFT to fit the character you're talking to. So it's some of them will prefer having chats or meet and

greats or depending on who you're talking to, that utility can variegate. Got it. So somebody that's kind of on the gaming side of things, really entrenched in the culture there, what are you excited about? Outside of Fitchin, what are you getting up in the morning and you're just over the moon excited about with this space? The first thing is the how early days on the amount

that you can generate there. The content that can be generated and how can a community be able to build their own stories. And that's, I think that's amazing. Very cool. So what's next for you guys? What does the next 12 months look like? Our next few months is pre-insane. We have a restarting doing some tournaments. We have the tournament platform coming in in probably in the

next month. We have, after that, we have the community side coming in. We are partnering with teams. We are partnering with with metaverse developers. We are partnering with many people to bring this all together. We have still to get the marketplace there. And we also need to launch our own token. Because as I was talking, this is a big platform. And at the end of the

day, it's an ecosystem. And for that, it needs a token that runs along inside. And once we have all that, it's the second layer, it's the gamification of this. And how you allow teams to build their own IP on top of this and build a whole story behind it. Very cool. It's really interesting. And we are partnering with gaming, kind of coming into what you would

consider an open metaverse. Because a lot of it is centralized. What are your thoughts on some of these big gaming companies? Like your Epic games and all these big companies that are on the brink of doing something. We all know it's coming. But what are your thoughts on time frame? Are they going to come in in the next five years, 10 years? This year? What do

you think? What do you think about these big centralized gaming companies and Web 3? It's a good question. And because they're really close to this world. You said you're pretty sad. Taking out like four nights, you have the V-Box. What's the difference between a V-Box and a token? There's not much difference except that the V-Box you can't take it out of the game. But the user

has that concept. Or the schemes. It's very much the same as NFTs. And now the only difference is they're stuck inside a game. They had had some backlash. So I understand they are worried about moving out or to a more open economy. But I would expect them in two to three years to start opening up and allowing crypto more entrenched into how they're into their business.

People are pushing for that. They start even pushing further more into that by when they start seeing that it's not because gamers are also afraid of NFTs and crypto in a way. So once we progress on adoption and they start losing that fear, they will also start pushing the publishers on opening up their economies and allowing these transactions to happen. And that will be one to

two years. You won't be that log from now. Yeah. I am so interested in how it's going to happen. Because in a way it just completely operates their current business model. So I'm quite interested to see how they could maybe even create a new company. Somebody like an Epic Games could in theory create a whole Web 3 gaming company and have Web 3 focused games and

then slowly kind of move over to it. That's kind of how I'm viewing this progression. Because I just can't really see a world where they just flick a switch and then they're business doesn't get disrupted. So I'm so eager to see it happen. Yeah, I agree with you there. It's they're big companies and they are afraid of losing their business or making a bad decision that

would hurt their business. And they're bottom line. I don't think it would be big changes. I will think it will be small changes until at some time you realize that they're they have changed their whole business model at the beginning would be okay. I let you. I don't know the currency inside the game can get in and get out and you have that availability. And then

you start okay. I start allowing more. Secondary market sales and then you start allowing taking those assets outside of the game. You will be in in in different in small steps. But it will come eventually. And I think that the first changes will come. Brothers will be sooner or later. And but it's it's everything to be seen. It's hard to see them transforming in app. But

I think it's not going to be a big change. But based off the game sales pressure actually needs to be gaining in probability. But they'll all be happy and happy. And again the dialogue, so we are helping. As a matter of fact. So, what's the overview? Do you think the game will be be a big change? In a transaction and taking to some other places? Well

said. Well said. And that's a good segue into which blockchain. So there's always always commentary on every every L1 all to out there. Who is going to be the gaming blockchain? I have my opinions, but I'd love to hear your take on who's going to be the kind of king blockchain gaming. It's a really, really difficult one. And I think that there's one thing very important

for who the winner will be. It's the price of the cost of transactions. Because we are talking about meekers transactions. We are talking about a scheme that might be five bucks or maybe 15, 20. You're not going to pay $25 on gas. So that takes some of the L1s out of the table. So my view is that the winners will be the ones that can make

it cheaper. And yes, you can go to L2s to help on that. But some of the transactions will put some friction. If you go to the expensive ones such as a, I don't know, the third you miss it. It's a casing point. We are currently building in Solana. So we do think that it will be a multi-chain world. And you see other networks such as a

polygon doing a very good job attracting games and that industry. And so it's, we are trying to be as agnostic as possible in our view here. Because at the end of the day, our key person is the user. The gamer. And so we want to give them the best, the best experience. Yeah. I think a lot of, a lot of enthusiasts out there do get bogged

down. And in the details of this, because in 10 years, people are going to be using this technology in the background. It's not like anybody's going to be talking about the words NFT. It's all going to exist behind the scenes. We're talking about the technology that's going to power that experience. And so, you know, which blockchain is on like you said, being agnostic to it so

that any, any blockchain can participate in any asset that can come in from any different blockchain. I think is going to be the future of how this works. So, we're talking about the tools on Ethereum. So jumping on to an L2 where you can actually do a lot of transactions. Where there's already value underneath it and making it less expensive. I feel like is where things

are going ahead. But I do really like Solana a lot, a lot of the community there is amazing. And, you know, I move the guys that start Atlas well and some of the games that are being developed there. So, it's really cool to see, you know, these kind of tribes of people talking about which one they believe will be the most powerful. Is going to take

the throne as the king blockchain. It's a very it's, and with you on, in the future, no one will care or the user what doesn't care where he's. And that's like, yes, but then and that goes into. These tribes doesn't make too much sense for the user. And we are thinking even in the small things and friction having your wallet. And. Yes. It's. Great having your

metamask and or hard wallet and but the user it's used to. I don't know, getting into his the game and has his has his wallet created and not wallet crypto wallet but the wallet in. For night you have your your wallet where you can have your coins and your the money that you spend then in buying stuff in crypto will be kind of the same. It

won't be it can't be so hard to have your your wallet or or access. And that's where there's there's a couple of things being built which for the crypto natives. It's it's not the right way to go. Web three out or magic. There's other a couple of of companies making this through a web to kind of approach to building your wallet. But for the users it's

it's where it opens up easier. Take out the friction and and. And we don't board more people into it and that applies also for the for the network right. Yeah. Well said and for everybody listening you know. There is a window of opportunity where we are talking about this technology for people to sort of place their bets on who they think is going to be the

winner. And you know in the future a lot of people who aren't paying attention to that and maybe they don't need to. There is like a good opportunity window for people to. To very much get involved in all these different ecosystems whether it's Salana, avalanche you know any one of these L ones or these L2's like optimism or polygon or one of these they're coming out.

So. Those are all the questions I have for you. Sentyago where can people go and learn more. Well we have our our site 15 dot GG and we have our Twitter 15 GG and our these cars will so we have several places. And keep track of what's going on. We are advancing pretty fast. We have a lot of news coming in and I think we are

going to make it. We are going to get our our targets and our targets are really aggressive with a huge amount of community of gamers coming in through this because there's nothing. It's our go to market is through the teams and the teams have this community and by bringing their communities. Make a dent into what crypto is today. Awesome awesome. Well wherever you guys are listening

to this on iTunes or Spotify the links that Santiago mentioned will be in these show notes. But thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story. Thank you Steve. Thank you for coming me here.