Scene Infrastructure Company is a software business building better instruments for socialization. We recorded with the founding team, Jose Mejia, Ethan Daya and Neesh and what we got down on tape is super valuable context, experiences and thoughts around founding a new company.

For design, product, community building and technology choices. Coming from earlier founding experiences at organizations like FWB and Zora. On designing a brand, and finding inspirations from retro spots like computer magazines, playstation games and lore, to create something fresh.

We talk about their vision for the future and what they’d like to build, as they’re figuring it out in real time.

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Zerion combines every corner of web3 in a simple and intuitive app for self-custodial humans. Discover the hottest NFT collections, track your DeFi rewards, and vote in DAOs across 10+ chains. Get started at zerion.io

Higher is a lifestyle. A community of optimists on Base that formed on Farcaster. To join high agency crypto natives in a new experiment in onchain brands, visit higher.party

Paragraph is where you can create, distribute & monetize - on your own terms. This publishing platform enables creators to mint posts as collectible content and send token-gated newsletters directly to wallet addresses. To get started with these radically powerful tools, visit paragraph.xyz

OPEN has built state of the art onchain ticketing infrastructure that puts artists, organizers and fans back in control. Anyone can participate in the ticketing revolution through the DAO of creators, builders and token holders. To join the onchain tickets movement with OPEN, head to onopen.xyz

Lore is a group wallet experience for co-ownership. Own expensive NFTs, move memecoins markets and win crypto games together. Check out how you could use Lore with your friends to earn more than you could alone at lore.xyz.

LATASHÁ is the founder of Topia. The evolution will not be televised. It will be onchain.

She’s an artist, musician, producer, world builder. An original from the onchain music scene who was minting works on Zora back in 2021 kinda time. She had one of the earliest websites with onchain music videos and tracks.

In this period she became Community Lead at Zora and produced ZORATOPIA. An events series and community which helped to educate and onboard artists into new internet ways of releasing music and working together.

Music prize winner in the We Love The Art contest from Optimism for WAVE, a track and music video produced from her home studio and environment.

We talk about her origins in music and production, making beats and writing, coming up in the scene in New York City. Experiences working at ZORA in these earlier formative stages of the onchain arts community. Reflections on the space in this moment in 2024, and hints at what she’s building now at Topia.

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Zerion combines every corner of web3 in a simple and intuitive app for self-custodial humans. Discover the hottest NFT collections, track your DeFi rewards, and vote in DAOs across 10+ chains. Get started at zerion.io

Paragraph is where you can create, distribute & monetize - on your own terms. This publishing platform enables creators to mint posts as collectible content and send token-gated newsletters directly to wallet addresses. To get started with these radically powerful tools, visit paragraph.xyz

Lore is a group wallet experience for co-ownership. Own expensive NFTs, move memecoins markets and win crypto games together. Check out how you could use Lore with your friends to earn more than you could alone at lore.xyz.

July is a founder of Faust. Developing Roc: a reality oracle computer that notarizes reality, onchain. He’s an engineer who built flying cars and autonomous vehicles with Kittyhawk, a startup backed by Google.

He’s an early Farcaster user and creator of the /july channel with 6.5K members. A place where anyone is invited to post musings, thoughts & dreams. July is based in the Bay Area and we met recently via Farcaster where he posts about art, history, philosophy, and thoughts on technology.

In this episode we talk about July’s background in arts and tech. How he grew up all over the world in his childhood including Japan, the Netherlands and California.

Observations about counterculture movements. What’s happening on Farcaster and onchain. About collective imagination and the zeitgeist, how that is expressed through culture. Why people want to build robots. What all these things mean for the future. And a bit about Farcon in Venice Beach where we’ll be meeting in-person, early May.

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Zerion combines every corner of web3 in a simple and intuitive app for self-custodial humans. Discover the hottest NFT collections, track your DeFi rewards, and vote in DAOs across 10+ chains. Get started at zerion.io

Paragraph is where you can create, distribute & monetize - on your own terms. This publishing platform enables creators to mint posts as collectible content and send token-gated newsletters directly to wallet addresses. To get started with these radically powerful tools, visit paragraph.xyz

Lore is a group wallet experience for co-ownership. Own expensive NFTs, move memecoins markets and win crypto games together. Check out how you could use Lore with your friends to earn more than you could alone at lore.xyz.

Nat Emodi is the Co-Founder and CEO of Highlight. Their product is being used for generative releases by leading artists, organizations, and platforms. Helping creators to release any type of collection, from tightly curated series to generative open editions. Opening the space for experimentation as more people can explore their ideas and make generative art.

Nat is based in the Bay Area. We met online when we were both judges for the We Love The Art competition hosted by Optimism. He was working on ideas for a blog post which became ‘20 for ’24: Digital Art Trends That Will Shape This Year’.

We decided to record an episode about these ideas, and put the focus on art and trends in the industry, technology, for artists and collectors, galleries and curators. Jumping on the mics right before Nat was heading to the airport to fly out for NFT Paris from California.

We talk about art trends such as the expansion of ‘generative’ as a concept. Games and interactivity having an increasing role in digital art. And how best to create immersive IRL gallery experiences for onchain and digital art.

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Zerion combines every corner of web3 in a simple and intuitive app for self-custodial humans. Discover the hottest NFT collections, track your DeFi rewards, and vote in DAOs across 10+ chains. Get started at zerion.io

Paragraph is where you can create, distribute & monetize - on your own terms. This publishing platform enables creators to mint posts as collectible content and send token-gated newsletters directly to wallet addresses. To get started with these radically powerful tools, visit paragraph.xyz

Lore is a group wallet experience for co-ownership. Own expensive NFTs, move memecoins markets and win crypto games together. Check out how you could use Lore with your friends to earn more than you could alone at lore.xyz.

Alvaro Delgado is a musician, artist, and co-founder of Oval — A newborn creative community from Barcelona.

Starting in 2024, Oval is putting together a series of concert and club nights, community events, suppers, and writing camps — designed to foster cross-pollination among individuals who have come to the city in search of something more: a spotlight, a sense of belonging.

They believe they can build something better, and they want to do it onchain.

The project was introduced with Barcelona Series on Zora. The first token is a text note that outlines their project, and the second is a video for BCN, their entry for the music category of the We Love The Art contest by Optimism.

Oval produced a song, visualizer, and artwork inspired by Barcelona and its people. Fragments of a city that needs to be heard, seen, and felt. The video was assembled from clips sent in from their community in the city, to offer a multi-faceted composition.

In this episode we talk about the inspirations of Oval for creating a space for people to belong. The power of events to build a community and an actual scene where cross-pollination, friendships and collaboration can take form.

We talk a bit about the music industry in a time of shifting technology. About radio and the onchain realms, looking at places like NTS, Catalog Radio and what we’re creating here at UFO.

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Zerion combines every corner of web3 in a simple and intuitive app for self-custodial humans. Discover the hottest NFT collections, track your DeFi rewards, and vote in DAOs across 10+ chains. Get started at zerion.io

Paragraph is where you can create, distribute & monetize - on your own terms. This publishing platform enables creators to mint posts as collectible content and send token-gated newsletters directly to wallet addresses. To get started with these radically powerful tools, visit paragraph.xyz

Lore is a group wallet experience for co-ownership. Own expensive NFTs, move memecoins markets and win crypto games together. Check out how you could use Lore with your friends to earn more than you could alone at lore.xyz.

On today’s show, Alex Guy, aiio and LGHT. We are the hosts of the first shows on the UFO network.

Alex is head of Growth at Zerion and in December launched Still Here. A show to explore his curiosity. Talking with people who are active web3 citizens, through all the ups and downs of crypto, answering the question of what inspires and motivates them. Why they’re still here.

aiio is a researcher, community builder and writer bridging across web3 and the underground electronic music and arts communities in Copenhagen. She writes about the concept of space, linking it to human culture, existence, and the need for adaptive ecosystems. Soon bringing a podcast to UFO!

LGHT is a pseudo anon artist, designer, writer, and technologist based in the Eastern United States. Creator of the Hypercultures essay series as well as co-founding Based Management. His work mainly focuses on protocol design, the science of digital language/memetics, and zero to one acceleration of tech primitives and adoption.

Today we’re announcing LGHT’s upcoming series on UFO — PROTOTYPE

This is a special episode for UFO 50. We started in September 2022, soon after Nick Hollins returned to Byron Bay in Australia after travelling in Europe, where he met Alex and aiio at ETH Barcelona in July.

The first episode was with Charlie Waterhouse, a co-founder of Extinction Rebellion who helped design their art and iconography. From the jump UFO was publishing with the available onchain tools. Publishing on Mirror, establishing a web3 social audience on Lens Protocol, releasing mints. We had the UFO Genesis Pass in November 2022 with over 8000 mints, which helped create an audience and community starting from scratch, which has only grown since then.

In June 2023, UFO was the first podcast to mint on the Zora network as it went live. We publish to an 1155 contract, and you can listen and mint onchain via all your favorite apps.

There’s been 61 guests on UFO, covering arts, music, technology, and culture. Exploring trends in AI, web3 social, onchain media. Many of the most happening projects have dropped into the UFO studios to share stories along the way.

It’s been a place for revolutionary ideas. A show to discover new projects and the people creating them. Revealing the many connections and friendships between people in this space who are collaborating and building things together.

It is a counterculture scene, spread across the world, and happening for the most part online and onchain.

Now that we’re here, next steps for UFO is launching a collective of podcasts. Building towards an onchain radio station and magazine from ufo.fm.

Our approach is a combination of music, arts and ideas. These podcasts we have coming through, including quite a few we’re not announcing yet, will surprise and delight our listeners. We’re still early.

This recording for UFO 50 with Alex, aiio and LGHT was the first time the four of us have all spoken together. We talk about UFO as a collective signal. The vital importance for collective platforms like this to exist. Sharing experiences and imaginings for how we see this going forward into 2024 and beyond.

Thank you for being here. This is UFO 50.

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Zerion combines every corner of web3 in a simple and intuitive app for self-custodial humans. Discover the hottest NFT collections, track your DeFi rewards, and vote in DAOs across 10+ chains. Get started at zerion.io

Paragraph is where you can create, distribute & monetize - on your own terms. This publishing platform enables creators to mint posts as collectible content and send token-gated newsletters directly to wallet addresses. To get started with these radically powerful tools, visit paragraph.xyz

Lore is a group wallet experience for co-ownership. Own expensive NFTs, move memecoins markets and win crypto games together. Check out how you could use Lore with your friends to earn more than you could alone at lore.xyz.

Leo Pastel is a musician, songwriter, multi-sensory artist and active builder in web3 music from Cincinnati, Ohio.

He started releasing music in 2018 and has been involved from early days in the crypto music scene. His first single Woah was a hit with almost 750,000 streams on Spotify. He's produced as part of Songcamp and Camp CHAOS, and performed at FWB Fest in 2023.

Leo tells stories about experiences in the gospel scene, growing up in a musical family, and singing as part of the Sunday Service Choir with Kanye. Leo is super prolific talking about music online, sharing opportunities in the web3 space, and co-hosting a weekly live space GRLKRASH talking all things music, with a podcast on the way.

Music NFTs have been a hot topic in the US lately after Flyana Boss withdrew an NFT mint because their fans called for them to cancel it. Onchain music is a controversial and unpopular medium at this moment. NFTs have a reputation problem.

Meanwhile, Condé Nast announced major layoffs at Pitchfork, gutting the editorial staff. People have since been reflecting on the value of music. How do we appraise and experience it culturally? If we’re making music and no-one’s around to listen, critique, write about it and record into the zeitgeist — does it make a sound?

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Zerion combines every corner of web3 in a simple and intuitive app for self-custodial humans. Discover the hottest NFT collections, track your DeFi rewards, and vote in DAOs across 10+ chains. Get started at zerion.io

Paragraph is where you can create, distribute & monetize - on your own terms. This publishing platform enables creators to mint posts as collectible content and send token-gated newsletters directly to wallet addresses. To get started with these radically powerful tools, visit paragraph.xyz

Lore is a group wallet experience for co-ownership. Own expensive NFTs, move memecoins markets and win crypto games together. Check out how you could use Lore with your friends to earn more than you could alone at lore.xyz.

Nick Smith is a designer from Melbourne, Australia. Founder of Fam, a space for music communities to grow, collaborate and collectively fund creative projects.

He’s an OG early member from FWB and helped to organise Soulquest, a collaborative music project featuring Iman Europe, V.C.R, illcamille, and Swarvy, along with visual artists Jamee Cornelia and Shawntel Johnson. The group performed and recorded at FWB Fest in 2023.

This project is an inspired homage to The Soulquarians, a loose collective that formed in the late 90s while recording D’Angelo’s acclaimed album Voodoo. Involving members Questlove, D’Angelo, James Poyser and J Dilla along with collaborators Common, Erykah Badu, Q-Tip, Mos Def, Talib Kweli and many others.

Nick is intrigued by music collectives through history such as the Wu Tang Clan, The Grateful Dead, Odd Future, and Native Tongues. In late 2023, Nick ignited a pop up group called Cheeks Collective. Spurred by a tweet about exploring ways to collectively stage music events around the world. A telegram group formed with people interested in staging parties, hosted by local producers. A bit like Boiler Room. Positive sum.

In this podcast, we talk about Nick’s origins in crypto, as a co-founder from Talisman and projects with Flex Dapps. Ambitions and dreams for onchain music and experimenting in new formats for creating and releasing music on the internet. The revelation of positive sum collabs with artists and people in the community, to help make art, music, and experiences happen.

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SPONSORS

Zerion combines every corner of web3 in a simple and intuitive app for self-custodial humans. Discover the hottest NFT collections, track your DeFi rewards, and vote in DAOs across 10+ chains. Get started at zerion.io

Paragraph is where you can create, distribute & monetize - on your own terms. This publishing platform enables creators to mint posts as collectible content and send token-gated newsletters directly to wallet addresses. To get started with these radically powerful tools, visit paragraph.xyz

Lore is where communities come onchain. Helping communities of all kinds raise funds onchain, up and down vote decisions and take action towards a collective mission. They are accepting applications from community leads and creators who want to crowdfund initiatives to be on their V2 launch line up. Go to lore.xyz to apply