NFT
While Ripple Chief Technology Officer David Schwartz says he still gets most excited about payments, he’s also got his eye on carbon credits and gaming NFTs.
“We’re really excited about carbon credits,” he said in a Nov. 29 interview in Miami after speaking at the Decentral conference. “I think just because the fit seems to be really good. There’s a real problem in the carbon credit space right now of provenance and making sure that things aren’t issued, like there aren’t two sets of carbon credits.”
Schwartz suggested that gaming is another area of opportunity. Schwartz claimed that non-fungible tokens are able to help studios make it easier for users to find their new products.
“There are real problems in the gaming space that NFTs solve,” he said, noting that gamers tend to get comfortable in older games and can be hesitant to follow developers into newer products. “You have to start over from scratch, and there’s this feeling of loss. If you could take NFTs with you, then you wouldn’t have that feeling of loss, and you’d be more likely to migrate to the game that the game studio wants you on.”
Creator fund
Ripple doesn’t currently build consumer applications directly, but it looks for partners that can leverage the XRP ledger for its low cost and high-speed capabilities. Schwartz stated that Ripple also has a $250m creator fund, which is being used carefully after initial hesitation.
“If I give you enough money, you’ll do something that makes no sense at all, right?” he said. “There’s no reason for you to jump up and down and cluck like a chicken, and if I give you $1,000 you might do it and I might say ‘look, look, this is a real use case. This is a real solution.’ And actually, what’s happening is I’m paying you to do something.”
Ripple launched its own fund in order to promote realistic projects in eco-systems that make sense. Schwartz explained that Ripple typically requires developers to raise outside capital and create a minimum viable product first before Ripple creator funds can be dispersed.
“There are people paying people to do stupid things,” Schwartz said. “And so if you want to get people to build projects that are going to be successful and steer them away from locking themselves into blockchains that have high fees and low throughput, or locking themselves into issuing a token that makes no sense for their project, money has to be part. You have to be smart about it … You have to be really careful that you’re not creating the illusion of success and progress.”