OIG AMA with ORIGYN

23 min readApr 21, 2022

ORIGYN are on a mission to identify, authenticate and unlock the powers of ownership for objects of value.

Spicey | OIG
Welcome back OIG family to another exciting episode in our ama series today I had the privilege of speaking with Mike Schwartz, the co-founder of ORIGYN. ORIGYN brings NFTs to life with biometric data and unique ownership experiences to power brands, creators, artists, marketplace, consumers and industries with guaranteed certificates of authenticity. If you liked the content, subscribe, hit the bell notification button and hit that like button to stay up to date with all the content coming out from OIG. Without further ado, let’s get right into the AMA. Well, Mike, I’m glad to have you on the show today. Could you tell us a little about who you are and how you came to founded origin?

Mike
Great to be here. So yeah, my Schwartz is my name. I am currently chairman and co-founder of the ORIGYN Foundation, which is a Swiss-based foundation with a global footprint and seems a team that exists around the world. ORIGYN is a culmination of more recently, an eight-year journey, although it’s really a multi-decade in terms of how we got here really started around about 2015, this intensive part of the journey when we were thinking deeply about this great migration of global commerce to open decentralised infrastructure. And thinking this was a better way for society and business and government to operate for all those stakeholders, which is unusual for them all to benefit at the same time. Back around 2015, however, the infrastructure didn’t really support that ambition. What we call layer one protocols today, didn’t really scale didn’t perform well enough, limited capacity, and no real governance mechanisms. So there were some great advancements back then, from Bitcoin and Ethereum. But really, the infrastructure wasn’t ready for primetime. So the last eight years or so have really been about, first of all, getting a layer one protocol in place that delivers those properties upon which an organisation like ORIGYN can build and enjoy those properties. Because those properties are necessary to accommodate global commerce, you can’t put global commerce on a platform that doesn’t have those properties. And this has actually been left out of the conversation for far too long, in this entire crypto space. we have a protocol layer one protocol now, which has these properties. That’s Definity internet computer. That is also not well enough understood. But that since that protocol is now in place, are just now able to deploy what we call pan-industry platforms to web three and open decentralised infrastructure across various industry verticals. And that was the mission. That was the vision from 2015. And it’s taken us the best part of eight years to get to where we are now, which is the point at which we deploy real pan-industry platforms. So it’s a very exciting time after a lot of hard work and a lot of perseverance.

Spicey | OIG
Definitely, I mean, eight years, that’s definitely taken its toll on you, as well as the team to be building such a monumental and revolutionary product that really provides the infrastructure needed to facilitate the use of these digital assets in a safe manner as well. You mentioned Definity internet computer, how did how will his building on Definity internet computer health ORIGYN built out on its foundation?

Mike
Well, the properties I mentioned are all important. There’s not much use in seeking to facilitate the migration of real commerce. I’m talking about mainstream commerce, to this infrastructure, which is a multi trillion-dollar opportunity. And this is the main game where we can talk about NFT’s in many different guises. And that hopefully will shortly and how they get there. But the main game is a big one. It’s real commerce. And, and those properties are all important. You know, you think about today’s infrastructure, web two and prior forms of this kind of infrastructure. You know, it can accommodate enormous transaction throughput among enormous data volumes and incredible capacity. They’re all be those somewhat flawed governance mechanisms that exist Test whereby stakeholders can discuss new features and upgrades and deploy those in ways that are understood around how they’re funded and who’s doing it and who’s responsible. And what happens if they don’t deliver those simple things that need to all exist for mainstream commerce to say, Okay, I will deploy over here now. If they don’t, they won’t. And so you know, Definity has worked on those properties over that same timeframe. And this has really been a strategy that’s been two parallel threads in concert thinking about this outcome.

Spicey | OIG
So you touched very briefly on the many different opportunities that exist with the use of NFT’s. Could you go into a little more detail about how ORIGYN will provide that?

Mike
Sure, absolutely. So, you know, again, many, many years ago, I think the first pan-industry platform that was was attempted, a true pan-industry platform was one that myself and a team built for the diamond industry, it was called tracer. And it had, you know, we had to deploy on Etherium at the time, which didn’t deliver those properties and still doesn’t today, to be honest, and let’s be objective about this. But that was really about building a platform and creating digital twins of diamonds so that we could track them from the source the mind all the way through to your finger, and track provenance and sustainability and in terms of how they’re sourced and ethically sourced items, and assets, and building infrastructure around that. That was the first time we really made use of what now we think of as NFT’s digital twins of real-world physical objects at that time. And now if we sort of Fast forward to today, there’s obviously been an enormous increase in NFT’s particularly around art and in particular digital art.

I was only talking last week at NFT LA about bored apes, and you know, it’s easy to dismiss these kinds of caricatures. They’re really mugshots digital mugshots, as you know, overpriced, and you know, too much FOMO, and so forth. But really be thinking about what’s happening there. These, the folks behind bored apes are pretty clever, you know, they’ve managed to invent a step forward where people feeding serums to their apes, turning them into different kinds of apes, they’re acquiring new collections. They’re managing the scarcity supply model pretty well. But more important than that, they’re starting to attach entitlements to these assets. And so they’ve become more like a multifaceted ticket. A much better-looking one than your usual ticket and much more interesting. But when you start to get access to the drops, events, you then you’ve got an organisation that can challenge the likes of Ticketmaster Live Nation experiential organisations. So that’s, that’s a whole different ballgame. But that’s a different level of commerce again, to the selling mugshots. When we take another step forward again, and we think about what ORIGYN are the people who work at ORIGYN started doing many years ago with pan-industry, platforms and what we’ve where we’ve taken it to now. Those NFT’s, can be digital twins of real-world physical objects, or NFT’s designed to help us better manage natively digital assets, like movies or songs or static images. Those things can with a sort of infrastructure that I described with the properties that I described, the NFT can then house enormous amounts of data within itself within a canister smart contract canister entirely on-chain. And so then we can start to think about you know if we have a luxury item, we can start to embed things like imagery, high-resolution imagery so that we can not only authenticate an item early in its lifecycle, we can continue to do that as it shows up later in its lifecycle to support. Not only, b2c, but also C2C commerce, and guarantee the authenticity of items so that buyers and sellers can be confident and transact directly in cutting out middle folk. And then we can start to embed things like financing information, insurance, data, warranty, service records,, heritage data, all sorts of different things. And this is going to help us not only do commerce in a more reliable and trustworthy way, but also we can make new revenue, new forms of revenue, and enjoy new types of growth out of existing inventory, and this is very important for businesses and manufacturers, creators, titleholders, and also consumers and ultimately government as well, I think we can get better government and be smaller government serving people better, which is nirvana.

Spicey | OIG
You know, you mentioned a lot of features that, like just using the example of the bored Ape, this collection has done to create value. And it’s like you said, it’s creating value off existing inventory. And there’s also the novelty effect behind it, which carries the value forward as well. And, and, you know, a lot of what you’re talking about today, comes down to creating this digital profile for people to really have a secure digital presence, but something that they can also monetize on within Web three. So very cool stuff. So I would assume origin boasts a robust native token to accompany the utility that the platform brings to the space. Could you go a little more into that?

Mike
It’s a great question. What we seek to deliver is real utility, genuine utility, not just some coin, in inverted commas, that we kind of pump and promote and just hope that it goes up. So within an organisation like origin, the token is fundamentally important to the proper functioning of the system. The endgame here is a different type of organisation, not necessarily a company. And yes, DAOs can be a big part of that, that there are other forms, shapes and sizes of organisations here that are possible that are not companies. And those organisations need instruments and tools to help us best manage the organisation. And it comes back to things like governance, which we’ve touched on already today. You know, governance is an all-important facet of all forms of commerce and business. And, you know, we, for instance, if we use the token to allow people to propose new features to vote on their merits, to suggest that hackers reversed if something like that occurs, these are things that people are entitled to do if they’re token holders, their stakeholders. And if they’re staking those tokens, they may enjoy greater influence, because they’ve committed themselves long term to the platform. And they’re committing themselves to improve that platform for the sake of others. And by locking in their tokens into a governance regime. They’re demonstrating long term commitment, and are somewhat at the mercy of the ebb and flow of the platform itself. So, therefore, they deserve more influence for that commitment. So it’s just one type of utility that the token provides. It also helps people use the platform and create twins and NFTs. And also, if they are an authenticator, an Oracle is an expert in authenticating certain items, then they can stake tokens in terms of putting their reputation on the line and making sure that they’re doing a good job authenticating.

Spicey | OIG
You know, with all the things we’ve touched on, I’m sure that the regulatory landscape has been something too, or at least a little difficult to manoeuvre. How has your experience been in terms of manoeuvring through the regulatory landscape?

Mike
Very involved, That’s for sure. It’s certainly involved in lots of discussions with lawyers and various continents. Lots of discussions with those in politics and senators in Washington and in different states like Wyoming but I think we’ve charted a very responsible and defensible course here to do good and, and for the benefit of the communities who participate. ORIGYN is a Swiss Foundation, as we touched on at the start. And what we do is we have a mission to identify and authenticate and unlock value for real creators and titleholders the world over and everything we do, is about fulfilling that mission and we’re, we’re inspected closely to make sure that the council follows that mission wholeheartedly and delivers on it. So everything we do comes back to the mission, And I’m sure most regulators are gonna be pretty happy about that. It’s great, it’s a very good model. It’s a very robust model and responsible one.

Spicey | OIG
So, you know, you mentioned the mission and quite an ambitious one for sure. Could you tell us a little more about the team that’s involved in creating this new reality?

Mike
Sure, I’d love to. It’s a great topic because I feel really privileged to get up and start work every morning with a group of people that we have at ORIGYN which spread around the world, in every continent, just about I don’t think we have any now Antarctica, yeah. And a great team, but the disciplines are really quite involved. Incredible. And I talk about eight years, ORIGYN is not eight years old, but many of the people who work at ORIGYN have been on this journey with me through several incarnations of roles and organisations come together come apart come together again, all trying to find the best pathway to deliver on this promise. And so, you know, even just from a technical standpoint, we have people who are deep on the back end layer one protocol side of things. And understand the internet computer and how all that works and canisters, we have folks who are more traditional full-stack engineers through to middle-tier who and front end to understanding how to deploy the entire application, on-chain. We have a whole slew of artificial intelligence, machine learning computer vision, and people who work on imagery I was talking about before to help us identify and authenticate objects. We have folks who IoT and hardware, we’ve built robots and desktop machines, and we’re doing a lot of work with this device here. The phone with its fantastic new macro lenses, which is, which is really pushing things forward. And now we have folks in it who understand tokenomics, traditional economics. Obviously, business leaders, and we have vertical leaders across luxury goods, collectables, fine art, and digital media. So it’s quite a diverse organisation. And I keep mentioning is eight years, we’ve never allowed ourselves to be rushed. This is a complex undertaking. And we want to get it right. And we’re pretty excited about getting it right this year. With some deployments coming up, and our listing, in fact, just a handful of weeks away, and some releases of software, some great partners that have been signed up from entertainers to sports folks to industry leaders in different categories. So all of that’s coming together. And it’s, it’s a great time, it’s a great time for all of us.

Spicey | OIG
Really exciting. Yeah. And you mentioned the listing, which we’ll get into a little later on in the show. And you also touched on authentification and the importance of having it to create a secure and cohesive experience for the user. How does interoperability tie into that? And how will it interact with ORIGYN?

Mike
Okay, so this is where the ORIGYN standard is important, has an open platform that the destined state for our codebases open-source, ultimately. So that means that nobody in ORIGYN holistically owns nor controls the asset. So if we deploy it on this properly decentralised infrastructure so that it’s inspectable and tamper-proof, then we have standards, which are trustworthy, and no company or individual big tech gang is going to control. And that’s what we all need, return to a more open world and attempt proof trustworthiness. So an origin standard exists that can support both physical items with digital twins and natively digital ones, then that helps us all interoperate. And we can all own that standard. And so if we just take an example of perhaps say, moving into the metaverse and how that might just suppose with gaming, we have a university where we’re coming from a place where companies have come to be gaming companies, and some of them have done very, very well. And quite powerful, and have almost been existing a little bit like the earlier web one companies where they really feel like they need to control everything. So even though the more recent successes, the monopolies and oligopolies have made them a little less likely to want to interoperate. But I think as we deploy these standards, and they apply to things like open metaversus, and folks are building really interesting, gaming operations in and around that universe, they won’t be building those in open standards, we’re going to have interoperability and built-in from the ground up. And that’s really interesting for gamers as really interesting for visionary for gamers who can think about recognising assets, whether it’s skins or items that you’re using games that can transpose the boundary of one game, and exist in another. And the open standards will help us all do that in a way that’s trustworthy, and doesn’t feel like we’re being locked into some big tech effort to commandeer that universe as well. I think that’s really exciting for all of us, are gamers and gaming companies or going gaming organisations, I should say, because some of these might be tokenized, as well, they’re not big companies. And I think that the incumbents would be very wise to embrace this, you know, the, you can pick up any kind of economics textbook and see how the composition of stock indices changed dramatically every 10 or so years, and in a way that we could never have believed. So I think incumbent large incumbent gaming companies would be very wise to embrace this new world rather than shun it and try to retain control holistically. But that’s good news for everyone else, who’s moving to the gaming sphere, as a developer, and, and even a player. So there’s a lot for us all to look forward to there. And this infrastructure, these standards are critical to facilitating that.

Spicey | OIG
Definitely, I mean, from a gamer standpoint, and game developers as well, it’s in their best interest to adopt this standard, simply because interoperability really means accessibility, and just opens up the floodgates to mass adoption. So definitely something in everybody’s best interest. And I’m definitely looking forward to the future. I mean, this is something you know, as a kid, I used to play games and always wish to see certain aspects or features from one game in another. And that will soon be a reality. So very exciting stuff.

Mike
I think what we’re discussing here just re-emphasises the importance of tokens that have real utility because there’s a critical instrument here that enables these types of organisations to exist, that are not companies that are not controlled by one company. And for us to all get comfortable with trusting infrastructure and standards like this, that we’re going to hang our hat on. As developers, we need that we don’t, we don’t want to be locked into another big tech company that’s going to end up controlling things, and we can’t see their code. And we don’t know what they’re doing with our data. And we don’t know who’s really owning the real value and what they’re doing with it. We need infrastructure. And we need standards that are open and not controlled by one company. And this is where tokens are so fundamentally important when they’re properly managed, when they’re when their purpose is clear, and fundamentally important, as I said earlier, to the proper functioning of the system.

Spicey | OIG
And like you said, I mean, the utility of set token will ultimately decide, you know, who or what platforms make it to that future. Ultimately, if there is no utility, there’s no use case, there’s no interest, and it slowly phases out. So I think definitely 100% utility will be the definitive factor on whether or not a project survives to see that future.

So let’s switch gears here and move over to our Twitter questions.

Twitter Questions:

Spicey | OIG: Our Twitter questions were asked that we can advance prior to this AMA, and we’ve selected to hear question number one here is, NFT collections are one of the hottest trends today and crypto users buy this even if it costs a lot. However, not all NFT’s have value in the mark It plays. So can you tell us what are the utilities of ORIGYN tech and NFTs? And how can we be sure these NFT’s have value?

Mike
Great question, thank you. NFT's that are going to have the most value moving forward, will have properties that present value to, for real commerce through real consumption for consumers and creators. And so rather than just a mug shot, and I don’t mean to belittle those, because some of them are great, fantastic. But rather than just a mug shot, we talked about an evolution, where we’re talking about entitlements, almost behaving like a ticket, and we talked about very rich and NFTs, that hold all sorts of business data. We can also deploy things like movies and clips entirely on-chain now with things like the internet computer and then we can interrogate the code that exists inside that entity. It’s not just data, it’s code. So we can interrogate images down to pixel level, inside the canister inside the NFT. And we can put rules inside that NFT, which really dictate what happens to the value. When whatever is inside that NFT. Say some art, for instance, is made available in a marketplace and is transacted and the rules about where that value will go, whether some will go to a charity, or some will go to the Creator, or some will go to the new titleholder, they can be baked into that, and empty that tween that canister, such that if any marketplace plugs into that standard, The rules which the creator and or type title holder set simply have to be obeyed around the proportion of value for instance, right? Or the assignment or not of copyright, right? All of these things are baked into between. And that’s a long way from a mug shot, just inside an NFT. Right. So that’s, that’s real value. That’s when you get global commerce plugging into the platform and making use of the NFTs, and the infrastructure supporting that becomes inherently valuable. And that’s where we start talking about a trillion-dollar opportunity.

Spicey | OIG
Amazing, really, truly amazing stuff. So question number two, I understand that ORIGYN tech will take part in developing NFT games. But really, what features will these games have? Will they be of a specific theme? And will users be able to contribute ideas or even develop games with the technology of your platform?

Mike
Okay, thank you for the question. That’s a really interesting one. The first thing I’ll say about ORIGYN is that it is something that you should think of as a bit like, akin to the Intel inside. So it seeks to power platforms as an open standard, open asset management system, if you like. It seeks to make itself available to platforms and marketplaces and games, that want to be sure, they can identify the assets they’re working with, and that those assets are authentic. And that the value that can be created off the back of those assets goes to the right places to the creators and other titleholders. So origin can make sure that that’s true. And that happens if you plug into it as a marketplace or a gaming platform. So at the end of the day, it’s really up to the organisations that are creating the games to make use of the ORIGYN platform. And to enjoy those benefits and to make sure that their community in a game is enjoy those benefits too and can play with confidence. I will say that origin also supports and is about to release a very exciting marketplace called impossible things. And that is a little bit like Apple TV or Spotify, you know, those things are both marketplaces and players. So optimal things are also both it’s a marketplace, which is obviously wholly compliant and powered by origin. And, and it’s also a player. So you know, I can transact in digital assets through impossible things. And I can immediately view or play those if they’re natively digital assets. I can also create a native token economy as a creator on top of that player and deploy that on ORIGYN which runs on the internet computer and I can and therefore incentivize gamers to play to do certain things to earn rewards. And that’s, that could include incentivizing folks to make suggestions, build things or create things that are of value to a gaming universe. That’s pretty cool. That’s pretty exciting. So all of those things are becoming available through this little ecosystem of platforms, the internet computer, ORIGYN built on top, in marketplaces, and players and gaming platforms, which take advantage of that whole stack. As a gamer or a board game developer, you have an extraordinarily large portion of your stack already accounted for and running. And just usable. You don’t have to build all that stuff. Identification, the authentication, the value, disbursement token platform, we can go on and on governance mechanism, all those things are built in a cryptographically, secure way, and a properly decentralised environment that performs and scales and has capacity. It’s cheap to store data on unlike a lot of the other layer one protocols. And, and that’s there for you. So as a developer, super exciting, and then as a gamer, you’re going to find that you have all these different incentives mechanisms available to you and different forms of reward that you can enjoy. And ultimately, there’ll be cross-game, and, and cross-platform. So what’s not to like about that?

Spicey | OIG
That sounds epic. I mean, there’s really, I truly believe that people today really can’t wrap their heads around the potential and the trajectory in which this space is heading towards. But truly remarkable stuff to hear. So that concludes our Twitter question segment.So Mike, could you tell us about some key achievements that ORIGYN has, while achieved in the past up until this date?

Mike
Sure. As I mentioned earlier in our call, the first pan-industry platform tracer. In the diamond industry, we’ve worked through several other platform iterations in different asset classes and industries. The model was really, it evolved from the era where we said, okay, let’s identify industry leaders in key industry sectors that can bring market volume and inventory to our platform. So less interested in asking for money more interested in qualitative volumetric inventory that we can pump through the platform, identify and authenticate and so forth. So what has ensued since then, is figuring out how to get pull a value proposition together, which the industry leaders recognise is something they can’t not do. They can’t not participate in. And so we have, well, we’ve been developing the platforms and the software, which is, we can touch on some of the accomplishments there shortly. We’ve now signed major players in luxury goods, with an initial focus on luxury watches, but into other sub-sectors there as well. The watch universe has typically run by either families that have a great heritage of sometimes hundreds of years, or conglomerates that work across watches, handbags, jewellery, or fashion. So if you’re dealing with the latter type, you quickly get introduced to other asset classes as well. We have some great relationships there that have been secured. And we’re working on b2b services there right now, where we have a meeting engine that we’re meeting, digital twins right now, of what will be many 1000s of items, 10s of 1000s of items with industry leaders in both primary and secondary market. So that’s happening right now. We’ve also signed folks in entertainment and sports. So we have collections that we’re meeting now and curating. They will be made available very shortly. We’re talking weeks, actually, with the launch of the software platforms that I mentioned earlier, the marketplace and the player. I can’t tell you the names yet. You’ll just have to see there will be items will be in Preview mode very soon online. And there’ll be a pass available for folks to get privileged access to a lot of these collections. We’ve also signed artists, major artists with major works of art, both traditional art and also a digital artist with great collections. So those will also be released in the coming weeks. So all of those things are going to be made available with a series of drops over what will be coming months, sequential drops. And that paths will be made available to give people access to those as well. So a lot of work is involved. And that’s years of work. It’s not months of work in building out the software platforms, in signing those people in coming up with a commercial constructs in understanding and relating how the tokenomics works for those people, so many, many achievements in there, and in terms of sticking all these pieces together into a coherent whole that can be wanted to

Spicey | OIG
Really exciting stuff. So I guess my last question is, what are you looking most forward to in the upcoming roadmap?

Mike
That’s a great question. I mean, launching a whole bunch of products is going to be super exciting after just so much work for so long, with so many people, very devoted and dedicated people to the cause and the vision. And, you know, we’ve really kept on track the whole way along, and refuse to be nudged off it by folks coming into the market with sort of, quickest, easiest solutions, you know, I’ll get back to that main game around the great migration of global commerce, and to be the very front edge of laying out the platform that is good enough for them to look at it and say, Okay, it’s time, we need to start moving to this new infrastructure. That’s super exciting. I mean, that’s, that’s going to improve the world. For everybody, you know, for it’ll, it’ll make it possible for more people to engage in the global economy, it’ll make for a better distribution of wealth and power, in a more transparent and trustworthy manner, it will mean that the governance of our commerce systems will be more transparent, and more reliable, more trustworthy. And, you know, the world is in short supply of trust right now. So I think this infrastructure is, is a lot more than a Trojan horse. And I’ve used that word a little bit in the last few months. Because there, there are a few aspects of what we’re doing, which is a bit Trojan horse life. You know, this infrastructure is the foundation for a better future for humanity. And that’s, that’s pretty damn exciting. That’s, that’s what gets you in the shower in the morning. And to be that close now to launching key elements of, of that core infrastructure, that we already have good evidence that industry leaders are saying, yes, that’s, that’s something that, that I couldn’t be more thrilled about. And one thing I have to add there is this is ours. It’s not mine. This is an open infrastructure. This is something that everyone can get involved in and benefit from, contribute to and be rewarded for doing so. In transparent and trustworthy ways.

Spicey | OIG
I mean, you said it, you said it best, there’s really no other way to put it. I mean, it’s exciting, it’s an exciting time to be alive to see the work that you guys are doing. And the focus on, you know, quality utility as well as security that ORIGYN takes in the work that they’re doing. I’m excited to see this in action. And, you know, we wish you all the best, obviously, and the upcoming launch. And for all our viewers that are tuning in today, where can they see more of ORIGYN?

Mike
Well, you can see ORIGYN site at origyn.ch, you can poke around there. But in terms of a really near term roadmap, you’re going to see a lot more very soon, with the launch of impossible things which is built on top of the minting engine and the player experience. So you’ll have a whole lot of new stuff to look at really soon and use and take advantage of and, and that a lot of that will be extending the internet computer ecosystem which will also be pretty cool.

Spicey | OIG
For sure. Well, thanks a lot Mike for Just coming by our show today, we honestly can’t wait to see you guys again and see what you’ve done until the next time we have an AMA. But for all viewers, the official links will be in the description so you can get as much as you want of ORIGYN. And really keep an eye on this project because it’s sure to revolutionise how we look at the world. And thanks again, Mike.

Mike
Thank you so much take care.

Spicey | OIG
Yeah. Well, OIG family, that wraps up another episode in our ama series. Remember, if you liked the content, subscribe, hit the bell notification button and the like button to stay up to date with all this stuff coming out of OIG. Until next time, see you soon.