Jake: Hey everyone, today we are joined by Handuo, Co-Founder of The Babel Universe – a new NFT collection dropping on the Mogul platform soon! Handuo – would you please start by giving the audience a bit of background info on Babel and how you went about creating the IP?
Handuo: Great! Nice meeting you everyone.
The Babel Universe is a Sci-Fi IP I’ve been developing for the past 3 years.
It started as an academic thesis called “The Concept of Universal Language” where I researched the history of a trend of thought – the willingness to break through the linguistic communication barrier between individuals. In other words, connect our minds.
You may be thinking about telepathy or some other “pseudo-science” now but it actually has become quite technological these days, ever since Elon Musk’s Neuralink and the whole brain-computer interfaces movement.
So I wrote the thesis into a Sci-fi short story. Which you can read here: https://mirror.xyz/0xbdBfFB9c2a660E6FDaf49f01519b84F2A0bd2000/JFDtGRlBGhcQlNcfobziREp3rihjL3icuvpiPZPP7nE
Then three writers heard the story at the Cologne film festival in 2020. We then worked together to develop this into an Animated Series Bible and a Pilot Script.
Since the story is about a collective intelligence (formed by 10,000 connected minds) against an AI totalitarian world, we believe that such a story should also be made by a collective intelligence.
So I partnered up with crypto veteran Yanko at the beginning of this year and developed Babel into a Collaborative Sci-Fi Project.
way of working”, and that is BabelDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization consisting of 8 autonomous Guilds.
Jake: Wow, lots to unpack here! The story sounds fascinating.
Handuo: Yeah, a lot of stuff.
Jake: Congrats on your success with the development of the story so far, It’s evident how much thought has gone into it.
What spurred you to want to use NFTs/web3 from the start when going about developing the story and vision?
Handuo: So, on one hand, like I mentioned, having a collective intelligence to create a story universe centering a collective intelligence is the way we stay true to the story’s spirit.
On the other hand, our mission is to build an Inclusive, Engaging, and Ever-expanding Sci-fi Universe. To make an IP “Ever-expanding”, we believe we have to let others own it so it can live even when we’re not here.
We focus on three things in this IP’s co-creation, “Co-create, Co-govern, and Co-own”. While the first two you maybe able to achieve in Web2, the Co-ownership can be better implemented with Web3 technology.
Jake: The story and vision completely embody the whole Web3 ethos, so definitely seems fitting that you have decided to go down this route for it to have a life of its own! Really collaborative stuff.
Handuo: Thanks:
Jake: I personally also really like the art you guys have attached to the different NFTs – how did you go about designing these? Where did you pull the inspiration from? I hear you’re an artist too – did you design them?
Handuo: Haha, great to hear that!
My background is in film and media art. But 3D stuff isn’t my specialty XD
I gave the original concept for the NFTs to be “growable” from a Seed to a Sapling, then to a Tree.
Because in the original short story, people found the “universal language” through planting trees on a virtual planet for 10 years.
One of our designers Marco designed the shape of the NFTs. Then our 3D artist Nico made them into the badges they are now.
Nico used Houdini and Cinema 4D to simulate wind in nature to turbulent particles and recorded the paths they took.
Jake: Very cool! Quite aesthetically pleasing how you guys decided to turn them into GIFs, the movement gives off the feeling of something living for sure.
Handuo: The seemingly chaotic intertwined threads form a shape that makes sense. It’s also how we imagine a collective intelligence will be creative.
Jake: Here is also the Eco Negative which will be available soon for those that are curious
Handuo: Yeah, there. Eco is the active energy to power the growth of our badge. For example, forging a Seed with 10 Ecos will give you a Sapling.
Jake: Interesting – would you be able to dive into this a bit further to explain to the audience how all the badges work synergistically and what they mean?
Handuo: This is the Eco you can claim on Galxe. If you hold an Eco Negative that you buy from Mogul, you can redeem 10 Ecos with it. https://galxe.com/BabelDAO/campaign/GCnwjUtT7U
Imagine you’re immigrating to a new universe, the Babel Universe.
The Seed badge is your Visa which you can claim for free after completing two simple tasks: follow our twitter, enter our Discord.
Then the Sapling is like your permanent residency. You can receive better benefits, participate deeper into the co-creation.
The Tree badge is your Citizenship. You can now create tasks and bounties and earn our native ERC-20 token. While becoming a Tree usually means the person has a really deep understanding of the Babel Universe, these are the members who we want to hold our token.
All of these can be found on our campaign page on Galxe. Our PR team worked very hard to make thing easy to follow.https://galxe.com/BabelDAO/campaign/GCHj5Ut7qi
Jake: Fantastic – thank you for breaking that down for us!
Handuo: My pleasure!
Jake: Building a brand around a new piece of IP from the ground up is really exciting, how do you plan on tying in the animated series?
Handuo: Great question. While many forms of work can be derived from a universe, we plan to have the animated series be the one work that brings the whole IP to the public. The animated series bible is written and so is the pilot episode script. We plan to fund the pilot episode production and connect with networks (i.e. Netflix) to produce the animated series. In a way, it is to be a high-quality series with an engaging story and high-standard art. We’re to do this with an animation studio.
On the other hand, it has promotional value to our universe IP and so it is to our native token. Think about characters spending $BABEL between each other on Netflix XD
And most importantly, all the artworks created during the series production (i.e. concept arts, sketches, music) can all be listed for internal auctions within the community. It does not only support the production, but give the community members access of valuable artworks that may go up in value once the series is released.
Jake: That’s really creative – also a great way to help scale the awareness of the IP by having a high quality piece of content to drive people back towards the stories Babel is developing collectively.
Handuo: Yeah, that’s the idea!
Jake: I know how much work goes into developing the animated series bible + pilot episode script etc as we went through that process recently with Mogies, so kudos to you guys!
Can you explain how you guys are forming a creator economy via a DAO where people can help have a say in the story / future development? Perhaps touching on the guilds people can be apart of too
Handuo: Sure thing.
These are the Guilds. They each work autonomously led by a Guild committee.
The Guild Committee representatives from the DAO committee and are in charge of allocating funds and grants to Guilds according to their proposals.
The Guild committee is elected by the Guild members, as the Guild representatives are chosen by the Guild committees. In a way, we are a DAO with 8 small DAOs in it. Here is a diagram that explains it all;
Jake: The visuals really help absorb the structure of it, thanks!
Cool how you’ve created the 8 guilds as there are so many different types of creative people, so I’m sure someone will at least fall into one of these buckets.
Handuo: So far, yeah. We received around 4.5k members on our Discord last week. We’re working on channeling them into Guilds. This week guild members are creating symbols for their guilds to be made into NFTs by the end of the week.
Jake: Nice work – that’s awesome! I know you’ve been developing this for a while now – like any new venture, nothing is usually a smooth road – what would you say have been some of your biggest learning experiences launching this as a new Web3 project?
Handuo: I guess…Web3 doesn’t wait until you’re ready…you just go and learn on the road.
Jake: That’s for sure … best way to learn is by doing
Handuo: Like we haven’t had a chance to celebrate since we only launched recently. It’s just all of a sudden you are in this trend that pushes you forward.
Jake: Absolutely – well said
Are you able to explain some of the main upcoming milestones in the short to medium term that people in the Babel Universe can look forward to as community members?
Handuo: Yeah, we have a roadmap, https://www.babeldao.co/roadmap
Jake: Perfect – thanks for sharing this
Handuo: Other than these, each guild is doing different things. Like the writing guild may begin expanding the story and create a Babel Universe Fandom page.
The visual art guild will be creating images for the story, while the PR guild are seeking for more channels to promote the project at the moment.
Jake: Got it – that makes sense. Cool how the different guilds are helping shine a light on what is going on within Babel. I know we are at the end of the hour so we will wrap this up – thank you so much for your time and we are looking forward to having the NFTs live on the Mogul platform, a little birdy told me it may be within the next week or so, more to come on that soon!
Handuo: So looking forward to that and happy to be here!
Jake: For those curious on anything further around the Babel Universe, here are some links with further information;
Link to website: https://www.babeldao.co/
Link to landing page on Mogul: https://my.mogulproductions.com/platform/collection/eth/0x37446F3181181220C5404184a9b8f380d9A2CBbB
Thanks again Handuo – chat with you again soon
