Gamifying Nature Protection With Arch from Wildchain

Tarmo Virki  0:02  
Welcome to nature back podcast where we are speaking with interesting investors and entrepreneurs about the green future. Today, my guest is on edge from wild Chang. And we are meeting above the skies of Bangkok, looking at sunny world around us. Arch what is wildchain?

Arch W.  0:23  
Okay, so wildchain is it's a solution to get the general public more interested in protecting nature and helping to protect the world's last remaining species. So we use a combination of technologies, including blockchain FFTs, gaming, gamification, specifically, to to raise funds and to raise awareness to help these kind of like conservation projects that are desperately seeking support from the general public.

Tarmo Virki  1:12  
How did you come up with the idea? And

Arch W.  1:15  
so our inspiration is, I think mostly two different inspirations from games. The first is Pokemon Go. And it was just a phenomenon back then, you know, like a game that acquired billions of users within a year, right? And it actually got people walking like, you know, 4000 steps more than usual, in order to find rare Pokemons, right, and collect all the different Pokemons. And the question that I was asking was, like, you know, what, if we can get people to do that much to protect the world's last remaining species, you know, now we're facing, you know, like a huge biodiversity loss, possibly, like another mass extinction will already in another mass extinction, and nobody knows about it. So this biodiversity issue is something that's really lacking in in awareness, and really desperately needing help. And if we continue on this path, it's going to be a huge problem down the line, right. That's the first. The first one, the second one is crypto kitties. And, you know, following that, we've seen a lot more NFT projects that have been, you know, able to raise so much money, right? With crypto kitties, like, I was just seeing people buy kitty and fts for like, hundreds of 1000s of dollars. And I was like, Huh, why are people not putting that much money in protecting real endangered animals? Right. So combining these two ideas, it was based on like, you know, how do we create adoptable? Nf T's featuring endangered animals and threatened species. And how do we how do we create value for these adoptables? And so So it's a combination of these two ideas, actually. Then came the third kind of concept, right? Which is not concept but like third game that that inspired us it is Tamagotchi, right, and it's something that a lot of us grew up with. And so we combined this idea into into blockchain as well. And we wanted to create a digital sanctuary that exists on your mobile phone. And while you take care of this digital sanctuary, you're planting trees, you're removing traps, you're hiring Rangers, you're you're making it rain, and all of that, in order to make in order to kind of create a beautiful forest, right. And the concept is that if your forest is biodiverse and has a high eco score, right, then the animals that you own will show up in that forest and give you tokens. So you can basically take care of a forest and take care of your, the different animals that you have and interact with them. feel closer to them and kind of adopt these as digital pets. So that's kind of like the core idea of what we're doing within that sanctuary as you taking care of it. Like, the concept we're trying to integrate is having your endgame actions really impact the real world. So every tree that you plant, in your digital sanctuary, we plant a tree in the real world. So it is also a symbol of your impact in the world. So as you're planting trees, you're actually contributing to real trees being planted. As you're hiring Rangers in the game, we're actually hiring, like paying Rangers, in the real world to protect these rare species. If you're expanding your land, we're protecting real, you know, fragile ecosystems. So we're trying to integrate as much of the real impact as possible, and gamifying that on your mobile phone, so that, you know, you can really feel like you're participating and having an impact and enjoying the process of of making a difference. Yeah.

Tarmo Virki  6:19  
How far are you in creating this new Pokemon Go craze?

Arch W.  6:24  
Yeah. It's, it's been two years under development. It's it's bootstrapped. We haven't raised funds, we are planning to launch a token. But we did not want to launch a token first, and then build a product, we wanted to actually build a product a working product first, and then release a token. And, we have, so besides the game, we also have an NFT marketplace. And we already released the NFT marketplace a few months ago, and every week, we've been dropping a well, not really airdropping we've been dropping a new NFT. So every week, we're introducing one of the animals that will be featured in the game. And the game is, it's based on the African savannah, that's where we're starting first. And we're basically you know, dropping like, you know, giraffes and wild horses and riverine rabbits and cheetahs. And so we have like, we've been kind of growing a community of people who are basically every week, coming to bed for the first of its kind, right. So it's the first of its kind and FTS, of you, know, these rare species. And actually, we also have some not rare species in there as well, you know, like, it's a mix. Yeah. So, so we've been doing that. And it's, it's going well, so far, but you know, because we really haven't, we haven't really invested a lot in marketing, you know, and promoting it. So it's been very organic. Yeah.

Tarmo Virki  8:13  
The first of its kind, wouldn't the last of its kind make even more sense in your case.

Arch W.  8:21  
Yeah. So the idea is, you know, we're launching with the first of its kind, right, and then the first of its kind is actually going to fund while change development. And then when so, oh, yeah, one thing I forgot to mention. The animal population that we are releasing, is the exact same population as real-world population. So if there are, for example, like 4000 cheetahs left in the world, then we will only ever have 4000, cheater NF T's in our game and on our on our blockchain. So that kind of creates this scarcity, but also kind of like sense of, you know, like users having to protect it. Because actually, if the population increases, then what we think we're going to do, and this is still, you know, to be confirmed, like, is, like, if it increases from like 4000 to 4400. With this 400 New Cheetas. We're gonna actually randomly AirDrop to people who are taking care of cheetahs, right? So basically, it's like your cheetah can have a baby. Yeah. On the other hand, if the population of cheetahs decrease, then what we think we're going to do is we're actually going to mark some of the NF T's as deceased. So randomly, people who have not been taking good care of their cheaters in their game, or haven't basically been contributing to protecting, you know, nature could lose their cheetah, NF T's. So it creates this kind of balance so that people don't actively try to reduce their populations of animals in order to make their nfts more expensive because they could lose their entire investment. Yeah, so, I mean, there's also like other other factors, right? Like, if if, if the cheetah population drops below a certain level, then it generally will just decline naturally until zero, right. So, so that's, you know, not the only factor preventing people from actively trying to reduce that there is, you know, like, the more there is a species is generally better at first like long-term prospects. Yeah,

Tarmo Virki  10:54  
the, basically, you are creating digital twin of nature, in cyberspace.

Arch W.  11:04  
Yeah, on the blockchain, so we call it a digital mirror of like, the animal populations left in the world. And with this digital mirror, it's, it's kind of like creating a two-way connection, where the data of the real world feeds into the game. And the actions of the player in the game translates into, like contributions in the real world, and hopefully, impact that creates, like a difference in that in that data that circles back into the game and kind of like, I mean, hopefully both flourishes. Right. Yeah, so it's, it's a, it's a pretty complex idea. And that's why it's taken us so long to build it. And I mean, you know, we've also it being just Bootstrap. So

Tarmo Virki  11:52  
it takes more time than with massive capital.

Arch W.  11:55  
And I mean, we're just waiting for the, you know, for the market to recover as well, right? We,

Tarmo Virki  12:02  
it's a good time to build, yeah, it's

Arch W.  12:04  
the perfect time to build and I would say, now is the perfect time to launch as well, right? Because we're at the bottom of the market, probably. And we're you know, we're optimistic that the next few years is is is when the market comes back, and people becomes excited again, and things. I mean, like NFT craze has kind of died down, right. But the problem with, you know, existing NF T's is that it doesn't really represent anything in the real world. You know, the big kind of scepticism, is that always just the JPEG. And maybe it's, it's a token for being part of the community, right. But, you know, we're hoping that NF Ts and me, I love the concept of NF T's and I'm hoping that it can be something more than just than just, you know, that on and you know, the most I guess, like the lowest hanging fruit that I can think of, but also the most useful thing is making NFT is like a representation of things that exist in the world, especially things that are currently undervalued and underfunded in the real world, and things that maybe people cannot currently take ownership of, right. And because there's no ownership, there's no investments going in to protect it. And I guess, like, that's why I think, you know, like tokenizing nature is, is something that's, like, super interesting and could be groundbreaking. And I mean, I hope that this will take off, right? Yeah,

Tarmo Virki  13:50  
absolutely. I mean, you said, it's probably a good time to launch. What's the kind of current roadmap? When is the launch plan for?

Arch W.  13:59  
Yeah, so we were targeting October for a soft launch. We've actually released we've actually kind of released like a private alpha version of the game earlier. And we've been testing that with, you know, early supporters of blockchain. And we've we've taken the feedback that we got, and we were supposed to release it last June, but we decided that we're going to kind of overhaul the game a little bit more, make it make it a lot more gamey. Make it a lot more engaging. And we're basically we've been kind of rebuilding over the past few months running up to October hopefully we launched like a kind of like a private beta version of the game where it would probably be invite only. So we're hoping to kind of create like the clubhouse effect, right, where everyone gets It's like a limited number of invitations, and you can invite your friends to join. And hopefully, you know that that's how we grow. We don't want to kind of, like, splashed so much money into into marketing and everything. I think it's it's something that we'd like to build organically. And you know, we're not in a hurry to make it like to get to billions within the first two, three years. Of course. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think this is like a long-term game. So the first users coming in will help us learn will help us rebuild, redevelop the product. And you know that the African savanna is just the first of the biomes that we can begin with, right. And then we're going to take our learnings, and we're going to build the second biome, which could be like sea life or ocean life, you know, and then we can build like, tropical forests. So we have kind of a lot of other biomes, also to experiment. But we also hope that, you know, the first one works, but you know, we're, we are hopeful, but we are trying to be as realistic as possible. Yeah. So it could take, you know, eight years, it could take 10 years, or longer, but you know, I mean, the fate of the world depends on it. Yeah.

Tarmo Virki  16:26  
They have kind of also already kind of animal relationships in place with a conservation organisations that you can tell to the players by the exactly goes and which, which animal is kind of the link between the animal.

Arch W.  16:41  
So we did receive a little bit of funding from WWF. I think it was the pendant labs team, I think, based in Australia. And we did receive a bit of funding from you and environment. We have talked to a few different conservation charities, we are planning to actually go to Africa and meet in person, a lot of the different conservation initiatives working on the ground. So hopefully, we're going to be doing that within maybe this year or next year. And, yeah, so because we actually haven't raised funds, yet, there hasn't really been an urgent need for us to kind of like, you know, finalise on the charities that we're going to work with. But we have been meeting up with a lot and talking to a lot. Yeah, so hopefully, we finalise that, you know, within the next few months, I would say, but so far, we the only thing that we've been doing is we've been funding reforestation projects. Yeah. So even though we are just starting out, we wanted to kind of try partnering with reforestation projects, and, you know, seeing how that works out. And so, yeah, so we've we have already been funding, you know, like reforestation. And reforestation is probably one of the things that we that we're focused on in the beginning, right, because it's, it's about protecting their habitats, but it's also kind of like creating this, like, ring of nature around that, right, like expanding the forests. Yeah,

Tarmo Virki  18:35  
absolutely. Makes a lot of sense. What kind of gives you confidence to have success? Or have you guys been doing something like this before? Have you been doing successful games platforms before? What's the background of the team?

Arch W.  18:51  
Well, actually, the our background, our team background actually has worked in multiple games, like a lot of popular games and a lot of kind of, like big name games. That's like from the developer side and game designer and artist side. But actually, like, for, for me, myself, like my, my expertise has been social innovation. Specifically, like, innovative fundraising solutions. Yeah.

Tarmo Virki  19:32  
You know, the two fundraising solutions. What are the I mean crowdfunding or what kind of

Arch W.  19:38  
Yeah, so actually, I I did. I founded another social enterprise prior to while chain. It's called Social giver.com. And what we do is, is we make travel impactful, right and we If we were kind of like Groupon for good. So when you buy travel deals on our platform, the money actually goes to fund social impact projects. And we've been funding primarily like education related projects for underprivileged kids. We've been funding like health care projects, we've been funding also nature conservation projects. So the idea is that a lot of the businesses like hotels, restaurants, spas, activities, events, they have a lot of spare services left. And these spare services if not utilised, kind of create zero value for them zero value for basically anyone, right. And so we work with them to create a corporate social responsibility solution, where they give us a portion of the excess capacity. So unused rooms, right, every year, let's say they give us 10 rooms or 20 rooms, and it's not going to, you know, impact that them at all right? It's just like, a hump like, 0.1% Extra. Yeah, so. So they give us these rooms, and it's an in kind donation, right. And the problem within kind donations is like, you know, if you just give it to a charity, it's useless, right? You know, you give like a, you know, a five star hotel room to, you know, like, animal rights group, it means nothing. So they give it to us, and then we basically sell it to raise funds, and we give the funds to the conservation outside the social projects that they choose. So that way, you know, like, it makes it easier for them to give, because it's, it's, you know, I've, I've actually been in fundraising for a while, and one of the first problems that I realised was, it was so hard to get money from these companies, because they, you know, they don't have a budget for it, or they didn't make enough profit that year, or, you know, it's just, they don't want to give money. So what we do is, you know, like, instead of giving us money, give us your waste, right, and we turn this waste into corporate social responsibility, you look good, you get some extra PR, get some extra marketing, and you get to a, I guess, donate money, and you get an extra customer who can come in and spend more money, you know, you know, on an extra night on, you know, like, Yeah,

Tarmo Virki  22:34  
and if they like, they will come back and bring their friends. Everything grow.

Arch W.  22:38  
Exactly, exactly. So it's a way of introducing new customers to their businesses as well. And the charity is happy, because now they so one of one of like, the philosophy behind this idea is actually and it's quite similar to while chain, right. One of the philosophy behind this idea is, we don't want charities to only have to depend on donations, because donations is a very limited part of, of how we spend our money, right? You receive your paycheck at the end of the year, at the end of the month, you know, you might donate like, you know, like 1020 $30, right? Each month, and that would already be considered, like, good, right? If you're donating like $30 a month, oh, that that's great. But actually, like, you go out for a meal, and you're already spending $30. And you're doing that, like, you know, several times a week. And so that was like, the question that I was asking is, like, you know, how do we how do we convert consumer spending into funding for social impact, like, and that's kind of like what, you know, like, what inspired this idea. And so what we're trying to do, essentially, is to increase the donations into the social sector, increased the funding for social impact, without competing for donations, but instead, by kind of like increasing the donation pie, within the entire spending of the human race, basically. And with wild Chang, that's, that's kind of similar. We're paying for entertainment, we're paying to collect art, we're paying to, we're paying to, you know, like buy, like digital tokens, and everything. And, you know, how can we make that go to nature conservation? Like how do we make that actually, like, go and help, I guess, by the future of the Earth, right, like extend humanity's lifetime on Earth and, and kind of prevent billions of people who are already living in poverty to actually be impacted and be displaced by climate change. And so, I mean, like for me, it when I think about it, it sounds like a no brainer. I Unlike, you know, like, instead of buying directly at the, you know, like, I guess instead of booking your next hotel on, you know, like, booking engines, you know, if you've just booked it on social gateway, you could put a child through school for a year, you know, or you could plant like 1000 trees with just one transaction. So, it's, it's kind of like, you know, if if people were to actually think about, like making the world a better place, then then this is a better solution. And it's actually cheaper. They're not actually spending more money, we're actually saving them money, and they're making an impact. So that's kind of like what we've been building with social giver. And it's, we have already like, 500, corporations, like, brands on board. We've got like, some international chains, we've got like, very great, like, local restaurants, local hotels. Yeah.

Tarmo Virki  26:02  
Globally or focused on Southeast Asia, only

Arch W.  26:05  
Thailand right now. Yeah. So yeah. So social give also has been bootstrapped. And we actually haven't raised a single round, and we've just been growing organically for eight years. And it's, we are thinking about, like moving on to the next stage and starting to scale that. But, you know, it's, there's a lot of limitations. And, you know, I've also been focused a lot on blockchain. So I want to like launch this first and get this out first, and then maybe I'll spend a bit more time back at social.

Tarmo Virki  26:42  
But it makes a lot of sense, on projects, like social Giva, or wild chain to be bootstrapped? Because, you know, if wild chain will be launched by some greedy we fund willing to really look that

Arch W.  26:59  
good. Yeah, that is that is true. And that is actually one of the challenges with raising funds for social given, which is low, like investors would be asking about the profit, right. And we're actually an a nonprofit. It's a social enterprise. So it's registered as a company, we have like a social enterprise licence, but we don't take profit from that. And so investors are always asking us about the profit. And we're like, no, don't don't no, no, you know, the value of the company will increase, hopefully, but there will not be dividends. And so it will just be kind of like a token of your contribution to raising like, millions, for charities every year. Yeah.

Tarmo Virki  27:48  
Not the most classical VC proposal. Yeah. So,

Arch W.  27:51  
I mean, yeah, if if, you know, like, we are looking for more like philanthropic investors. So we're looking for, I mean, both for social given and well chain, we're looking for investors who, who want to make that dollar go further, instead of like, donating money and kind of like, it's like a one time use thing. Like, the idea is, like, you can put money into, like wild chain or social give it and have it grow in impact every single year, right, like, have it result in millions being raised and donated to, you know, like, worthy projects every year each year. And that growing, you know, continuously, so it's not a one time donation, and it's like, a way to multiply your impact in the world. And as an impact investor, myself, that's like how I look at it, like I want my dollar to, to result in you know, $10 being donated every year, like, I don't want my, you know, single donation to end there. I want it to grow and to multiply and to, like, make even bigger impact. And, and I guess that's why I'm spending my time doing like this.

Tarmo Virki  29:04  
So cool. Good luck with their projects, and, you know, roughly October launch. Yeah, sounds like a great time. I hate for you.

Arch W.  29:15  
Yeah. So, just to kind of like add a little more

Tarmo Virki  29:19  
any call to action to for the listeners.

Arch W.  29:22  
Yeah, I mean, like, you can start bidding on an NF Ts. It's at the wall. chain.io. And if you plan to travel to Thailand anytime soon, then social giva.com. And, you know, feel free to email us and kind of like, we'll help you plan your trip and create like an amazing itinerary for you in Thailand. Yeah, and for a while chain, sign up, subscribe, because you can get early access to the game when we launch. And yeah, I'll see you in the wild

Tarmo Virki  29:56  
and good stuff. I will definitely sign up. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Arch W.  30:00  
Thank you bye bye

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