Empowering the 99% of creators in the web3 ecosystem

Val Bercovici is a visionary Silicon Valley tech exec, who holds the industry's first NFT patent, alongside other Augmented Reality / Metaverse patents. Throughout his career, Val led the development of next-gen platforms (Web1, Web2 & web3) with Microsoft, NetApp, VMware, Yahoo!, Facebook, AWS & Google.

After serving as CTO of NetApp/SolidFire and a founding member of the CNCF board, kickstarting the wildly popular Kubernetes Open Source project, Val dedicated his career in 2017 to Blockchain technologies, Crypto Currencies, NFTs, and DeFi, forecasting the web3 wave will dwarf both Web1 & 2 in value.

A competitive skier and father to a mixed family of six children, Val is passionate about equality, inclusion, and access to opportunity via decentralization of information, power, and wealth.

Last week we’ve sat down to discuss the launch of CLICK and the latest web3 summit in San Diego, WAGMAS.

CLICK just came out of Stealth mode - what prompted the idea behind CLICK and how do you see the creators empowered in web3 ecosystem?

CLICK has been a thrilling journey. We started as a cyber security business - we have a patented technology that allows creators to protect the integrity of their data and enables them to effectively mint millions of NFTs per second, and that was developed even prior to the NFT market existing. CLICK is focused on utility case applications to the market that values integrity and ease of use. A year ago, the NFT market began to blossom and the industry took off with cases from Bored Apes to Invisible friends and others. The market however is very tailored to the “winner takes it all” market with large players leading the way. The reality is - the vast majority of the population is on social media today and the majority of the creators are not enabled to monetize their creations and social media activity. Content creators are really beginning to appreciate the massive opportunity in NFTs and yet they make pennies on the largest platforms. Our tagline for CLICK is - do what you love, own what you do.?

How do you see CLICK differentiating from other NFT platforms like OpenSea and Rarible?

The existing platforms are tailored to the top 1%, the big names, the blue chips. The system works very well for the large creators, however, we are missing the 99% of the creators out there who may not be in possession of the large marketing budgets and millions of followers. Our token economy places the smaller creators in the same playing field as the likes of Kim Kardashian. In essence, if you follow the creator you love, who is young and small or from an emerging country, you should be able to support the creator directly, participating in the success of the digital assets in question. It is all about decentralizing power and giving control to the creators and their fans.

How do you envision CLICK in 2-3 years?

Simply being the Amazon of NFTs. Today what we see clearly is the functioning eBay model and that's where Opensea is today - wildly profitable with billions in revenues, big names, and big items, unfortunately, also lots of fraud and lots of scammers existing on the platform. Who does it work for? The winners - the large collectors and speculators. That model is serving only a few hundreds of thousands of people across the globe. What we see ourselves doing in the coming years is what Amazon did back in its day: removing the friction for the consumer and taking the game to the next level. That's where I see us. There is already a solution for the large influencers and celebrities to further monetize their creations and fan base, but we need a product that serves everyone else. Whether you are a first-time user or a second-time user of the web3, your experience should be fun and easy when building your collection of digital assets. So we really aim to take the grind out of the equation for the collector as well as for the creator. Making it fun for first-timers, making it fun for second-timers - that's the opportunity where CLICK is leading.?

How does the experience in CLICK differ for the consumer?

We are striving to mimic the retail eCommerce experience with easy check-outs and predictable prices. The model we are looking at is a sub $100 price point available and accessible to the average consumer, which empowers everyone to build a portfolio of digital assets they love and removes the risk of speculation. In that pricing model, the majority of fees are factored into the final price. On the same platform, both creators and collectors can interact and earn rewards for the social activity they exhibit (such as like, share, and comment), enabling them to further invest in their collections on the platform. Verified engagement online is a big web2 problem which is also what we are solving with CLICK. This is what excites me going forward in the future: the authenticity of the content at scale.

I’m aware that you also just finalized the WAGMAS summit in San Diego last week. Could you expand on that a bit more?

WAGMAS’ name is originating from WAGMI (we are all going to make it), which we’ve extended to WAGMAS (we are all going to make a summit). It is the community of the creators already actively investing, building, and creating assets for the web3 ecosystem. The summit is tailored to the Fortune 500 / Global 2000 leaders who are aiming to enter, invest, and adopt the core practices of web3 and align the incentives of the different stakeholders in their business with the help of a sustainable token economy. You cannot necessarily do this in the other conferences which are tailored to either promoting the products and services (Bitcoin Miami) or focused on a specific audience (ETH Denver) such as development in web3. WAGMAS’ focus is on connecting organizational and institutional leaders to those who had already created web3 systems, the experts, for knowledge exchange.

Where do you see companies coming from?

We had a diverse crowd of presenters - investors, researchers, entrepreneurs serving the web3 space (such as fraud protection), investment banks, retail industry leaders,? NFT creators, and collectors. We see the fashion industry being a leader in the space of change, the music industry is also innovating in the space. The retail industry is changing rapidly thanks to the changing consumer needs of gen-Z and millennials who are more accustomed to evaluating and appreciating digital goods. The marketing is being re-thought in web3, enabling the customer to contribute directly to the success of services and products they love.?

What do you think was the highlight of the summit in San Diego?

The coolest thing we did on the last day was a hackathon format (Impact-A-Thon) for the task “applying blockchain for good” targeting massive problems, pollution, sexual abuse, human protection, etc. All the #wagmasimpact submissions were awesome.

When and where are you planning the next WAGMAS event?

October 25-27th in New York City. We are very excited - there is a business crowd in New York that is keen to attend. One of the best opportunities in web3 of course is the application of the concept and technology to consumer use-cases, healthcare cases, financial services, and so on. We are really looking forward to welcoming more thought leaders and growing our community!

Join the WAGMAS community if you are a player in the web3 ecosystem.

Join the waitlist for CLICK to monetize your creations and browse the up-and-coming creators.?