MoonPay CEO talks about universal partnership and the future of NFTs
When asked about MoonPay’s upcoming partnership with Universal Parks & Resorts, MoonPay CEO Ivan Soto-Wright couldn’t help but look back on his childhood experiences at the theme park – especially the long-running Halloween Horror Nights program.
“[I]It’s a strange circle for me. I actually never used to go with my dad back then,” said Soto-Wright in an exclusive video interview with nft now. The tagline for the Horror Nights program was that “they’re there to scare the crap out of you […] But the point is that they are there to scare you.”
Through its many partnerships, the crypto payment service MoonPay has established itself as a decisive player in the NFT area. Cryptocurrency exchange CoinGate and NFT marketplace leader OpenSea are just two of their partners in their quest to make Web3 transactions easier.
But what is it for MoonPay to get involved in a theme park event whose sole purpose is to scare park attendees? Is the crypto space going to dark places? On the contrary, MoonPay’s partnership with Universal Parks & Resorts could be the biggest onboarding event in history for IRL Web3. But park attendees won’t know that while they’re there.
“The foot traffic [inside] the theme parks are enormous in scope. Millions of people go to these universal theme parks – and so our mission at MoonPay is to board the world of Web3. We want to bring billions of people into the ecosystem, so we think this is a very good pilot,” he said.
MoonPay’s universal partnership
Many players work tirelessly to integrate new people into the Web3 world. For example, OneOf dropped several collaborations with popular pop culture icons and even had a massive presence at this year’s Grammy Awards. The last is important – to bring your audience into Web3, you need to meet them where they are. That’s when MoonPay made plans with Universal Parks & Resorts. And it started with a scavenger hunt.
Starting September 15, MoonPay placed QR codes hidden near park attractions at Universal Studios Hollywood and Universal Orlando Resort. By scanning these QR codes with a smartphone, park attendees will receive unique NFTs of character art related to the Halloween Horror Nights program. Should a participant find all the QR codes scattered around the park, they will be awarded a special gold medal NFT.
Through this initiative’s month and a half runtime, MoonPay believes that millions of people will take their first steps into Web3 – whether they know it or not. “This is probably the biggest ever POAP – proof of attendance [protocol NFT drop] in history. Up to seven million NFTs are going to be created through the HyperMint platform,” said Soto-Wright. The HyperMint platform is critical to the success of this initiative, as it will facilitate high-speed minting of what could be millions of POAP NFTs .
Soto-Wright also believes that adopting NFTs is in the best interest of most brands. And many other companies agree. For example, Netflix used NFTs to measure viewership of the final season of Love death + robots. But in Universal, “[t]the guy or girl running around the park scanning all the QR codes’ will arouse the curiosity of other park-goers. “You probably want to know who that person is because that person is obviously super engaged with the experience. And then you have a new touch point to reach that person when you never have that data before, right? You get a new data point. This is a new tool at their disposal, and it also makes it more exciting to identify who the superfans are — […] the boys and girls who are super excited about your brand.” he said.
NFTs tomorrow
Crucial to the process is the seamlessness of the minting experience, which HyperMint and MoonPay make possible thanks to the ease of use of their platforms. “A grandmother can scan this QR code,” Soto-Wright said. “It doesn’t matter who you are. You can scan this QR code if you’re in line without having to download an app or anything like that, […] without any of the technical challenges of getting started with Web3.”
Soto-Wright does not believe that ease of use should be an experience only Web3 newcomers can enjoy. Whether you’re a total greenhorn or a Web3 veteran, Soto-Wright believes that ensuring Web3 technologies and platforms are easy to use will be a significant driver of its future growth.
Tying MoonPay’s latest initiative to its guiding philosophy as a company, Soto-Wright said, “everything I’ve done has been about usability. Our company has been focused on the usability aspect of crypto, not solely looking at crypto as an investment asset class. How do you make this usable? How do you make this important in everyday life?”
Thus, MoonPay developed entry and exit ramps for buying and selling large crypto wallets that were really easy to use. “You don’t have to go to a crypto exchange, buy that crypto and move it into your wallet. You can seamlessly do that with a couple of taps,” he said. But Soto-Wright’s vision didn’t stop at making buying crypto easy to use. He also saw a similar future for NFTs.
“If people want to acquire NFTs, it doesn’t necessarily make sense that they need to buy Ethereum from an exchange and put it in their wallet, [only to realize] that they didn’t have enough gas to interact with the smart contract and buy that NFT, he said. Identifying this pain point when purchasing NFTs then led to OpenSea’s new NFT checkout feature, which enables users to purchase NFTs using fiat currencies. Soto-Wright described this new feature as “a seamless process.”
The Crypto Winter
Soto-Wright also touched on what the future might look like for NFTs. After all, ease of use and mass adoption are just some of the tentpoles of NFTs that community leaders seem to be working towards achieving. What else is it? Soto-Wright believes that a key factor for the further growth of the NFT area lies in providing users with new, fun experiences.
“I think [the Universal Studios scavenger hunt] gives you an idea of what’s coming,” Soto-Wright said. “We’re only limited by our creativity now, aren’t we?” Across the NFT landscape, that certainly seems to be the case.” With the bear market in full swing, “innovation has seemed to be the new currency in the space.” Over the past year, several developments have shown the potential of the future, including step-to-earn initiatives powered by NFTs, massive NFT gifts with unique mechanics and inexplicably goblins.
And Soto-Wright believes MoonPay will be part of Web3’s future – and sees the latest partnership with Universal Parks & Resorts as the first of many steps in new directions. “We’re going to keep raising the bar. “We’re going to continue to do these experiments with brands, and I think we’re going to show the world, rather than just say it,” he said. “You have to have a long-term mindset or view when you look at what’s going to happen. This is a transformational amount of change. It is as if anyone who has gained access to the internet can participate. It really levels the playing field and a lot of industries where there was really only a very small set of people who could participate.”
