Last Friday we held our first AMA in Monaco, in the meeting, I represented the HippyGhosts team, explained our roadmap, here is the text version of the AMA dictated from the recording:

首先介绍一下你们的团队和产品吧

Let's start by introducing your team and products

我们是HippyGhosts团队， 一个以工程师和设计师为主的团队，分布在上海和洛杉矶， 几乎每个人都有10年左右的工作经验了， 我们有web2产品的开发和设计，游戏的开发， AI工程师， 以及在高校工作的科学家。 同时我们在web3项目也开发了一定时间了， 但一年时间我们已经为多个项目贡献过了， 所以在技项目的各方面， 最不担心的应该就是产品本身。

无论是工程师还是设计师， 都是在给Web 3世界创造事务的角色， 我们叫自己创造者（Creators）. 所以我们的产品也是为Creators而生的。我们希望提供一个工具集来服务所有的创造者， 这些创造者不只包含工程师和设计师， 也包括作家， 作曲家， 和所有需要创造力来完成复杂工作的角色。 我们希望我们能让他们在自己工作和协作工作时能有更高的效率， 也希望接下来他们的作品能被更多人看到， 他们能获得更多回报。

We are Team HippyGhosts, a team of engineers and designers based in Shanghai and Los Angels, almost everyone has about 10 years of working experience in web2 product development and design. And we also have game developers, AI engineers, and scientists even working in universities.

We are nomads from the old universe but have worked on web3 projects for a while. We have contributed to multiple projects, have our own strengths in building products. I am very confident in the product aspect.

Every engineer and designer is in the role of creating things for the Web 3 world, we call ourselves Creators. That's why we build this product, we build a platform for someone like us in the crypto world. We are willing to provide a toolset to serve all creators, not only engineers and designers, but also writers, composers, and all roles that require creativity to finish a complex work. We hope we can make them more productive when creating their own masterpiece and help them to collaborate with each other better. and something even more important: help them to show their work to the new world, touch more people then hopefully they will get more profit.

那NFT的计划是什么？和这个产品的关系是什么呢？

And what is the plan for NFT? What is the relationship with this creator platform?

我们将在3月中下旬发布6666个Hippy Ghosts， 包括了4000个预售白名单， 其他的部分包括很少量的预留， 这些预留除了早期贡献者会拥有一个， 我们还会送一些给我们认为为Web3世界积极的create东西的人们， 剩下的2000多个会进入公售。 Hippy Ghosts的销售收入将用来建设我们的后续产品， 同时Hippy Ghosts NFT也是通往我们这个世界的门票， 用户拥有了NFT才能进入我们的平台来使用我们的产品。

此外我们这个版本的NFT是pixel的， 其实市面上做的很高质量的pixel产品不是很多，我们希望大家喜欢这个产品。 但我知道有些人会喜欢不同的风格， 所以我们目前给限量款也在绘制一个3D的version， 我们的设计负责人也有一些其他很棒的想法， 我们后续会去实践。 但无论如何作为我们的第一个系列的NFT， 这个系列的持有人也是早期支持者，无论后面我们的产品怎么迭代， 这些持有人们一定会在我们的platform中获得最高的权限。

Our team is planning to release 6666 Hippy Ghosts in mid to late March, including 4000 pre-sales whitelist spots, and a very small amount will be reserved for Nomads’ friends, which includes teams, teams friends literally who helped us in this project, and also someone can be called creators to web3 world, the detail will be posted in official website. And we still have more than 2000 entering the public sale stage. The profit from the sale of Hippy Ghosts will be used to build our products, we will post a roadmap next week on the official website, and the Hippy Ghosts NFT is also the ticket to our world, the holders will be able to access our platform with their hippyghosts.

In addition, this NFT version is pixel style, which is very classic, a lot of pixel style is there on the market but just a few of them with high quality, so we tried our best to create one, we hope you’ll like the design. But I know some people will like a different style, fancy, scientific, so we are currently drawing a 3D version of the limited edition, our design director also has some other great ideas, we’ll try some brand new style later in the following series. But anyway, this is our first series of NFT, the holders of this series are also early supporters, and no matter how we iterate on the product later, these holders will definitely get the highest authority in our platform.

我们看到你们的RoadMap中提到首先要构建一个小说平台， 能说说这个想法么， 为什么要做一个这样的产品？他的特别点在哪里？

We saw that your RoadMap mentioned you will build a novel platform first, can you tell us about this idea and why you want to make such a product and what makes this product special ?

正如我刚才说的， 我们的目标是做一个给Creator的平台， 作家也是一种Creator, 而选择小说作为开始的原因是因为他足够典型也足够简单。我并不是说创作一部很好的小说这件事简单， 而是小说只需要写出来， 而如果我们一开始就做一个游戏， 除了需要剧本外， 还需要设计， 还需要写代码， 而小说只需要写出故事就好了， 这样我们能相对快速的创作出内容， 让我们能更快的发现问题和解决问题。同时写小说这件事可能也需要协作， 作家把小说写出来， 比如需要一个翻译的过程， 这里我们就可以去测试怎么让不同角色的贡献者们去合作。

而特点， 我们希望这里的小说有一点所谓元宇宙的特点， 也就是当你拥有不同的ghost， 你就用了这个角色在这个世界中的视角， 比如在同一个小说中， 黄色皮肤的ghost可能看到的是主人公1的视角， 而蓝色皮肤的可能是主人公2的视角， 或者说可能看到不同的结局。 这里我们有多方面的考虑， 首先给这个平台增加一些趣味性， 另外我们也希望用户看完了一个小说的一个侧面， 更愿意去看另一个侧面， 这样能促进一些NFT的流动性。

As I said earlier, our goal is to make a platform for creators, and writers are creators for sure, and the reason we chose novels as a starting point is that this form is typical and simple enough. I'm not saying it's easy to create a good novel, but a novel only needs to be written and do not need any extra tools and high curve skills, but if we start with a, for example, a game, we need to design and write code, test, and we need a novel like a script as well.

For a novel platform, we can create content relatively fast, so we can find problems and solve them in this stage with this product. Writing a novel may also require collaboration, as the writer writes the novel, which requires some to translate, for example, and here we can test how to get different contributors to collaborate with the same product.

And your second question is, what is the special point, we hope that the novel here has a few so-called metaverse characteristics, which is, when you have ghosts, you’ll have a totally different perspective in the world. for example, we have some multiple endings, multiple characters novels. in the same novel, the yellow-skinned ghost may see the perspective of the main character 1, while the blue-skinned may have another angle, he/she may experience the main character 2’s story. Or different holders may see a different ending.

Even for this fun part, we actually do this with multiple purposes, first of all, to make this platform interesting, second, we’ll test what we should do for the functionality of one user with multiple NFT login, and the third one, we also hope that after reading one side of a novel, users will be more willing to read another side, so we can promote some NFT mobility.

那在小说上线后呢？ 有没有一些别的计划？

And after that? Are there some other plans?

首先我们工作的中心是寻找一种合适的能给创作者利润的方式， 早期的阅读都是免费的， 未来他们会再把创作分享给读者的时候获取一些收益。 或者有的有开放结局的小说， 当社区中有人愿意去续写的时候， 也会给原作者一些收益。

目前我们有计划做一个多角色的页游， 因为我们有Game Developer。 其实我们还有一些关于音乐创作的想法。 音乐创作是个典型的需要多角色协作的创作过程， 我们希望从小说这里的协作经验可以帮到后续的产品开发和设计。 但是很明显音乐创作需要工具， 我们也希望可以再后续社区中找到一些社区里更加专业的成员， 能帮我们去完成后续我们想做的数不清的工作。

The most important thing is how to find suitable, long-term ways to give the creators profit, like tickets income, reading in the early stage is free, but in the future, the reader may need to pay some fee to express their gratitude. Another plan is for some novels with open endings, when there are people in the community who are willing to continue, they will also give the original author some revenue, we are thinking about this, we don’t want to create a Ponzi, our team wants this product probably not to grow too fast, but live in a healthy status.

And we also have a plan to make a multi-character web game, one reason is we have Game Developers, and novels are games, but text games without animations, so they are similar, easy to move from one to the other. We also have some ideas about music creation. we called hippy, right? Music creation is typically a collaborative process that requires multiple creators to work with each other, and we hope that the collaborative experience from building the novel platform will help us in subsequent product development and design. But obviously, music creation requires tools, and we hope to find some more professional members of the community to help us with the countless tasks we want to do later.

我们注意到你说你们有一些AI功能， 可以介绍一下么？为什么要做这个？

We noticed that you said you have some AI features, can you tell us about them? Why do you want to do this?

目前有一些简单的功能， 比如我们让Ghost有一段自己歌词， 是GPT-3 根据一首很Hippies的歌词， 根据他们的穿着生成的，我们原来的目的是给这些Ghost增加一些趣味。生成的结果有的不错， 有的感觉好像在说梦话， 但正好我们都是Ghost， 说梦话似乎也符合他们的特点。

我们接下来的计划是做一个chatbot， 让鬼可以和人来对话，总的来说就是我们希望让他不只是一幅jpg， 还是一个拥有灵魂， 拥有性格的朋友。

但在那之后我们想， 既然我们以前做过AI项目， 又想要做一个给Creators的平台， 为什么不做一些具体的能帮助他们的产品呢， 所以这也是我们正在计划的部分。 我一直觉得区块链和AI是很好的组合， 一个是生产力一个是生产关系和协作制度， 都是为了提高工作效率而生。

Currently there are some simple functionalities, for example, we make the Ghosts have their own lyrics, you can see the lyrics on our official website later, the lyrics are generated by GPT-3 based on the lyrics of a very Hippies song, and based on what they are wearing, our original purpose is to add some fun part to these Ghosts. Some of the results were good, some felt like they were talking in their sleep, but that’s ok, we are all Ghosts, so talking in our sleep seems to fit their profile.

Our next plan was to make a chatbot where the ghosts could talk to people, in general we wanted to make our NFTs not just a jpg, but a friend with a soul and a personality.

After we come to this point, we are start thinking why not to create some useful things, since we've done AI projects before and we want to make a platform for Creators, why not make some functions that can help them: like the AI may give the writer some inspiration of where this story going. We hope our community give us feed back of what they need in futre. I always think blockchain and AI are a good combination, one is productivity and the other is production relations and collaboration system, both are made to improve efficiency.

作为工程师团队， 你们在技术方面有什么优势么？

As a team of engineers, what are your technical strengths that you want to introduce to people?

我们是 2020 年初接触 solidity 语言和区块链开发。我们早期一直在参与朋友的 DeFi 项目，以及在一些 L2 的区块链上进行基础工具的开发，2021 下半年开始接触 NFT 和 web3 应用开发。在决定自己发行一套 NFT 的时候，已经有将近两年的链上开发经验。很多 solidity 的坑，比如 gas 的优化，重入的避免，链下签名的漏洞，等等，我们都踩过。

在2020年之前我们自己在创业，积累了很多前后端开发和服务器运维的经验，这是我们的另一个优势，我们相互之间的配合比较熟练和规范，迭代效率高，并且在处理高并发和系统可用性上，相对于其他团队我们还是有不少优势。

We were introduced to solidity language and blockchain development in early 2020. We had been working on a friend's Defi project and on some L2 blockchains for basic tool development in the early days, and then we started to get into NFT and web3 applications development in the second half of 2021. By the time we decided to release our own set of NFTs, we had almost two years of on-chain development experience. We have a lot of experience on how to solve problems in solidity may fuck things up, and how to optimize the product, such as gas optimization, preventing reentrant, off-chain signature vulnerabilities, and so on.

We have accumulated a lot of experience in front-end development, back-end development, server operation, and maintenance since we started our own business before 2020, like in 2015, which is another advantage of us. We know how to cooperate with each other, with high iteration efficiency, we know how to build products step by step, and we still have many advantages over other teams in dealing with high concurrency and system availability. So, you’ll see.

你们和其他蓝筹NFT有合作么， 合作方式是什么？

Do you work with other blue chip NFTs and how do you do it?

我们聊了一些蓝筹NFT项目， 之前我们刚刚聊过BAYC和Punk的社区**（这个再确认一下）**， 我们希望他们也能参与到我们早期的产品的使用中来。我们的团队还是Crypto Coven的粉丝， 我们非常喜欢他们的相性， 不着急卖很多NFT， 而是慢慢做自己的事情， 运营自己的社区， 这让他们的持有者社区的质量很高。所以我们也和他们聊过了， 平台的一些功能也会开放给他们的持有者。还有很多最近知名的项目我们都和他们聊过了， 当然有一些我们也会采用赠送一些白名单的方式， 但如果只是这样就太无聊了， 我们希望能让他们的支持者们也变成我们的支持者， 变成我们的早期用户

We talked with some of the blue-chip NFT projects. like we just talked with the BAYC and Punk communities earlier, and we'd like them to be involved in using our early products as well. Our team is also a huge fan of Crypto Coven, and we really like what they are doing, learnt a lot of things from them, not rushing to sell a lot of NFTs, but taking their time to do what they should do and run their own community nicely, which makes their holder community very high quality. So we have talked to them and will open up some of the platform features to their holders. We've also talked to a lot of recent well-known projects, and still talking with more teams with high potential, of course, some of them we're going to give whitelist to them, but that would be boring, and we'd like to make them our friends, our supporters, to become our early users.

其他呢？ 还有什么有补充的

What about the rest? What else do you have to add?

我们设计了很酷的周边， 有hoodies， 甚至还有underpants和一双看上去很fancy的袜子， 我很喜欢那双袜子， 晚些时候我们的官方twitter会发出我们的设计， 我觉得你们也会喜欢他的

We designed a cool bundle, there are hoodies, there are even underpants and a pair of fancy looking socks, I really like the socks, later our official Twitter will send out our design, I think you will also like him.

目前团队背后有大型投资机构的支持么？

Is the team currently backed by a large investment institution?

目前没有， 团队现在的目标是做好产品， 刚才介绍过了， 我们是一个由有足够产品经验的core contributors组成的团队， 有足够的能力来建设一个不错的产品， 而且作为一个web3社区，面向的又是创造者， 在产品完成后， 我们也更希望力量的来源是社区， 甚至不是我们自己。 但是未来如果有机构和我们的creators一起来创造点什么的话， 我们也始终欢迎大家来一起完成一个不错的产品。

Not for now, our main goal is to build a good product, like I just introduced, we are a team of core contributors with enough product experience to be able to build a good product, so we do not raise funds to pay for development. And as a web3 community for creators, after the milestones for now achieved we would prefer the community, not ourselves, to be the source of power. But in the future, if there are organizations interested in working with us and our creators to create something, we always welcome them to come together to join us.

问一个轻松一点的问题， 你们叫HippyGhost， 你觉得什么是Hippies呢？

The last question, you guys are called HippyGhost, what are Hippies in your opinion?

说实话在做这个项目之前， 我印象里的嬉皮士是Roadtrip,  Anti-power with a peaceful way, 比如枪管中的玫瑰， 甚至是drugs或者是过于开放的性关系。 但后来因为做了这个项目我找到一段Jobs的话， 大概意思是， 后来的Hippies只是太极端了， Hippies的出发点是可贵的， 是超越日常生活的， 生活中充满着琐碎， 关于财产， 关于职业， 但是真的Hippies是在这样的日常生活中去寻找一些不一样的东西， 去寻找真相， 为此有的人愿意去当诗人也不去当银行家。

我觉得这也是我们的追求， 虽然名字不是我取的。 这个新世界里最近也有很多让人觉得不太愉快的， 过于逐利的项目， 我们也希望我们是其中的那些Hippies， 去做Web3世界中的诗人， 能真的为这个新的世界contribute一点我们的所长。

To be honest, before I started doing this project, the meaning of Hippies for me was Roadtrip, Anti-power parades with a peaceful way, like roses in the barrel of a gun, or even drugs or too open sexual relationships.

But later, because we start building this project, I found a quote from Jobs, which he said in an interview, that one really moved me. He said that the starting point of hippy is valuable, that is something beyond the daily life, beyond the career, the family, the two cars in the garage, but hippy is the other side of the coin we don’t talk that much. And the hippy is to find what real life all about, the understanding from most of us, the sex and drug thing is someone swing too far. The actual hippy is the reason some people are willing to become a poet rather than a banker.

I think this is also our pursuit. In this new world, there are a lot of unpleasant and overly profit-oriented projects recently, and we hope that we are among those Hippies, to be poets in the Web3 world, to work and stand with creators all around the world, use our strengths and skills we learned to make this new world better.