The ZAO presents
Long-form conversations with web3 builders, music-first founders, and the operators building what comes next.
Hosted by BetterCallZaal·New episodes Tuesdays
Alaskan Magpie spent years in web3 gaming partnerships before going solo in February. He demos Fable Boy, a retro console that runs in any browser with 30 games, and Waypoint, a space game where you own a solar system and AI crews fly your fleet, and shows Doctrine, a card RTS.
Slava, a builder and former audio producer, tours Base Rooms, an online desktop with the feel of the early internet where your Buddy visits a friend's desktop and you listen to music together. They talk about building at night with AI tools, keeping art and music on chain, and what that does to a creator's rights.
Danny, founder of P2E Inferno, tells how a friend's Ponzi scheme led him to Bitcoin, how losing a front-end job and playing Axie Infinity led him to Unlock Protocol through a Build Guild bounty, and why he built P2E Inferno as a learn-by-doing platform where communities create incentive loops for actions that matter to them. He walks through the live quests and daily quests, the move to stablecoin rewards, the human and agent layer, and composable verifiers for a WaveStation integration. Danny then asks Zaal how ZAOstock went, which leads into Down East ZAO, ZAO Respect versus the ZABAL token, and Zaal's idea for a launcher where an idea comes before a token.
Zaal sits with Erik and Jonathan (JC), the two builders behind Fotocaster, a Farcaster mini app for putting photography on chain. Both came to Farcaster as photographers - Erik as a nomadic investor who picked up a camera, JC as a working photographer and former co-host of I Took A Photo. They walk through why they built Fotocaster: frustration with high take rates and low ownership on existing NFT apps, and a thesis that putting something on chain should be separated from selling it - not everything needs to be a marketplace, some things are just collected. The app gives creators full control over editions, pricing, and titling, with artists keeping 99% and 1% routed back to fund free on-chain deployment. Two weeks post-launch: 371 creators, 787 collectors, 4,000 photos collected. Open questions discussed on air: moving storage from IPFS to Arweave, and how to make the public-good model self-sustaining long term.
Zaal sits with Kenny (founder of POIDH - Picture or It Didn't Happen), introduced via Maceo on the Let's Talk About Eth podcast. Kenny walks through the origin of POIDH from healthcare-coordination + Seattle-trash ideation, why permissionless + laser-specific bounties are the wedge crypto unlocks that traditional org structures can't, and how SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) map onto bounty writing. Demo of the May best-bounty meta-bounty + Zaal's BCZ YapZ ep 17 clipping bounty with 11 submissions from 11 creators. Conversation closes on cosmo-localism - using internet tools to pull global resources into rural Maine - and the AI-agent opportunity to lower bounty-writing friction natively inside the POIDH UX.
Zaal sits with Andy Minton (Hangry Andy) of Hangry Animals + Hang Studio. 27-year creative veteran (creative director, animation studio owner, agency lead) who jumped to Web3 in 2020, mental-health-driven return to illustration via Twitch live streams. Origin: pivoted from "Angry Hippos" Hungry Hippos riff to 5-character NFT collection (hippo/moose/zebra/bear/gorilla), then to gaming-for-good platform with subscription-based charity donations (animal welfare, mental health, food poverty). Live Unity demo of food-delivery racer game with stacking mechanics, drone enemies stealing items, bomb pickups, climbing-spider crawlers. Toon-shaded Jet Set Radio aesthetic for tween audience. USPTO trademarked across merch + games + entertainment. Hang Studio agency funds Hangry Animals development. Just back from Games for Change at London Games Festival.
Jack Dishman (Dish) on building Clanker - the Farcaster-native ERC20 token launcher - how an in-feed AI agent became a launchpad, the evolution from chat-bot to flagship + alt-clients, and why in-feed experiences win.
Hannah of Farm Drop on building a volunteer-driven local food network across Downeast Maine since 2011, the Food for Health mutual-aid program, and an upcoming slate of community solution events.
Nikoline of Hubs Network on connecting physical web3/coordination hubs worldwide, sociocracy as a fractal governance tool, and the Plural Events format that runs the same conversation simultaneously across 12+ cities.
This conversation dives deep into the evolution of building in Web3-from early crypto experiences and NFT markets to the emerging reality of agent-driven systems and mechanism design. Zaal sits down with Jordan (JK Charters) to unpack lessons from past cycles, including the rise of meme coins, NFT liquidity challenges, and the breakdown of long-term holding behavior.
In Episode 13 of BCZ YapZ, Zaal sits down with Ali, founder of Inflynce, to break down how one of the earliest Farcaster marketing tools came to life. Ali shares his journey from trading crypto and losing everything to contributing in a Discord, earning a role through pure effort, and eventually building Inflynce after getting rejected from over 180 job applications. The conversation highlights how real opportunity in Web3 often comes from participation, not credentials.
In Episode 11 of BCZ YapZ, BetterCallZaal sits down with Roaring Sensei for a wide-ranging conversation that moves from martial arts philosophy to GameStop culture, community building, and the realities of growing an online presence.
In Episode 12 of BCZ YapZ, Zaal sits down with Saltorious.eth, a builder in the Farcaster ecosystem and creator of Among Traders, an AI agent-powered social deduction game. They break down Saltorious’s path from traditional finance into crypto, his experience building across DeFi and Web3 gaming, and why Farcaster has become one of the most powerful environments for builders today. The conversation explores how distribution, identity, and embedded wallets are reshaping product development.
Juliano (GIU) from Pinetree on his path from Brazilian Math Olympiads to MIT AI Lab (Minsky, Winston), writing a viral GPT-2 explainer, Transcend director of engineering, and building Pinetree - an on-chain platform for video creators with creator-owned monetization and distribution.
In Episode 9 of BCZ YapZ, Zaal sits down with Snax from Pizza DAO to talk about the global pizza party movement, DAO-native community building, and how crypto energy turns into real-world impact. Snax shares how Pizza DAO was born out of the Clubhouse NFT era in 2020, how they went from idea to treasury to 300+ pizzerias in just three months, and how Bitcoin Pizza Day evolved into a global coordination experiment spanning hundreds of cities.
In this episode of BCZ YapZ, Zaal sits down with Adrian (aka Divifly), the lead developer behind Empire Builder, for a deep dive into the technical infrastructure and future roadmap of the platform. Adrian shares his long history in the cryptocurrency space-from mining Dogecoin on a laptop in 2013 and navigating the 2017 ICO boom to his work as a technical writer for major protocols like Scroll and Rootstock.
In this episode of BCZ YapZ, Zaal sits down with Jordan (aka Yerbearserker), co-founder of Empire Builder, for a wide-ranging conversation on building sustainable onchain ecosystems. Jordan walks through his unconventional path into Web3 - from outdoor education and digital media to token design - and lays out the philosophy behind Empire Builder: helping creators and communities move from idea to durable, generative infrastructure. The discussion digs deep into digital scarcity, creator tokens, incentives, and why value should be built in products and communities first, not price charts.
ZM we’re yapping with Sven, founder of Incented - the on-chain protocol redefining how communities coordinate, reward, and create together. From his early experiments in DAOs to engineering a system for equitable contribution, Sven’s approach to decentralized collaboration blends real-world management principles with Web3’s open ethos.
BetterCallZaal sits with Daya, co contributor at Flix.Fun, for a detailed look at the new homepage system, the upcoming meDaya node, and the shift from Cosmos to Base. Daya explains how Flix.Fun evolved from years of work in the Cosmos ecosystem, why creator owned pages matter, and how their new Base deployment enables fast onboarding with email and gasless transactions. The conversation covers live streaming infrastructure, content distribution, video embeds, and what creators gain from hosting pages onchain.
BetterCallZaal sits down with Rock Opera, an engineer, pianist, and on-chain artist from Boston, to explore the intersection of art, code, and identity. Rock shares how a fascination with color naming became a blockchain project for tokenized color, what “natively on-chain” really means, and how composability is shaping the next wave of digital art. The conversation moves from the philosophy of ownership to practical coding, AI as a creative assistant, and the future of artist provenance.
BetterCallZaal sits down with Yoni Dubz, streamer, musician, and digital storyteller, for a deep talk about live creation, community, and the discipline behind staying consistent online. They explore how streaming turned from a side project into a core creative outlet, how to balance being entertaining and authentic, and why Web3 gives artists real control over their content. Yoni breaks down how he builds connections through Twitch and Retake, why every viewer matters, and what it takes to keep momentum when no one’s watching yet.
Rich Bartuc brings the story of PowerPacks to life. From GameStop memes to graded collectibles, he breaks down how a community of collectors and investors turned a moment into a movement. Zaal and Rich go deep on finance, culture, and the psychology of holding through chaos - the true Diamondhands mindset.
BetterCallZaal kicks off the first episode of BCZ YapZ with Deepa, founder of GrantOrb, a tool that uses AI to make grant writing fast and accessible for creators and nonprofits. We talk about how Deepa entered Web3 through Polygon’s India COVID relief campaign in 2021, saw crypto’s social impact potential, and built GrantOrb to help people turn ideas into funded projects in minutes. This episode dives into how AI and Web3 are reshaping the grant process, why writing funding applications is a bottleneck for artists, and how automation can make fundraising accessible to anyone with a cause.
