Interview with Meme Cake- A Jolly Good Laugh!

We interviewed Meme Cake, a decentralized comedy platform that will bring gamification to their characters 'Dick' and his pet, 'Balls'. They see their project as a decentralized version of 9GAG and their goal is to introduce an NFT meme platform and NFT marketplace to the internet computer.

Can you tell us about your project?

Meme Cake is the world's first decentralized comedy platform for creators and artists to share their memes, comedy videos, or GIFs and register their Proof of ownership on the Internet Computer. Think of it as a 9GAG but decentralized. People behind this platform love to laugh, and it's for the global audiences, predominantly Generation Y and Z.

2. What makes your company marketable, and what will ensure its long-term success?

From the beginning, we focused on monetizing the platform rather than relying on token or NFT sales. We want to focus on the sustainability of the platform and focus on the core technology and consensus. We want to stay away from concentrating on NFT art. Instead, we would like to concentrate on NFT usability and monetizing the platform.

3. How many NFTs will be minted?

7,777

4. Why is Meme Cake NFT special?
Apart from the beautiful art, our NFT has a unique value in our platform. We provide NFT staking rewards. We use a Proof of Importance consensus protocol to define the validators voting power in our platform. This POI score is determined by factors such as your activity within the platform and the amount of NFT or token you are staking.

Proof of importance only counts NFT that have been in an account for a set number of days. Each activity (above a minimum size) contributes to an account's Proof of importance score. More significant and more frequent actions have a greater impact on the Proof of importance score. Accounts with a higher importance score will have a higher probability of being chosen as Prime Validator. The rewards are paid using native tokens, i.e., MCK.

5. Do you have any token sale planned for the future? If so, when? Can you give details?

Yes. We do. MCK will be the native digital cryptographically secured utility token of the Meme cake. As the native platform currency, MCK will play the role of the settlement medium, Platform Incentivization, Community rewards, governance, and Platform utility token within the entire meme cake ecosystem. We plan to launch the platform beta in Q1 2022. We are anticipating the token launch via reward programs for the beta members.

All NFT holders will receive tokens via airdrop through Proof of Burn participation.

6. What is Proof Of Burn?

Proof of Burn is a consensus protocol. Our NFT holders can burn their NFT assets through POB and receive MCK tokens in return. They replace burned selected NFT at a 1-1 valuation in $, valued at a fair price, using oracle valuations or market price.

7. Tell us more about NFT characters.

Our main characters of NFT are Dick and Balls. The backstory of Dick is pretty straightforward. Dick had a hard time growing up, and one day, Dick disappeared from his town Wachatoota. After twenty years, Dick reappears in Wachatoota with his pet "Balls." Dick is now an internet sensation, and he aims to conquer the town of Wachatoota with Dick memes. He is a lovely human being from inside and a total Dick from outside.

We are launching 7,777 NFT’s of Dick. All Dick NFT holders will get airdrop of Balls NFT on a 1:1 ratio. All you need to do is hold the NFT in your Plug or Stoic wallet, and we will credit it.

8. What excites you most about your launch?

I am grateful to see that the community accepted our idea of the product and pre-ordered our NFT. This is an excellent proof of trust in the vision, and nothing excites me more than someone believing in your idea and vision. When it comes to our NFT, The total concept and the gamification we bring into this NFT(dick & balls) is awesome, and I am very excited to see the Balls airdrop, bakery launch, and a lot more suspense are on the way.

9. What benefits do you think the Internet Computer has over other L1 blockchains when it comes to creating NFTs?

One of the primary reasons we are launching Meme Cake over the Internet Computer is the power of the Internet Computer's non-interactive distributed key generation (NIDKG) protocol. This is probably something that the community never discusses, but we strongly recommend anyone building private multi-assets or private NFT platforms to examine the NIDKG aspects of the Internet Computer. On the Internet Computer, each old signer only needs to broadcast a single message to the new signers.

Many concepts from advanced cryptography are utilized to ensure that this is done securely, including encryption with forward secrecy and non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs. These non-interactive methods are ideal for an asynchronous environment. Internet Computers do not have to keep track of changing public keys. The advantage of this method is that the other parties on the Internet Computer do not have to keep track of evolving public keys.

The gas fee is probably the last reason :).

10. What attracted you initially to Blockchain?

The Internet 2.0 was a big revolution, and billions of people got access to remarkable technologies, many of which were free to use. The bad news is that it became much harder for startups, creators, and other groups to grow their internet presence without worrying about centralized platforms changing the rules on them, taking away their audiences and profits.

This, in turn, stifled innovation, making the internet less attractive and dynamic. Our entire team comes from a startup background, and we firmly believe that decentralization can add a lot of value and perhaps replace some big centralized giants we see today. We saw the value of decentralized systems in the first era of the internet. Hopefully, we'll get to see it again in the next.

11. Of all the platforms you could have chosen, why did you decide to build on the Internet Computer?

I came to know about the Dfinity project back in 2018. One of my friends shared a whitepaper on a Slack group, and he said, "you have to read this." It was fascinating to read about the idea that basically, we can use some of the distributed decentralized architects to create an entirely new cloud and completely new internet, and this blew my mind.

I have a background in Network Engineering, and Dfinity gave me a new perspective on decentralization. I believe Dfinity has a different approach towards decentralization, and if we can achieve it, it's a game-changer for the whole world. At the moment, I don't see any other blockchain that offers blockchain ethos to the next level.

12. How long has your company been established, and what is your business model based on?

We started working on Meme Cake in Feb 2021. Our business model is based on data integration, and our first step focuses on application-based integration since the plan is to support decentralized and centralized systems.

13. What challenges have you faced while building your company?

The primary challenge was understanding the technology and going through the documentation. Dfinity was in the early stages of launch when we started working on this project, and it was challenging to understand the backend. Other than that, we did not face any challenges.

14. What overall vision do you have? Do you have a roadmap? If so, what does it involve?

Our vision is to build a fully decentralized comedy platform and deliver value to our investors and the community. We have a roadmap, and it involves many exciting stages like Private Bidding and purchasing of NFTs. Our goal is to introduce the Zero-Knowledge Proof marketplace to the Internet Computer. At the moment, we don't see this happening in other blockchains, and if we can introduce this, it's a huge step forward.

15. What advantages do you believe you have over other competitors?

We have a good team with a lot of knowledge working with good decentralized companies like Cardano and Vechain. Our team has worked together for the past six years, and we have deep experience building complex systems and architecture.

We are also focusing on building a community and bringing value to our NFTs. Our focus is on actual working platforms and monetization strategies, and it's more like giving back to the community.

16. Tell us about the team

Meme Cake is a project developed by former NEM, SYMBOL & VeChain developers, and it's led by one of the Sr. Product Managers of Cardano. The team has over 30 years of software development experience combined and has worked in the blockchain industry for the past five years.

17. What advice do you have for anyone working in the same space as you?

Focus on the backend and introduce things that add value to the project. Focus less on floor price and more on building solutions. If you deliver value, you will eventually get more interest from the community.

18. What other projects building on the Internet Computer are you most excited about?

I am excited about DEX platforms that are about to launch on the Internet Computer.

19. Do you have any plans to collaborate with other projects building on the Internet Computer?

Once the project reaches the beta stage, we are excited to start the conversations with companies building decentralized social media/chat solutions.

20. What advice would you give to anyone trying to enter into the world of NFTs?

If you are a buyer of NFTs, don't get excited because of the artwork. Understand the technical aspects and the usability of the NFT. You also need to understand if this is something you will use in you're real life. If you don't like games but invest in a metaverse/gaming project, you are probably doing something wrong. Another vital aspect that I look for is the background of the founding team and their technical knowledge.

21. Why do you think NFTs have become so valuable in such a short space of time?

FOMO (that's the truth).