Baron Davis launches SLiC, a Web3 platform for athletes and fans

For National Basketball Association fans of a certain age (raises hand), we remember Baron Davis as the electric point guard who in 2007 led the Golden State Warriors to a stirring upset over the heavily favored Dallas Mavericks. Fearless and fiery, Davis knew how to fire up a crowd.

He still does. Or, more accurately, since venturing into entrepreneurship, Davis has worked to excite and engage communities across a range of projects – offline and online and now Web3. With The Black Santa Company, Davis launched a mix of block parties, games, mixed media stories, apparel, books and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to celebrate diverse and inclusive storytelling.

The Black Santa Company is a multi-hyphenate – many different things at once – much like Davis himself. He can rap, he can play, he can make savvy business plans. It was tougher for athletes to do 20 years ago. “When I was making beats and rapping, you couldn’t release an album as a basketball player,” Davis says in a Zoom interview. “Now 20 different athletes have albums out and their fans are supporting them.”

So as more athletes become creators, Davis is building Web3 tools to empower creators and help them engage with their communities. Enter his latest venture, SLiC, which stands for Sports Lifestyle in Culture. Ultimately, Davis envisions SLiC as a multi-hyphenated mix of platform, production studio, community hub, publisher and streamer that connects fans and creators.

One of the first verticals Davis will launch is SLiC Images, which aims to be a decentralized platform, file storage product and licensing system for photographers – both pro and amateur. “If a picture says 1,000 words, we want to capture the story now because in blockchain and Web3, those words can live for 1,000 years,” says Davis, who opens up about the goals of SLiC, how he sees athletes using social tokens and utility tokens . in the future, and why even in the bear market, despite all the negative press, NBA players who know web3 “are still excited about it.”

The interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

Let’s start with The Black Santa Company. Was that part of your journey to NFTs and Web3?

Baron Davis: We were out playing Hollywood every day. Some producer, director or studio head. Finally we got an offer from a studio and they told me that they would pay for me to basically not be associated with the project for two years while they develop it.

And I thought, “Well, I have this whole vision of being able to bring in a group of creators.” And because of who Black Santa is, this should feel communal and we should be able to license the IP to small businesses.

Right. You wanted a seat at the table.

I didn’t want to go around Hollywood with the Hollywood elites selling out my brand, selling out my community, selling out my culture.

And then came NFTs. So that’s how Web3 came to be. It was like, “Let’s make Web3 and NFTs easy for our community.”

What are the goals of SLiC Images and what problem does it solve?

The problem we’re solving is, first, photographers have never had a marketplace. Another is, think about the way photos are shared and the way people take photos and random photos and selfies at conferences or basketball games. When you look at LeBron [James] shot [breaking Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s scoring record], everyone in the arena had their camera out. There are 1,000 photos of LeBron’s last shot. With SLiC, you could view, nominate and identify certain images to use and license.

Ah, so in theory SLiC would be a platform for anyone in the arena to store their photos on chain, and they would actually own them and be able to license them, as opposed to just giving them to Instagram?

Absolutely. If a picture says 1000 words, we want to capture the story now because in blockchain and Web3 these words can live for 1000 years. So we look at it and say, “Well, SLiC Images should be the database where you can go back to 2023, 20 years from now, and put in a date and all your images will come up and they belong to you.”

Interesting. So is this almost a competitor to Instagram, in a weird way?

Yes, it’s just a longer process [with Instagram]. If you filmed a documentary, or if you wanted to use a photo as a flyer, right?, our goal is to create a database for those photographers, those galleries, those publishers. And now the next big documentary or Hollywood film or festival will have the opportunity to have access to the images.

Smart. How has it been to launch this in the bear market?

I think it has affected us a lot. We’re just a small design shop, right? We haven’t had the greatest visibility. So when we came out the market crashed. But we are builders.

I’m sure you’re still in touch with NBA players. What would you say their stance is now on crypto and Web3? Have they soured on it in the bear market?

I would say for those who know and understand it, they are still excited about it. I think they are waiting for the right opportunity and the right platform.

For us, we want to invest in culture and we want culture to have a place at the ownership table, so it’s a real partnership. Because I would like to buy an NFT, a picture, a highlight, a picture, a trading card, knowing that it comes from the players in some way, or from someone who was actually a part of it?

As opposed to just uploading my photo to Instagram and waiting 10 years to find out if I’ll ever get paid for content I no longer own.

You’ve commented on utility tokens in the past and how you see them as different from social tokens. Can you elaborate?

Oh, man, I’ll give you all the sauce. So there are two use cases for tokens, I think. For us, from the SLiC side of things, the social tokens allow you to socially interact with talent and content and experiences, things like that. You can earn benefits, you know what I mean? You can earn and win auditions, tests and things like that. Because you’re a contestant, you might not have the resources, right? You may not have the financial resources, but you have the talent and there is a way to get to know people socially through social media and enjoy their work. So I think social tokens allow you to enter the community.

Utility tokens are your membership, right? It means you are part of something. You can bid on things. You can use tokens to participate in things. You can use tokens to support projects. So really, when you think about utility, you think about participation.

Someone buys tokens to hold them, right? Some buy tokens to use them. And some buy tokens because they want to see what happens. And so for us, as we start to work through our token structure, it’s more about the tool.

What is your prediction for how athletes will use tokens? Do you think this will be widely used?

Well, if I predict SLiC and if I predict the future, I think if the token is the tool, and if we look at the evolution of the internet, if we look at the evolution of a blog page or a fan page or Instagram or followers, we are common in nature .

Our greatest responsibility as athletes is, in no particular order, to our family, the game, our team, the city, and then the fans. And you know it’s the fans that make you feel good about your work. So I feel that the athletes have the opportunity to create an infrastructure and a system through SLiC, right?, where they can interact with the fans through their token.

So is this type of token a future vertical for SLiC?

It is the SLiC of the future. It’s also time for SLiC, you know what I mean?

Think of the New Age athlete. Back in the day, when I was making beats and rapping, you couldn’t release an album as a basketball player. Now 20 different athletes have albums out and their fans are supporting them.

And as people [athletes who are also entertainers] begin to realize, “I have to align myself with a community,” we want to be that destination.

Let me try to synthesize this. You point out an important cultural trend, that in the last 10 or 20 years, athletes now have the ability, the agency, and the tools to be creators in many different facets of their lives.

Even if crypto didn’t exist, it was already happening in a broader trend. And Web3 can help accelerate this trend by removing friction from the system and empowering them to have real ownership and engagement in their community? And SLiC can help with this. Am I hot?

Absolutely. I love how you worded it. I’m glad this is being addressed. [Both laugh.]

Before we wrap up, what other projects excite you in the space?

I would say on the gaming side, metaverse. We have a project, “History of the Game,” where our goal is to build the digital Hall of Fame for basketball storytelling. We have a mini-documentary and you will be able to walk around and watch this documentary in a digital tunnel.

Do you want me to show you? I can show you?

[Over our Zoom, using his phone, Baron Davis then gives me a sneak peak of a mini-documentary of LeBron James passing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for the all-time scoring record. Davis directed it. He explains that it’s just a rough cut. It’s an immersive doc that you watch as you walk through a Hall of Fame-esque tunnel, with videos playing on both sides of you.]

This will eventually live in the metaverse that we are building. This is where we will save the work we have done. And now we can create the NFTs in our metaverse. So SLiC, as a production entity, creates these assets, and then these storytelling assets can now be ported into our museum. We can have award ceremonies, concerts or special storytelling in a virtual environment.

Congratulations on this, and good luck to you and SLiC.