My guest today is Christian Dittmeier. A former financial analyst, Christian was pulled into the crypto world after the wild and unexpected success of one of his side projects. Today, Christian is the co-founder of Evaluate, a platform for trading and swapping NFTs like Top Shot trading cards and Doodles wearables. In this episode, he talks about his insights and experiences in the world of NFTs. We discuss the different types of users, the value of swapping, and the decision to build on the Flow blockchain over Ethereum. Please enjoy my conversation with Christian Dittmeier. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to the best content to learn more, check out the episode page here. ----- This episode is brought to you by OKX. You may have seen OKX on McLaren’s Formula 1 race car or Manchester City’s football kit. But what is OKX? OKX has over 730 spot trading pairs, 280 derivatives markets, and 1000 options markets. It processes 400,000 requests per second with 99.95% uptime. That’s why over 20 million traders and institutions choose OKX when they want to trade. Visit okx.com to learn more. ----- Web3 Breakdowns is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Web3 Breakdowns, visit joincolossus.com/episodes. Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @Web3Breakdowns | @ericgoldenx | @patrick_oshag  Show Notes (00:02:33) - (First question) - How the founding team of Evaluate came to be (00:04:23) - What it was like for Evaluate to gain popularity so suddenly in the NFT boom (00:05:39) - How they made decisions about their business model and image (00:07:08) - How they think about collaborating with other builders in the space and branching out from their small niche market (00:09:51) - Dealing with the fast-moving and cut-throat nature of this nascent market (00:11:32) - Building a defensible and profitable business in an open-source world (00:13:35) - The nuances and challenges of deciding which chain to use for an NFT platform (00:16:14) - The irony of re-centralizing DeFi on an NFT platform (00:17:51) - His perspective on the community built around NFT capital (00:19:51) - Evaluate’s direct NFT-swapping system (00:23:28) - How sentimental value and “the endowment effect” play in to NFT valuations (00:25:40) - How NFTs can unlock new levels of fandom (00:27:37) - Key factors in building successful NFT systems and infrastructure (00:30:13) - Weathering volatility and staying innovative in the wake of the NFT boom (00:37:43) - The difficulties of avoiding speculators and securing a stable customer base  (00:39:48) - What he’s most excited to build over the next six months and six years