PANTS: Across the Nanoverse II
@nattorare
19/12/2022
2 minute read
From New Zealand, to the Metaverse
One thing I love about Web3 is how it’s possible to have a perfectly serious interview with someone that I would formally refer to as ‘Lil Pants’.
“Aww, Pants!” she recalls, chuckling: a nostalgic nod to Calvin’s catch phrase in Calvin & Hobbes, a classic American daily comic that ran in newspapers across the world. She adopted the moniker while growing up in New Zealand, with previous iterations along the lines of “Shady Pants”, much to the annoyance of lead founder and university cohort - Rei.
“I don't know, he just has his moments.” Pants says, likely grinning, “He's like, ‘I don't like your name’. I'm like, ‘Good. You have to put up with it then,’.”
Pants and Rei, along with parts of the early Nanoverse team hailing from New Zealand: had individually and collectively decided to move out at different points in time. “It's just too small, too isolated and we felt trapped.” Pants laments, recounting that a ‘dark cloud’ would hang over her and many local entrepreneurs that she had met during her previous job in the Agricultural Tech field. In this time, Pants would notice a renewed spirit within her bosses when they would return from their trips to Silicon Valley, inspiring a need for change:
“[New Zealand]... It's beautiful, right?... If you're retiring. But where we are on our journeys - it's not the right fit.” Thus, Pants and the team would make arrangements to move while labbing on the early concepts that would eventually become today’s Nanoverse.
COVID would come in the middle - putting a stop to their travel plans - but would set the stage for a frantic and turbulent journey for the Nano team, as their launch would be on the same trajectory with the dawn of 2022’s NFT Bull Market.
With winds on their side, the 5555 piece Nanopass collection had minted out, despite the team having felt tense over the mint process itself. Once COVID had passed, Pants would move from New Zealand to the UK:
“I'm kind of on this journey to find a place that works for me and maybe eventually return to New Zealand,” she says, noting that her choice to move had been largely fruitful: “Being on this half of the world, I'm seeing benefits… I've managed to attend events. I've made appearances representing PxN & Nano at conferences, being able to speak on panels… It's really amazing and this is what I mean, like all the hubbub is over here. Whether it's in the UK or Southeast Asia, or America or Dubai like… It’s all [in] this half of the world.”