Raymond St. Martin is a founder, inventor and entrepreneur who has always been ahead of his time. At this moment, he is right on time.
His early exploration of how physical and metaphysical objects could be defined and understood by creating unique digital identities and unified through their defining attributes led him to explore blockchain technology to create a standard for hosting and connecting this content on-chain. From this, and with the help of his team at ESAIYO, the "SIO standard" is becoming a reality. A technology standard that has the potential to power cross-blockchain engagement, ownership, and a connected universe of context, knowledge, and the human experience. Secured, immutable, and continually evolving.
This emerging standard and the company that is its namesake, ESAIYO (Ess-Eye-Oh), ultimately developed as a result of Mr. St. Martin’s unique background across technology and media industries. From being a founding member of Dubtribe Sound System – a San Francisco-based house music band famous for playing live shows and its rave anthem, Mother Earth – at 19, to conceiving and launching a peer-to-peer recommendation site two years before YELP, or working to put the power of media creation and narrative in the hands of athletes and celebrities two years before The Players’ Tribune, Mr. St. Martin has always found himself at the forefront of bleeding-edge media, concepts, and technologies.
As his longtime colleague and collaborator at Big League Impact – legendary MLB pitcher – Adam Wainwright stated, "Raymond has such an incredible mind in so many different avenues. I’ve always admired his ability to take simple things into a deep space that I never knew was possible. He has a heart to help people and a spirit-driven attitude that takes his creativity and passion to a different level. I am definitely a big idea type of person, and I call on Ray-dawg anytime I need help taking things from being just a crazy idea to being crazy awesome. That’s what happened at Big League Impact. What began with just one player, and one team, grew into a charitable engine working with all 30 major league teams and players all across Major League Baseball. We would never have been able to do that without the brilliant mind of Raymond St. Martin."
Therefore, it’s no surprise that, seven years ago, long before today’s lofty valuations for NFT platforms and blockchain service providers, Mr. St. Martin envisioned that technology would soon allow for physical and virtual objects to be humanized and connected in ways similar to a human social network. This simple premise led to the patenting of The Social Identity of Objects Standard or the "SIO". Mr. St. Martin then worked to assemble a group that believed in the vision and that would work together to bring the full power of a platform to life.
ESAIYO, which was initially co-founded with his SIO co-inventor Andrew Van Valer and Silicon Valley blockchain and supercomputer stalwarts Ryan Quick and Arno Kolster, is now working with the Government of Barbados to explore the multiple uses of their proprietary software in protecting Barbados’ ownership pertaining to their heritage data and records while amplifying this information by surfacing and connecting the stories of Barbados’ people, culture, places, and significant objects through the launch of the Reclaiming Our Atlantic Destiny initiative.
With customers as diverse as NFT platforms, sovereign nations, and large manufacturers lining up to leverage the combined ESAIYO vision – the SIO Standard and the ESAIYO technology platform – ESAIYO is poised to help solidify humanity’s on-ramp to the metaverse.
ESAIYO is essentially building a framework to ultimately be the source of definitive narratives, authenticity, and provenance data for virtual and physical objects across the universe.
As Mr. St. Martin stated, "Seven years ago, I knew that soon everything would be connected by its context, so I mapped out an idea and shared it with a few friends. Andy was the only one crazy enough to see it, so we began working together on IP. The concept is called the ‘Social Identity of Objects’. Using a unique identifier specifically for the history of the object allows us to humanize and better understand any ‘thing’. From people, places, things, memories, events, thoughts and even collections, we are able to collect, connect and surface meaningful data in ways that have not been done before. Utilizing blockchain technology also gives us a valuable level of trust and security. For this reason, we formed ESAIYO and built a team that is creating a common language across chains and digital assets. As Web3 matures, consumer and brand adoption of digital assets is ramping up and ESAIYO aims to be an important player in the space. Every day that goes by without a technology to capture, secure, and connect significant, defining data and ownership is another day lost to history."
