Opinion: Metaverse is the next application layer for social interaction
Original title: "IOSG Weekly Brief | Metaverse Creator Economic Outlook #107"
Original source: IOSG
Part. 1 Insight
By Ishanee Nagpurkar, Investment Associate
This article is only for industry learning and communication, and does not constitute any investment advice
Google Keyword Search "Metaverse"
The Power of Virtual Worlds
We see the Metaverse as the next application layer for social interaction, Facebook (now Meta ) is moving from a flat 2D social media platform to a fully immersive experience. The main attraction of virtual worlds is that people can engage in simulated activities with a degree of freedom compared to the real world. And the higher the degree of freedom, the more opportunities for design. However, a higher degree of freedom does not always mean better: in a gaming world, rules are necessary to ensure a full gaming experience.
The concept of metaverse originated in 2003 and was hosted by Linden Laboratory an experiment of . They call their virtual world "Second Life," and the project has gained some popularity. Today, we unknowingly consume virtual reality across the entertainment industry through movies like Marvel and Star Wars, games like Grand Theft Auto and Horizon: Dawn, and virtual world simulations like Roblox, Minecraft, and Fortnite. Worlds and the Metaverse.
Building a company in the metaverse (for display only, not investment advice)< p>
Centralized Metaverse: Roblox
Let's start by analyzing the progress and influence of the centralized Metaverse. Because while the blockchain metaverse has a lot to offer, some of the innovations in the centralized metaverse in terms of pricing, business models, and products are amazing and most easily transferable to the blockchain metaverse. Even though Fortnite is one of the best-selling games, Roblox's business model has the strongest synergy with the blockchain game/metaverse. Sandbox is already emulating Roblox's vision and GTM.
Roblox provides the underlying technology to 9.4 million game developers, allowing them to publish more than 40 million games on the Roblox platform, and then sell them on mobile phones, Released on all game platforms including desktop and console. The platform and tools (Roblox's proprietary game engine) are free to developers, and they can earn Robux (the in-game virtual currency) once their published games become profitable - by Q2 2021, Roblox developers $248 million has been earned. From this perspective, the Roblox Metaverse is a publishing and distribution platform.
Roblox offers users a free and paid model, they introduced $Robux and allow parents to pre-set wallets (minimizes risk of unknown bank transactions) , and convert the money into U.S. dollars when needed. Roblo earns about 1.25% from all Robux purchases (about $12.50 per 1000 Robux).
In the end, brand advertising, licensing, and royalties make up only a small percentage of Roblox's revenue. These brand advertising agreements/licensing agreements are with Disney's Marvel, Lego, at&t Warner Bros., Walmart, etc. Roblox scales its business by partnering with developers and brands: the developer retains full copyright to the IP, but Roblox reserves the right to license that IP and collect royalties when the IP appears on websites, forums, etc.
Statement: Since some game activities are not recorded on the chain and are not open source, some data are estimated results for reference
The "Big Four" Blockchain Metaverse: Sandbox, Decentraland, Somnium Space & CryptoVoxels
In Google search, the words most associated with Metaverse are cryptocurrency and blockchain. It is worth noting that in the blockchain metaverse, after people purchase land, they can customize the land according to their own preferences, which cannot be done by a centralized system. Governance Token, such as $MANA, $SAND can allow users to participate in platform governance.
1）Somnium Space
Somnium Space is a cross-platform metaverse, the main feature is VR technology, and is currently in continuous cooperation with Tesla Suit. Although the platform has gained attention in the metaverse, its recent development direction is to promote the development of Somnium Space's headset VR, Somnium Wallet, and incubate creators in its metaverse. At present, Somnium mainly relies on Opensea for secondary market transactions.
The main products of Somnium Space are as follows: WORLDS, PARCELS, AVATARS and ITEMs.
In Manpower is deployed on the avatar SKD and API to help creators create, tokenize, and trade avatars. Avatars brought Somnium Space over $500,000 in revenue in 2021, just its first year live. This reflects the user's love for UGC.
WORLDS is a small parallel universe built based on Somnium SDK, which can be divided into three categories according to size - 75MB, 200MB and 500MB. Users can travel freely among these universes.
Somnium PARCELS is a land that allows purchase and customization. Every PARCEL has a permanent URL link, allowing users to access it through the web at any time.
2) Decentraland
Decentraland emerged around 2017 and provided creators with a range of tools. In the Decentraland metaverse, the community can build a regional management system (such as dragon city), and Decentraland has also released a set of frameworks to encourage such ideas. wMANA, LAND and ESTATE are means of management protocols.
Decentraland's LAND and ESTATE NFTs act as an identity layer in the ecosystem and help users link ENS addresses to their own land. MANA is a token used for governance and distributed to land owners. The usage of MANAToken is as follows, Decentraland marketplace charges a fee for each transaction, MANAToken will be used to purchase NFT in Decentraland marketplace, thus creating an inflationary deflationary economic system.
Another interesting feature is that the land mortgage of this metaverse is supported by Ripio Credit Network, which supports people to establish a position and purchase in advance Parcel. Another point is that this does not mean that the land has been reserved, and other users can still purchase land from the market.
Finally, Decentraland pays great attention to the development of UGC and Builder Mode, and allows creators and developers to design scenes, wearables and different experiences . At present, in terms of wearables, 10.2k users have purchased 71k wearables, and the transaction amount has reached 85.5k ETH. In terms of items, 161k users purchased 640k items, reaching a transaction volume of 152ETH.
3) Sandbox
Sandbox focuses on building a UGC ecosystem (similar to Roblox), and provides creators with tools such as Voxel Editor, Game Marker and Marketplace modules.
Sandbox’s governance Token SAND gets 5% of secondary market transaction fees, half of which is fed back to $SAND pledgers, and the other half is allocated to Foundation developed as research. 25% of the fees charged for marketing and brand partnerships will also be fed back to $SAND stakers. Recently, Sandbox launched a game called Alpha Pass, which allows users to explore 18 different metaverse experiences and get up to 1k SANDToken at the same time. Up to now, 200k Alpha Hub visitors have obtained a total of 5k Alpha Passes.Sandbox Assets activity and reached 6.9k ETH, and the trading objects are all NFTs under the Sandbox metaverse.
4) Gamefi Universe
like Axie Infinity, Illuvium, Star Atlas The virtual world/economy has the attributes of the metaverse, and will derive other metaverses, but will give birth to different rules of the game.
Enter the Metaverse
You can participate in this universe by joining any of the companies mentioned above. If you're an experienced player, then you'll definitely enjoy navigating the game's universe. If you are a social person and you are interested in the concept of an open world, or you may be a speculator, then buying governance tokens and investing in the Metaverse Index will be a way.
Forecast for the metaverse (medium and long term)< /h4>
1) User-generated content is king
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In the future, more and more products will test the water in the two-dimensional trading market, providing opportunities for creators and brands to co-create and auction. This can extend to metaverses, avatars, and other in-game products. Skin trading and gambling already exist in the game universe, but future games will integrate UGC into their native universe. Other UGC concepts such as Twitch live broadcast and Tokenized video playback will continue to show dividends. As the metaverse and its internal content gradually mature, more native live broadcast services and e-sports platforms will be born in the future to create interactive experiences for users.
2) Explosive demand for head-mounted VR
December 2021, Oculus has witnessed volume sales of 5.3M-6.8M, a 90% year-on-year increase in average daily usage. Playstation announced the launch of PlayStation VR2. The CES 2022 conference also had a lot of discussions around AR/VR devices.
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3) Interoperable DIDs create the conditions for an immersive metaverse experience
As more users become more familiar with the metaverse and especially the blockchain metaverse, decentralized ID will become an important part. Take Sismo, CyberConnect, DeSo, and Mem Protocol as examples. These projects are empowering the construction of a new generation of identity systems.
4) Growth of brand metadata and metadata content
b>
As consumers are drawn to shiny virtual reality headsets, more and more brands are starting to build Its own metaverse to attract consumers' attention, such as the sandbox of H&M and Sotheby's. Disney' Marvel, which previously used sandbox games, applied for a patent for a "virtual world simulator" for a theme park Metaverse. Musicians such as Snoop Dogg, Deadmau5, and Travis Scott have used the Metaverse for concerts and parties. Recur is another project working directly with brands to bring their content to Web3 via NFTs and other experiences in the Metaverse space.
2022 will be an extraordinary year for VR technology, content and metaverse expansion. It is likely that companies will grow in a low-key manner for some time to come (due to the current highly competitive environment), but for creators and developers they will continue to add value to existing platforms.
Part.2 Investment and financing event< /h3>
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Liquidity network WOO Network gets Binance Labs 1200 million US dollars strategic investment
*DeFi
The liquidity network WOO Network announced that it has received a strategic investment of US$12 million from Binance Labs, and will carry out further cooperation on the BSC. According to previous news, WOO Network completed a US$30 million Series A financing in November last year, with participation from Three Arrows Capital, Crypto.com Capital, AscendEX, MEXC Global, Fenbushi Capital, and BitTorrent.
OpenSea Completes $300M Series C Funding Led by Paradigm and Coatue Management
*NFT
OpenSea Announces $13.3 Billion Investment Post-valuation Completed $300 million in Series C financing, led by Paradigm and CoatueManagement. The funds will be used to accelerate product development, significantly improve customer support and customer security, make meaningful investments in the broader NFT and Web3 community, and expand the size of the security team. At the same time, OpenSea will soon launch a funding program to support creators and blockchain builders in the NFT field.
As previously reported, people familiar with the matter said that OpenSea is seeking a new round of financing at a valuation of US$13 billion. Meanwhile, OpenSea plans to acquire Dharma for more than $100 million.
NFT Game Starbots completes $2.4 million in private equity financing
*NFT
Livepeer completed US$20 million B+ round of financing, and the total financing has exceeded US$50 million< br>
*Web3
Decentralization based on Ethereum Live video platform Livepeer has completed a $20 million B+ round of financing, with participation from Alan Howard and Tiger Global, as well as existing investors such as Digital Currency Group, Northzone, and Warburg Serres. The new round is equity financing, bringing Livepeer’s total funding to date to approximately $51 million. Livepeer plans to use the new financing to expand its market share and plans to support video NFTs. Livepeer is a decentralized video transcoding platform. In July last year, Livepeer completed a US$20 million Series B financing, led by Digital Currency Group (DCG) and participated by Coinbase Ventures, CoinFund, and Northzone.
Nametag completed the seed round of financing with a valuation of 30 million US dollars, and Continue Capital and others participated
*Web3
The US dollar valuation completed the seed round of financing, and Continue Capital and others participated in the investment. Funding is used to create a robust, standard Web3 social layer on top of the Internet's traditional Web2 architecture. In the next few months, Nametag will support more chains, release Nametag API, and release NTToken.
Tribal Credit Completes $40 Million Debt Financing
*Crypto Payments
Crypto-focused enterprise payments platform Tribal Credit closes $40M Partners for Growth, a California-based investment firm, and the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), a nonprofit organization that supports the development of the Stellar blockchain, participated in the debt financing. The new funds will be used to expand the company's operations in Latin America.
TDX Strategies Completes $2.5M Series A Funding Led by Transcend Capital Partners
*Asset Management
TDX Strategies, a digital asset institutional derivatives platform, announced that it has raised $2.5 million in Series A financing, led by Transcend Capital Partners, Gobi Ventures, Baboon VC, Twin Peaks Group , Alameda Ventures, IWM Ventures and others participated in the investment. The financing will enable TDX Strategies to develop innovative investment solutions for digital assets and expand the geographic reach of its product distribution.
NFT Data Aggregator CryptoSlam Closes $9M Funding Led by Animoca Brands
*NFT
NFT data aggregator CryptoSlam received $9 million in financing, led by Animoca Brands, Mark Cuban, Sound Ventures, Binance Smart Chain, Stocktwits, Reid Hoffman, founder of the recruitment website LinkedIn, American hands Games company Zynga founder Mark Pincus and The Sandbox co-founder Sebastien Borget participated in the investment.
Alto Completed USD 40 million Series B financing led by Advance Venture Partners
*Asset Management
Alto Alto Announces $40M Series B Funding Led by Advance Venture Partners, with Unusual Ventures, Acrew Capital, Alpha Edison, Foundation Capital, Gaingels and Coinbase Ventures Participating . Alto will use the funding from this round to expand access to the Alto IRA (retirement account) and Alto CryptoIRA platforms, accelerate the hiring of all internal teams, and continue to develop new products.
It is understood that Alto provides users with a self-directed investment platform to invest their retirement account funds in alternative assets. Currently, Alto has nearly 20,000 fund accounts with nearly $1 billion in assets, 40% of which are dedicated to holding cryptocurrencies. Last April, Alto raised $17 million in Series A funding.
numbers Asset bank Sygnum completes US$90 million financing, led by Sun Hung Kai & Co.
*Asset Management
Digital asset banking and trading platform Sygnum has raised $90 million in a new funding round at a valuation of $800 million. The financing was led by Sun Hung Kai, with participation from Animoca Brands and Meta Investments. As previously reported, in June this year, the Swiss digital asset bank Sygnum launched a series of decentralized finance (DeFi) Token custody and trading, including Aave, Aragon, Curve, MKR, Synthetix, Uniswap and 1inch Network, Sygnum also added USDC banking services.
Decentralized lending protocol Goldfinch completes USD 25 million A+ round of financing, led by a16z
*DeFi
Decentralized lending protocol Goldfinch announces completion of $25 million A+ round of financing, led by a16z, well-known hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, encryption investment institution BlockTower and investment management company Kingsway Capital participated in the investment. It is understood that Goldfinch is an open loan market, without collateral, and uses a decentralized loan underwriting process. Previously, Goldfinch completed an $11 million Series A round led by a16z, with participation from Mercy Corps Ventures, A Capital, Access Ventures, and Divergence Ventures.
Part.3 IOSG post-investment project progress
Arbitrum announced that the network sequencer is down and the funds in the system are safe< br>
*Layer 2
Ethernet with Optimistic Rollup technology Fang Layer2 network Arbitrum announced that it encountered a network sequencer (Sequencer) shutdown and is recovering, and the funds in the system are safe. Arbitrum’s most recent block was generated at 18:29 Beijing time, and no new block or transaction has been generated for more than 2 hours. At the same time, the Matemask wallet cannot be connected to the Arbitrum One network.
Polygon Gas fee increased to 500 Gwei, or affected by the NFT game Sunflower Farmers< br>
*Expansion
PolygonScan data display, affected by NFT games Due to Sunflower Farmers, the cost of Polygon Gas has increased to 500 Gwei. Currently, Sunflower Farmers account for 46.42% of Polygon network gas consumption, while the second place only accounts for 4.79%. It is understood that Sunflower Farmers aims to motivate game players to obtain as many Token rewards as possible, and game players receive SFFToken rewards through smart contracts.
Polca has opened the 7th parachain slot auction
*Polkadot
Polkadot’s 7th parachain slot auction It was opened at 2:46 am today. Composable Finance currently collects the most DOTs of all active Crowdloan campaigns, followed by Centrifuge, Interlay, Nodle, and Litentry. The seventh auction is expected to close on the evening of January 13.
Moonbeam will be fully launched on the Polkadot mainnet on January 11
*Polkadot
Polkadot ecological smart contract platform Moonbeam Network Announced that it will be fully launched on the Polkadot mainnet on January 11. At that time, Sudo (super account key) will be removed, and balance transfer and EVM functions will be enabled. Token holders can obtain rewards through staking and participate in on-chain governance. After the network is fully launched, crowd lending participants can also obtain their initial rewards, and the specific distribution plan will be announced later. At the same time, developers can use Moonbeam
Celer cBridge will work with Frax to establish an open native asset standard to Realize multi-chain extension
*cross-chain
The cross-chain bridge cBridge launched by Celer, a layer-2 expansion platform, announced that it has reached a cooperation with Frax, a mixed-algorithm stablecoin protocol, to achieve multi-chain expansion by establishing an open native asset standard and rejecting supplier lock-in. Users can now use cBridge to bridge FRAX between BSC, Polygon, Avalanche, Fantom, Arbitrum and Boba at high speed and low cost.
Part. 4 Pulse of the Industry
a16z releases Web 3 policy proposals for global governments
*Regulation
a16z released Friday A policy agenda for governments around the world with 10 guiding principles on how to "build a better Internet". In this agenda, a16z encourages world leaders to actively think about Web 3 policy, establish a clear vision, provide clear and fair digital asset taxation rules, support multi-stakeholder governance, and more. Additionally, the policy agenda recommends that global leaders “accept well-regulated stablecoins” and provide a clear regulatory framework for private stablecoin projects. In October last year, a16z released a similar report to U.S. lawmakers and recommended that the Senate Banking Committee clarify laws related to digital assets.
PayPal is exploring creating a USD stablecoin
*Stablecoins
A spokesperson for payment giant PayPal confirmed on Friday that with the company’s encryption business PayPal is considering launching its own stablecoin. "We are exploring a stablecoin. We will of course work closely with the relevant regulators if we seek to move forward," a PayPal spokesperson said in an email.
< /p>
Evidence of PayPal’s exploration of building a stablecoin was found in PayPal’s iPhone app by developer Steve Moser and shared with Bloomberg, which first reported the news. The hidden code and images revealed the words “PayPal Coin ” will be backed by U.S. dollars. As previously reported, PayPal is actively monitoring layer 1 and layer 2 networks that process scalable payments, including Ethereum, Polkadot, Solana, and Algorand.
Data: The total scale of grayscale assets under management has reached 434 million US dollars
*asset management
Grayscale tweeted that the total asset management scale of Grayscale has reached 43.4 billion US dollars. Among them, the Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) traded at $43.28 per share, up 1.14% from the previous day; the Ethereum Trust (ETHE) traded at $38.27 per share, up 4.17% from the previous day.
BitDAO new proposal proposes to create zkSync Ecological accelerator and provide 200 million US dollars of funding
*DAO
BitDAO and Matter Labs jointly launched a new proposal on "zkDAO Endowment", proposing to create and fund a zkSync ecosystem accelerator owned by the community, and provide $200 million to help start the zkSync ecosystem and empower builders, And help BitDAO and all DAOs grow.
The initial capital allocation arrangement is as follows: grants 7.5%, security/audit 7.5%, strategic capital 70%, R&D 5 %, education 5%, operation 5%. BitDAO pledges to provide $200 million worth of various encrypted assets in 5 areas, namely: funding public goods and infrastructure, supporting the development of strong security practices and frameworks, research and development, leveraging industry knowledge to deploy strategic capital, and education.
Digital RMB Pilot APP Added 3 operating agencies, four types of wallets are anonymous wallets
*Digital RMB
According to the West China Metropolis Daily, compared with the digital renminbi APP that has been unveiled in the previous period, in addition to the six major banks of industry, agriculture, China, Construction, Communications and Postal Savings Bank, the pilot digital renminbi app also has There are more China Merchants Bank, MYbank (Alipay), and WeBank (WeChat Pay). Users can choose any one or several to open a digital RMB wallet. Among them, the four types of wallets are anonymous wallets, which can be opened only by verifying the mobile phone number. , without binding a bank account. It is worth noting that there are currently nearly 50 merchant scenarios in the APP, including JD.com, Meituan, Ele.me, Tmall Supermarket, Didi, Ctrip, Bilibili, etc.
United States Treasury plans to issue preliminary guidance on definition of cryptocurrency broker this month
*regulation
According to Bloomberg News, sources revealed that the U.S. Treasury Department plans to issue preliminary guidance this month, which will clarify the definition of cryptocurrency brokers in accordance with legislation passed by Congress last year. The Biden administration is preparing to regulate which cryptocurrency companies will be required to report large amounts of customer data to the IRS, people familiar with the matter said. More formal rule proposals will follow after the initial guidance is published, and Treasury officials declined to comment.
According to previous reports, the infrastructure bill passed in 2021 contains regulations for crypto brokers, including a A series of disclosure requirements, such as reporting to the IRS and investors customers' names and addresses, gross sales proceeds, and any capital gains or losses. Encryption industry insiders said that the definition of brokers in the statute is too broad and likely includes miners, stakeholders and software providers who cannot access such information, which will stifle encryption innovation in the United States and push encryption business to Markets outside the United States.
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