Dialogue with Co-CEO of Muverse: Empowering Hollywood with Web3, Reshaping the Ecology of the Music, Film and Entertainment Industry

After experiencing the game of the underlying public chain and the prosperity of DeFi and NFT, the encryption industry has gradually ushered in an era that requires applications as the core. The core of Web3 applications is to "break the circle", which is to enable hundreds of millions of non-encrypted users to gradually understand and enter the encryption industry. In addition to the playability of the product itself and the composability of the product, this process also requires the "blessing" of the entire industry.

The entertainment industry centered on music, games and movies as well as sports, The sports industry with competition as its core is an industry with a wide audience around the world, and it is also the industry that is most likely to produce super applications. In the field of sports, we have seen the success of Chiliz (Token: CHZ). In the entertainment industry, BlockBeats also recently chatted with Mark Rau, the co-CEO of the Web3 interactive entertainment platform Muverse, and listened to him share his views on current music, games & The view of the movie NFT market, and the path Muverse chooses to run through.

Muverse Co-CEO Mark Rau

Join Muverse

BlockBeats: Let’s start by talking about your experience and why you joined Muverse?

Mark:I started in the film industry 25 years ago and the film industry is always changing. We always need to adapt, for example from DVD to digital cinema and streaming. So to finance a film, you have to be very flexible. The film industry is also closely linked to music, fashion, design, the automotive industry, product placement and all other industries. So part of what I'm interested in is finding new ways of raising money, bringing creative people and money together.

In music, I meet a lot of musicians who are not happy with the situation because they don't make money. So the entire music industry was the first to really move to digital. With a lot of stuff, people lost their jobs and musicians couldn't make any more money. Bootlegs everywhere, and then the uneven hits are really bad for everyone. So the music industry was taken over.

Web3 brings many opportunities. My idea is to bring them together and lower the barriers to entry. But for the vast majority of musicians or people who like music, it is difficult for them to understand everything about the web3 industry, and it is also difficult for them to enter this industry. Moreover, whether it is movies, music or games, they are all art for the public. Therefore, if you want to make some changes to the entertainment industry through tools such as Web3, NFT, and DeFi, then you must design a game that allows all users to Products that are easy to enter, and bring new revenue models and incremental markets to the entertainment industry.

And Muverse is such a simple yet powerful product, I really like its concept, That is, Muverse is to facilitate frictionless transactions of global music, games, and movie assets. Promote the combination and development of the music, game and movie industries with web3 through the power of the community. I also have a deep connection with the ESL (Electronic Sports League) community, they are a famous e-sports league in Europe and the largest community in the world today. From ESL, I see the power of the community. By building a community, giving the community space to play, and supporting them through bonuses and sponsors, then this community will have the opportunity to bring huge business and social value. I clearly remember the uncontrollable excitement on Kent's (Muverse founder & CEO) face when he first introduced his idea to me. I've been working with Kent for over 10 years and I've only seen this look when we were working with James (DC CEO James Gunn) on Witchboy. After carefully studying Muverse's products and vision, I felt that my old friend (Kent) was trying his best to create a product suitable for Web3 music, so I chose to join Muverse without hesitation.

I have been involved in the Muverse project since its initial establishment, but before There is some business to deal with in the European market, so the addition was only recently announced.

BlockBeats: I am curious when there is a combination of music and Web3 Thoughts?

Mark: Kent and I are both Hollywood producers, so we There are abundant resources in the field. Kent's original idea was to start with movies, which we are all good at, but movies are a long-term field, and the experience for ordinary users to participate in the interaction will not be very good, so we choose to start with the music field where the public can participate. In our vision, the product we want to provide cannot be lifeless. It should be easy to use and have good user interaction and social attributes. Compared with movies, music has lower barriers to entry and is easier to practice. product idea.

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How is the Muverse different

BlockBeats: Muverse aims to What?

Mark: What Muverse wants to build is a complete web3 entertainment ecosystem, which includes NFT Asset exchange, NFT asset application & interactive scene, artist UGC platform, music & movie metaverse and entertainment underlying public chain. In order to achieve this ambitious goal, we will build our product matrix in stages. The goal of the first stage of Muverse is to be the world's top Web3 entertainment NFT asset exchange, and the goal of the second stage is to be the underlying public chain of entertainment.

BlockBeats: Why Facilitate Frictionless Music, Game & Movie NFT Assets trade? What is Muverse's solution?

Mark: Before building Muverse, our product team had analyzed all NFT related The platform has done detailed research and analysis. We believe that most products have problems such as low user activity, poor stickiness, sluggish secondary market transactions, and insufficient liquidity. Therefore, there are huge transaction frictions. One of Muverse's goals is to build the world's largest NFT asset exchange, so we need to solve the transaction friction problem in NFT asset transactions. Moreover, Muverse’s main income also comes from the transaction fees and taxes of assets on the platform. Lower transaction friction can promote higher-frequency asset transactions and bring more transaction revenue to Muverse.

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Muverse's idea of solving transaction friction is innovative and sustainable. We first fragment the NFT assets to obtain a standardized F-NFT. Then add a liquidity pool for F-NFT / MCT (Muverse Utility Token) through the AMM mechanism. Different from Blur's credit model (essentially liquidity mining), users' income from adding liquidity to the Muverse liquidity pool comes from transaction fees, so it will not bring Token inflation to the system.

Let me give an example for everyone to understand. On October 31, 2022, we cooperated with FNC, a well-known Korean entertainment company, and completed the Korean singer Lee Hongki (former FT-Island vocalist) Sales of the NFT of the single "I『m Missing You". The initial pricing is 0.6 ETH (the current floor price is 1.66 ETH), with a total of 200 shares and a total sales of 120 ETH. This sale was successful for the primary market issuance, but for the secondary market transactions, means to promote its circulation are still needed. To increase the liquidity of Token in the secondary market, the core is to promote the participation of small investors and high-frequency transactions. Therefore, through the NFT fragmentation function, first expand the base and precision of assets that can be purchased, and then cooperate with the AMM mechanism to launch F-NFT (Standard assets after NFT fragmentation)/MCT liquidity pool can solve the transaction problem very well.

In addition, give users a reason to have to buy, this is not allowed I won’t go into details about our rhythm game products and ecology. In Muverse, we first capitalize the music elements, and then make the assets props and enter the game ecological circulation. In this way, the investment attributes and functional attributes of music NFT are cleverly combined, thereby creating a real demand for fragmented music NFT assets in the game and generating continuous buying. Therefore, the F-NFT after entering the game becomes a functional item to increase game revenue and unlock specific benefits. For game users, it is necessary to purchase F-NFT.

BlockBeats: Why started with a rhythm game instead of something else?

Mark: The logic I just mentioned shows that Muverse needs to find suitable applications for NFT assets scene, and what I'm going to say next is why this scene should be a game in the first place.

In fact, there are many scenes that can be combined with music. For example, Tiktok is a combination of short videos and music. Combination, Smule is the combination of music and karaoke, Guitar hero is the combination of music and games, or the simplest scene of listening to songs, such as Spotify, Apple Music, etc. All scenarios were studied by Muverse, and in the end we settled on a combination of music and rhythm games. The reason why we finally selected the game scene as the initial scene is based on the following considerations:

1. The scene needs to have: I) low threshold for user participation; II) high user activity and high retention characteristics; III) have social attributes ;IV) Have a natural human firewall;

2. The scene should not be too heavy, and UGC should not be done in the early stage;

3. The scene should be interactive and focus on strong user interaction.

So, when we think about products from these three points, we First of all, the scene of listening to songs is excluded, because the user interaction of this scene is the weakest, and when combined with the incentive model, it is most likely to be cost-free, leading to rapid inflation. Later, we also ruled out the karaoke mode. This mode is OK in terms of user interaction and retention, and it also has a natural human firewall. However, from the perspective of the product, its essence is UGC. If the project party does not try to be a good user Guidance and content planning are only used as a means of Token mining, and it will not go far. If the project party wants to pay attention to the generation, guidance, screening and planning of user content, it needs a relatively large operation team to support it, and the early cost will be relatively high. And the karaoke model is not conducive to the development of new musicians, because users can sing, and there is a high probability that they are all well-known pop songs, so it is difficult for new musicians to have the opportunity to be discovered. The project party purchases the copyright The cost will also be higher. Therefore, after excluding the above two scenarios, the most suitable game scenario is naturally left.

Of course, this is not to deny the two scenes of listening to songs and karaoke, they also have their own Advantages, but it is not suitable as the main scene in the early stage. Muverse currently also integrates the listening scene (auxiliary) and the UGC tool (Muverse Studio) for new artists, and the project is relatively mature and stable, and the platform income is sufficient to support When we explore other scenarios, we will also consider launching a karaoke scene, or even a scene combined with VR fitness.

BlockBeats: How long has the product been in operation? What about user data?

Mark: Our closed beta version will start on October 15, 2022. The public beta version will be launched on November 29, 2022, and the public beta period will be 106 days. On March 16, 2023 our Google Play and iOS Testflight was officially launched, and users began to experience rapid growth. On April 2, we launched USDT/MCT transactions on Uniswap Yes, providing liquidity for MCT further promotes user growth. Since the product test version was launched, users have mined a total of 20,955,839 MCTs, of which 9,858,819 should be destroyed MCTs (for earphone upgrades, repairs, Mint), and 383,981 are Muverse revenue (earphone NFT Mint). The MCT Token consumption/output ratio is about 48.87%. Such data performance shows that the game ecology is healthy, and users actively participate in various activities in the game. The Muverse team attaches great importance to the openness and transparency of Token usage. We will regularly issue transparency reports for the community to read. The latest transparency report was released on April 2. For details, please visit: Transparency Report for Quarterly 2023.

Overall, our games have achieved success in attracting users, increasing activity and retention achieved remarkable results. We will continue to pay attention to user needs, optimize game experience, expand game scenarios, and cooperate with more high-quality resources to achieve long-term development and prosperity of the game. We believe that with the continuous enrichment and improvement of games, Muverse will become a more active, interesting and attractive game platform in the future.

The Muverse game "out of the circle" is loved by users of different ages and genders in different countries

The imagination of Muverse

BlockBeats: Can you give us a summary of what kind of product/ecology Muverse is going to build?  

Mark: As mentioned earlier, the core of Muverse is to promote global music, games And the frictionless transaction of movie NFT assets, but whether music, games or movies have a very mature market, and a very solid profit cake distribution method. Therefore, Muverse needs to create a new ecology and a new product portfolio in web3 to bring new narratives, new asset circulation methods, and create new interest cakes to the entertainment industry. Just like the success of Tiktok, it is because it has injected new vitality into the music market through the combination of music and short videos and remix, bringing incremental revenue, rather than cutting the cake of the original streaming media subscription model.

In terms of products, what Muverse wants to build is a combination of multiple "interaction & Revenue" scenario, product portfolio of NFT exchange and UGC tools. A variety of "interaction & income" scenarios are the basis. All assets traded on the NFT exchange can be given functional attributes to enter the "interaction & income" scene circulation, while some of the assets issued and traded on the exchange come from UGC .

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BlockBeats: The Muverse Hong Kong event was very successful. Does it help you in your future development? What are the next major product updates and market cooperation?

Mark: Yes, we and our investment agency Syndicate Capital held the Hong Kong Maritime Museum The Hollywood x NFTx cultural themed cocktail party was a huge success. We are honored to invite Liang Hanjing, Director of Financial Technology of Hong Kong Investment Promotion Agency, Hadi Badri, CEO of Dubai Economy and Tourism Bureau, and Akatsuka Yoshihito, a well-known Japanese art director, to participate. At the event, we announced our strategic cooperation with H3 Entertainment, and the plan that the two parties will work with Mr. Akatsuka to jointly develop a film based on his work "The Interstice".

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Hong Kong is a great place, which gave birth to "Oriental Wall Street" and "Oriental Hollywood". At our event, Mr. Liang Hanjing said that the Hong Kong government is committed to bringing Hong Kong back to the leading position in web3, for Hong Kong has injected new vitality. And it also emphasized that the Hong Kong government wants to tell a new Hong Kong story, so that when the world mentions Hong Kong, it not only thinks of money, but also culture, art and entertainment. Therefore, Muverse has great potential in Hong Kong in the future. We have recruited colleagues in Hong Kong and are looking for a suitable office location to be the location of Muverse's Asian headquarters. At the same time, it will also strengthen its connection with the Hong Kong Web3 Association to promote the development of Muverse in Hong Kong in an all-round way.

Muverse currently has three main product lines, "interaction + income" products, NFT exchange, And the platform Avatar. In the "interaction + income" product line, we will continue to enrich the gameplay of rhythm games and launch the battle mode. And the closed beta version of our NFT exchange is expected to be launched in the second quarter. Last but not least, we expect to release an avatar for the platform in May, with an associated image available for the community to Free Mint. Mr. Yoshihito Akatsuka is in charge of the art design and world view of Muverse Avatar.

Finally, we will start our Asia trip around May 20th, the team will start from Starting from Seoul, South Korea, offline Meetups will be held in Tokyo, Japan, Beijing, Hangzhou, and Dubai, United Arab Emirates. You can follow our official Twitter: @muversenft to learn about the latest developments. Welcome to participate in our activities.

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