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The metaverse track was once the "brightest star in the night sky" in the last round of bull market:
After playing "Ready Player One" several times, the players excitedly imagined that within five years, they would be able to wear a VR gold suit and wield a lightsaber to slash at each other;
Investors watched the price of Sandbox under Animoca rise from 0.05 U at the beginning of 2021 to 8 U by the end of the year, a 160-fold increase in one year, which made people excited;
The last madness appeared at the end of October 2021, when Facebook changed its name to "Meta", and the official announced that it would take the deity's entry into the Metaverse as the main direction of attack in the future, and the whole market was boiling. On the 10th day after the news, on November 10, 2021, the price of BTC pie reached an all-time high of 69,000 U, and the stock price of Meta also broke through 350 U. The entire encryption and investment circles were roaring with carnival.
However, the laws of history are always repeating itself, and the peak of glory is not far from collapse. After the end of 2021, the encryption circle has entered a long bear market until today. A report in October last year exposed the "Metaverse Scam": only 9% of the metaverse scene Horizon Worlds dominated by Meta has 50 or more visitors, and most of them are uninterested; two metaverses in the encryption circle Cosmic project leaders Decentraland and The Sandbox have daily active users of 38 and 522 respectively, and these two data correspond to a valuation of about US$1.3 billion; then the headlines directly cut off the metaverse project "Party Island".
Is something wrong with the metaverse? Surely not, Xiao Zha is not stupid. In addition, Roblox’s “Minecraft” still has an annual revenue of 500 to 600 million U.S. dollars, with a DAU of about 50 million, which is quite a beautiful report card.
The main reason is that this track is too early, the infrastructure is too backward, the narrative is too large, and there are too many sub-paths that can be developed, which makes people feel that it is impossible to start. The success of Roblox is that it has found the entry point for subdivision early: it mainly focuses on children's puzzles and social interaction, and parents have no reason to object to the logic of developing intelligence.
The current predicament of the Metaverse is similar to when personal computers were first popularized more than 20 years ago. The price of a 486 computer is the salary of an ordinary family for a year. To access the Internet, you need to connect to a fixed-line telephone to dial up. The most common users use it is to browse the news webpage and receive emails. What impressed me most was that at that time Some views of the paper media: News, can’t newspapers be read? Isn't it okay to write emails? If you give up your home computer because of poor initial user experience and practical value, you may miss the entire Internet wave.
Future developments lie in devilish details. I still remember how a classmate from a better family managed to win over his parents and bought a 486 computer: At first, the family definitely wouldn’t let him buy it, “I know you buy a computer just to play games! And it’s so expensive! What did you learn?” Can’t you learn programming? Can’t you learn it in the school’s computer room? Can’t you learn it by yourself?” So the student borrowed a computer from a good friend to play for three days during the summer vacation, and put it in the hall. During the day, he pretended to learn programming. During the break, I played minesweeper and taught my parents how to play. As a result, after he woke up in the early morning of the first night, he peeked through the crack of the door and saw that his parents were still having a minesweeping PK competition in the hall... A few days later, a new computer became his new favorite.
The same is true for the metaverse. The new generation of children grew up playing Roblox "Minecraft". For UGC, there is a path dependence for social interaction in the game. When a few children hang out with each other, playing games while wearing VR is already the norm. The cloud universe is to the new generation, similar to the minesweeper twenty years ago to the new computer players. So my judgment is that there is no problem with the metaverse track, but the basic construction has not kept up with it. After five to ten years of development, the development of the scene in the track will exceed everyone's imagination.
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The VR faction represented by Meta
Players have the strongest consensus on this category of metaverse gameplay, and it is also the track that Zuckerberg is betting on, which is to drive the development of the track through hardware.
It's a pity that it's still in the green stage: Reality Labs, the metaverse hardware segment within Meta, will lose a total of 13.72 billion US dollars in 2022, which is an increase of 35% compared with the previous year's loss of 10.19 billion US dollars. Tsk tsk, Xiao Zha is real Bash money.
Reality Labs sells the VR device Quest. A high-end Quest pro sells for $1,500, which is too expensive, and the scenes in Horizon Worlds get tired of playing, resulting in a decline in the retention rate of old players every year. More than half of Quest users buy the product 6 months later , just threw it aside and stained it with ashes.
After spending tens of billions, he must stick to it. Xiao Zha introduced two new gadgets to Meta some time ago: AI "discovery engine" and short video function Reels. Look forward to the combination of Meta's AI and the Metaverse later.
We have found three representatives of the Metaverse VR project in the encryption circle:
High Street
Mixverse
Ceek
Explained separately:
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The most dazzling market performance of Highstreet was the surge at the beginning of this year. On January 30, CZ, the boss of Binance, said in an AMA that he would invest in VR or metaverse games, and said that he is more inclined to invest in other virtual reality or metaverse games. This wave of rides.
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What kind of product is Highstreet, and what kind of capital can it become a hit and become the darling of the VR Metaverse track?
Let's first look at the founders and financing background. Highstreet's parent company is called Lumiere VR. It was co-founded in 2015 by Chinese-Canadian founder and CEO Travis Wu and co-founder Jenny Guo. It is mainly engaged in the monetization of VR in physical places, SDK development and VR data analysis. The core members of the team come from DeFi , VR and art fields, worked in McKinsey, Sotheby's and other companies. The team appears to have a decent professional background.
The project has had three major rounds of financing. The first round was a $5 million round completed in June 2021, led by Mechanism Capital, NGC Ventures, Palm Drive Capital, Cherubic Ventures, Jump Trading, GBV, Panony, and Shima Capitl. The second round was a $2 million strategic financing from Binance Labs and Animoca Brands, and the third round was strategic investments from Crunchyroll, Twitch, Kabam, Rotten Tomatoes, and Fitbit. The projects that have embraced their thighs are different. They have raised three rounds of funding, especially Binance and Animoca in the second round. The capital operation and platform blessing are both leveraged. They are fully capable of turning their hands into clouds and hands into rain. It is not surprising to sign a big player like Jay Chou.
What kind of metaverse world is Highstreet trying to create? A simple understanding is an open world MMORPG+Shopify, as the saying goes, it is an e-commerce metaverse.
Highstreet's NFTs are issued in the form of Phygital, also known as physical digital NFTs. Gamers can exchange the goods they purchased on the chain into real objects off the chain, and achieve O 2 O in the encrypted world. For brands, this model can turn existing products into game assets, boosting brand marketing; for players, it brings in-game shopping into the real world, blurring the boundary between reality and virtuality, and players are also convinced A high-degree experience improves the immersion in the Metaverse. In the future, it is said that the platform will also be connected to Amazon and other e-commerce platforms, becoming the real e-commerce portal of the Metaverse.
However, we believe that these traditional e-commerce giants will not sit still. When VR technology develops to a certain degree of maturity, e-commerce giants will definitely develop their own metaverse e-commerce version. How Highstreet will face the competition of giants at that time is a huge challenge. uncertainty. In the past few days, Amazon broke the news that NFT is about to be released. This should be a pathfinding in the early stage. I don’t know if Highstreet will take the opportunity to hype it.
Highstreet Market is Highstreet World's marketplace to redeem limited edition items, with each item having a physical equivalent. Highstreet Market will use a bonding curve (Bonding Curve, similar to an AMM automatic market maker) to ensure the liquidity of the product. Under the automatic price discovery mechanism, the price of the item will fluctuate with each purchase. The bonding curve always ensures that there is a counterparty. At the same time, the brand can customize the exclusive bonding curve to encourage more transactions or offline product redemption.
Currently, Highstreet World consists of six explorable areas: Highstreet City, Binance Beach, AVAX Alps, Asteroid 325, Animoca Archipelago, and Republic Realm. The main gameplay includes upgrading, purchasing houses, game battles, domesticating pets NFT and other activities. It is said that Binance will build Binance Beach in the game to provide various services and DeFi products on the Binance platform. Animoca Brands will also introduce many well-known projects and brands to the project to expand the influence of its Metaverse.
In terms of economic model, Highstreet adopts the dual token model of HIGH and STREET. The main uses of the mother currency HIGH include pledge, platform governance (creating proposals and voting) and in-game transactions (real estate or limited edition products). The total amount of Token is capped at 100 million, and the current circulation is 33 million. At present, High has been launched on platforms such as Binance, Coinbase, and Crypto.com, and DEX users can choose to trade on Pancakeswap and Uniswap. The sub-coin STREET is an in-game Token with no fixed upper limit, and it will inflate appropriately with the increase of players and the progress of the game. Players can obtain it by hunting monsters, completing tasks, treasure hunts and other activities, or exchange it with the mother currency HIGH.
Highstreet does look like a glamorous boy, a top student in every aspect, and the second layer of narrative "metaverse e-commerce" we emphasize is also more sexy. But is it really the most efficient development path for the Metaverse at this stage? How different is the experience between buying things with a VR headset and directly clicking on Taobao, Jingdong, and Amazon? It will be a long and time-consuming road for tens of thousands of brands in various categories to complete the display and transformation of metaverse products. Can Highstreet really win this marathon?
I think the above questions have revealed some answers in terms of the completion of the project schedule. I remember that at the beginning of last year, I saw the project party enthusiastically said that 2022 would be a harvest year for products, and formulated the following grand launch plan:
Highstreet Project 2022 Plan
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Case B: MixVerse
The first time I noticed MixVerse was when the project started Mint Pass cards in early November last year. Because it was the deep bear season at that time, the transactions in various sectors were not active, and the NFT market was like a pool of stagnant water. It was rare to see a project that could go against the bear market and bravely issue NFT.
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Unlike Highstreet, MixVerse does not have a glamorous investment background and star blessing. I learned from several AMAs that this project was developed by a WEB2 VR game team that has been working on it for several years. They will strive to build a VR game metaverse platform, provide sufficient traffic support for games through open ecology, distribution platforms, etc., and realize the establishment of the entire game metaverse ecology.
The MixVerse team has developed several VR mini-games. The fantasy skiing 3 developed by core members (available in stores such as Pico) will also be integrated into the MixVerse Metaverse game platform in the form of an evolutionary upgrade. Future projects will also put other developed VR games on the platform, and invite more development teams to release games on the platform.
The MixVerse team has been working on VR since 2016 and has 8 years of experience in VR game development. Last time, they invited many experts and scholars in the VR industry in the special AMA on Binance Live. The fantasy skiing series used to be the number one download in the Steam VR sports category, with a cumulative global download volume of nearly 3 million sets. It was released as an official game at the Beijing Winter Olympics.
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What kind of Metaverse world does MixVerse want to create? In addition to the grafting of various platform games mentioned above, the main world of MixVerse also has its own set of main game lines. Players will start the game around elements such as survival, career development, construction, collaboration, and competition. They can build homes on the land, build communities together, form various councils, associations, and guilds, and conduct treasure hunting, trade, and competition. In the early stage of the game, PGC is still the main focus. In the mid-term, more third-party development teams will be introduced, and gradually move towards PUGC. Finally, the real UGC will be realized by improving the map editing function.
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In terms of the token model, MixVerse will also adopt a dual-token model, with Mix as the parent currency, a deflationary governance token, and the sub-coin Chaos as a circulation token with unlimited issuance. Neither token is currently live, so it’s early days for the project.
For players, a set of ordinary VR equipment is about 300-500 U, and the whole project model is still a bit heavy. Therefore, the project team also simultaneously developed the H5 version of the game, which can be played with mobile phones, and the nightclub gameplay can be experienced on the official website at present (it can be used for white). Such a multi-terminal design can facilitate players to log in to the MixVerse metaverse through various devices anytime, anywhere.
Compared with Highstreet, MixVerse is more like a project that expands from the WEB2 VR game platform to the Metaverse world. We took this project as an example because there are too few specific scenes for players to play in the metaverse track of WEB3. Most of them just set up a display platform, and everyone runs around after entering to visit or do tasks. The games that can be played in MixVerse have basically taken shape. Currently, there are nightclub games, and there will be skiing scenes in the future. Compared with Highstreet, which uses the metaverse of the web to draw big cakes, the completeness of Mixverse products will be even better.
Of course, what we are most worried about is, can the WEB2 team enter WEB3, and can they learn operations and marketing methods as they do? After all, we have seen some excellent WEB2 teams use the old style of play, but they sank after testing the waters in WEB3.
Case C: Ceek
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CEEK brings together well-known figures in the global music, sports and entertainment fields. World-class partners include Universal Music, Apple and T-Mobile. Because of its star effect, the project is relatively well-known in the currency circle. CEEK enables content creators to patent and monetize their work through virtual streaming platforms to reach audiences around the world. CEEK opens up new revenue streams for music artists and creators, offering a whole new way to directly reach and monetize his fan base.
I took a look at the official website of the platform. In addition to the sales of hardware such as music-related VR helmets and earphones, there are also a large number of celebrity live broadcast videos, as well as land sales. Maybe this is the star effect, and the temptation to let everyone become neighbors with stars in Ceek's virtual world is really great.
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Summary of this article
This article is the first article of our recent intensive review of the WEB3 metaverse track. It discusses the current situation and problems of the "hard-core niche" VR metaverse in the subdivision sector, and analyzes three typical VR metaverses. Projects - Hightstreet, MixVerse and Ceek.
For the e-commerce metaverse represented by Highstreet and the game metaverse represented by Mixverse, which one is the better path to realize the metaverse at this stage? These two paths respectively represent the two mainstream implementation channels of the Metaverse:
From the perspective of implementation difficulty, compared with the integration of offline and online items in the e-commerce metaverse, the pure virtual content environment of the game metaverse does not need to transform real products. There are mature game ecological creation templates that can be directly used for reference. It is better than the e-commerce Metaverse;
From the perspective of implementation speed, the transformation of the relatively limited number of games in the Metaverse will be faster and more effective than the transformation of thousands of physical objects;
From the perspective of technical difficulty, in order to truly realize the complete mapping and display of products in the Metaverse world, the Metaverse e-commerce still needs a lot of infrastructure construction and popularization, while the game Metaverse only expands horizontally on the game platform and game content. Rich enough.
Obviously, analyzing from the above three angles, the realizability of the game metaverse is higher at this stage. At the same time, Ceek uses the way of celebrities to bring goods. If a large amount of WEB2 private domain traffic can be introduced, the potential should be unlimited.
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Welcome to reprint, originality is not easy, please indicate "Guadain Laboratory W Labs" produced
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