The Metaverse

The metaverse is undoubtedly the hottest "celebrity" of the moment. In addition to social giant Facebook resolutely rebranding itself as "Meta," tech giants like Tencent, Google, ByteDance, Microsoft, and Baidu have also jumped on the bandwagon, rushing to the metaverse track. Meanwhile, the capital that has caught wind of this trend is also "boiling," with numerous instances of high financing.

Although the definition and scenarios of the metaverse remain quite vague, the ways it is being shaped are diverse, with social, gaming, entertainment, and other sectors creating a dreamy interaction with the metaverse, leading to a situation where various applications seem to be "distracting the eye with a riot of colors." As the metaverse becomes a topic of endless discussion, this article from PANews will review some popular projects in the blockchain field that focus on the metaverse concept.

## Underlying Infrastructure

Flow

As the blockchain platform developed by Dapper Labs, the team behind popular blockchain games like CryptoKitties and NBA Top Shot, Flow attracts many partners with its advantages of fast and low-cost transactions, including world-class brands like NFL, UFC, Warner Music, NBA, and Ubisoft. At the same time, Flow has also received investments from well-known investment institutions such as a16z, Coinbase Ventures, DCG, and USV. To date, Flow has attracted over 650 companies across various fields including art, fashion, collectibles, DeFi, gaming, and sports, with projects built on Flow raising over $700 million in 2021. Notably, Dapper Labs recently completed a $250 million financing round led by Coatue, achieving a valuation of $7.6 billion.

Flow Ecosystem Diagram Source: Flow Official Website

In addition, Flow and Dapper Labs have each claimed 108 plots of land in the metaverse project Matrix World to establish virtual headquarters.

Enjin

Enjin's vision is to create a gaming multiverse for players. Initially, Enjin provided website creation and hosting services for gamers, later launching the first NFT creation platform and using the ENJ token as the raw material for minting NFTs. Additionally, Enjin's CTO Witek Radomski created the semi-fungible ERC-1155 token standard.

Enjin's Efinity is a scalable NFT cross-chain network built on the Polkadot network, allowing users to mint and trade NFTs on-chain. On November 4, Enjin announced the establishment of a $100 million Efinity Metaverse Fund aimed at supporting Enjin and Efinity developers in building the metaverse, providing support for the Enjin ecosystem, the metaverse, blockchain games, decentralized infrastructure, NFT DApps, and more pioneering projects.

According to Enjin's official website, there are currently 27,000 commercial projects running on the platform, with ERC-1155 assets valued at $1.16 billion, and the number of wallet installations exceeding 1.7 million.

Ronin

Ronin is an Ethereum sidechain built specifically for the leading blockchain game Axie Infinity at the end of 2020, operated by a POA network of validators appointed by the game's core development studio, Sky Mavis. Blocks require approval from two-thirds of the validators to be confirmed. Validators are responsible for writing and verifying blocks, updating price oracles, and handling the storage and transfer of assets (ETH, ERC20, and ERC721) to and from Ronin. The initial validators include Ubisoft, Binance, Animoca Brands, and Nonfungible, among others. Currently, Ronin has launched its mainnet.

Rangers Protocol

Rangers Protocol is incubated by the blockchain game publisher MixMarvel, integrating cross-chain, NFT, and EVM protocols, aiming to provide DApps and assets with frictionless interaction capabilities across multiple chains (currently supporting Ethereum, BSC, and Tron). It aims to become the blockchain infrastructure for the metaverse. Previously popular projects like HyperDragons Rocket Arena and HyperSnakes have adopted Rangers Protocol. Currently, Rangers Protocol has officially launched its testnet, with fixed-rate lending protocol BlueStone successfully migrated.

In June of this year, Rangers Protocol completed financing at a valuation of $63 million, with investors including Framework Ventures, Alameda Research, Hashkey Capital, and former co-founders of Ele.me.

## Middleware

Chainlink

Communication between the crypto and real worlds requires oracles, and Chainlink is one of the representative middleware projects connecting the two different worlds. Currently, Chainlink has developed smart contracts that connect other on-chain services and other codes, allowing users to flexibly choose the core blockchain on which applications run and access any required off-chain data and computing resources.

In recent times, metaverse projects such as Brokoli, NASH Metaverse, XCarnival, Metasaurs, and FireStarter have successively integrated Chainlink.

Mask Network

Mask Network is a portal that helps users seamlessly transition from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0, allowing users to send encrypted messages, cryptocurrencies, and even decentralized applications (such as DeFi, NFT, and DAO) seamlessly on traditional social giants' platforms.

Currently, Mask Network has achieved seamless posting of encrypted tweets on Twitter, supports multiple chains like BSC and Polygon, allows sending and receiving encrypted red envelopes, Gitcoin donations, integrates with DEXs like Uniswap, SushiSwap, and QuickSwap, and supports recognition and display of URLs of works on NFT trading platforms like OpenSea and Rarible, as well as features like NFT Gallery, NFT Avatar, and NFT red envelopes. Additionally, the current Mask Network ecosystem covers social, storage, DeFi, DAO, NFT, trading, and privacy sectors.

## Identity

Spruce

From "not your keys, not your coins" to "not your keys, not your identity," digital identity authentication company Spruce is building cryptocurrency-native tools to help users manage identity and cross-platform data. In September of this year, Spruce won a project initiated by the Ethereum Foundation (EF) and Ethereum Name Service (ENS) to enable login to third-party applications via Ethereum accounts.

Recently, Spruce completed a $7.5 million financing round led by Ethereal Ventures and Electric Capital, with other investors including BITKRAFT, Coinbase Ventures, Alameda Research, A.Capital Ventures, SV Angel, and Protocol Labs.

Litentry

Litentry is the first decentralized cross-chain identity protocol on Polkadot, compatible with different DID standards to provide reliable decentralized identity aggregation computing services, essentially acting as a cross-chain identity aggregator. As early as 2019, Litentry received Web3 Grants.

In fact, Litentry launched the metaverse identity application My Crypto Profile in August this year, allowing users to showcase their NFT collections on Twitter by linking their Ethereum identity with their Twitter account. The game has also established collaborations with metaverse projects like The Sandbox. Notably, Litentry recently announced its participation in the first five parachain slot auctions on Polkadot, allocating 20% of its total token supply as rewards.

BrightID

BrightID is an anonymous social identity network that addresses the uniqueness of identity by creating and analyzing social graphs. Users can prove their unique identity to various applications through this platform, without the need for applications to collect identifiable personal information or collaborate with centralized organizations. BrightID achieved impressive donation results in the seventh round of the Gitcoin open-source software funding campaign and received praise from Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.

## Games

Axie Infinity

Axie Infinity is a P2E game popularized by the Philippine gaming guild Yield Guild Games (YGG), frequently topping market trading volume charts. According to ultrasound.money, since the official launch of EIP-1559, Axie Infinity has burned over 14,000 ETH, leading mainstream applications like 1inch V3 and Sushiswap. Meanwhile, Token Terminal shows that in the past 30 days, Axie Infinity's revenue reached $190 million, ranking second among all blockchains and DApps, only behind Ethereum.
Axie Infinity Revenue Comparison with Other DApps and Blockchains Source: Token Terminal

Notably, the Vietnamese developer behind Axie Infinity, Sky Mavis, recently completed a $152 million Series B financing round, with other well-known investment institutions including Paradigm, Accel, Konvoy Ventures, FTX, and Libertus Capital. This funding will be used for Axie Infinity and Ronin.

Illuvium

Illuvium is a decentralized NFT collection and auto-battler game built on Ethereum, where the core mechanism involves players leveling up by defeating monsters to capture beasts, minting them as NFTs, and then selling them in the marketplace. Due to Illuvium's integration with the Layer 2 scalability solution Immutable-X, both players and developers do not need to pay any gas fees for minting or trading NFTs. In April of this year, Illuvium raised $38 million through Balancer LBP. Currently, Illuvium has not yet launched and is set to release a public beta version in Q1 2022.

Alien Worlds

Alien Worlds is a space exploration game that offers players land ownership, deployment of tools, soldiers, and weapons, and customization of unique game characters, integrating DeFi, NFTs, the metaverse, and DAOs. It currently supports Ethereum, WAX, and BSC.

According to Dappradar, Alien Worlds has over 240,000 users, with more than 12 million transactions occurring daily.

Treeverse

Treeverse is a 2D pixel-style MMORPG deployed on Ethereum, founded by NFT investor Loopify and co-founder Aizea, aiming to become a social gaming experience for NFT chatting. Treeverse features built-in trading markets, guilds, NPCs, mini-games, and pets. In its initial public offering, all 10,000 land NFTs of Treeverse sold out within an hour at a price of 0.125 ETH.

In October of this year, Treeverse completed a seed round financing at a valuation of $25 million, led by IdeoCo Labs and Animoca Brands, with other investors including SkyVision Capital, Stani Kulechov, and Krybharat.

Star Atlas

Star Atlas is a space multiplayer online metaverse game based on Solana, similar in gameplay to EVE Online. Players are divided into three factions, and in starship battles, the victorious side receives loot rewards, while some assets of the losing side are randomly destroyed. If a player's starship is destroyed during battle, the corresponding assets will also be destroyed.

In January of this year, Star Atlas completed a seed round financing led by Serum and MoonWhale Ventures, with FTX and Alameda Research serving as core ecosystem advisors for the Serum Foundation. Additionally, the official website shows that Star Atlas's partners include Sino Global Capital, Crypto, Animoca Brands, LD Capital, Yield Guild Games, Solstarter, and Mechanism Capital. Although Star Atlas has not yet launched, it is expected to release an Alpha version in Q1 and Q2 of 2022.

## Virtual Worlds

Decentraland

Decentraland is an Ethereum-based metaverse platform managed by the community in a DAO format, where users can create, experience, and monetize content, games, and applications using its token MANA, all done on virtual 3D land.

According to NFT trading platform Opensea, Decentraland ranks first in all virtual world categories with sales exceeding 157,000 ETH.

The Sandbox

The Sandbox is a virtual gaming world under game developer Animoca Brands, where players can create and own different gaming experiences and earn from them using the Ethereum-based functional token SAND. The Sandbox has achieved a strong "outreach" effect through collaborations with well-known IPs like The Walking Dead, Smurfs, Care Bears, Atari, and Nyan Cat.

Recently, The Sandbox secured $93 million in financing led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, which will be used to expand into areas outside of gaming, such as fashion, architecture, and virtual concerts.

According to Opensea, The Sandbox's sales have exceeded 32,000 ETH, with over 23,000 holders.

Cryptovoxels

CryptoVoxels is an Ethereum-based metaverse world similar to Minecraft, where users can build, develop, and sell digital assets using custom pixel blocks on the streets. Unlike other projects, CryptoVoxels was independently developed by founder and former Decentraland member Ben Nolan. As of November 4, CryptoVoxels' sales have approached 20,000 ETH.

In October of this year, CryptoVoxels announced support for Facebook login, which has 2.7 billion users. Furthermore, CryptoVoxels has also revealed plans to support Twitter.

Somnium Space

Somnium Space is an open and social virtual reality world launched in 2018, dedicated to applying VR technology to gaming, with the ultimate vision of becoming a virtual reality world similar to that depicted in the movie Ready Player One. In Somnium Space, users can purchase land, build or design buildings, and create or import objects to construct a shared virtual world.

Currently, Somnium Space has migrated from the Loom network to the Matic network to enhance its scalability.

Matrix World

Matrix World is a developed virtual world where users can build 3D immersive applications across multiple blockchains, with NFTs permanently stored on chains like Ethereum and Flow. At the same time, Matrix World can provide a beacon for the metaverse, merging multiple metaverse spaces through code, offering rich scenarios and collaborative resources for innovation in the metaverse.

## Social

Friends with Benefits

Friends with Benefits is a private club based on Discord with over 2,000 members. Joining the organization requires passing a strict identity verification (written application) and purchasing a ticket worth nearly $10,000, as well as holding a certain amount of the native token FWB. However, starting in October, Friends with Benefits introduced the concept of city subDAOs, allowing willing participants to apply for city membership at a ticket price of $600.

In addition to launching a series of parties around the world, Friends with Benefits has also introduced "token-gated events" applications, NFT galleries, Web3-centric editorial businesses, virtual music studios, and more. Recently, a16z announced an investment in Friends with Benefits and will provide guidance for its next stage of development, actively involving key community members in governance.

Rally

Rally is a creator-driven network where digital creators, crypto influencers, brands, and celebrities can establish their customized personal tokens on the platform. Through personal tokens, creators can gain incentives, while fans can support their favorite creators by using the RLY token to purchase creator tokens and gain unique experiences and content, such as limited edition content and merchandise, direct communication, and participation in private events. For instance, the band Portugal the Man and Twitch streamer Alliestrasza have issued personal tokens.

## DAO

Yield Guild Games

Yield Guild Games is a DAO and gaming guild established in the Philippines, composed of players and investors. In Yield Guild Games, all participating members are both investors and players. Investors are responsible for the NFT assets in different games within its ecosystem and lend these assets to community players, while players engage in gaming to earn. The guild's surplus is reinvested to purchase virtual assets and land within games. According to Yield Guild Game's asset report from September, the total number of guild members reached 4,710, with YGG, members, and community managers collectively earning $10.13 million.

In addition to popularizing Axie Infinity, Yield Guild Games has also invested in ZED RUN, Star Atlas, Guild of Guardians, and Ember Sword. Besides investing in blockchain games, Yield Guild Games completed three rounds of financing this year, including a $1.325 million seed round led by Delphi Digital in March, a $4 million Series A round led by esports fund BITKRAFT in June, and a $4.6 million Series A round led by a16z in August, with other investors including Kingsway Capital, Infinity Ventures Crypto, and Atelier Ventures.

WHALE

WHALE was founded by WhaleShark, one of the largest individual buyers of NFTs, with the token value dimension based on his holdings of NFTs like Gods Unchained and The Sandbox. The WHALE token can be used to purchase NFT artworks, rent on-chain properties or artworks, participate in voting, liquidity mining, and more.

## DeFi

XCarnival

XCarnival is a collateral lending platform targeting metaverse assets, providing collateral lending services for various NFT assets and long-tail assets, effectively releasing value for illiquid assets. XCarnival's revolutionary time-limited auction liquidation mechanism aims to build leasing, pawning, and lending businesses for non-standard assets, and it also offers various flexible synthetic asset templates to help users quickly create financial products for profit.

Currently, XCarnival has completed four rounds of security audits by CertiK, and its mainnet has also been launched.

Aavegotchi

Aavegotchi is a combination of DeFi and NFT digital collectibles, where each Aavegotchi NFT token is both a collectible and an income-generating asset, with the NFT's attributes depending on its value and rarity in the Aavegotchi universe.

On November 2, Aavegotchi's metaverse game Gotchiverse completed its first land auction, with bids totaling approximately 40.6 million GHST, valued at around $10 million.

Vera

Vera is an open finance platform aimed at providing decentralized financial functions for NFT assets. Users can use the platform's token VERA to access financial services such as financing, leasing, and asset verification on NFT applications, without the need for any centralized intermediaries.

In August of this year, Vera completed a $3 million seed round financing led by Animoca Brands, with other investment institutions including OKEx Block Dream Fund, Genesis Block Ventures, Krypital Group, and Shima Capital.

## Sports

Chiliz

Chiliz is a blockchain service provider focused on the sports and entertainment industry, backed by Binance, aimed at facilitating communication and interaction between fans and clubs in the traditional sports industry, providing fan monetization solutions for sports clubs. Currently, Chiliz's partners include Barcelona, Juventus, Paris Saint-Germain, AC Milan, OG, and Heretics, and it has launched fan tokens. For instance, OG Fan Token (OG), AS Roma Fan Token (ASR), and Atlético de Madrid Fan Token (ATM) have all been listed on Binance.

REVV

REVV is the utility token of REVV Motorsport, the platform with the largest licensed motorsport in the world, used as the in-game currency for multiple racing games released by Animoca Brands, including REVV Racing, F1® Delta Time, and MotoGP™ Ignition.

## Music

Opulous

Opulous is a music financing platform launched by one of the world's largest digital distribution and record companies, Ditto Music, helping music artists bypass traditional institutions like banks to obtain financing directly. In April, British rapper Big Zuu and American musician Taylor Bennett successfully sold a majority stake in their unreleased records through the platform; in June, Opulous collaborated with well-known musicians like Lil Yachty and Kyle to issue music NFT works on the Binance NFT platform.

Currently, Opulous has secured $6.5 million in financing. Recently, Japan's telecommunications giant LINE's blockchain and crypto business division Tech Plus (LTP) also reached a partnership with Opulous to jointly develop NFT products.

Audius

Audius is a decentralized music sharing and streaming protocol aimed at facilitating direct transactions between listeners and creators, allowing everyone to freely distribute, commercialize, and stream any audio content. The native token AUDIO enables users to participate in voting rights, value-added services, and more. Currently, Audius features tracks from well-known music labels like deadmau5, 3LAU, and Zed's.

In September of this year, Audius secured $5 million in financing, with investors including Katy Perry, The Chainsmokers, Nas, Jason Derulo, Pusha T, Mark Gillespie, and former Sony Music CEO Martin Bandier.

Notably, Audius recently reached a partnership with short video platform TikTok, allowing musicians on the platform to upload and share their works directly to TikTok's Sound Kit, while musicians can link their TikTok followers back to Audius.

Rocki

Rocki is a music streaming service and digital payment ecosystem built on the Binance Smart Chain, aimed at solving the tricky issues of platform playability and participant revenue distribution in the music industry. Rocki has launched two unique music NFTs on its platform: the ERC 721 "royalty income rights" NFT and the ERC 1155 "exclusive listening rights" NFT.

In October of this year, ROCK, in collaboration with Binance and 1001 Tracklists, launched a $1 million artist relief fund aimed at helping artists affected by the pandemic to continue their artistic creation.

## Trading Platforms

Opensea

Opensea is the largest NFT trading platform, allowing users to trade collectibles, art, music, in-game items, and more NFTs freely. According to ultrasound.money, as of November 4, Opensea has burned over 94,000 ETH, ranking first. Meanwhile, Dappradar shows that Opensea's total transaction volume exceeds $10.14 billion, with over 620,000 total users.

In July of this year, OpenSea completed a $100 million Series B financing round led by a16z, achieving a post-investment valuation of $1.5 billion.

Rarible

Rarible is an NFT trading and minting platform running on Ethereum, where any user can create and sell digital collectibles without coding skills. Users can mint, buy, and sell digital collectibles through Rarible without any coding skills. The token RARI launched by Rarible can be used for platform upgrade voting, artwork management, and review.

Dappradar shows that Rarible's total transaction volume has reached $260 million, with over 83,000 total users.

Ethernity Chain

Ethernity Chain is an NFT charity platform chain dedicated to exploring the digital art world through NFTs and providing opportunities to participate in charitable causes and social welfare. So far, it has included NFTs issued by legends like Pelé, Muhammad Ali, Lionel Messi, and former NBA player Shaquille O'Neal.

## Business

Highstreet

Highstreet is a commercial metaverse platform created by LumiereVR, a computer vision-based VR retail company, aimed at creating a gaming experience for brands similar to Shopify, allowing brands to establish a presence in the MMORPG world. By directly integrating with existing e-commerce systems, players can purchase physical products for use in the game or choose to redeem items purchased in Highstreet for real-life use.

In August of this year, Highstreet completed a $5 million financing round with investments from Mechanism Capital, NGC Ventures, Palm Drive Capital, Cherubic Ventures, Jump Trading, GBV, Panony, and Shima Capital; in October, Highstreet secured a second seed round strategic investment led by Binance Labs and Animoca Brands.

## AR/VR

OVR

OVR aims to create the first open-source AR metaverse platform based on the Ethereum blockchain, referred to as "the evolved version of Pokémon Go," intending to become the preferred spatial network reference platform for anyone wanting to create or explore geolocation-based AR/VR content. OVR divides the real Earth into 1.6 trillion hexagonal lands, each representing 300 square meters, which can be auctioned, traded, or leased in a decentralized manner.

Bloktopia

Bloktopia is a virtual reality metaverse project built on Polygon, utilizing a 3D creation engine to construct a 21-story skyscraper in the virtual reality world, significantly enhancing user experience. People can experience immersive content across different floors, primarily including learning and education, earning profits, gaming, and content creation. The choice of the number "21" commemorates the 21 million Bitcoin.

In September of this year, Bloktopia completed a $4.2 million private placement financing round led by Animoca Brands, with other investors including Anti Fund, Polygon, Bitboy, Wendy-O, X21, GenBlock, AU21, and Avalanche.

## Storage/Rendering

Arweave

Arweave is a blockchain-based file storage protocol characterized by one-time payment for permanent file storage, with the core principle being redundant distributed storage, forming contract state snapshots.

Viewblock data shows that in October, the storage data of the blockchain storage protocol Arweave reached 7.91 TB, setting a historical record, with an increase of over 79.3% compared to September and more than tenfold compared to August's 708.21 GB. Meanwhile, the number of on-chain transactions on Arweave also reached 3,792,650 in October, a significant increase of 43% compared to September's 2,650,759, also setting a historical record.

Filecoin

IPFS is an open-source decentralized network protocol aimed at providing a decentralized addressing method to complement traditional centralized HTTP. Filecoin is the economic layer on top of IPFS, incentivizing nodes to host IPFS data.

Recently, Filecoin founder Juan Benet revealed at the Wanxiang Blockchain Summit that Filecoin has reached 12 EiB bytes, with 3,362 nodes globally. Additionally, over 6,500 clients have stored more than 6.5 million NFTs on NFT STORAGE.

RNDR Network

RNDR Network is a fully decentralized network under the authoritative cloud rendering company OTOY in the U.S., composed of artists and GPU (graphics processing unit) power providers, aiming to become the computing and technological infrastructure that brings the next generation of 3D and holographic media to the public. RNDR Network is building two types of infrastructure: decentralized GPU computing and technical protocols, as well as products related to 3D, holographic media, and NFTs.

Since the beginning of this year, RNDR Network has completed nearly 250,000 rendering tasks, with creators and artists in the ecosystem generating over $500 million in cumulative NFT sales. Among the first RNDR archive projects in RNDR Network are high-quality works from DC, Marvel legendary comic artist Alex Ross, renowned digital artist Beeple, and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.
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