Title: "MetaCreation - A New Paradigm for the Creator Economy in the Metaverse"

Author: Nikkor

With the entry of Web2 giants, the concept of the metaverse has brought the traditional internet and blockchain-based Web3 context closer together.

In the context of the giants, the Metaverse resembles the blurred boundaries between virtual and real states described by Liu Cixin, namely: empowered by technology, wearable devices gradually become an indispensable part of people's lives, just like today's smartphones. Ultimately, this creates a reality where the senses in the virtual world are infinitely close to those in reality.

In the Web3 context, underpinned by the vigorous development of technologies like blockchain, the metaverse not only blurs the lines between virtual and real but also places decentralization at a higher dimension. In this context, identity is the unity of rights and behavioral responsibilities, where rights manage assets, and behavioral responsibilities affect the value and reputation of identity.

Comparing the metaverse in both contexts, they are not opposed but have their own characteristics outside of their intersection. We focus on the characteristics of the latter, which I believe emphasizes the economic leverage of creators. To summarize simply, the former is "what people need, Facebook creates," while the latter is "what creators create, people possess." Here, "possess" should be interpreted in the context of blockchain, which includes three elements: governance, usage, and recreation. The economic model connects these three elements.

Governance: Participants in the metaverse jointly govern, determining the value of a creation, the rewards given to creators, and the consumption and costs associated with the use of creations.

Usage: Based on governance, people use and reuse creations. An interesting point is that creations within the metaverse are indifferent to the world and protocol layers; for instance, game scenes created on the Flow chain can potentially be moved to Ethereum's DCL for use.

Recreation: Creations in the metaverse are not static; they undergo continuous recreation based on people's needs, governance requirements, and technological iterations and updates. To make it easier to understand, we can use the well-known DeFi as an inappropriate example: Bancor is the pioneer of AMM, Uniswap has expanded it, and Curve, Balancer, and Perp DODO have extended its application. Uniswap V3 has become a more integrated and preferred AMM.

Therefore, under the wave of the metaverse, the creator economy is transitioning from a Web2 paradigm where platforms empower creators and creators enjoy growth dividends based on platforms, to a Web3 paradigm. For example, in the Web2 paradigm, TikTok creators grow within the platform, which takes nearly half of their income. In the Web3 paradigm, platform rights and revenues will be greatly ceded to creations and creators themselves. When we combine this cession with the metaverse, it gives rise to a new definition of the creator economy—MetaCreation.

MetaCreation can be explained with three keywords: identity identification system, boundaryless creation, and creation components, ultimately becoming a creation paradigm that is by metaverse, for metaverse, and of metaverse.

Identity Identification System

This should be familiar to those who have long been immersed in the world of Crypto and blockchain, as on-chain, identity identification to some extent signifies a collection of behaviors. In the past few years, many projects have focused on DID, hoping to help people use on-chain identities and on-chain data more conveniently, including early DID-oriented public chains, DeFi Passport's ARCx, Onchain Credential's Project Galaxy, and those hoping to empower IDs through domain systems like ENS and DAS.

These directions provide great inspiration for the identity identification system in MetaCreation because, with the popularization of the metaverse, the value of on-chain behaviors associated with identity identification far exceeds its intrinsic value. Creations in the metaverse can also label users based on different identity identifications, leading to various operational behaviors. For instance, an identity that has participated in multiple metaverses may gain earlier access in a new metaverse, while an identity that has shown malicious behavior in multiple project governance should have certain thresholds set for its entry by creators, etc. Meanwhile, data indexing tools like The Graph/Dune Analytics also help creators more easily discover the needed identity identifications and data, allowing for targeted creations.

If this is still hard to understand, we can simply think of it as big data in the current mobile internet world, with the difference being that identity identification and its behavioral data are not recorded on centralized servers and do not exist due to some algorithm; they exist solely because they are on-chain.

Boundaryless Creation

In this section, I want to clearly articulate what creation means in the metaverse.

Creation is not just an architect building a structure in DCL, nor is it a curator arranging a gallery to collectively exhibit their JPEG NFTs. It encompasses the above and includes the internal economic cycle system of a collaborative organization with even just three participants, as well as the administrative management, social division of labor, and economic model of a future city with one million participants. In other words, creators evolve from concrete creative works to more abstract collective theoretical research, model design, concept implementation, and even behavioral participation. In such boundaryless creation, the identity boundaries between creators and general participants will also become blurred; creation is no longer a solitary endeavor but becomes a truly widely participatory form of self-governance.

For example, any creative group can obtain the necessary data from existing identity identifications, combine the data, select the target audience for the creation results, and then design an economic model, establishing rules for emissions, consumption, inflation, etc., to create an economy, infusing it into a community of 10,000 participants that integrates education, healthcare, dining, and commerce. This community can be used in a specific metaverse and can also be partially or fully migrated or reused in other metaverses. This is the essence of boundaryless creation.

Creation Components

In addition to the aforementioned data indexing layer, creation components will also include more specific low-coding or no-coding design tools to enable residents of the metaverse without programming backgrounds to become executioners of creation. Furthermore, the overall economic model design will rely on organizations similar to the "Athenian Citizen Assembly," where collective wisdom is harnessed. Existing DAO-related governance tools will also become part of the creation components of MetaCreation.

As a new creation paradigm, MetaCreation will not only become the creation paradigm of the metaverse but will also, in the long term, promote a new organizational paradigm within the metaverse to some extent. In this paradigm, the definition of participants will no longer be singular. In traditional finance, shareholders can become board members after reaching a certain shareholding threshold. In DeFi, this process becomes flatter; even the smallest unit shareholders can participate in project governance, and as projects mature, they transition to DAOs, becoming projects governed and decided by all. In the new creation paradigm of the metaverse, participants' identities will include not only traditional DeFi roles like token holders and governance participants but will also replace roles like VCs, becoming more diverse.

In summary, when this new creation paradigm of MetaCreation becomes universal, the presentation of the metaverse will also become more diverse, with stronger combinability, and will embrace more residents of the metaverse, even iterating out native residents of the metaverse.

Source link: mirror.xyz