LD Capital's Investment Layout Series: What is the Charm of the Metaverse?

Author: Jill, LD Capital Research

Preface

Recently, music sensation G.E.M. (Gloria Tang) returned with her new metaverse album "Revelation." The album's MV is presented in the form of a musical drama, centered around the concept of the metaverse, constructing three distinctly different worlds: paradise, wasteland, and the real world. G.E.M. transforms into the virtual player Gloria, traversing these realms, "Here, you can meet people anytime, go to places you want, and do things you wish to do."

Internet image

However, G.E.M. is not the first artist to engage with the metaverse. Prior to her, several artists, including Vincent Fang and Hu Yanbin, had already begun exploring the metaverse, and the entertainment industry’s foray into the metaverse has become a new trend. Major brands are also leveraging metaverse technologies and concepts for commercial marketing: Gucci collaborated with Roblox to develop the experiential game Gucci Garden Archetype; Nike established NIKELAND on Roblox; McDonald's, Nayuki's Tea, and Mixue Ice City have also rushed into the metaverse. For brands, this allows them to tell their brand stories in a more interactive way, enabling every user to gain the desired interactive experience. Through metaverse marketing, brands can naturally attract massive attention.

What is the Metaverse?

The metaverse is a new type of internet application and social form that integrates various new technologies, providing immersive experiences based on augmented reality technology, generating mirrors of the real world based on digital twin technology, and building economic systems based on blockchain technology. It closely integrates the virtual world with the real world in economic systems, social systems, and identity systems, allowing each user to produce and edit content.

Image source: Tsinghua University New Media Research Center

The metaverse is a platform that hosts virtual activities, emphasizing the integrity of the ecosystem and the subjective initiative of users. Users in the metaverse are not just passive players; they can engage in socializing, entertainment, and creation just like in real life. The metaverse provides users with rich consumption content, a fair creation platform, a reliable economic system, and immersive interactive experiences. It can also embody human emotions, giving users a sense of belonging and allowing them to make friends in the digital world.

In summary, the key elements of the metaverse are:

• More immersive, enhancing visual and sensory experiences so that users can hardly distinguish between the virtual world and the physical world, which is what we often refer to as being "immersed."

• More interactive, where interpersonal relationships and communities remain at the core of the metaverse, allowing human work and entertainment to thrive within it, breaking free from the spatial constraints of the physical world and bringing people closer together through the metaverse.

• More convenient, requiring that the use and participation of related hardware devices and networks are very easy.

• More equitable, as the economy is the foundation of society, the metaverse, as a virtual social form, can have a fairer economic system based on blockchain.

Metaverse Industry Chain

The metaverse is supported by multiple technologies, and its industry chain can be divided into: 1) Underlying technology layer, including network infrastructure and computing; 2) Intermediate technology layer, including AI technology and machine learning; 3) Virtual world entry, including smart wearable devices; 4) Virtual world infrastructure, including digital identities and digital assets based on blockchain; 5) Virtual world experience platform, using games as an entry point to experience social, audio-visual, and other applications. The first three layers are physical world products that drive the implementation of metaverse application scenarios with their technological support.

Image source: Guohai Securities

Global tech giants have also announced their entry into the metaverse wave. In October 2021, Facebook changed its company name to Meta Platforms, signaling its commitment to the metaverse, and began trading under the new stock code "MVRS" on December 1, 2021. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that he hopes to transform Facebook into a metaverse company within about five years and has established a team dedicated to metaverse development.

Image source: Tsinghua University New Media Research Center

LD Capital's Metaverse Landscape

LD Capital, founded in 2016, manages nearly $1 billion in assets, having invested in over 300 companies with a total of more than 160 investment projects covering areas such as NFT, GameFi, DeFi, public chains, and infrastructure. Currently, the metaverse and GameFi are new investment focuses, and we have compiled some of the metaverse projects that LD Capital has invested in.

LD Capital official website

Cradles

Cradles is an RPG (role-playing game) where players control core game characters. Players achieve victory by completing a series of battles or reaching the main storyline's conclusion while exploring the game world. A key feature of this type of game is that characters' powers and abilities grow, and players can plan character development.

Image source: Cradles

• Product

• EIP-3664

EIP-3664 is an NFT attribute extension protocol proposed by the DRepublic team, based on the ERC-721 and ERC-1155 protocols, supporting the customization of NFT attach attributes during NFT minting. One NFT can attach an unlimited number of attributes. EIP-3664 attributes include several basic fields: ID, Name, Symbol, URI, Balance, which means NFT attributes are tokenized, and each attribute is a type of NFT, providing infinite variations for NFTs.

Currently, EIP-3664 has implemented six core attribute operations: upgradable, modifiable, addable, removable, splittable, and combinable. This means EIP-3664 provides NFTs with splittable and combinable features, allowing all NFTs to be freely assembled. The initial version of the genesis release is a combination of multiple different components, similar to a Lego set, where each component can still be sold as a complete NFT asset in the secondary market after being split.

In-game assets (source: Tofunft official website)

• MetaCore

MetaCore is a one-stop NFT platform based on the EIP-3664 technology solution, integrating identity systems, infinite splicing, infinite combinations, and variable attributes (such as NFT attack power and health points), allowing all users and project parties to create their own splittable and combinable NFTs, akin to assembling scattered blocks into a Lego set, and linking them to the MetaCore identity system. Additionally, MetaCore enables all enterprises and users to create their own combinable modular NFTs and associate them with MetaCore identity attributes.

Currently, MetaCore's products are still relatively simple, only supporting the display of Dragonstar (little dinosaur) (MVP version).

MetaCore official website

Dragonstar (little dinosaur) is the core character in the game and the first implementation of EIP-3664. The basic attributes of the little dinosaur are similar, but they can be enhanced by wearing rare components.

Image source: Cradles

• Gameplay

The background of Cradles is a prehistoric environment, introducing the concept of time and the concept of entropy increase, meaning the game's timeline simulates the real timeline, and the game's ecology changes with the passage of time. NPCs also have growth and recovery times, increasing the exploration and fun of the game. Moreover, in an entropic world, players have no game rules or constraints, but if players destroy the ecological system within the world to the limit, the world will forcibly shut down and punish the players who destroy it.

Cradles gameplay is divided into PVE and PVP. In the game, players can take on various roles such as firefighters, police officers, and bank employees, mastering survival and hunting skills to complete tasks in the game world and earn game Crystal.

Crystal is the universal currency in the game world, divided into three levels: energy crystal, super crystal, and legendary crystal. Lower-level crystals can be synthesized into higher-level crystals. Energy crystals are minted by the DRPC platform token and can be used to purchase items, accelerate the passage of world time, stake, and pay gas fees. Higher-level crystals and legendary crystals have more uses, such as enhancing items and exchanging unique NFTs with NPCs.

Additionally, Cradles introduces the Mod Slots gameplay, where any organization or individual can develop their own Mod, such as gameplay similar to survival in the wilderness or gambling matches, but this Mod must be approved by the entire community before being added to the game. Once the Mod is online, players can purchase and experience it. Each Mod is a story chain, requiring developers to rent slots from Cradles over time, after which the Mod will automatically drop from the slot. Players can experience various fantastic world scenarios without disrupting the overall gameplay of Cradles.

• Economic System

• Subscription mechanism: Players need to purchase a monthly card to enter the game, similar to traditional game subscription payment methods.

• 0% transaction fee: All items are created by players, and items can be freely traded between players without transaction fees. The team only charges a small tax on the trading of rare and valuable items.

• NFT staking empowerment: By staking tokens to enhance NFT attributes, for example, a weapon may require staking many tokens to enhance its buff, allowing players to invite others to help stake, and those who assist can share the rewards from monster drops.

IC1101 World

IC1101 is named after the largest galaxy known in the universe and is jointly creating a decentralized metaverse ecological platform with ICP to achieve human information immortality. Dfinity aims to replace traditional IT stacks with its Internet Computer Protocol (ICP) and eliminate the intermediary role of large tech companies, building a public blockchain network hosted by a collection of independent data centers worldwide. Based on ICP, IC1101 uses token economics as its core management model, relying on blockchain, AI, and VR technologies, with social interaction as the core link, allowing players to happily live in a grand, surreal, dreamlike metaverse, fully enjoying the immersive ultra-real experiences brought by gaming, traveling, shopping, exhibitions, and concerts, while also seeing NFT digital beings from different worlds coexisting in the IC1101 metaverse, awakened by AI technology.

IC1101 official website

IC1101 is a multiverse composed of star chains, where players can pilot spaceships across star systems to different planets, mine resources, play their favorite games, travel, explore, or meditate on life.

Image source: IC1101

By combining UE5 with Houdini, MetaHuman, and VR, it creates the most immersive 3D experience for users. The C+TO B business model provides users with comprehensive commercial solutions for concerts, product launches, brand displays, and NFT exhibitions.

Image source: IC1101

Matterverse

Matterverse is dedicated to enhancing user interaction experiences with AAA-level visual effects, accommodating different project needs through more customizable gameplay, and creating a digital world powered by a cloud-native technology stack and Web 3-enabled economy and community. Residents of Matterverse can build their virtual avatars, homes, and even games, entertainment, and shopping in this open-world sandbox.

Image source: Matterverse

MatterAvatar is the standardized avatar and identity system for metaverse residents, starting the Matterverse journey by creating a virtual avatar and saving it as an NFT. MatterAvatar represents the player's on-chain membership and assets.

Matterverse has already conducted its first round of public beta testing and will distribute land, apartments, equipment, OAT, and a series of NFTs that can be used in the future Matterverse to the first batch of residents. Players can build anything on NFT land, even design games, and the distributed equipment can also be used in the game.

Matterverse material library

This beta test opened two modules:

The first is the metaverse creation tool MatterCreator, a powerful and easy-to-use metaverse editor that integrates a large number of general materials, allowing everyone to create on their personal NFT land with zero barriers and invite friends and family over. For professional creators, it also supports and encourages exporting their models, designs, materials, and even NFTs.

The second is the player center of the open world MatterCity, where everyone can socialize, entertain, and explore. The team will gradually open various functional modules in the player center, including but not limited to: NFT galleries, clothing stores, player apartments/homes, concerts, game halls, etc. Meanwhile, MatterCity will also expand through NFT land, and everyone can design and launch their own open-world content in the metaverse through these NFT lands.

Players participating in the public test will receive the Matterverse Beta Test OAT (On-Chain Achievement Token) NFT, which will be used to distribute the first phase of Playground NFT land.

Conclusion

Some say the metaverse is just a story, another outbreak of the internet's restlessness, but I firmly believe that the metaverse represents a test field with high hopes for significantly enhancing the experience. This test field can be a carrier for any field, including the data revolution of Web3, organizational structure revolution, and can also trigger a chip computing power revolution. The efficiency improvements brought by technological reform and innovation are our core pursuit. Therefore, the fundamental pursuit of human society for the metaverse is actually the pursuit of innovative power that has the potential to create enormous economic benefits based on the next generation of the internet, which is also why we are more optimistic about the AI+3D-driven metaverse track.

Based on the advantages of the gaming industry in visual effects, virtual world construction, user-generated content, and social scenarios, gaming has thus become the primary form of presentation in the early stages of the metaverse. From the layout of leading enterprises, it is also focused on dimensions centered around gaming content.