Into the Metaverse: What Lies Ahead? - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2022

hi everyone thank you for coming here and to listen to our panel today we're going to talk about this amazing topic and uh first of all I'm Sierra Sun I'm the founder and managing partner for c-score adventures and I was ahead of uh listing and investment for hobby Global before and very um delighted to have this panel with our amazing panelists why don't we start with a round of introduction first everyone I'm miles uh co-founder and CEO of decentral games we make metaverse poker excited to dive into into the metaverse today thanks for coming hey guys uh David chin I am the uh Global Group head for the Clayton Foundation based here in Singapore hi everyone um I'm Beryl uh co-founder of yoga games I look after Finance or treasury as well as um legal as well um good to be here okay so um today we're going to talk about metaverse in general right so since the beginning of the internet people haven't stopped exploring the digital space so with the new technology such as AI VR AR now blockchain industrial internet now the physical and the digital space has really integrated a lot and today we're gonna really divide our topic for the metaverse in five different Trends so the first Trend we're gonna talk about digital and real economy integration and the second trend is emerging digital economic community and search trend is a reshaping of digital identity and force is a boom in digital culture and last but not least immersion of digital Finance for broad Society inclusion so let's move on to my first question the matter verse will boom was the digital economy to a new stage so what do you think well the new metaverse economy look like we can talk about you know just general um General Vision or we can talk about specific use case so at the central games we thought that just building kind of games that people already knew how to play and you know really focusing on the consumer-facing application layer would be the great a great way to just accumulate as many users as possible in a space that's really nascent and you know mostly empty and so we started with poker we built a poker game in into Central land and kind of grew that to around 5000 daily active users currently and which is roughly about 60 percent of the central lands traffic um and so from there obviously these numbers are very small from a web 2 standpoint but you know in terms of web 3 it's substantial and you know I think as we continue to grow we want to solve that kind of main uh problem with the metaverse is it's empty and you know I think if you hop into a lot of these Virtual Worlds there's not many other uh users and so you know building applications that people you know actually like to play in like in a social environment is kind of right where we wanted to get started cool um for me I I think the uh the next iteration of uh social interactions that we have on the internet in other words where do we graduate from Facebook and Twitter the natural uh Evolution for me is in the metaverse so it becomes more of a digital interaction further from where we are today in the in the web 2 world of social activities uh and then the other additional footnote to add there is those social activities can now really translate into more meaningful digital economic activities and we can look at things like bartering assets we don't have to always interface into an exchange or a Marketplace and I think that's exploring that element of metaverse is really really exciting because then we can truly start developing what I call digital GDP and the contribution to the wider economy I think that's where it gets fascinating I believe there's going to be an evolution of uh games uh so we've started with play to earn games um in the metaverse but um we'll be seeing so in theory sometimes it works but in practice it's really different right and um I think like the mistakes in the past uh you know uh we've learned a lot from these mistakes right so for example um in the past we've not really accounted for speculators in the market right um so the next iteration of uh of token economics would have to like consider that um apart from games I actually see extra earned applications so there is going to be an incentive structure around a learning platforms you know educational platforms which we call Learn to Earn then you get incentivized as well for uh for exercising like move to earn and so we'll be seeing a number of these like gamified application patients in the space and moving to the math of Earth cool just to quickly add on to borough's point I think um economic in metaverse gaming is a very good example right so um the start of um web3 gaming booming we see axes playing to iron uh model and now we see like single tokens World token and even multiple token going forward we're all trying to upgrade the tokenomics for gaming so that it doesn't only work in up market right and will be able to attract more value and real contributor to the economy and um hopefully you know guilds going forward we'd be more focusing on educational and informative materials rather than just having you know all the players and attract value from the ecosystem um great point so move on to my next question the economic community so I think you guys will probably all know better than I do um so right now with the new digital space and um digital culture aspects of what's Happening no matter where space um it's really upgrading the organizational form right we see new kinds of organizations happening with real incentivized for different contributions to the to the community such as developers of the game platforms like Clinton and even like organizations like Dallas and girls and ygg so what are you guys think about the digital Community happening in the space yeah I'm just watching I'm not sure who that was but uh um at the central games you know we we kind of view our community as like a mini country and so you know obviously within each country there's economic policy and you know different incentives in place to hopefully you know encourage the community members to to be productive um and so as kind of barrel brought up you know in the past like year or so a lot of these um economic models were built on growth uh growth models and you know once you know once the market kind of turns a bit um South and you know the growth stops you know a lot of these in-game economies we're not able to sustain and so at DG you know we're really focused on really providing value to our existing community and so that even if growth stops um you know you still have a sustainable in-game economy and so right now you know we we're launching new features to you know deliver that value to our existing you know stakeholders in our community cool you know the industry observation I've made is uh earlier on uh in web 3 the the marketing budgets weren't as big for projects I mean they were obviously big for foundations and and whatnot um but as marketing budgets grow and uh higher valuations are raised I think you're going to see more projects not just develop communities at the Grassroots level but actually pay for conversion where communities make sense to integrate so at Clayton what we've done is to help out some of our gaming projects we have invested in evos which is the largest Esports team in Southeast Asia we've invested in loud which is the largest Esports team in Latin America and we're looking at a few others we've been speaking to T1 and what we want to do there is we're willing to help with conversion costs where it makes sense to bring in new communities to have them contribute to the gaming economy and it makes sense for them as well because they're all looking for a web 3 strategy at the standpoint Place autonomous organizations is to actually incentivize your community right the the people that are actually going to be contributing uh within your new economy or within your new um application right and um at least with the yield Guild games we've contributed 45 of our tokens in circulation uh to incentivize the community so these are for contributors uh these are for uh projects to incentivize the first few users of the platform um and and so on and so forth right um so this is one innovation of a Dao structure and then the second point I'd like to make is you'll kill games was not a Dao on the first day it was the founders that make most of the decisions then afterwards as soon as they actually build the team uh the decision making gets distributed within the team and then you have investors and then we have actually introduced the concept of sub-dials which is um a structure where uh we have it's like a distribution Channel per region so we have um we have the Latin America subdo the India subdial and the Brazil you know like Japan Korea and so on and so forth but each of these regions are its own uh Dow structure economy where uh ygg uh the uh the association think of it as an association um owns a percentage of each of these um sub-dials but they don't own the entire thing right the reason behind it is because we want to incentivize the the the localization uh Within These sub-dials or distribution channels to make their own decisions to raise their own funding um and to be able to really localize uh the you know the the structure of their own like Dao right so the association itself includes all these sub sub-dials or subcommittees as members of the of the Dao itself right so they're still part of decision making like each of these sub-dials um in the future of how Dallas should be like uh what they should how each of them should look like but at the same time they could actually share their experiences in their local market so I think um this was a really important innovation for uh for us at least um as a Dao as a guild of Guild South Dallas yeah very interesting so I hear like Regional communities and different kinds of communities right resources of the applications institutional and Retail investors as well as developers and Builders so these are all our community members and we come together and make contribution into our our metaverse right um okay so move on to Trends free it's a very hot topic right now is um digital identity so avatars reflects your self-awareness and when we see like all the users they enter into a metaverse or a different application the first thing they do is create their own avatar and I'm curious to hear about your thoughts about the potential of digital avatars digital and identity and even decentralized identity we're seeing like different Technologies and infrastructure that can really make it happen like DK Technologies so what are the views on this so yeah digital identity is is really key to to the metaverse you know it's it's really what um the entire metaverse economy currently is is based around you know people uh you know creating their Avatar dressing their Avatar in in clothing uh naming their Avatar and all of these kind of items that they are able to customize um their identity with or nfts and so I think we've seen in kind of the early days of the metaverse is kind of an economy built around these assets um and specifically that applied to gaming um you know I think it's really important um distress identity and stress kind of the social interactions because um you know as people play games and you know we've seen play and earn and play and own uh different models you know where people are able to earn these assets by participating in the game um it's important that the individuals earning those assets kind of have a tie to those assets and they they want to flex them and show them off to their friends because otherwise if they don't have this desire to kind of show them off they're just going to sell them and you know exit and you know you know we we all know that that doesn't end well too and too well for you know the in-game economy assets so it's a really crucial piece of all kind of metaverse games to have this like identity and to have a strong uh sense of you know items that you can show off on on your avatar you know for for us at Clayton we're really really bullish on um did um one of the challenges in web 2 is that there's no way of validating if your LinkedIn profile is really what it is I mean you know what stops someone from saying I was the CEO of uh Pando acid or you know there's there's really no concept of proof of me verification and I think this is where did becomes quite interesting because once you're able to do that um it extends into opportunities into the metaverse but also it really starts uh decreasing some of the risks around catfishing in the metaverse and things like this so um I really like the concept but more importantly from a monetization perspective once you have that footprint that you can verify you can then start collecting a lot of social data around that and get into things like social graphing or what others call token graphing and that takes again the sort of digital economy to another level where there's a lot of opportunities to monetize on data so this reputation and identity piece is really crucial to the development of uh the metaverse and web3 in general right so um it started with nfts and avatars to accentuate your personality right so it's it's like in the in the real world we actually dress up we actually you know um choose our own fashion to actually kind of like show who we really are right in the digital space it's the same it's about social status it's about collecting all these um rare items right um kind of like collecting stamps in the real world and then um it's also about uh you know like uh some of these nfts are also a utility to be able to uh for example in games you have these nfts to be able to get into the next level or to actually help you uh you know like um earn more rewards right like I'm in games so nfds in general and like avatars are kind of like necessary in the digital space right or in the metaverse so I don't think it will go away but there actually needs another layer uh that would help really develop uh the nft space uh further right and um this involves the uh the the the part that um David was mentioning like um the the you know the social graphing piece where you know like um you have reputation badges right you earn them uh so to actually prove that you've uh you've completed a certain task um and then once you actually have all these badges which we actually call Soul bound tokens right um you actually create um your entire reputation that's actually sipping in a wallet and then there's going to be another um how I see it is there's going to be another like privacy layer right which still needs development in the space and then once you actually complete this identity there's just so much applications that can actually build on top of that identity it could be other forms of uncollateralized loans it could be insurance right and this is where you know we actually see that there's going to be more development um in this space it starts with identity I believe yeah I want to add on to David's point I am a victim of the LinkedIn scams so I was I was I was managing listings and investment for hobby there are many fake accounts for Sierra so I had to cancel my own LinkedIn accounts I don't have linking accounts so just for the record because people like they asked for listing fees with fake accounts and then there's no way to verify so they come to my Twitter and sometimes we can see the direct messages but apparently Twitter can just cancel your accounts whenever they want so I'm really excited to see did release of our problem right here on to my next question for digital culture and boom so nfts has become the value carrier of the digital culture so I want to talk about The nft Right nft Use case we see tons of 90s volume are happening on the top five of the pmps so people use them as as profile pictures on the other hand for gaming people use nfts as a better use case scenarios according to the camera so what are your thoughts on this yeah so I think just the pfp kind of movement was just the tip of the iceberg you know it proved that you know these these digital kind of communities could could unite and you know have value these items um that have you know meaning um within within its specific community and for us at DG you know we all of our items in-game are nfts and they have direct utility by giving you access to the to the game um and within the game obviously you can earn other you know items and kind of develop a reputation and so you know I think moving into that space you know there's there's several projects that have been you know in the gaming space that have you know added this utility to these nfts um and so I think you know moving forward you know I think that's kind of like the way the direction I think it's kind of headed is just adding additional more and more utility to these nfts within games and potentially even adding existing uh utility or adding utility to existing nfcs for example like if we wanted to roll out um uh and and kind of bring in folks from the board a ecosystem you know we can add utility directly in our game to board ape nfts I mean we've started to do this um with this few different partners as well at DG um for us at uh Clayton we we really like the idea of horizontal integration between games through creating nft portability and in-game asset portability typically games are vertically integrated and so if I buy V bucks and I use the V bucks to buy a skin on fortnite once I get bored of that game I can never extract that value so you lose out on the utility value because it gets trapped with nfts where it becomes interesting is as we have more interoperability we're able to create this horizontal portability with the assets and I think this enhances the opportunity for utility value not just with the nfts but in game as well so we're really excited about seeing a lot more technology being built around that we're also really excited about Dynamic nfts we work very closely with chain link on this and a few other teams including galaxis a team that used to be formerly known as ether cards they were leading the drive in the dynamic nft projects we really see dynamic dynamic nfts taking a strong use case in game and even in the metaverse if we go back to the idea of an avatar being represented by a unique mnemonic on chain think about health being represented it in a game by a bar graph but now if you have Dynamic nfts and oracles integrated into that you can have avatars you know grow in size get more muscular skinnier and really Health gets the representation of Health can be really shown in a different way so we're pretty excited about that so Miles and David have actually explained it really well right so at least with ygg y one thing one thing is you actually own them right and so YG is able to actually lend these uh our assets that we own to our communities in the emerging markets and I think um that's actually one thing that uh the the space in terms of like gaming and like nfds can do great points more points so moving on to my last question here about digital Finance emergence so to me it doesn't it it's not only to be digital and decentralized and also truly inclusive to be able to um attract all of our communities each and every one of us to be able to use it and to make it more efficient and low cost so my last question is is defy the ultimate form for inclusive digital Finance if it's not can we picture a better form yeah definitely I think you know defy um is something that a lot of our users were introduced to for the first time because you know gaming um they actually onboard it to crypto through just playing our game in the metaverse um and so just due to the fact that you know you can take a wallet from you know our game and go use it on Ave or or maker or you know whatever defy protocol you want take out a collateralized loan I think is pretty amazing um and so kind of just like bigger picture I think you know defy will be exposed to a lot more users due to gaming and metaverse adoption um and so you know we've seen this kind of already play out with uh the rise of of actually you know they were able to onboard three million people into their game and like those people are using the swaps on on Ronin et cetera um and so you know I think you know for us we're really focused on onboarding improving kind of the new user onboarding especially not only for web 3 users already but also you know for web 2 folks um and I think you know going forward um it'll play a massive role in in d5's adoption um D5 is quite interesting I you know I was a banker for a long time and I always thought to myself Bank should just become like a utility like Hydro or electricity um you know the point I'm making there is like defy at the Nirvana State perfect state is just going to replace Banks because Banks what they do is they collect deposits they loan out those deposits to give you interest and essentially they they take the counterparty risk that you may go to default and they charge you for that well if you have if you think about it you can completely decentralize that and that's what D5 is so I think D5 as a utility will get integrated into all sorts of domains including gaming entertainment uh in web 3 in the metaverse so that that's one aspect of D5 that I just wanted to clarify from my perspective and then the other thing is I think there's going to be a new form of trade in the metaverse and even in gaming and it's going to be what I call barter 2.0 if you have digital assets let's say that are represented by nfts and there's value and the marketplaces value on that from a supply and demand perspective why do you have to go through an exchange you don't have to go through a Marketplace you can directly barter as long as you have a virtual environment that allows you to interact that way so we're pretty excited to see where that where that moves to yeah I'm really excited to see so much Innovation going on in defy uh in general right from lending to uh to finding um you know like Arbitrage in the space and all all that one thing that I probably would spend more time like thinking at least us as a guild right is uh the the problem that the rich just gets richer what the the whales um in in crypto can just like use um the staking uh part of D5 to get more rewards but what about communities right in Emerging Markets um they don't have the same amount of resources in terms of capital but they do have resource in terms of time how do we make use of their how do we you know like um no make use of their how can they make use of their time to be able to participate in the upside of D5 right and so uh yeah I I believe that the important part here is like the identity piece so that once you offer loans in the form of uncollecting these loans uh with uh with gaming assets and then communities are able to like slowly like earn an income through playing games then the identity piece would actually know what games do they play with you know how many hours do they actually spend you know uh in in an application in an extra earned application uh what skills have they actually learned uh you know like how much rewards do they normally earn and um through those um and for through that data and information you're able to actually extend other forms of defy applications right in form of other forms of uncollatories loans um in Insurance yeah great so from my perspective um there are institutional Traders and then there are retail so for institutions um regulation is very important for them right for for uh for them to really be able to trade and scale and see if either licenses they're protected by centralized government but for D5 um you know regulation is a is a problem we're still in discussion and also on channel liquidity Solutions right that's a real pain point right there and then for retail the user experiences retail shouldn't be able to really feel anything when they're like get onto a platform and they want to trade you shouldn't ask them to register for like wallets and then there's long like key like everything that I just get overwhelmed everything should be solved in the back end so we're like you know constantly looking for new projects solving that infrastructure problems right there so thank you so much for a informative panel and um that's uh this is it and um we still have some time left do we want to take a question from the from the audience Maybe questions I think all right thank you so much