Standards and Democratization for Metaverse Builders

Transcript

[Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hey guys pleasure to be here my name is Nicholas founder of that hopdao and today I will talk to you about standards and democratization for metaverse Builders right in the last two or three years the topic of the matter is has obviously been let's say yeah around a bit right the term has been widely abused and used I would say in both directions positive and negative and I think generally

there's obviously a huge misconception around the metaverse in general out there you know now when you talk to people 50 will tell you oh the metaverse isn't it dead what is the metaverse right and I think whether we call it metaverse internet spatial Computing whatever we want to phrase it right at the end we all know that the internet is heading to a more immersive and 3D environment and here in order to achieve Mass adoption we need to collaborate we need to work together and above all we need data infrastructure standards right and that is what I'm going to talk to you about today how actually these standards can be facility stated how the matter is adoption especially for the builders as a first step can come to

life in general just to recap right the metaverse still right now is a huge ecosystem in terms of opportunities right you have the creative economy you have gaming and web3 which at the moment of course Mark the key verticals around the Metro's economy but obviously long term it goes beyond right I will not spend too much time on this slide because we all know it's a huge opportunity but sometimes it's important to recap right what is a status quo however at the moment the matter is itself lacks behind its true potential right we all know that you know most of the web 3 metaverse worlds are not really scaling there's a lot of talk about the users there's over 160 plus different Virtual Worlds there is over

500 000 500 million users actually across worlds right so at the same time while we have all these different worlds there's also still a lot of users and I'm not talking just about web3 worlds obviously right there it's a bit less I'm talking about generally the concept of virtual environments and spaces in the world and in the internet so there is growing traction right there is still growing demand there's especially amongst younger Generations a lot of traction and yeah a lot of time actually spent in these more immersive virtual environments but their data silos right so as you have your identities in one platform you have your other identity in another you you you don't you're not

able to move seamlessly from these different ecosystems like you would move from website a to website B right so that's a huge issue and that is by well because of the lack of interoperability standards and there is tremendous amounts of lands out there which we all know as being the matter is infrastructure right the domains of the metaverse however each of these land ecosystems is super fragmented right and as a builder it's very hard even as a company where I would say some of the companies even big Brands can be seen as Builders right we get a lot of requests from companies and traditional Finance IP in Esports traditional Sports gaming right and they often don't know where

should they go right and I'm as an individual Builder as a freelancer as a Creator you also don't know where should I actually start should I go to fortnite or Roblox should I go to the central end of sandbox or should I build my own world in my own instance right and this is this is a huge issue right so there's no Universal standard for interoperability yet especially when it comes to also connecting the web three worlds in general what we want to Envision and with the Hub right what our vision really is and how we want to help Builders is actually setting these standards right there's a lot of data standards out there there's a lot of ecosystems out there but there's not really an aggregation thereof right and

this is really what what our mission is and we really want to power the applications that scale the user adoption how this looks like is that of course eventually you have the fuel right which is the data which comes from the blockchain the metadata the AI and obviously extracting from the users that consume create and scale the businesses in these ecosystems and you have the platforms on top right and the key verticals that users focus on is invest building experience right so do you purchase something do you build something or do you just have fun right so in order for users to go through this flow to use a journey they need to have these standards in place

and here for instance tools that we from our side have already launched is on one end the Metro is Explorer which can help you all basically to scale to find the best places in these worlds to position yourself and to just also make purchases right so when you want to know where should I go in these different worlds you can use tools like the Explorer where you can navigate through these different ecosystems right on top of that there's also different Builder Suites right that that we are working on and we'll dive in in a second on that basically concretely where actually you will be able to navigate from a builder's perspective through these different ecosystems and don't limit yourself anymore to just building

in one of them right and then having a siled ecosystem in terms of traction just to show you that the metaverse still has traction these are some of for instance the recent user metrics that we have right um there is still traction around the matters I just want to mention it because I think it's it's important to show right that there is not it's not at that space it's actually something that is still moving that is still scaling if you focus on the right verticals so basically a quick background about ourselves right and we are a diverse team from all over the world we we have been early contributors to a lot of the the core protocols in the space Also in the web 2 world we have quite a good presence and our mission is really to

scale the standards in the user adoption we have a strong team of advisors right so with these advisors we do different mentorship programs educational programs and other initiatives basically which we can help you and other people with that come from universities to actually enter the space right and navigate into the right directions we have strong Partners so anyone looking to build in a metaverse and find the right Partners can also reach out to us and we can help and connect you with them of course and now I want to take the time to dive a bit deeper into actually how Builders can yeah let's say facilitate these standards and can leverage matters building for themselves for others for businesses and users and

for that I have a little surprise prepared please give it up for my co-founder Camilo who is responsible also for the tech he doesn't like to be called a tech leads right so I'm going to skip that but yeah he's he's the expert to tell you a bit more about these steps thank you thank you Nico um guys I actually want to talk about interoperability so as you know bringing standards to to the place very very important right now but a lot of people talk about interoperability as it would be like a regular topic right like yeah interoperability and now in the medical space when you talk to different companies they're all saying it like interoperability interoperability so we really wanted to approach this topic

I mean as Nicholas mentioned we have these different verticals on how we bring these standards um to to the metaverse and one of the main pillars is the building component now in the medical space I don't know if any of you have built anything in the metaverse I don't know you Sergey you two okay good so as you as you can see not so many people oh not so many people uh not so many people built in these Virtual Worlds right and if we envision the metaverse as the future of the internet then we will have everybody every one of us building immersive experiences in one way or the other now if you want to do and if you want to build an immersive experience of as of now you need to really know how to code you need to know how to build these 3D

models and we need to change that so for that we built an interoperable metaverse Builder now the first iteration of this was with the centerland where early contributors to the protocol and we really think that it's one of the best sort of say Virtual Worlds out there because it's very very composable and it allows you to interact with its SDK in a very simple way and we took it so to say as the MVP for our big idea which is really making these interoperable building editors now the way it works is very simple so you essentially um have an editor where you can actually put entities into it you put the entities it could be a circle it could

be a 3D model or an asset that you have from your library place it into the scene rotate it move it around I mean as if I don't know you probably played Sims in the past that's what you can do then with the the Central and editor now it's might sound a little bit trivial but um one or one and a half years ago when we actually created this tool you had to code everything from scratch so if you wanted to actually place a chair or maybe this plant in your scene you would need to literally code the coordinates of where that plant is going to be in which position and in which angle which is ridiculous now the we really wanted to change that and create this decentralized editor and the way it

works is you pretty much um use the editor it plays the things that you want in your scene and then it gets compiled into code that gets deployed to the decentraland SDK and then it gets rendered on the decentraland client now this process that you're seeing here is so to say the flow that we used for the Central and SDK but this flow can actually work for other Virtual Worlds now as Nicholas was mentioning before we're getting approached by multiple companies and projects that are either wanting to get into the metaverse OR are building their own world now the issue is when you're creating a metaverse it's I mean you really need to create you choose your your engine okay Unity

um unreal and then you need to create an editor so you can actually create those scenes and everybody needs to do it from scratch so if you talk to spatial to sandbox all of them invested millions of dollars and actually many a lot of time to actually create these editors with this over here you can really use the editor deploy it and create your own virtual experiences now um the the future for it and what we envisioned this to become because this was the MVP with the central end is to actually deploy the scenes that we're creating in the Universal scene description format the universal scene description format is a

format that has been pushed by Nvidia and Pixar since many years trying to bring a standard to the metaverse so like we all use HTTP nowadays we will be using in a way the universal scene description the cool thing is you create for instance a scene which is for the central land on the decentraland SDK on Unity that has let's say some Intel intelligent components as a door that goes uh opens and closes an elevator all these things that I mean you can where you can add logic to the scene so you pretty much create that code that deploy it into unity and since it's in the Universal scene description format you

can then deploy it in Unreal Engine and all the other engines that are coming up in the next couple of so it's actually very very useful if you add the web 3 component to it you just save the whole scene with all the logic and of course the metadata in Universal scene description you save it in an nft and then you can actually transpose it to all the different Virtual Worlds now this is what we're actually doing from the building side we're also doing it with avatars and are trying to really get on board it or get as many people on board to the metaverse in the most simple way Nico is going to give you the final words thank you bro so basically yeah you heard now a bit about the technology of course if you're a metaverse builder if

you're a Creator then yeah I encourage you to to just go to our website download our tool try it out you can reach out to us here of course if you have any questions right so we always open we we do different initiatives around education so you can also sign up to those seminars that we do right so it's all about fostering standards and adoption for us and I think you know for us really the core vision is that the metaverse is not something that eventually we will still use as a term right we've been all over the world talking about what we do and you know of course right now we also see that generally as I mentioned the beginning the metaverse term itself is

something that who knows right like whether it will be around who knows whether it is positively or negatively connotated right it kind of always depends on what Market cycle and what Hive cycle we're in however at the same time we are all on the same page I think that the way that the internet works right now will not be how it will be in in the future right and I think that's why these standards are so important right and that's why the best principle is always learning by doing right so starting out trying new things failing succeeding it doesn't matter right at the end we all want to you know just create a new and more inclusive environment in the internet and I think the two key parts right that these standards actually enable associated

with with with let's say the the user adoption is tools and the users are able to further decentralize what I mean by that specifically is that we always have been talking in this space about decentralization I think actually back in 2018 19 decentralization was a topic that was more used and more used in the correct terms I feel like in the last pull cycle it kind of yeah got pushed in in the in the back a bit and it was more about which Big Brand is coming which big you know IP sports athlete Music musician right like it was more about these topics and decentralization is something that we should not forget right and decentralization as we're also operating as a Dao with the Hub is

something that we we take you know to the core and that's why we also further decentralized and democratize the metaverse right and it's funny as I sometimes say we we also actually need to tokenize the metaverse right and only if we achieve the tokenization of the matter whereas where right now a lot of these Assets in the virtual world that you see they're not tokens right maybe projects and brands are selling tokens to a lot of web 3 communities which we should not forget is them selling consumer products not investment vehicles right at the moment um I mean we all have maybe played around as dejans a bit in the hype of the bull market but at the end really

the metaverse needs to be tokenized first it needs to be decentralized um which happens also at in part through this tokenization and for that you need to have the right tools right and how do we achieve it right enabling the tools that then scale the users because we can only have massive adoption once actually the builders are satisfied once the builders are able to seamlessly create not before right we always kind of like to jump and jump ahead of ourselves where we talk about Mass adoption millions of users in this space before we can actually even have any standards right for the builders it's it's kind of like if you travel to a different country and you you cannot use your your

charger right like humans is generally I think have an issue with aligning on on standards right so I I believe and I see it with the Metros itself it will be probably quite similar like with with everything in our lives but still um you know if if you're interested to set standards if you're interested to actually achieve a more decentralized metaverse right then we are here we are open to collaborate we are open to educate and Mentor we are open to guide right and and at the end we just want to build and and enjoy right and yeah that's that's our mission and we are really excited to to share this Mission with anyone and yeah looking forward to a couple of more

amazing days here at ethcc thank you so much guys and have a great day [Applause] yeah if you have any questions feel free to shoot them hey exciting yeah interoperability is super key um I'm pretty interested in uh building in Vision OS like the augmented reality coming with applicant can your tools help with that as well yeah so the the vision OS is supported by unity so essentially all the all the tools that we create are unity compatible and unreal compatible I mean just making

sure we can use all the engines so and did I hear right that you said that you connect people with devs as well to help build yeah devtools definitely yeah of course all right let's talk maybe quickly on the connection side so right what we tend to do is we team up with universities and local ecosystems right um so we've done it in Germany we've done it in Colombia we're doing it currently also in Nigeria for instance soon we'll do it in Singapore where we collaborate with these local universities we do initiatives there where we teach the students about for instance how they can become a metaverse Creator through our tools right so if there's any initiative that you have in

mind happy to to discuss it yeah and I must to add into that um it's also a very very new space right so in 2021 everybody spend uh their time or the ones that were in the metaverse many of them selling um things right so um we got in 2020 into the space into the medical space and we realized okay there's no documentation for anything so um that's why we kind of created this and now a lot of people are on boarded through these uh educational workshops to actually learn how to do these things yeah thank you if there are some more questions Sergey yeah yeah what about legal uh how you

see it uh when Mass adoption will go to the when all the young boys were sitting in glasses how how you connected with legal when they will when in metaverse you can see powerful things like bad things how how yeah I mean there's actually a philosophical question around this from Jamie Burke from outlier Ventures will the metaverse subordinate to nation states or will nation states subordinate to the open metaverse right and yeah I think in general the my personal take is um it will be quite ambivalent right I mean

right now the same Logics that happen right now in the more centralized internet and who knows whether the metaverse and the open metaverse the web 3 world will actually at some point be decentralized because at the moment it is not right so we will not know how that will play out therefore from a legal side my first guest right now of course I have to say this I'm not a lawyer would be that probably it will be actually quite similar like currently right in the web 2 world where there's bad stuff happening on the internet of course it is always not always but it is quite subjective sometimes if it's bad or not right sometimes for a regulator it's bad for the message it's not sometimes it is

just bad right um so it's always a bit difficult also to evaluate that of course um but at the end I think yeah in human nature it's very hard to stop right humans from doing something and the nature of decentralization is that someone can literally do anything right and has all the the same opportunities right and that's a good and a bad thing at the same time I think we will not be able to stop people from doing bad things um I think that especially I think that we should not focus on stopping bad things so much but actually more about doing good things right I think generally we should focus our

energy on that so that actually people that come into the space don't even have any relation to the bad thing right that yeah it will there will always be something there um and maybe here and there are Regulators need to intervene but I think if we actually collaborate together and work on the right Solutions then we will be able to to be in a good position and I think the most important or one of the most important thing is actually laws around data right data privacy data security and I think on that side actually this is something that is not so much related directly to them let's say these Virtual Worlds themselves but more actually to the data privacy laws and regulations generally of these places right and there I think for

instance here in the EU actually we we are more or less on the Forefront globally on this right if we compare it to other ecosystems so uh where we like to bash the bureaucracy of the EU and then everything around it I think actually there is some some good things happening there um I also believe that if the platform is fully decentralized then for instance the Builders of this platform should not and cannot be held liable for anything bad happening there right because I mean they cannot stop that people from doing that but if a platform is centralized then I think it is actually also the responsibility of that platform right to to protect people and to prevent people from doing bad

things so for instance um a very decentralized quote-unquote world like uh decentraland um there are different principles that would apply to a more centralized World currently like the sandbox right so there's differences where the sandbox for instance is actually Hands-On trying to prevent um things like racism right aspects like General discrimination sexism aspects like that right they are practically pursuing that and flagging accounts that manage and do these things right but in an ecosystem like decentraland it's it's almost impossible but at the end of the day we also have a

great lawyer so in case happy to to connect and and talk about this with him a bit further thank you well yeah I think now the the time is is up but have a great day guys enjoy the rest of your conference [Music]