SHIPPING SZN
I’m sitting on a long flight to Singapore, thinking back on the last four years. The Open Metaverse was never going to be an easy objective. We have the odds stacked against us and the journey is a long one. If we let the probability of success dictate what we do, we’d never do anything important. No matter the odds, it is worthwhile and that’s why I’ve spent so many years of ups and downs committed to this.
This is no longer just me, I now have a core leadership team of 12 people around the world and we’ve successfully generated a movement of thousands all focused on one shared goal. Our investors and members are among the best in the world, and still growing.
This week marks an important milestone for shipping a brand and product to market. Our team has found a great flow together and done some really excellent work.
Open Meta sits at the crux of one of the most compelling stories in human history. Our aesthetic and tone of voice deserved to reflect that - so we’ve worked with our creative team Totem - who are also close friends of ours - for the past several months to arrive at a brand that can tell it’s own story. One that is deserving of this mission of a new open economy of worlds.
Our explorations took us into iconography and symbols, anime and movie posters, game art and culture. Everything that we love and feel inspired by.
One of our later mood boards captures the aesthetic exploration:
But more important than the ‘look’ was the recognition that the Open Metaverse is emerging and relevant to everyone. Open Meta will shift shapes and take on new textures as the community grows and as the DAO itself becomes a vehicle for collaboration, education, and the widest possible spectrum of interests and ideas.
First impression: www.openmeta.xyz
As we worked through a new website, we knew it would be the kernel for other forms of communication, and that it would grow and expand. It creates a journey for different people as they enter the Open Metaverse:
For the curious, who may know very little about the Open Metaverse or web3
For the believers, who are looking for a community that reflects their values
And for the builders, who are looking for others with similar talents or interests, or who want to use tools like Emergence to help them create experiences in the Open Metaverse
This is just the silhouette of what is to come. You can use the menu to navigate the website or you can choose your own adventure to explore the narrative based on what you believe.
OPEN BETA IS LIVE
The nervous system of Open Meta is a web3 game engine protocol that we’ve developed called Emergence, which we are now formally in the open beta for.
We have been outspoken that we believe the metaverse is the internet built by game developers. Emergence is a set of tools for skilled game developers to become world builders. Documentation and full Unreal supported SDK plugin for Unreal 4.26, 4.27 and Unreal 5.
Our Unity version will be available in the coming weeks. And we’ve already gotten a bunch of great feedback from the community asking for new features that we’re working towards.
You can find a slew of Tutorial Videos, GitHub Download Links, Documentation about our APIs and Feature Overview at our developer documentation site here:
https://docs.openmeta.xyz/
Be sure to join our Discord to share any feedback or ask questions to our dev team, we have a very active developer support channels: www.discord.gg/openmeta
The Open Metaverse in its full expression is still many years away, but the emergence of it is happening now. Emergence defines the interface between wallets and game engines, mapping ownership into tools for game developers to build on-chain and as interoperable as they choose.
EMERGENCE CORE FEATURES (UNREAL & UNITY)
EVM Chain Compatibility
Native WalletConnect integration
Persona Creation & Management
Avatar Identity System
Inventory Service
KEY PILLARS OF OPEN META
We are sharing more detail on the design principals of our particular DAO, through the pillars of $OMETA, the Agora, the Quorum, the HIRO score, and a network of 13 Houses.
$OMETA - our native token which mints members, and creates pathways for involvement and ownership, value is returned to the community through $OMETA
The Agora - a shared space for members to collaborate and hang out
The Quorum - a dedicated place for governance, members must stake their way in
HIRO score - a reputation score for those actively participating in governance
Houses - the organizing principle for members to develop into skills trees based on their values - funding, collaborating and co-producing projects together
NEW WORLDS
Now looking forward, we move into the chapter of taking this all to market more broadly, we are doing that with something called New Worlds - a globally reaching hackathon for game developers to build into the open metaverse from the ground up. New Worlds is a completely new opportunity to explore use cases and move the world forward to more utility and interoperability. New Worlds will be one part summit and one part game jam. We will do twitter spaces all month and also work with developer teams in an ongoing way for a panel of judges to choose winners next year.
We are doing well on runway but it’s time to scale and I am starting a road show to raise another round this week, starting with Singapore.
I’ve come to realize that so much of this comes down to staying power, who can be in the arena for the long run.
Man, what a journey. Thanks for being on it with us. A lot more is coming.
SUGGESTED READING (AND LISTENING)
Check out this amazing article by Aleissia who heads up the Emergence team.
Listen to this Twitter space with The Feature, our partner, where we discuss Open Meta and the upcoming New Worlds.
This Twitter space with the House of Virtual Fashion is a great interview with the Mt Rushmore of fashion innovation
Aleissia will also be talking at Games Beat Summit Next, October 25-26th in San Francisco. Be sure to check out the event if you’ll be in town!
SINGAPORE
If you’re in Singapore this week, get in touch. I’m here raising.
DATA ROOM
A deeper dive on everything can be found here.