Here’s how the Metaverse is born: an update from Matters Lab
Author: Jieping Zhang, Annie
Happy New Year from the Matters Lab team. What a year! Matters.news, our web3 blogging platform, has made giant strides in 2021, and we want to thank every content creator and reader on Matters.news who boldly participated in our experimental projects, from our NFT logbook to our writing award. We also want to thank our investors’ support.
As the founder of Matters Lab, my vision is a freer and fairer world for creators through web3. I’m committed to creating a better, more decentralized, and more sustainable business model for creators: a world where everyone can express themselves and contribute to the ecosystem equally.
Today, the pandemic is the new normal. It’s a part of everyday life. No matter which time zone you are in, you are probably battling the virus socially, politically, physically, and culturally.
All the things we took for granted, like a jet-setting lifestyle and being global citizens, are fading away. Forced into our own personal bubble and increasing isolation, life as we know it is disappearing.
Meanwhile, work and life goes completely online. In a world of closed national borders, our only connection to the world is online.
This is how the “metaverse” happens.
In a society isolated by the pandemic, we yearn for refuge in the online world, a world where fresh beginnings abound. Online, we can take control of our lives, and we express our individual uniqueness. No wonder the metaverse has become a buzzword: even Facebook is now “Meta”.
New worlds are always exciting, and how it turns out is always unpredictable: we can never judge the ending as good or bad. When we build a new world, it’s that very dissatisfaction or rebellion against the old system that gives birth to new ways of thinking, new practices, and new experiences.
Countless setbacks can bring a little bit of change. In truth, this is how revolution happens.
We’ve had our setbacks at Matters Lab, but also our accomplishments. These are our proudest accomplishments in 2021:
1.Encrypted Wallet Login: Matters.News, the decentralized content community with 80,000 registered writers, has always promoted decentralized storage (IPFS), access to Likecoin ecology, open source technology, and decentralization of community governance.
In the first month of 2022, we launched a key step in the decentralization of the entire community: support for crypto wallet registration and login. Now, you can use Matters directly through your encrypted wallet, publish your content, and enjoy decentralized storage without using the web2 login method.
2. Circle Project: In addition to the Matters community, we aim to provide convenient community tools and communication mechanisms for creators to build their own supporter network. The Circle Project, which was launched in the first half of 2021, is the content monetization mechanism on web2. In 2022, we will iterate the prototype of the project on web3, in addition to NFT and other revenue and profit sharing models.
3. NFT Avatar: In 2021, Matters Lab released its own ecological NFT Traveloggers–our first experiment to explore the creator business model with NFT. It’s the only NFT that expands private ownership with collective creation with a logbook co-creation function.
At the same time, it’s also the identity of the explorer from Matters City to Matterverse. We have several revolutionary NFT experiments coming up and current holders of Traveloggers will be given priority to purchase the next round. Buy your Travelogger on OpenSea now.
4. Logbook Co-creation: Each Travelogger comes with a never-before-seen function: a logbook written on the blockchain. Only the owner of the Travelogger has the exclusive rights to add records (stories, pictures, and webpages) to the log.
With every successive trade of the Travelogger, ownership is transferred, and the new owner not only gains the rights to the avatar, but also the collective messages left on the logbook from past owners. This creates a mutually beneficial collaboration between content creators and collectors. From here, we explore how Web3’s tools can solve the problem of ownership management and profit distribution under collective authoring.
5. On-site Nonfiction Writing Award (Chinese): At the core, our mission is to nurture independent writing and to build a network of self-governing writers. In 2021, we collaborated with Renaissance Foundation Hong Kong to launch the first season of the On-site Nonfiction Writing Award.
The award garnered 350 participants from different countries, ages and occupations. 35 prominent publishers, media professionals and authoritative figures in Chinese nonfiction writing acted as judges.
Due to several outstanding projects on important themes, a total of five prizes were awarded. In 2022, we plan to organize more On-site awards with a decentralized operation model, and even Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) model.
6. Pre-A Fundraising: At the beginning of this year, Matters Lab secured $2 million in Pre-A round of financing. The investors include key players in the web3 world: Longling Capital, Protocol Labs, Mask Network, Crust Network, Infinity Labs, Assembly Partners, and Incuba Alpha. Matters Lab will use this funding to implement the aforementioned experimental prototypes for our users, greatly expanding the decentralized creator ecosystem.
Going forward, Matters will continue to create revolutionary projects based on web3. Since 2018, when we talked about topics like decentralization, blockchain, cryptocurrency, and even Matterverse, we were discussing web3: an Internet-owned platform co-governed by users and builders. Stay tuned for our exciting works by following Matters Lab Medium.
And with that, the Matters team wishes everyone a happy new year. In the year of the tiger, may we be more diligent and free, always be curious, be courageous, and be more present in our own lives–no matter what happens in the world.
See you in Matterverse!
Interested in NFTs? Our inaugural NFT collection, Traveloggers, can be found at OpenSea here.
Follow us on Medium and @MattersLab on Twitter for the latest news and insights on NFT and web3, or start creating on Matters.News.
