What is the metaverse? This question is seemingly simple, yet exceptionally complex, and no authoritative definition has emerged so far. In this roundtable discussion, executives and investors from various parts of the industry chain shared their views on what the metaverse is, what stage it is at now, what opportunities it holds at the industrial end, and how to identify quality projects.

Virtualization is irreversible Although there is no unified definition, people have formed similar insights on the metaverse, whether it is the hardware side, the software side, or the content production side.

According to Liang Lu, Head of Strategy and Marketing of Unity Greater China, the metaverse represents the next generation Internet, which transforms the original 2D, non-interactive and static Internet into a real-time, 3D and interactive form, creating a sense of more spatial experience.

These brand-new features are graphically interpreted by Wang Xin, the founder & chairman of Sharing Times, through an image: starting from the descendant Nuwa to the future science fiction era, a new universe world spanning 5,000 years is created by the content development platform, which includes all kinds of virtual image IPs and IPs based on real celebrities for secondary development, and they are jointly transformed into They are jointly transformed into "digital assets", generating intersection and interaction in the virtual world.

All this is dismantled to the technical end, Bright Vision CIO Zhang Li explained that the metaverse contains a series of 3D, digital asset displays, all of which are supported by a variety of converging technologies such as AI, edge computing, visual processing, and Web 3.0 infrastructure technical support. The convergence of diverse technologies to the current point in time provides an opportunity for the metaverse to explode.

Zhang Li believes that no matter what kind of world the meta-universe will eventually present, one thing will be certain - the value people create in the virtual world will be greater than the entire real world. "In the future, it is likely that all artists will leave reality and run to the meta-universe to paint and create, and thus the scarcity of artworks will be shown in the meta-universe."

In the practitioner's view, going from reality to virtual and mapping reality with virtual will eventually be an irreversible process. So when will the promising metaverse actually explode?

"The dawn is not that far away, it is now past 12 midnight." Unlike previous technological waves, the multiple "small waves" in the metaverse windfall are developing in parallel.

Jin Cheng, CEO of Peanut Animation, said that if we follow the traditional thinking to understand the development of a new thing, it usually goes through the process from preparation period, development period to explosion period. Corresponding to the preparation period of the meta-universe, it is the high-speed iteration of various communication networks, cloud computing, and arithmetic algorithm technologies to improve the infrastructure of the meta-universe. In the development period, various tool models such as bookkeeping and NFT trading platform are spawned, and the uppermost application layer is various applications such as games and social networking.

But at present, the technology of infrastructure, tools and application layers are developing in parallel, and all kinds of startups are sprouting up, which is showing that the metaverse will show the momentum of high-speed development. According to Jincheng, "The dawn of the meta-universe is not that far away, and it is now past 12 midnight."

Wu Feng, partner of Northern Light Venture Capital, used the Internet wave as a reference to analyze the law of technology development. 2010 was the time when the infrastructure of Internet communication and network was being built, "At that time you wouldn't invest in e-commerce and OTO because the payment tools were not yet mature. The best investment targets at that time were tools, games and social."

But in 2015, major banks and Internet payment systems were gradually built, logistics systems became increasingly mature, e-commerce quickly emerged, and then gave rise to new ways to play live with goods, video e-commerce, etc. The investment community also set off a wave of OTO, e-commerce, live boom.

Wu Feng believes that at this point in time, there is no doubt about the development prospects of the meta-universe, but it is still too early to say that it will explode. "If the meta-universe is the next interaction cycle, then the reference before the PC era, there is the groundbreaking Windows, mobile era, there is the world's popular smart phones, meta-universe 'artifact' has not yet been born, everything is still in the early stage of chaotic development. "

Liang Lu, the head of Strategy and Marketing Department of Unity Greater China, explained the urgency of the current rapid development of meta-universe from multiple dimensions, such as industry, technology and capital.

From the industry's perspective, the Internet has entered the "in-volume era", and the mobile Internet can't find a new breakthrough in terms of content, communication and interaction methods. As the next-generation Internet, the metaverse is expected to be a new round of industrial growth and carries the ultimate fantasy of human beings for the Internet.

At the same time, capital is also looking for new breakthroughs. Virtualized social, virtual idol, and virtual land are scenarios that are believed to stimulate more business potential and give birth to a large number of high-growth enterprises.

From the technical point of view, 5G, cloud computing, digital twin, XR and many other technologies are in the stage of rapid development, and the metaverse has built a huge world system, which is the best way out for these technologies to land.

"Throw away the paradigm of thinking based on Web 2.0" Standing at the current point in time, there is no shortage of applications such as Roblox and Axie Infinity that have already taken the lead in detonating, allowing investors, founding teams, and even early participants to make a lot of money. How to identify quality projects has also become an inseparable topic for every investor and practitioner who is concerned about the metaverse industry.

The answer from Wu Feng, partner of Northern Light Venture Capital, is that whoever can make users play first is the winner. Compared with "what is Web 3.0", ordinary users are more concerned about "what different experience Web 3.0 can bring" and "whether they can benefit from it", which are related to the application effect. The questions are about the effectiveness of the application.

Many applications are indeed bringing new experiences to users. For example, on social media such as Yup, users can manage content from the Web 2.0 world such as YouTube videos and music, while managing Web 3.0 assets such as NFT and earning tokens in the process; in the digital wallet Disco, users can store different digital identities and choose what information they want to reveal and transfer it between different dapps (decentralized applications) and dapps. Then, for example, the game application Axie Infinity allows players to earn tokens through game battles, breeding and other methods, and to trade and spend them ......

Wu Feng suggests that Web 3.0 entrepreneurs should throw away the paradigm of past Web 2.0-based thinking and start from scratch to re-engage users.

How to build a successful Web 3.0 application?

Wu Feng concluded that, referring to several of the most successful Chinese Internet giants in the mobile Internet era - Headlines, Meituan, Jindo, Racer, Xiaomi, and Drip - they all have one thing in common - "exclusivity ", that is, highly based on fragmented scenes, highly dependent on the characteristics of the camera and other technologies, which is not in the PC era, unique to the mobile Internet era.

Analogous to now, 3D, real-time, and interaction, become the three most essential features of the meta-universe. Wu Feng believes that around these three features, each of them will create a large number of market opportunities. Northern Light Venture Capital's investment approach is to select the track before the CEO, and beta before alpha.

Wang Xin, the founder & chairman of Sharing Times, is more optimistic about the development opportunities of infrastructure. He said that in the initial development stage, the metaverse created a large number of digital arts, including music, animation, paintings, etc. They all need clear digital corroboration for deep development. Therefore, technical services based on digital corroboration will be in immediate demand in the market.

Zhang Li, CIO of Bright Vision, believes that interaction will be an opportunity point that is both highly challenging and high potential. There are no companies that are far ahead in such sub-sectors as optics and gesture recognition, and these tracks may eventually converge to a few large head companies to lead the market. From this perspective, the players in the current track all have greater growth potential.

From the underlying infrastructure to the upper layer applications, everything on the Internet will face reconstruction. The meta-universe era is already whistling, and a new round of wealth feast is about to open. *** Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) ***

What is the metaverse? This question is seemingly simple, yet exceptionally complex, and no authoritative definition has emerged so far. In this roundtable discussion, executives and investors from various parts of the industry chain shared their views on what the metaverse is, what stage it is at now, what opportunities it holds at the industrial end, and how to identify quality projects.

Virtualization is irreversible Although there is no unified definition, people have formed similar insights on the metaverse, whether it is the hardware side, the software side, or the content production side.

According to Liang Lu, Head of Strategy and Marketing of Unity Greater China, the metaverse represents the next generation Internet, which transforms the original 2D, non-interactive and static Internet into a real-time, 3D and interactive form, creating a sense of more spatial experience.

These brand-new features are graphically interpreted by Wang Xin, the founder & chairman of Sharing Times, through an image: starting from the descendant Nuwa to the future science fiction era, a new universe world spanning 5,000 years is created by the content development platform, which includes all kinds of virtual image IPs and IPs based on real celebrities for secondary development, and they are jointly transformed into They are jointly transformed into "digital assets", generating intersection and interaction in the virtual world.

All this is dismantled to the technical end, Bright Vision CIO Zhang Li explained that the metaverse contains a series of 3D, digital asset displays, all of which are supported by a variety of converging technologies such as AI, edge computing, visual processing, and Web 3.0 infrastructure technical support. The convergence of diverse technologies to the current point in time provides an opportunity for the metaverse to explode.

Zhang Li believes that no matter what kind of world the meta-universe will eventually present, one thing will be certain - the value people create in the virtual world will be greater than the entire real world. "In the future, it is likely that all artists will leave reality and run to the meta-universe to paint and create, and thus the scarcity of artworks will be shown in the meta-universe."

In the practitioner's view, going from reality to virtual and mapping reality with virtual will eventually be an irreversible process. So when will the promising metaverse actually explode?

"The dawn is not that far away, it is now past 12 midnight." Unlike previous technological waves, the multiple "small waves" in the metaverse windfall are developing in parallel.

Jin Cheng, CEO of Peanut Animation, said that if we follow the traditional thinking to understand the development of a new thing, it usually goes through the process from preparation period, development period to explosion period. Corresponding to the preparation period of the meta-universe, it is the high-speed iteration of various communication networks, cloud computing, and arithmetic algorithm technologies to improve the infrastructure of the meta-universe. In the development period, various tool models such as bookkeeping and NFT trading platform are spawned, and the uppermost application layer is various applications such as games and social networking.

But at present, the technology of infrastructure, tools and application layers are developing in parallel, and all kinds of startups are sprouting up, which is showing that the metaverse will show the momentum of high-speed development. According to Jincheng, "The dawn of the meta-universe is not that far away, and it is now past 12 midnight."

Wu Feng, partner of Northern Light Venture Capital, used the Internet wave as a reference to analyze the law of technology development. 2010 was the time when the infrastructure of Internet communication and network was being built, "At that time you wouldn't invest in e-commerce and OTO because the payment tools were not yet mature. The best investment targets at that time were tools, games and social."

But in 2015, major banks and Internet payment systems were gradually built, logistics systems became increasingly mature, e-commerce quickly emerged, and then gave rise to new ways to play live with goods, video e-commerce, etc. The investment community also set off a wave of OTO, e-commerce, live boom.

Wu Feng believes that at this point in time, there is no doubt about the development prospects of the meta-universe, but it is still too early to say that it will explode. "If the meta-universe is the next interaction cycle, then the reference before the PC era, there is the groundbreaking Windows, mobile era, there is the world's popular smart phones, meta-universe 'artifact' has not yet been born, everything is still in the early stage of chaotic development. "

Liang Lu, the head of Strategy and Marketing Department of Unity Greater China, explained the urgency of the current rapid development of meta-universe from multiple dimensions, such as industry, technology and capital.

From the industry's perspective, the Internet has entered the "in-volume era", and the mobile Internet can't find a new breakthrough in terms of content, communication and interaction methods. As the next-generation Internet, the metaverse is expected to be a new round of industrial growth and carries the ultimate fantasy of human beings for the Internet.

At the same time, capital is also looking for new breakthroughs. Virtualized social, virtual idol, and virtual land are scenarios that are believed to stimulate more business potential and give birth to a large number of high-growth enterprises.

From the technical point of view, 5G, cloud computing, digital twin, XR and many other technologies are in the stage of rapid development, and the metaverse has built a huge world system, which is the best way out for these technologies to land.

"Throw away the paradigm of thinking based on Web 2.0" Standing at the current point in time, there is no shortage of applications such as Roblox and Axie Infinity that have already taken the lead in detonating, allowing investors, founding teams, and even early participants to make a lot of money. How to identify quality projects has also become an inseparable topic for every investor and practitioner who is concerned about the metaverse industry.

The answer from Wu Feng, partner of Northern Light Venture Capital, is that whoever can make users play first is the winner. Compared with "what is Web 3.0", ordinary users are more concerned about "what different experience Web 3.0 can bring" and "whether they can benefit from it", which are related to the application effect. The questions are about the effectiveness of the application.

Many applications are indeed bringing new experiences to users. For example, on social media such as Yup, users can manage content from the Web 2.0 world such as YouTube videos and music, while managing Web 3.0 assets such as NFT and earning tokens in the process; in the digital wallet Disco, users can store different digital identities and choose what information they want to reveal and transfer it between different dapps (decentralized applications) and dapps. Then, for example, the game application Axie Infinity allows players to earn tokens through game battles, breeding and other methods, and to trade and spend them ......

Wu Feng suggests that Web 3.0 entrepreneurs should throw away the paradigm of past Web 2.0-based thinking and start from scratch to re-engage users.

How to build a successful Web 3.0 application?

Wu Feng concluded that, referring to several of the most successful Chinese Internet giants in the mobile Internet era - Headlines, Meituan, Jindo, Racer, Xiaomi, and Drip - they all have one thing in common - "exclusivity ", that is, highly based on fragmented scenes, highly dependent on the characteristics of the camera and other technologies, which is not in the PC era, unique to the mobile Internet era.

Analogous to now, 3D, real-time, and interaction, become the three most essential features of the meta-universe. Wu Feng believes that around these three features, each of them will create a large number of market opportunities. Northern Light Venture Capital's investment approach is to select the track before the CEO, and beta before alpha.

Wang Xin, the founder & chairman of Sharing Times, is more optimistic about the development opportunities of infrastructure. He said that in the initial development stage, the metaverse created a large number of digital arts, including music, animation, paintings, etc. They all need clear digital corroboration for deep development. Therefore, technical services based on digital corroboration will be in immediate demand in the market.

Zhang Li, CIO of Bright Vision, believes that interaction will be an opportunity point that is both highly challenging and high potential. There are no companies that are far ahead in such sub-sectors as optics and gesture recognition, and these tracks may eventually converge to a few large head companies to lead the market. From this perspective, the players in the current track all have greater growth potential.

From the underlying infrastructure to the upper layer applications, everything on the Internet will face reconstruction. The meta-universe era is already whistling, and a new round of wealth feast is about to open. *** Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) ***