Before launching DeFiHorse, Giang achieved many accomplishments. He was named a Forbes “30 Under 30” Vietnam honoree and has been the driving force behind the development of various companies. DeFiHorse is advised by Steven Nguyen, founder of Metub and Coincu; Hung Dinh, founder of Rada; and Duong Vi Khoa, vice president of the Vietnam Recreational eSports Association.

Unlike many other projects, DeFiHorse is building a metaverse in which users can own horses and earn income from competing, buying, selling or even breeding horses.

DeFiHorse is one of the NFT metaverse projects in Vietnam that has received the most funding from a private round to date, at $5 million. According to the project’s spokesperson, the additional funds will be utilized to further develop DeFiHorse with the long-term goal of becoming a technology unicorn founded by Vietnamese and bringing promising blockchain technology closer to everyone.

“We intend to present to the world a high-end NFT metaverse in which everyone can own at least one NFT horse and horse farm. The player can proudly own NFT horses and farms just like elite people own horses in real life,” Mai Truong Giang, CEO of DeFiHorse, stated.

NFTs can be traded outside of the game, and some players are already playing up to eight hours a day to earn a rare sword. Clearly, working for eight hours to earn something valuable in the virtual world already has the potential to make as much economic sense to some people as working for the same amount of time in the real world.

By 2022, Oasis will connect games in the diverse arenas of fishing, sports, casino games and shopping, in addition to the world of SWORDS of GARGANTUA. 

An NFT is a unique token representing a specific item. Each NFT has unique information or attributes that make them impossible to replicate. Like an original Topps 1956 Mickey Mantle baseball card, some of these items can become collectible and worth significant sums of money. CryptoKitties, a blockchain game famous for clogging the Ethereum network in 2017, can boast the sale of an NFT for over $170,000. That amount was paid for Dragon, a cotton-candy colored digital feline whose profile informs us that she spies on her neighbors.

Image: CryptoKitties

A Lesson From Second Life

Second Life, the multiplayer online game developed by Linden Lab, is known as a pioneer in the field of virtual-reality entertainment. In Second Life, you can socialize with others using avatars, or create your own items and environments and sell them for Linden Dollars, which you can then exchange into fiat currency. Although the game garnered widespread attention in the early 2000s, it never really entered the mainstream.

One of the main reasons why Second Life never achieved widespread adoption, according to Kunimitsu, is that it relies on the centralized management system of Linden Lab. “Because Linden Lab issued currencies and increased the land size at their will, it caused inflation,” he explained.

Of course, the world of Second Life was not as immersive as that of current virtual worlds, and it may not be fair to compare the two directly. But a system that allows the central authority to decrease the value of currency arbitrarily opens itself to criticism that participants who create within that ecosystem cannot be properly compensated, which results in a decrease in the incentive to build.

But blockchain technology promises to help us evolve from the Internet of Information to the Internet of Value: a world in which the exchange of information is economically meaningful.

To Kunimitsu, what is most interesting about blockchain and Bitcoin is the fact that “mere data possesses a value.” When that data represents a unit of economic value — for example, an item within a game environment or a unit of currency on a blockchain — the supply limit can be proven to every participant. In a virtual environment with sufficient network effects, simple laws of supply and demand suggest that when the supply is limited, things get valuable.

In-game digital assets, such as avatars’ clothes, weapons, and land, may be limited. “Digital assets in the virtual space begin to have value,” suggests Kunimitsu. And when data becomes valuable in the virtual world, people will start thinking about “earning” it.

“If you are good at earning money in the real world, you can continue to do so. But if you are good at making houses and furniture, hunting monsters, making weapons in the virtual world, you can sell to those who are good at earning in the real world.”

Kunimitsu is also the CEO of Yomuneco, the publisher of the VR-based action game SWORDS of GARGANTUA, complete with its quirky capitalization.