MetaPortal - Investment Thesis
This post is brought to you by…
NFTfi allows borrowers to put up assets for a loan and lenders to make offers in exchange for interest. The NFT is held in escrow so lenders know for sure that they will either get their money back with interest, or receive the NFT in exchange.
“MetaPortal aims to foster development of the open Metaverse, through a mixture of contributions and capital.”
The idea to grow MetaPortal beyond just a content hub was fuelled by a discussion of our fundamental purpose for working in crypto back in August. We figured it’s still the early stages of the Metaverse emerging, and there are a lot of ways it could develop. We want to be players in this infinite game, steering things in a more open and positive sum direction. There are many ways we can, and will, achieve that. One of them is through venture contributions as MetaPortal.
We’ve broadly begun to define the Metaverse as being an emergent reality, where physical and digital meet. It is persistent, and allows for unbounded movement of ideas, identity and value. The experience itself will be enabled by hardware and software that is ever reducing the boundary between the two realities. It is in effect, becoming a true second life. That means a second economy with the potential, we think, to be larger than anything constrained by the physical world.
In support of this idea let’s look at how others are investing. In recent months Axie Inifinity raised $150m, The Sandbox raised $93m, and YGG took in $4.5m. This is not just some circular funding frenzy either, these rounds are being led by a16z, Softbank and other big venture firms. There were 111 Web3 & NFT related rounds in Q3 2021, totalling $1.8bn, NFT startups alone raised $1bn in September (Dove Metrics doing stellar work here).
Then at grassroots level, we’ve seen play-to-earn emerge as more than a narrative, with people in the Philippines leaving their jobs to “drive Axies not taxis”. To cap it all off, Facebook pivoted their business to focus on the Metaverse at the end of October, even changing their name to Meta. Suddenly, 2.8bn people are exposed to the term, and funds everywhere lapped it up (Metaverse was mentioned 128 times during investor presentations this year, compared to just 7 last year).
We see many groundbreaking innovations of the future coming from crypto. From improved human coordination and greater understanding of what constitutes value in our society, to technological unlocks like blockchains, NFTs, social tokens and others. Accelerated by the increased interest, understanding and of course, funding, changes to all the above will start to happen very quickly indeed. As MetaPortal we can focus on the effects of these changes specifically in the Metaverse, and help projects who are looking to capture and iterate on them.
Of course, we want to make sure our purpose is aligned with the teams we work with. As such, we have distilled our thinking into four core principles, listed below.
Infinite Players
People who are working on something bigger than themselves, pursuing things for the satisfaction of being present at this time in history, not seeking status or riches.
“I like to say that working [on things in the Metaverse] is effectively building my own afterlife” - Mark Studholme, MetaMundo
“We should talk not just about the open Metaverse, but about the open intelligent Metaverse” - Arif Khan, Alethea.ai
Interoperability & Openness
Absolutely key for blockchains and ownership. Interoperability could mean between chains, between real world and digital, between virtual worlds, anything. Openness refers to the open source nature of development in this space. To go far, go together.
Innovation
We want to look beyond the hype and contribute to projects that move the space forward, always in pursuit of the qualities listed above. Bonus for combining 2+ technologies together (looking at you Alethea!).
Decentralisation > Centralisation
We value a metaverse that is built on the principle of decentralising ownership and democratising opportunity.
So that’s how we think about our ventures, be they capital or contribution. It’s an exciting time to be in crypto, and we can’t wait to get stuck-in alongside some incredible teams in the future.