 Everyone, welcome to theCUBE's presentation of the Unstoppable Domains Partner Showcase. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We're here talking about the Metaverse and what it all means, what it brings to the table. We've got two pioneers here in the Metaverse breaking it down, doing great stuff, both co-founders of companies, Noah Gainer, co-founder and CEO of Parcel and she's a Heatherington co-founder of Atlantis World, digging deep and doing all the great stuff in the Metaverse. Gentlemen, thanks for coming on theCUBE. Thank you so much for having us. So first of all, I want to say congratulations for the work you guys are doing. This is one of the biggest ways we've seen coming on. It's changing user expectations. It's changing architecture. It's real technology involved. There's a lot of action. 30% of people at University of California, Berkeley are dropping out of the computer science program to get into Web three. This is the biggest technological change, business model change, user experience change. And we've seen going back multiple inflection points. This is a big deal. The Metaverse is real. Some people say, well, it's not coming. It's just a matter of time. So let's get into it. What do you guys do? And tell us about your companies, Parcel and Atlantis World. Noah, start with you. Sure. So Parcel is a marketplace for virtual real estate. So you can take of something like OpenSea, which everyone is familiar with, but we solely focus on virtual land and virtual real estate in a number of virtual worlds, maybe part of Decentraland or the sandbox. So we feature those on our platform and we take it the next level with the user experience. So we have fully interactive maps. We have price estimates. You can think of it like as estimate on Zillow. And in general, we're building the fully verticalized solution for virtual real estate users. And that will extend into rentals like Airbnbing out your virtual condo or getting a mortgage on your virtual home, as well as cultivating the community around it and especially helping empower creators and architects and builders and getting them working, getting their work on display. I'm looking forward to digging into that. That sounds very cool. CJ, what's Atlantis World doing? What do you got going on? Yeah, exactly. So at Atlantis World, we're building the Web 3 social metathos by connecting Web 3 with social gaming and education in one lightweight virtual world that's accessible to everybody. So we're going with actually a lightweight first and a pixel approach so that you can play on mobile or a really old device because the problem with existing metathoses is that they set an incredibly high cost barrier to entry. And also tech isn't necessarily readily available globally in terms of things like VR headsets and gaming PCs. Like for example, when I was in Africa, I travel a lot. If my MacBook would break, it's not even that I couldn't necessarily afford to buy a new one. It's actually not available there. So we're ruling out a lot of the global population from a Metaverse experience and we're building something which is like 2D pixel and super lightweight to kind of bridge that gap and build something which is ready to be mass adopted now and onboard billions of users into Web 3. So they'll basically be using Web 3 applications in a gamified way and going really hard on connecting that with social features like voice chat and talking getting and virtual events and downloading and all that stuff. You know what I love about you guys doing your pioneering a whole nother area but what's great about the whole crypto area is that since now 2017 on where you saw Ethereum set the developer market started coming in strong. So you started to see that development and now we've got the Metaverse. So I got to ask you guys, what's the current definition of the Metaverse? I mean, I mean, everyone's, I mean, since Facebook changed their name to Meta, it's been a hype cycle. And I was like, well, first of all, you know why they did that but they're actually putting a lot of dough in this. This is a way we talked about that but what is the Metaverse? How do you describe it? Why is it relevant? Virtual real estate, that sounds cool. Where does this all come together? Explain it for the people out there that might not be getting it right. Yeah, I feel like for me, the critical difference between an ordinary game of what one might think of as a game and a Metaverse is actually Web 3. For me, Web 3 is Metaverse. And for me, it's really because Web 3 enables real world utility but inside of a virtual environment. So for example, inside of Atlantis, you might run into a DeFi bank and understand by interacting with other game characters which are programmed to teach you about DeFi and like what is Aval or how to deposit. And so you're actually getting a real world utility out of doing something in a virtual environment. And for me, that's what really bridges the gap in Metaverse. Yeah, I'm really kind of bullish on that. Noah, what's your take? Define the current state of the definition of the Metaverse. What is the Metaverse? Yeah, to me, it's the 3D internet. And I do agree with what CJ's saying how what makes it the most compelling and ultimately the most successful is that addition of blockchain and essentialized distributed ledger technology because you can have the closed Metaverse which nobody wants that future and I don't believe that will be the future versus the open Metaverse which is blockchain based. The users are the owners of the assets and the land and everything around it and it's really foreign by the people. But I see the Metaverse as just an extension of the internet we're using today but we're going to have hardware that makes it 3D and more immersive like AR and VR. Yeah, definitely. Go ahead CJ. Around kind of like eight or nine months ago when we started to build Atlantis we decided that the Metaverse was a virtual world where you could live, work, plan and that's what we've been building. It started off as like building the Metaverse that has DeFi and over the kind of time that's gone on and our community has grown and we've started to understand the future of our product and our mission and values. It started to become the Web3 Metaverse, right? And then on top of that the Web3 Social Metaverse. So it's a combination of all of these things. You know, it's interesting and I'm a little bit old because I wish I was your age but when the Web came along people were saying the same thing. Though the Web's terrible, it's a stupid thing it's never going to be real. And yeah, there was problems. It was slow to dial up back in the day but now with gaming I got to say I had to look at the gaming evolution being a gamer myself, old school I guess but the gaming culture is a proxy to what I see kind of happening in the Metaverse. And I'm going to get your reaction to that. I'm not saying directly but you saw what gaming did, right? In game currency, some pockets of the same kind of dynamic where a lot of value is happening and the expectations were different for users. So how does the Metaverse, how does gaming crossover? What's the ecosystem of Metaverse? Obviously it's a cultural shift one, infrastructure too but I can just see this new generation of thinking. It's a whole nother level. Can you guys share your thoughts on that Riff? Yeah, absolutely. It's like for us we really believe that we can enable a social revolution where impoverished workers from impoverished and remote regions can actually be onboarded into these digital places to earn economies and also learn to earn economies. So it's about leveraging web three and blockchain gaming, whatever actually you want to call it to enable this revolution and actually on board new people into a completely new working economy and dynamic. One of the other things we envision for Atlantis imagine like you run around this game world and you complete quests inside of the game. And these quests basically involve talking to the non-player characters, the NPCs which are basically pre-programmed. I don't know if anyone's ever played an MMORPG before but it can be super fun and they'll actually teach you how to use different crypto applications. Whether that's a DeFi Bank, NFT marketplace, kind of digital asset exchange. And once you all do that, the kind of end goal innovation is that you will be rewarded with tokens. So users will earn crypto for learning about crypto. And if anybody wants to do that right now they can actually go to Rabbit Hole GG. It's a different project to Atlantis but they are building a learn to earn and you go on your complete quests and interact with different crypto applications and it's so crucial for onboarding. And yeah, it's going to be really powerful, the kind of revolution that play to earn and learn to learn well and enable. I'll check out the Rabbit Hole GG sounds awesome. What's your take on the reaction to that riff on this convergence of culture, tech, gaming, vibe that's kind of dividing the metaverse. What's your take on that, Noah? Yeah, I mean, I think gaming will be the on ramp for maybe the first billion people into blockchain. It's something people already do and are already paying for. And they now have the opportunity to get paid to play. So the incentives are extremely strong. And I think that will be a great way to usher people in, teach them about blockchain without realizing that they're using blockchain. And then once they're already in it and have already used it, then it becomes much more natural to use it in other applications. It's funny people always talk about, oh, user experience, expectations drive experience, right? If you expect something, and if they're used to gaming, I see the great, great call out there, good point. Let me ask you guys a question because I think this comes out a lot in terms of like the market shifts and metaverse. He has an old expression, great markets pull the products out of companies or out of the industry. What organic growth have you guys seen in the metaverse that's been either a surprise or a natural evolution of just success and just growth? Because the market's hungry for this and it is relevant, it's new. What's pulling out? What's coming out of the organic aspect of the metaverse? I think a lot of art and architecture and design and it's empowering a lot of independent creators and allowing them to stretch their skills in a way that they maybe couldn't do before but now can do and get compensated for. Like we see really see the rise of the creator coming in the next couple of years in the open metaverse and finally they will be the ruling class, they won't get the short end of the sequential artists have for all, maybe all of the time. Yeah, some of the Wall Street bets guys in the same way feel the same way. CJ, what's your take on what's getting pulled out of the organic execution growth of the interactions and metaverse evolution? Of course, yeah. I would first of all love to go back to the previous point on gaming and just kind of like definitely agree with what Noah said. And the thing is that gaming is 3.4 billion user market and they're typically an experimental by nature people and group of users, right? So it's definitely a huge onboarding opportunity for teaching users about web three and using web three in a game of like where and making that kind of inherently fun and engaging. And again, in terms of organic growth, web three is incredible for that. We place a huge emphasis on, I think, collaborate versus compete and try to enable network effects for everybody who is involved in Atlantis and becoming part of our fast-growing ecosystem. Like we have eight blockchains, more than 10 DeFi apps, like Aave Yen, Balancer, 1-inch Perpetual, all of the DOWs, like the X-style, Metcartel, Loves the DOW, Pizza DOW, all of NFT communities. Like we're actually building a yacht or bought a yacht club on the beach in Atlantis. So that's fun. But yeah, we grew our community. We're very early stage still. We've been building on for eight or nine months but we grew our community to like 20,000 to 30,000 community members across social channels. And we recently raised over a million dollars from our community. And we're fully bootstrapped and taking no private money. So the ability to actually do that and to coordinate both kind of community efforts and fundraising and resources is really testament web three and what it's becoming in the community aspect of that. And also its future and the kind of dawn and domination of the Metaverse. Well, I got to say, I just got to give you props for that. I think that fundraising dynamic is a real entrepreneurial new thing and it's awesome. You got active communities, they vote with their contribution. And whether it's money and or other value, right? You got social value. This is the whole thing about the Metaverse. There's a new community culture going next level here. We believe in community and we believe in web three. And we don't understand why most leading Metaverse is focusing fully on huge IP and actually ignoring web three. So we're actually trying to build the infrastructure layer for web three applications and for web three driven utility inside of the Metaverse. And what we mean for that by that, imagine that any developer or any project or any team or any company could occupy a plot for free inside of the Metaverse, customize it to their branding and then effectively set up shop. Whether that's a web three integration. So it's a DeFi bank or it's an exchange or whether that's an NFT marketplace or a music venue or a co-working space. We're really excited about that. And we really believe we've designed the value capture mechanism for virtual land in the Metaverse. And we're approaching it in a different way for land in the real world. That's awesome. Well, let's get in that infrastructure conversation. Unstoppable domains, obviously they're having the partners showcase here. You guys are partners. This NFT kind of like access method is a huge, I love it by the way. I think it's phenomenal. I love the value of there, but it's also a digital identity and it's distributed naming. So you kind of got this enablement vibe. You got solves a problem. How is it working with you guys? Take us through what does unstoppable math? Why does unstoppable matter to the Metaverse? Yeah, unstoppable is very great, mostly for identity and having a kind of cross-chain identity inside of the Metaverse and just kind of in web three in general. And unstoppable, we enable login with unstoppable. So if you have, for example, an unstoppable domain, which is like a human readable kind of crypto wallet address, but you can also do some incredible stuff with it. And there is a lot of fun and exciting utility. Effectively, like if you would have, I don't know, like unstoppable.dow, you would be able to use that to log in to the Atlantis Metaverse. And it would represent some of your identity and social graph in game with your peers. Awesome. No, what's your take on the Istanbul angle on this? Yeah, I mean, yeah, it makes it social. So instead of, you can have a feed, something we're thinking about at Percel is like a feed of all the real estate transactions you could follow certain people, you can follow your friends and see a feed of everything that your friends are doing in English or human readable terms that are not just like a wallet address. That's obviously a big one. And they're also giving people more options in terms of naming and top level domains if you want to be something.wallet or .NETT or hopefully eventually they'll have .metaverse will help you know, expand that ecosystem much more. In addition to like on our like back end being able to capture email when they log in and provide better marketing for our users. What would you guys say to other Metaverse partners looking for work with unstoppable domains for their login and digital identity? What's your, what would you recommend? It doesn't make sense to me. Can I with the best of and integrate that if you want to keep shipping stuff for your community and keeping it exciting and engaging and enabling user choice and how they choose to display their identity in virtual environments? Yeah, there's practically no downside and plenty of upside, you know and again, having those users who are already using their unstoppable domains quickly, you know, log into your site and log in. All right, that's awesome. Well, good stuff with unstoppable. I got to ask you guys give an example of your products. I love the Metaverse progression. I love the pioneering work you guys are doing. And again, the funding things are different. The user expectations are different. Technology experience are different. Billions of people going to be enabled for it. What are the cool things you guys got going on? CJ, we were talking before we came on camera about the tree thing you got going on. Take us through some of the things that are exciting that people may not know about or may know about. What should they pay attention to? Share some insight. Yeah, of course. So one of the fun things actually that we're building in a month is that together with our full team and also some outside contributors from the community and Chukin protocol, which is a regenerative finance protocol and I'll get into that a little bit in a minute. Effectively, what we're actually doing is planting a carbon capturing virtual forest inside of the Metaverse that will in future also be bio diverse. So how we're approaching that is imagine that you can plant NFT trees inside of the Metaverse, providing that you'll deposit X amount of kind of USD stablecoin or Ether or some digital asset. You can actually use that to deposit inside of the tree and we will use some probably something like Superfluid, which is like a kind of smart contract infrastructure platform and we'll essentially enable every single second funds being sent from the contract and actually purchasing real world carbon credits. So legitimate government backed carbon credits from the voluntary kind of public market that have actually been bridged on chain, transformed into a crypto asset and they will be locked away inside of these trees inside of game forever. And in future, we also hope to have like user on animals roaming the great forest of Atlantis which will have biodiversity and endangered species credits locked inside. And we hope to support a variety of different kind of sustainable assets and things like that to really populate this ecosystem. So it's you're doing climate change good for real as well as rendering it as an asset for everyone to see and enjoy. Absolutely. And for me, that's what makes the Metaverse the Metaverse. That's what I talked about. It's how web tree enables the Metaverse to cross over into our real world, ordinary life from URL to IRL and actually provide some incredible positive impact for all of humanity and the planet. And Noah, you have some action going on there. I mean, I would be like, oh, virtual real estate isn't an unlimited real estate. But when you have users come together, this value we've seen this in gaming. What are some of the cool things you got going on over there at Parcel? Yeah, I think one thing that stands out which may be not enough people are thinking about our AR virtual world. So right now a lot of people are focused on the VR types, especially in sandbox and Atlantis. But there very well may be a billion people using augmented reality before there are a billion using virtual reality just because of the nature of the hardware development. And Apple may come out with their AR headset by the end of the year. So there are a few projects there. They've taken the real world map and parcel of that into hexagons and you can actually buy that and you own that piece and you can put your own custom content there. And on that social impact point, we have heard about a few projects that are trying to use it for good and what the one project has bought up some land in the Amazon rainforest and some of the proceeds go to conservation of the rainforest. So we're all about using blockchain for good and coming together as a, as a, as a globe. I can't wait to see the commercial real estate division of your group with all the work from remote coming on. Guys, great stuff you got going on. Again, you guys are pioneering an area that is coming big, it's coming strong. It's got a lot of momentum, vitality and energy to it. Put a plug in for your companies. No, we'll start with you. What's going on with parcel? Share a plug for the company. What you're looking for do some key highlights, news. Take a minute to give a plug. Sure, yeah, great. We are the destination for virtual real estate and that extends well beyond just the buyers and sellers. That's everyone across the whole chain with property managers and property developers, but then also the builders and creators and artists. And we are working right now on aggregating the best creator directory and the metaverse. So you can think of it as a place where artists can come showcase their work and get hired, as well as just generally like bridging this knowledge gap that is much, much wider than we even expected. So we have our parcel learn product coming soon, which is a fully fledged knowledge base education, informational content and lots of rich data. Where can people get involved? What's the channels? All channels open, where can we find you? Yeah, our website is parcel.so on Twitter, you can find us at parcel nft. And you can link to our Discord from either one of those. It's the best way to get involved. All right, CJ, put a plug in for Lance World. I know you got a lot of action to share. Yeah, of course. I would love to see everybody there. Thanks so much for having us and thanks for listening. Like I said at the start of the call, we're building the Web3 social metaverse. And we're connecting Web3 with social gaming and education in a one lightway virtual world that's accessible to everybody. We're also doing some crazy stuff, like planting their carbon capture in virtual forest and all of that and trying to be the infrastructure layer for Web3 driven real world utility inside of the metaverse. We believe that we have designed the critical value capture mechanism for virtual run. And we'll be sharing more about all of that very soon and continuing to integrate the best apps from across the Web3 ecosystem and showcasing them at the center of Atlantis. You can go to discord.gg forward slash Atlantis World. If you would love to learn more about us, you can go to wiki.atlantis.world. And there is some documentation now which includes backstory and team and some of our milestones and achievements so far from winning hackathons to raising grants and launching our alpha build, soft launching it. And we all have the public free to play coming in March. And we're most active, I would say on Discord and Twitter. On Twitter, you can find us at Atlantis OX or just search at Atlantis World and it's the first one that comes up. All right. CGA, thank you. Noah, thanks for coming on. I really appreciate you sending the time here and unstoppable showcase and being a partner. Again, they got the great digital identity, great plug there for them here. Thanks for sharing that. And thanks for sharing the time. Appreciate it. Good stuff. Appreciate it. Thanks so much for sharing that. All right. theCUBE's double domain partner showcase. Thanks for watching.