Author: Nancy, PANews
From being highly sought after to being deserted, the metaverse business is experiencing a period of decline after the capital frenzy. However, Meet48, a social metaverse platform driven by Web3 and AI technology, has become a "sea hunter", collecting "sea goods" during the low tide.
Recently, Meet48 has accumulated about 2 million newly registered wallets, more than 20 million NFT votes, and more than 4 million on-chain interactions in two voting activities. Behind the impressive data growth, how did Meet48 answer the Metaverse question, and what reference significance does it have for other Metaverse or Web3 projects that are suffering from growth difficulties? With such questions, PANews recently interviewed Meet48 COO Kai Xu.
Democratization of entertainment, mutual achievement between idols and fans
When talking about the entertainment industry in the Metaverse circuit, the outside world will naturally think of the many celebrity participants in the past. There are many cases of them "bringing goods" Metaverse products. Although the participation of celebrities has opened up the space for brand marketing to a certain extent, most of the products have gradually disappeared, with almost no one paying attention, and some have even been sent to the dock by investors.
In this regard, Kai Xu said in an interview that "stars" are the product of results. "Stars" bringing goods to the Metaverse or NFT is essentially a means of monetizing traffic in the traditional sense. Take "star" NFTs for example. The value of these NFTs is not equal to the brand value of the "stars" - people invest in brand endorsements, but after purchasing NFTs, the owners cannot really participate in the daily life of the stars or influence their future direction. They will eventually realize that these NFTs lack practicality and have no liquidity among collectors.
In contrast, Meet48 uses the idol market as the narrative home of its metaverse. "Idols are jointly created by community users and fans, cultivated over a long period of time, and have community consensus. The process is the experience, and users gain experience in the process of cultivation, and commercialization is a part of the cultivation system. While participating in the cultivation of idols, users share the value brought by the growth of idols, so idol cultivation and the Web3 consensus mechanism are a natural fit." Kai Xu told PANews that on this basis, MEET48 hopes to use AI and Web3 technologies and mechanisms to create a pan-entertainment idol cultivation immersive social metaverse platform, making entertainment more democratic and allowing Web3 to become popular through entertainment applications.
But for Meet48, entering the idol industry also means that it needs to enter a larger user market. You know, for most ordinary users, Web3 technology has a high experience and participation threshold.
In order to reduce user friction, on the one hand, Meet48 has created a seamless entrance. At the infrastructure level, Meet48 has developed a Dapp built-in AA wallet and cooperated with leading infrastructure providers in the Web3 field such as OKX Web3 wallet, thus providing a more seamless experience for non-crypto native users. Not only that, TPS capacity and gas fees will also hinder the participation of ordinary users, especially large-scale voting activities. For this reason, Meet48 is actively looking for a main chain that can carry high-frequency transactions and reduce transaction costs for deployment and cooperation.
On the other hand, Meet48 has increased the user's driving force for participation. Kai Xu explained that in terms of human nature, money and spirit are two original driving forces. At present, most Web3 projects rely on the former to drive FOMO, but when the user's income decreases or is not guaranteed or even loses, it will immediately collapse, which is also often called the "death spiral"; therefore, in addition to the basis of money, Meet48 also achieves spiritual drive by establishing an emotional bond between idols and fans. In the Meet48 ecosystem, fan users are not only for profit, but more for spiritual satisfaction. When the idols they support continue to grow and achieve success, the core demand has been fulfilled, which is also commonly referred to as "generating electricity for love." If fans can also share the benefits of idols' success, it will be a double harvest, which is also something that the traditional Web2 model cannot bring.
Combining AI and Web3 gameplay to promote star-making model and user experience
"Meet48 can give idols and fan users complete control and ownership, so that the development of idols depends on the support of users' voting (such as annual idol elections, golden song selections, best CP, etc.). Compared with the traditional artist market that used to rely on certain institutions and resource owners, the introduction of Web3 technology ensures the fairness, justice and openness of the election, and can also enable all participants to share the benefits of idol growth. NFT can collect and mark users with a consensus on idol culture, and tokenization can incentivize and support participants in the entire ecosystem. These make up for the experience gap of fans in the traditional idol market, and further enhance the development space of the idol market through the characteristics of Web3." Kai Xu introduced to PANews.
Although the traditional star-making model is already very mature, judging by the popularity of the trainee system and the emergence of a large number of talent shows, with the rise of emerging technologies such as AI, Web3 and the Metaverse, more and more entertainment industries are combining with them to promote their business upgrades and improve user experience.
As a decentralized and autonomous metaverse idol ecosystem, Meet48 is promoting the increasing popularity of idol culture. At present, Meet48 has formed a rich product matrix. For example, Meet48's AI data model can not only realize the creation, choreography and song generation of virtual idols, but also users can use AI tools to create UGC content to lower the threshold of creation and achieve profitability; the virtual theater supports users to create performances of real and virtual idols, and provides real-time video streaming and video on demand upload, and even uses related hardware devices to realize VR; and Meet48 also introduces virtual land, NFT, GameFi and SocialFi and other elements into the ecosystem, among which Pet48 includes pet mode, AI companion and NFT breeding and other functions; virtual land can support users to buy to build idol cities or other worlds, DAncing supports rhythm games, social DApps and equity competitions; Monster48 supports player battles, collectibles and adventures, and the introduction of these functions has greatly enriched the playability and entertainment of the platform.
Kai Xu added, "We hope to leverage the power of mass media to promote mass adoption of the platform. The bridge between Web2 and Web3 users can be built through entertainment content, after all, the public can never refuse entertainment. Therefore, Meet48 will launch a series of GameFi and SocialFi products around music, dance, and leisure and entertainment, so that more mass users can enter the Meet48 metaverse through these products. At present, Meet48 has cooperated with some large TV stations and streaming platforms to produce product-related content. Imagine that users can determine the ranking of a talent show by participating in the game, and their every move in the game can directly affect the final result of the game. This is why we hope to surpass the current crypto community as soon as possible and bring more content consumers into Web3."
In addition, Meet48 has introduced token economics to further incentivize user participation. Its governance token $MEET can be used to purchase NFTs, governance, and idol voting, where voting will determine the amount of resources and voting income obtained by the idol. According to Meet48, in the future, it plans to open up the entire ecosystem and users, allowing other compatible projects to access $MEET, thereby developing or issuing its own tokens (which can be exchanged for $MEET).
Roblox, the entertainment company, is about to launch a Web3 idol election event
According to Meet48's future plans, in terms of activities, Meet48 will launch the second Web3 idol finals in June this year. In addition to the voting for real idols, it will also join the voting for virtual idols. He believes that it will bring more user conversions and outstanding results; in terms of business, Meet48 will continue to focus on the creation of AI and UGC, and lower the threshold for users to participate in UGC creation to a minimum, so that everyone can create their own virtual people and turn them into virtual idols.
"For ordinary users, idol creation is out of reach, because the creation of virtual idols is not easy, not to mention the difficulty and cost of content production. Even few companies can afford the production and continuous operation of virtual idols in the long term. But Meet48's upcoming AI applications and SaaS tools will completely subvert all of this. At the same time, Meet48 will also establish a mechanism to support high-quality virtual idols, disseminate high-quality content, and create virtual idol performances."
Kai Xu also said in the interview that AI will bring about a huge explosion of virtual idol creation content, and the ecosystem and mechanism of Meet48 will protect the rights of creators and encourage the production of high-quality content, which will in turn bring more dissemination and traffic effects, allowing more people to know and join the ecosystem. Of course, Meet48's vision is not limited to virtual idols, it aims to create a more comprehensive and freer Web3 entertainment metaverse and become the "Roblox" in the Web3+ entertainment field.
