Launchpool AMA Recap — Realm
Launchpool x Realm AMA Summary
Place: Launchpool Official Telegram Community
Date & Time: July 22rd, 10:00 UTC
Guests: Matthew Larby & Joban Thomas (Co-Founders of Realm)
Host: Sam Harvey — Launchpool Project Manager
Launchpool was excited to host the Co-Founders of Realm for an interactive Ask Me Anything session with the Launchpool Community. The AMA comes in anticipation of Realm’s $400k Allocation Mining Event on Launchpool coming July 26th. The session lasted for 1hr 30mins, and consisted of questions from the Launchpool Team and questions from the community.
Questions from the Launchpool Team:
Sam: In anticipation of the upcoming AME on Launchpool on Monday, we have Matthew Larby & Joban Thomas (Co-Founders of Realm) joining us for an AMA.
Hello & Welcome, great to have you both here. If you could start by telling us a bit about yourself, your background and your involvement with the space.
Matt: Hey there, my name is Matthew Larby I am the founder and CEO of Realm. I’ve been building businesses in the technology space for the last decade. I previously founded a web 2.0 tech business with Joban, where we built an internal GPS system and a software layer to connect people with buildings. We eventually sold that business to a tech billionaire. I’ve been invested in crypto since 2013 and I strongly believe that most of the world’s problems can be solved by decentralising the services that humans use.
Joban: Yeah for sure, I’m Joban and I have been involved in tech startups and crypto for many years. I love building great products with super clean UX and elegant solutions. I take the role of CPO, Creative Director and have also been a CTO and technical consultant for large brands and startups in entertainment and prop-tech.
Amazing! An impressive background. Could you tell us about the rest of the team? (backgrounds, experience, etc.)
Matt: Of course, they are brilliant. The team consists of excellent individuals with a range of experience. Joban came from Cambridge University and has worked in tech startups the whole way through. Milan, our CTO, writes every computer language and is a grade 8 musician who builds games for fun.On the game and concept designer side we have people like Saiful who worked on the movie Avatar and at Riot games, 2 world creators, one Cambridge Uni Architect and 4 modellers. Then we have our core engineering division of 11 engineers who range from solidity devs, fullstack, GoDot game engine and react native. Everyone who works on Realm is really great at their job, collectively we have about 125 years of experience in tech.
What problem are Realm trying to solve? What is the overall vision for the project?
Matt: We see Realm as being a collection of cool microverses that you explore via portals to find rare NFTs and earn $REALM tokens. We are partnering with world class collectors and NFT artists to make their own realm’s so when you explore it’s going to be truly beautiful.
We really felt that current metaverses were targeted at an advanced blockchain user on a computer and while they are great, we don’t think they appeal to the mainstream mobile user. So we started thinking about building a new metaverse and realised that every person we spoke to had a different idea of what the metaverse was, hence we thought why not allow them to easily create their own microverse, a digital space they have complete creative control over. You can use realms to display art, connect with friends and play games!
We intend to make the largest economy in the metaverse and we will drive revenue for the platform and $REALM stakers from the economy, so we’ve decided to we need to make it very easy for people to build in the metaverse and this means not charging for all of the land up front.
The artists already have the coolest 3D worlds and models that they just render as videos and pics, they really love the idea that now people can explore their creation, get inside the art
Joban: One big problems we see is the NFT marketplace is very 2D, and that format doesn’t work for some of the amazing 3D art we see. The second problem is that both digital and conventional artists haven’t had a place to exhibit their art as galleries were deemed not essential businesses
So we are helping artists by enabling them to make a 3D virtual space using one of our template realms or by importing their own space. They can then place their NFT art into that space and invite people to their next drop. We are using live audio to then help the artist make a deep and meaningful connection with the fans who visit their realm. We think all of these things combined with new revenue streams from NFTix should help artists. Not only that, we take 5% of the realm fees and put them into an Artist fund.
Finally we can’t censor artists and they keep custody of their realm and their NFTs.
Given all of that exciting info about what Realm have planned — How are you differentiated from other similar projects?
Joban: Our difference is that we challenge the existing NFT marketplaces by providing creators and collectors a place to show and share their NFTs in an immersive and interactive environment, not just a listing site that looks like eBay.
The metaverse that we are creating does not charge for land as we think this limits the ability for creative people to make cool realms. Instead we are structuring Realm so that we make the largest metaverse that will in turn have the largest economy of all the metaverses.
We are also working with wealthy collectors and high profile artists, and we’re offering them better ways to connect with their fans. An example might be that a famous artist wants to do a private showing of their new drop to some wealthy collectors and we stream live audio of the artists into the realm to create a powerful engagement. Like Clubhouse but with the actual art in front of your face.
Realm is also built in an open source game engine, so will ultimately be allowing creation of mini games, VR experiences and an infinite variation of creative microverses — think decentralised Roblox!
Matt: One key differentiator is we are mobile first, where most the web traffic is. We just strongly believe that the type of individual who will spend a lot of time in the metaverse is using their mobile not just a PC. The other major benefit of mobile is we get to utilise Augmented Reality AR tech to literally blur the lines between the digital world and the real world, it makes for a really fun experience.
I’m going to drop in your roadmap below — could you talk us through where are you at? What are the next steps?
Matt: The last 3 months have been about developing smart contracts, the metaverse game space and our mobile applications. The smart contracts are complete, the team is running around collecting coins and NFTs in the metaverse and the mobile applications are seeing good progress with even the complex parts like the Augmented reality seen above.
We have also developed Realmies, fully 3D interactive companions for the metaverse that are animated. We are using procedural generation to customise each one, accessories included. Moving forward we will be spending a lot more time on the creator tools that make it really easy for anybody to make their own realm in a few minutes, if you can build in Fortnite you will be able to build in Realm.
So really Q3/Q4 is about creator tools. Improving our import pipeline that turns artists 3D scenes into Realms. Looking forward to 2022, things get very exciting as everything we have designed has been built so it can be used in VR.
We can show you some of the concept sketches as the rendered versions are being saved for the launch:
So each Realmie has a set of unique characteristics. We will develop breeding of these Realmies this year. When you breed you are creating life and this functions in a similar way to real life. We take the a characteristics of both parents and use our partner Chainlink to get verifiable randomness. Then the offspring is a totally new and unique Realmie.
Amazing — thanks for sharing! To switch gears slightly to talk about the raise and the investment side of the project — How was the project funded up to this point? How will the funds from the AME be used?
Matt: Yes so we raised a round from some world class investors who have been very supportive of the project the funds we are raising now are being used to develop out the creator tools and expand the Metaverse. We’re at a team size where we can build things fast but may need to add a few extra world builders
Joban: Yes, like Matt says we will be using the funds from the AME to further develop the product and ecosystem — as you know Metaverse and gaming projects require a lot of capital. We’ve already made amazing progress with our talented team and will be using the funds to grow the team and build faster. We are also in talks with some really exciting names in the Metaverse space for further investment. Cant divulge too much about that now.
Thanks for the info! Are there any strategic partners (excluding Launchpool) that you can share?
Matt: Sure the partnerships range from other projects to artists. People like Polkamon (polychian monsters) who are making a Realm and ensuring their characters work in the Metaverse. Chainlink who gives us verifiable randomness and are making us custom oracles to decentralise the game. NFTrade who we are doing NFT farming with. Polygon who are also investors and we use their L2 for most our processing so its gas free. Bridge mutual as we are exploring insurance in the Metaverse.
Joban: On the art side, we are partnering with some of the best NFT projects and they will be bringing their NFTs into Realm. We will announce these over the coming weeks. We are also partnering with wealthy art collectors who will be exhibiting their collections in realms. Finally, we have some world class artists who are coming on board as partners and advisors to Realm and have created unique experiences from their vision and 3D art. For instance the KidEight realm is constructed from one of his pieces, and will feature buggy racing and all sorts of fun activities.
I’ll keep a look out for future partnership announcements. What made you choose Launchpool as your partner for the AME?
Joban: Realm is designed as an egalitarian platform, with the freedom to create, explore and monetise being a central part of the ethos. Launchpool’s egalitarian approach feels much more in line with the ethos of Realm than the exclusivity in much of the early investment scene. We want to give everyone the chance to participate and benefit from the genesis of the platform on the same terms as GBV, NGC, Alphabit and all these great funds who are already fully invested in the project.
Launchpool allows us to give back to our awesome community and make sure everybody profits from the success of Realm.
Matt: This same ethos extends to our token supply, where 25% of the total token will be awarded to people for playing and creating in Realm. We should all own a part of the metaverse.
A glowing recommendation for Launchpool — thanks guys!
What is the total allocation you’ve set aside for the Launchpool community? Are there any limitations or is the Allocation Mining Event open to everyone?
Joban: The total raise on Launchpool is $400k, we wanted to offer the community a sizeable allocation! The AME is open to all participants who qualify under Launchpool terms — we look forward to welcoming as many of you as possible.
A reminder of the Launchpool country exclusions: Botswana, Cambodia, Canada, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Iran, Pakistan, Panama, Seychelles, Sri Lanka, Syria, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, United States and Yemen.
LPOOLers should be able to get a good sized allocation then.
What happens after the AME? Could you talk us through the tokenomics: total supply, initial circulating supply, initial market cap, initial vesting, total vesting period (from launch until when will the last token be vested for), etc.
Joban:
Total token supply: 1,000,000,000
Initial Circulating Supply: 14,155,429
Initial Market Cap on Launch: $424,663
Token Price: $0.03
The vesting terms are the same for investors and LPOOlers (as egalitarian as it gets), which is 12.5% unlock at TGE with remainder daily vesting for 18 months.
We will launch the token at the same time as the product in September.
talk to us about the REALM token itself — What are the use cases for the token?
Matt: The $REALM token is the primary utility token in the Metaverse. So all transactions for clothes, realms, trees, characters etc is paid in $REALM. Every time a transaction occurs it sends $REALM tokens to the staking pot, so if you stake our token you will be earning a part of the entire Metaverse economy.
For Realm builders we allow you to build a realm for free but as your realm gets more popular or you want to unlock additional functionality we ask you to stake realm to unlock the functionality
Joban: Also, 25% of the entire supply of $REALM will be distributed among the community over the next five years. Combined with the dispersal of platform fees, the Realm Foundation has the financial power to provide real benefit to the NFT gaming and art community.
Realm is committed to open source, and will be offering grants to content creators to build art, games and experiences using the Realm engine. Community DAO functions will also allow holders to determine the direction of creator grants and other community funded initiatives :)
Amazing — thanks for the added info. Before we open up to LPOOLer questions, where can we join your community? (twitter/telegram/discord/etc)
Joban: You can find us in any of the following places:
Telegram: http://t.me/Enter_Realm
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Enter_Realm
Medium: https://enter-realm.medium.com/
White paper: tinyurl.com/RealmWP
Thank you both! That concludes the pre-prepared questions. If you wouldn’t mind sticking around to answer any questions from the community 💭
Questions from the Launchpool Community
Will there be an IDO or only sale through Launchpool?
Looking at an IDO on polygon but we may just go direct to CEX.
Will I be able to bring my Launchpool Labs NFTs into my Realm, further down the line?
Yes you can bring any NFT into realms and we also partner with NFT creators to give their NFTs utility in the Realm Metaverse. If you have NFTs in your wallet they can be placed in Realms just by clicking where you want them to go. Simply sign in with metamask or trustwallet then you see your NFTs. Create a space from a template and tap where you want your NFTs to be seen. You can also see them in your profile in app.
We are looking towards the collectors as much as artists themselves — indeed we are literally working with some of the biggest collectors in the world with 7 figure collections. Anyone with NFTs in their wallet can add them to their realm — creating their own personal gallery.
We’re definitely super keen on interoperability between platforms — nobody has really cracked that yet. We are already working with some big brands to bring their NFTs and characters to life. Right now there are challenges of how well 3D assets move between platforms, so we’ve been working hard to ensure that we can use the assets from all sorts of projects and the Realm metaverse can be a super diverse and interesting space where you can show off your collections from either NFTs, other games, or things you’ve created and minted yourself!
We have many technical issues in Virtual Reality. Which important technical challenge of Virtual Reality did Realm encounter?
Keeping file size small is the hardest part and something we continue to work on. Our use of godot game engine is much more efficient than say unity or unreal.
Where do you see Realm in 5 years, what is the dream goal for this?
A decentralised Metaverse owned by the Community that can be accessed through AR or VR.
Will anyone be able to build their own realm? If not, are you considering making this available in due time?
Yes anyone can build a realm, we’re starting out working with big artists and creators, but by the end of this year all users will be able to use templates to create their own unique space, add their art and objects, and invite their friends in to see their realm and explore together.
I’ll add a bit about Godot — Godot is a powerful, lightweight, and community-driven game engine that is very different to centralised engines such as Unity and Unreal. Working Godot means the Realm engine is completely independent of any centralised entity who could impose censorship or control. One of the advantages of using Godot is that it allows Realm to provide a wide array of creation tools for players and creators. For example, non-technical players can choose from several Realm templates, such as Art Gallery, Cyberpunk, Samurai to easily create their own space. For skilled creators, Godot allows us to provide advanced tools for creation. Realm will ultimately contain a fully fledged gaming ecosystem hosting features such as physics, game mechanics, and monetisation opportunities.
How does the platform attribute value to each NFT given that they can be created and imported at ease by any user?
We don’t attribute value to NFTs from elsewhere — the market has already done that. However we will allow you to trade and set a price in REALM if you wish to sell an item you’ve imported. You have to verify the wallet and own the NFT in order to import it — you cant claim NFTs you don’t own!
The value of NFTs tends to come form the buyer and the scarcity. When realm creates NFTs like Realmies we calculate rarity so that some are worth more than others.
We are developing machine learning that scans all import hashes and looks for similarities, then flags to a community verifier.
What’s your business model? How do you expect to make profits?
We take a fee on all transactions that happen in the Metaverse. We create NFTs that we sell in the form of Realms, Realmies and accessories.
What makes Realm different from competitors?
One of the core concepts we had here was when discussing what the perfect metaverse would look like — we all had a different ideal, and realised that the best metaverse is one in which everyone can create their own world, or microverse. There are a host of other differences too, for instance our advanced pipelines for artists to import their own models into 3D, our mobile app which allows users to actually discover and be recommended content they will like.
We have also trademarked ‘NFTix’ — these are collectible NFT tickets which control access to events and realms. This is a concept that gives attendees a souvenir and also allows us to create music, art and other events in realms.
We are also partnering with GeoJam to put on music events with big artists in their Realm.
Who do you think your product appeals most to? What’s your target user profile?
The Metaverse is big business in Korea. We are bringing onboard as an advisor the ex head of Samsung blockchain. Korean people love the mobile-first Metaverse, eg Zepeto with 100m users.
Apart from the NFT exhibit and AR augmentation, any other medium available through which users can interact within the metaverse?
Well there is a whole game that we are creating where you explore the realms hunting for rare NFTs, think Indian a Jones in the Metaverse. We have artists that are breaking very valuable NFTs into little pieces for you to hunt them. I must keep some surprises though!
My last question is about your long term marketing plans. How, or through which big partnerships do you plan on utilising to pass your product onto the community and non-crypto community.
Marketing is focussed on partnerships with familiar artists and collectors that have large communities. We are creating events inside the Metaverse with musicians and talks similar to clubhouse.
We are going to have to conclude it there. Thank you to everyone who asked a question & to the Realm team for joining! If you have any further questions for Realm head over to their social channels.
About Realm
Realm is a cross-chain, community-driven open-source project that encourages collectors and creators to express their artistic vision in the purest form: their own magical virtual realm.
About Launchpool
Launchpool ($LPOOL) leverages communities, knowledge, expertise, contacts and capital to provide crypto projects with the best possible start to life, maximising their chances for success in this fast moving & dynamic space.
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