Realm Summary Recap with Shin Chan Community
We held a live AMA with Founder & CEO, Matthew Larby and Founder & CPO, Joban Thomas from Realm on 22nd June 09:00 PM (UTC+8). Here’s the recap for those who missed it.
Introduction
JH | ShinChan: Before the ama start, can you introduce yourselves and the team background to our community?
Joban Thomas: 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.
Matthew Larby: Hey there, my name is Matthew Larby, I am the founder and CEO of Realm. I love technology and 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 investing in the blockchain space since 2013 and see the future of all services ars being decentralised
JH | ShinChan: Can you introduce us about Realm or do you have any news would like to share with our community?
Matthew Larby: Realm is a metaverse built out of lots of little microverses that are connected together via portals. You can explore the realms and discover rare NFTs and upgrade your character as you go. You can create your own realm to look and do what you want. E.g. an art gallery realm that may be in outer space where you hang your NFT art and sculptures.
We have built our metaverse to support mobile technologies such as Augmented Reality and you see this tech used to bring our Realmies to life. Realmies are creatures that have genetics encoded onto the blockchain
Joban Thomas: 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.
In essence, Realm is a collection of virtual spaces where you can exhibit NFTs, sculptures, music and connect with friends and throw events.
AMA Twitter Section Begin:
Q1: How are AR portals designed just like an art gallery? Can we showcase our own NFTs here to other users and how does AR technology work here?
Joban Thomas: We’re building some amazing gallery spaces that anyone can use to exhibit their NFTs, but its not just galleries — people can display their art in any type of realm and share it with their friends, meet up there and explore other people’s realms and collections together. Augmented reality blends the real world and the realms, you can see into the realms via AR portals, and bring things from the virtual world into your own home!
Q2: I have read that you have partnerships with very large NFT brands, can you tell us a little about these partners and how they contributed to the creation of the REALM metaverse?
Matthew Larby: Yes Realm is partnering with very hot NFT artists, for example KidEight, we will be bringing his art to life inside a Realm that is specifically built for KidEight. Now you will literally be able to experience his art in an immersive game engine and when I say experience I don’t just mean look at the art, but I have to keep some surprises.
We are also partnering with large NFT brands that want to take their 3d models and allow them to be players inside of realm. Each NFT brand can build their own realm to suit their style and offer their own unique gameplay. Finally we are making all land free in Realm to allow up and coming NFT creators to make their own Realm
Q3: Creating a mainstream-grade experience for both end-users and NFT creators should be a number one priority for NFTs based project, could you give examples of modifications being made by Realm to ensure users have a seamless and smooth experience?
Matthew Larby: Firstly we are building mobile first to cut out as much friction as possible and ensure that the experience is good. We are adding a fiat on ramp so users can buy NFTs or pay for NFTix without needing to first buy crypto. You can also access these features on desktop and in the future VR.
For creators of NFTs or realms, which can be minted as ERC 1155 we are making creation as simple as possible. We do this in a few ways, import pipelines from professional programs like blender. For novices we are making templates that can be customised in a few seconds to look how you want then you can display your NFTs in the space. There are so many other things we are doing too. we really approach every decision from a user perspective of how can we make this reliable and simple and secure
Q4: How has the experience and background of your team been effective in the success of your project so far and how do you aim to revolutionize the field of blockchain and NFT?
Joban Thomas: The team consists of excellent individuals with a range of experience. I personally studied at Cambridge University and have worked in tech startups the whole way through. Milan, our CTO, writes every computer language and is a grade 8 musician. We have people like Saiful who worked on the movie Avatar and at Riot games. We use augmented reality a lot and Radu was one of the first engineers at Blippar, a world leading AR company. Everyone who works on Realm is really great at their job, collectively we have about 125 years of experience in tech.
Q5: I would appreciate it if you could share the next updates with us. What is the most ambitious goal of the project? What should the community look for?
Joban Thomas: In terms of product development we’re making great progress: smart contracts for our token and NFTs (Realms, Genetic Pets, in-game items) are completed and we’re building out a super user-friendly app for people to discover and follow content on the platform. Of course we’ve also been busy creating realms themselves, and the tools for users to build their own. We will launch with some awesome realms, and are also collaborating with artists and collectors to bring their work to life.
Matthew Larby: Next updates: Allocation Mining Event with launchpool.xyz around July 19th. IDO two weeks after. Then we open up the realms a few days after IDO. We have partnerships with very large NFT brands that create some of the coolest NFTs and they will build their own realms and you will be able to explore the Realm metaverse with these NFTs. Then of course there is a party event we are arranging in the “Temple of Doge” 🥳
Telegram Live AMA Begin:
Q6: What features of Realm might be of interest to large companies and corporations now? What will motivate them to use Realm in the future?
Matthew Larby: We are speaking with large corporations to allow them to create and sell virtual goods in the metaverse. We are also arranging making virtual events that people who can’t go to the physical event attend. Brands can use realm to connect with customers, make cools customer experiences etc
Q7: Security is the most important , thing to consider want starting, up a project how secured, is this project for users and investors?
Matthew Larby: We have now 12 engineers and all code goes through internal review then goes to external audit. We use industry standard security practices.
Q8: The ecosystem developed in Realm is very complete, using three chains, ETH — Matic and Reef, will you continue to use your fee system on the Ethereum blockchain? Do you have plans to switch, Realm is a reasonable gas rig?
Joban Thomas: Our fee system is optimised for our users, so we will always try to ensure that they pay virtually no gas to collect rewards, mint NFTs and trade with each other. Realms and pets will mostly be on Matic, with Reef Chain coming soon after :)
Q9: The microverses will be connected to each other based on the blockchain architecture?
Joban Thomas: Microverses will be connected to each other based on portals within the realms (users can search for realms and events too using the mobile app) — these portals lead to another realm which is itself an ERC1155 — so the blockchain architecture is the link between all these microverses
Q10: “STAKING” is one of the STRATEGIES to ATTRACT USERS and HOLD USERS
Does your GREAT PLATFORM have plan about Staking?
Matthew Larby: If you stake the $REALM token you will receive staking rewards. We take a % of the total transaction volume inside the Realm metaverse and we send those tokens to the Staking pool, these tokens are then split proportionately between all stakers.
The reason we don’t sell land is to not limit people from building the biggest metaverse. By building the biggest metaverse we will build the biggest economy making these staking rewards massive 🥳
Q11: Do you have Android and IOS Apple phone app? What are the compatible hardware for AR and VR, can it be downloaded from your web page?
Matthew Larby: Yes we will be on apple and android also on computer. We have tested on 6 year old mobile phones and the performance is still good. In fact the video I shared earlier was made on an iphone 6.
In the future you will be able to also use VR headsets like oculus 🧙♂️
Q12: What is the importance of Realm Pets within the Realm Metaverse? How is the process of breeding one of them? Do I have to buy food for them? I also read that they evolve in a random way, what good does this do us?
Matthew Larby: You must have life in the metaverse or it becomes a lonely place. So we created Realmies, they are creatures that have unique characteristics, some are very rare and they help you explore the realms and find more rare NFTs inside Eggs. You can breed Realmies to make new rare offspring. Here is one from the Cyber realm.
Q13: What are the different ways to get $ REALM for free within your platform? The only way is dominating Kingdoms? Each Kingdom has a different value or rewards?
Joban Thomas: There are loads of ways to get REALM — for exploring the realms, for taking part in limited events, and for creating amazing content. You can charge users to come to events in your realm by minting NFTix that are collectible NFT tickets, and you can even trade the entire realm as it is an ERC1155. The Realm Foundation will also be rewarding people for creating amazing content, from artists to musicians to game developers.
Q14: 🌴I read that #Realm will plant a lot of trees in real life in addition to their core services. So can you please explain a little more about it? in other words, the deforestation caused by man is alarming. How is this real / virtual planting system run?
Matthew Larby: To offset carbon emissions we do most of our processing on Layer 2 solutions like Polygon Matic and Reef Chain (Substrate). To further reduce the emissions when someone plants a virtual tree in Realm we send some money to Eden Reforestation who pay the local community to plant a mangrove tree. Plant trees in realm = plant trees in real life
Q15: I could read that one of the Realm products focused on the creation of kingdoms, will allow to divide the copyright, but really this would not cause any kind of problem in the NFTs, since one of the qualities is being indivisible?
Joban Thomas: Good question — the key here is not that the NFT is divisible (although some people are also working on fractionalising NFTs), but that the rewards are divided according to the percentages set by the creators. This means that when someone rents their Realm or buys tickets for an event with NFTix, then the tokens are split between the creators.
Q16: Does Realm has great technology for futures as a blockchain project?
Matthew Larby: We are now entering a time when the metaverse is becoming a popular place where people spend more and more time. This is accelerated due to lockdowns which limit access to the real world. So now I ask you 1 simple question, do you want both the physical world and the digital world to be centrally owned by a small number of people? Do you want only rich people to be able to afford to build and create in the metaverse?
Blockchain technology and NFTs clearly solve these problems. We let anyone create for free and then they can sell it to someone securely using blockchain 🥳🤖
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