On Saturday, May 29, we had the pleasure of participating in a Telegram AMA with the Crypto Talkz community. The community has over 26k members.
Matthew Larby, founder and CEO of Realm, and Joban Thomas, founder and CPO, answered questions from Crypto Talkz’s Moderator, Mary Joy, Twitter, and live in Telegram.
Some sentences have been slightly edited for readability but the meaning has been conserved.
Summary
Realm is a community driven open-source project to create personalised NFT metaverses. Realm allows creators to combine music, art, and games to create the perfect realm and mint it as an ERC-1155. Discover art galleries in space to underwater auctions through augmented reality portals and collect pets with cross-chain genetics.
Microverse denizens are welcome to sign up for early access to claim their realm Summer 2021.
Psst! We have a Gleam competition happening: get in now.
Introduction
Q — Mary Joy, Moderator from Crypto Talkz: Please introduce yourself to the Community.
A—Matthew: 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.
A — Joban: Hey, I’m Joban and I have been involved in tech startups and crypto for over 10 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 a number of years.
About Realm: Crypto Talkz Qs
Q1—Mary Joy: Can you briefly describe what is Realm? We would like to know more about it and how it works.
A—Matthew: Realm is a metaverse built out of lots of little microverses that are connected together via portals. People can create their own realm to look how they want. E.g. an art gallery that may be in outer space where you hang your NFT art and sculptures. Or you can just make a fun realm with mini games inside it. So in essence, Realm is a collection of virtual spaces where you can exhibit NFTs, sculptures, music and connect with friends and throw events.
Q2—Mary Joy: What are your main features that distinguish you from other projects and what competitive advantages do you have?
A—Matthew: 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.
We are 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.
A—Joban: We’ve also got a great team behind us. For example, Saiful Haque is our lead concept designer and has worked on Avatar, Riot Games, Outer Wilds, 20th Century Fox, among others. We know that we can offer something unique that artists will find valuable and give them true freedom of expression and a way to communicate with their fans and collectors.
Q3—May Joy: What are you looking most forward to doing in Realm?
A—Joban: I think we are really looking forward to seeing the ways people use the platform. I’m sure lots of creators will build realms and use the platform in ways we couldn’t have predicted!
A—Matthew: Personally, I’m looking forward to going swimming in the Reef Finance realm.
Q4—Mary Joy: How has the experience and background of your team been effective in the success of your project so far?
A—Joban: Our team is key to achieving the vision. As we’ve introduced ourselves above, we have already built and exited businesses together and know what it takes to build a sustainable software business. We also have a super strong technical and creative team — Our CTO has built everything from blockchain identity systems and cryptographic products for the german government, to multiple games.
We have a number of award winning engineers too: Radu was one of the first engineers at Blippar (a pioneering Augmented Reality company), and Saiful Haque, who I’ve mentioned above has incredible experience in film and AAA gaming.
A—Matthew: We are fortunate that Joban was at Cambridge University and his network are some of the smartest people I have ever met. We always take the approach that we want to bring together very talented people and give them the creative space to let their genius run free. By building a strong team at the core it then means you can easily add more experts for instance, Saiful.
Q5—Mary Joy: Could you please provide some progress on your Roadmap and what results Realm has achieved so far? And any sneak peek into 2021 plans for Realm?
A—Joban: We’ve made 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.
A—Matthew: Things have been going very well. Joban will cover the technical side. The plan going forward: Allocation Mining Event with launchpool.xyz around June 28th. IDO two weeks after. Then we open up the realms around July 15th. 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 our main focus for August through to December is on the creator tools, which make it easy to make realms and other cool NFT objects and pets.
Crypto Talkz Community Twitter Qs
Q1— From @mylhe: Realm is built with Godot open-source game engine. So can you tell us more about Godot? What advantages does Realm have being built by Godot? How does Godot bring a better service the Realm user?
A—Joban: Godot is a powerful, lightweight, and community-driven game engine that is very different to centralised engines such as Unity and Unreal. It means the Realm engine is completely independent of any centralised entity who could impose censorship or control.
Using Godot 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 developers, 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.
A—Matthew: Another great thing about Godot is it supports Open VR so you can experience VR through the web browser in say your oculus quest. We expect to release this functionality in early 2022, making us truly cross platform—Mobile, Desktop, VR.
Q2 — From @gurvinder98169: Without proper marketing and capital infusion a project dies. How do you convince us you have adequate marketing power and capital to push this project to the top project?
A — Matthew: We are really lucky to have some world class investors supporting the team. They have ensured the company has the right amount of money to build out a metaverse and have introduced us to some of the best NFT projects
On the marketing side we are supported by a world class company called MagicFew that have done over 100 token launches with big names like Ethernity chain and Animoca that own The Sandbox. We are really luck to have such great people around us 🥳
Q3—From @Mama25Mo: Realm will plant many trees in real life aside from its services. Could you explain how the planting of trees will be done? What are the targets needed for Realm to start the planting of trees?
A—Matthew: Great question. We’ve spent a long time thinking about how virtual worlds can impact the real world. We are using Polygon to be more efficient when processing transactions. So for instance, a transaction processed on Polygon is about 8500x less emissions than a transaction processed on Layer 1 Ethereum.
So to counteract the CO2 we emit, we have partnered with Eden Reforestation, who will plant trees in real life every time someone plants a virtual tree in Realm.
When you plant virtual trees in Realm, they make fruit which the pets and creatures that live in realms eat. This creates an economy inside realms that also fixes the real world.
It’s very important that we become carbon neutral using these mechanisms as it helps us appeal to a broad market and also means the mainstream press will cover our metaverse.
We really want the whole world to experience Realm not just crypto people as it makes for a strong business and token.
Q4—From @Carl_crip: Could you elaborate a bit on the wide use that your token can have within the ecosystem as an artist? That is, I understand that one of its potential functions is collection auctions, but what other use cases or benefits does it provide to users and the ecosystem?
A—Matthew: Yes, so, the $REALM token is the main utility token to be used in the Realm metaverse. It can be used to buy food, art, objects and increase the size of your realm. You can also use $REALM to buy NFTix, which are collectible NFT tickets that give you access to special events happening in realms.
So for instance, an artist could make a realm, exhibit their art inside it and then sell NFTix for when people visit.
A—Joban: 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 :)
A—Matthew: The method for distribution will be creator competitions, staking, and loot eggs.
Q5—From @NovaQasa: The community is the backbone of any project. How do you plan to grow your community? Do you have ideas for a loyalty system, rewards or something similar?
A—Joban: Yes, we have a lot of great ways we will incentivise the community. For instance, the Realm Foundation will be able to provide significant rewards for creation, and users will be rewarded for exploration of realms and taking part in events.
A—Matthew: We are taking a very open policy so any NFT company e.g. Polkamon can easily create a realm and bring their Polkamon into the Realms to be experienced in 3D in a game engine environment. This approach makes for a diverse and fun environment, and also means they can bring their community with them. Ultimately, it comes down to offering the best experience possible.
Crypto Talkz Live Telegram Qs
Q1—From CRYPTO-TO-NINE: I see your project has several partners but who is the main partner? What are the benefits of the collaboration between the Realm project and the Blockchain ecosystem and will those targets be completed and implemented soon in 2021?
A—Matthew: We have a range of partnerships that we are publicising. We have partnered with Reef Finance to build on Reef Chain, which is a substrate chain that launches today. This is a good stepping stone to the wider Polkadot ecosystem. We are partnering with Polygon and will do most our ETH transactions on their layer 2.
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
Q2—BAYERN Munich: How was the idea to create the Realm project born? What difficulties did the team face from idea generation to present?
A—Joban: The idea for Realm came initially from the feeling that traditional marketplaces don’t do justice to the amazing 3D and other NFT art that is out there. We were trying to agree on what the perfect metaverse is, and realised that everyone should have the ability to create their own microverse, free of any constraints or limitations.
Q3—Mughal Mirza: Your project is very important but it needs large user traffic to be sustainable over time. What marketing strategies do you have planned to increase the validity of your brand? Are you planning a strategic partnership to level up your project?
A—Matthew: We are talking with people who have 40 million followers on social. We will initially be throwing events inside Realm, so think of this like a cross between Clubhouse App and SuperRare.
Mary Joy: It was pleasure having you both. Thank you so much for spending time with our community & all the very best for “Realm” 🚀🚀
You can ask more questions by joining Realm Telegram Group👉 @Enter_Realm
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