Apr 26
Metablox update — April 2022
Hey Neighbors!
April was a terrific month. May is going to be even better. Here is a breakdown of our accomplishments and what to expect going into May.
April accomplishments
1. Miami NFT Conference
By all measures, the Miami NFT Conference was a big success:
- Increased Miami reservations from 4% to >20% in just one day
- Connected with influencers and did customer development to learn more about their needs
- Established meaningful relationships with our Neighbors: Joe, Javier, Jimmy, Marc, Matt
- Made some amazing memories
2. Official partnership with Polygon
We are now official partners with Polygon. Here is the announcement:
Be on the look out for Twitter Spaces and other promotional opportunities with Polygon.
3. Closed an additional $200K in pre-seed funding
Yu-kai Chou and I are carefully raising capital. We are raising it intentionally from strategic investors while retaining full control of the company. This is important as we want to accomplish two objectives with fundraising:
- Increase our runway and chance to success — this capital easily extends our runway by more than a year (possibly two years if we have to go super conservative mode)
- Focus on our mission to preserve humanity’s most important memories — the investors we’ve chosen are aligned with our mission and will not force us to shift our focus
4. Expanded our team to scale
We brought on some amazing new team members:
See them in action on our Discord and Twitter.
Looking forward to May
May is going to be an even bigger month. Here is what to look out for:
1. Minting!!! 🚀
We are going to launch in May. We’re planting the flag in the ground.
Status: Minting is ready. If we wanted to, we could launch right now; however, there are some product, engineering, and UX improvements that we need to do:
- Auto link from the Blox Panel to Open Sea — so that you can easily find the Minted Blox on Open Sea and trade it
- Bulk Minting — so that reservation holders can easily reserve all of their reserved Blox (without the pain of having to do it one-by-one)
- Minting without signup — many Web3 users want to just Mint and don’t want to be bothered to signup to a website before they transact
- Metablox Home page — it’s finally coming. We’re creating a home page that explains Metablox and can onboard users who aren’t yet familiar with it
There are two ways to Mint
Mint with Debit card
Mint with Crypto
2. Open Memories to everyone
Memories are currently available under an allowlist. After we launch, we will open Memories up to everyone.
As a reminder, there is a limit to the number of Memories that can be Rooted to a Blox (depending on the Level of the Blox). In addition, Rooting Memories costs MetaRent.
3. Memory Marks
Memory Marks are a way to signal that you believe the Memory is meaningful. There are four types of Memory Marks:
- Inspiring 🙌
- Heartwarming ❤️
- Enjoyable 😂
- Solemn 😥
- FLAG 🟥
If a Memory is irrelevant, NSFW, damaging to the community, or abusive, users can flag it to remove the Blox from our platform. The Blox owner will of course always own the Blox, but it will lose its value because it can no longer participate in the Metablox economy.
4. Memories anywhere in the world
This is a big one.
We will open up Memories to be submitted ANYWHERE in the world.
But how is this possible if we’re only launched in San Francisco and Miami?
Memories can be submitted; however, they cannot yet be Rooted to a Blox until that city is launched.
What are the benefits for submitting a Memory around the world?
When you submit a Memory, you are reserving that area. When there is a future Blox in the address to which you submitted the Memory, you will be the first to get the opportunity to Mint that Blox.
How will you decide which cities to launch next?
In addition to Neighbors voting through MetaRent, we will take into account how many Memories are submitted to a city. Likely, the city with the most submitted Memories will be the next one to launch.
5. Landmarks
Landmarks are coming post-Mint.
As a reminder, Landmarks can only be won at an auction using MetaRent. In addition, Landmarks cost MetaRent to maintain, which means it will be difficult to own more than one Landmark at a time.
Lastly, Landmarks generate MetaBlox Coin, increasing the value of the Landmarks.
We estimate to launch a Landmark auction once per week once the product is ready.
6. Neighbor Collectives
After we launch Landmarks, we will work towards launching Neighbor Collectives — the ability for Neighbors to join together and pool their MetaRent in order to win the Landmark in an auction.
The game dynamics are quite complex, which is why it’s #6 on our product roadmap. Yu-kai Chou is hard at work at completing the core gamification design for Landmarks.
