Open Web Sandbox AMA Recap: NEAR HUB — An Immersive Social Portal To Everything NEAR
On the 19th of January, the Open Web Sandbox welcomed Jeff Gold, co-founder of NEAR Hub to our weekly AMAs. During the AMA we talked about the difference between centralized and decentralized metaverses, how NEAR Hub came to be, future developments and more. For a recap on the AMA keep reading this piece and check the YouTube recording out!
What is NEAR Hub?
NEAR Hub is a community-driven initiative that aims to build the first metaverse for the NEAR community. It has recently received funding from the Human Guild, the NEAR guild dedicated to supporting the next generation of Web3 games built on NEAR. In the next few months, NEAR Hub will build the first portal to the NEARverse that will allow users to experience the NEAR ecosystem in an engaging and meaningful way while retaining full ownership of their data.
“We wanted to create a portal where people could just find anything about NEAR. So anyone, newcomers and veterans, can just come in and have a DeFi, NFT, gaming infrastructure, education area, so they can just walk in and find different projects, and access to the web of knowledge being created.”
-Jeff Gold
NEAR Hub’s vision is to create a metaverse for the NEAR community where people can interact with each other, work, and build relationships in a disintermediated and privacy-respecting environment. It positions itself as the first starting contact for newcomers to discover the NEAR ecosystem but also as the playground for NEAR’s dApps, a place where work mixes with friendship and creativity is unleashed.
NEAR Hub’s Core User Experience
- Immersive customisable 3D virtual meeting spaces : Spatial direction mic, pen function (allows to create art), in world camera, VR headsets and gloves.
- NFT marketplace, and introduction of gated NFTs for shows
- Avatar Options: base model, or generative NFT from NEAR Hub.
What are the Advantages of a Decentralized Metaverse?
The word Metaverse is breaking into mainstream and it seems that Web2 companies like Facebook have plans for building their centralized metaverses. These Web2 metaverses, however, are incapable of providing privacy to users as well as real ownership.
“One of the biggest advantages of a decentralized metaverse is privacy. With Facebook metaverse you have none. They know every motion you are doing, everything you are looking at, it’s kind of scary! While with NEAR Hub we don’t store the data, everything will be stored in NFTs in users’ NEAR wallets. When they come they can pull out the data from NFT, interact with the site, and use the assets as needed but when they leave, they take all the data with them.”
-Jeff Gold
NEAR Hub brings real ownership and privacy to the metaverse by empowering its users to have full control over their data and the assets they buy on the metaverse.
2022 Roadmap
Q1: NEAR Hub will bring to fruition a Human Guild Arcade, add world game mechanics, create token gated rooms, peer to peer token transfers and in World DAO voting.
Q2: Further UI improvements, avatar upgrades, deploy Beta node on IPFS and NEAR Hub auctions.
Q3: IDO launch, deploy Alpha node on IPFS, launch a NEAR Hub community loyalty program and bring to fruition the NEAR Hub Mega Park.
Q4: Public token launch and inaugurate community mining nodes to support the network.
OWS First Metaverse Party on NEAR Hub!
On the 28th of January, Open Web Sandbox is going to host its first metaverse party on NEAR Hub. We have commissioned a brand new room on NEAR Hub to welcome our guests and host a very interesting roundtable with NEAR’s most wanted metaheads!
For more information on Open Web Sandbox’ Events follow its dedicated Twitter page!
