Founder’s View — My Builder Meta-Festo (v 1)
TL;DR
- Sci-fi fans and culture is the market.
- The truly user-operated metaverse will win.
- Use cases will decode the “unknown unknowns” and hint at next steps.
- Volatility is always looming, so build it into the model or better yet decouple from it altogether. Whatever makes the project stronger.
- Builders are investors and investors are builders. Make it foundational.
As the doomsday clock approaches midnight, the elite, the powerful, and the ruthless fight for profits and leverage in a space held up by hopes and dreams… by builders and investors that don’t own hedge funds and trading firms. They’re here for the same reasons humans have been risking their lives to cross oceans, mountains, space and now cyber… humans love the frontier. And that’s exactly what Web3 is, the “frontier.” Unknown and unforgiving, the stakes are higher in Web3. Building in this space could feel like chaos. It takes a different approach that requires intense observation, experimentation, documentation and collaboration with like-minded teams and projects.
This is my meta-festo and the foundation on which Black Meta is being built…
Sci-Fi Prophecy
“I think if I’m going to do a science fiction, I’m going to go down a new path that I want to do.” — Ridley Scott
What we are witnessing in the world today is nothing less than prophecy. Sci-fi stories from our past about a strange future unfolding before us…
Where children are raised by computers, built by machines, powered by artificial intelligence…
Where rockets and cars operate autonomously, and everyone is interlinked in a digital world called the metaverse.
Shocker… science fiction has caught up to us.
On one hand, the sci-fi genre is now mainstream with media franchises like Star Wars and the Marvel Universe gobbling up the all the market share, yet still unable to satisfy the growing demand for new and original stories.
On the other hand, the world is witnessing parabolic advancements across all areas of science and technology — genetics, robotics, artificial intelligence, cybernetics…
And as humans evolve yet again, shedding their physical form in search of an answer to the age long question — what does it mean to be human — they step out of the physical world and into the digital one, starting both a new journey into the frontier of web3 and the metaverse…
Igniting a new era of science fiction culture.
Into the Metaverse
Ignore it. Laugh at it. The Metaverse is here. It’s been here for a while. In fact, the world’s most successful video games — Grand Theft Auto, Pokemon, SimCity, WarCraft, Fortnite, Minecraft — are the Metaverse built and owned by corporations or web2.
The upcoming Metaverse is built and owned by players. That’s what makes it different. That’s what makes it web3. Everyday people own it. Just like everyday people are building it.
Keep in mind, Grand Theft Auto had a release that did $1B+ in the first week, almost as much as the entire Alien Franchise by Ridley Scott. And, George Lucas trumps them all with Star Wars, still one of the highest grossing media franchises in history at almost $70B since inception.
That’s the market who is spending in this new world. And one day we will live, play and work in this world. The question is not if the Metaverse will succeed, it’s what ecosystems, narratives and stories will win in the end.
The next decade will be a renaissance of ideas and creativity that will feel like a game in itself. Millions building together, creating new universes to scale until a truly player-operated one wins.
It’s on this premise Black Meta is conceived. Created to be more than just a web3 project; it’s a truly player-operated business model designed to build stories, games and worlds with the premise that one day we will live, work and play in this new frontier.
And that’s exactly what the metaverse is… the new frontier.
Destination Unknown
“Rockets are cool. There’s no getting around that.” — Elon Musk
The frontier is not a place or an event or a state of mind. It is all of these things and more. It is the destination and the obstacle to getting there…
You see, to conquer the frontier, we must conquer the “unknown unknowns.” So how do you get to a destination without knowing where you’re going or how to get there?
We do it by turning the unknown into a lighthouse. Anchoring to the things we can observe, test and analyze. Because it will take more than just unquestionable belief and a willingness to adapt and overcome.
At this point, the metaverse is 99% unexplored. It is nothing more than a collection of use cases. And however small, these use cases and the ones Black Meta is building will become the codex for what the metaverse truly can be.
By having a strong focus on creating use cases, we will be able to to decode the “unknown unknowns” and shine a light on the next steps and opportunities we should take advantage of.
Darkness Is Coming
Building in the early cryptocurrency market is like building with the threat of a looming meteor traveling towards us in the darkness of space.
Worst case scenario, the entire market comes crashing down and we go into a bear nuclear winter.
The volatility of the crypto space adds risk and uncertainty to every single web3 project regardless of potential. So how does one build with darkness lurking behind every alley?
We make it our superpower.
Hey! Batman did it. Worst case scenario is we blow up the Earth.
You see, web3 projects being born now will face many challenges over the next few years. Especially in their first year. The ones that survive will be the ones that go beyond just understanding the doomsday level threats they face, they will be the ones that fortify and make themselves bulletproof to these threats.
It is from this epiphany that Black Meta adopts “Darkness is coming” as its brand’s tagline, because it goes beyond any tagline. It is our brand motto. As such, Black Meta must become the greatest repository of knowledge of the unknown unknowns.
This requires rules of engagement… guiding principles we call…
Doomsday Directives
“Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing.” — Wernher von Braun
Unless you have a crystal ball, the concept of a web3 roadmap is broken. The promise of investment riches is also a broken promise and illegal.
This is why Black Meta will never offer financial advice or any promise of gains or anything but doom. Because anything else would be unethical.
Financial advice should be a private conversation between you, your family and your legally licensed financial advisors… the ones that earn your business by helping you make smart investment choices.
With that said, building and investing work differently in web3 than they do in web2. In web2, the idea of building with investors was considered ludicrous. The focus was always on the end user. While in web3 the investors actually are the end users, providing an incentive for builders to work as closely as possible with investors.
And vice versa, in web2 investors would often be the ones who don’t participate in the development and growth of a project. While in web3, the ability to participate is encouraged for all investors through the community and the DeFi ecosystem like staking and voting via the project Dao.
At Black Meta we aim to take full advantage of web3 and eliminate the gap between investor and builder… essentially combining them into one.
Investors equal builders and builders equal investors.
In turn, this helps align the project builders and investors on one shared vision with a clear set of directives for builders and investors…
- Build (Invest In) One Shared Vision — There must be one shared vision between builders and investors and it must be shared constantly. The process of sharing it decodes it for more builders and investors to share in it, in turn building community capital and grassroots support.
- Build (Invest In) Community Capital — There must be a shared vision that incentivizes builders and investors. The process creates devoted fans who can take ownership and advantage of the opportunity to build a more self-sustaining community for themselves and each other.
- Build (Invest In) for Self-Sustainment — There must be a level of community capital whether it be incentives through recognition and status or actual rewards and compensation that are tied to the project growth model. The process helps decouple the project and the community from volatile markets. This reduces the friction that comes with innovating and experimenting on new use cases with the risk of failure or pivots.
- Build (Invest In) Use Case — To truly innovate at scale, there must be a shared community vision with a degree of self-sustainment in place to freely experiment on new use cases. The process allows the project to stay ahead of the curve both technologically and creatively. The bi-product is a originality or intellectual property (IP).
- Build (Invest In ) Intellectual Property (IP)—To truly create IP at scale, there must be shared vision and a shared freedom to create original IP that ties back to use case and the growth model of the project. The process cements use cases, increases the value of them and creates new opportunities for self-sustained growth. This incentivizes builders to build and investors to invest.
We Build!
I didn’t know how I felt about this concept when I first launched Black Meta. Now, I can’t see building it any other way. If every project and investor adopted the builder motto who knows what could be accomplished…
Until then, we build and 🩸,
Founder at Black Meta
