How it started.
It was the end of 2020 and the world was in chaos. COVID was spreading rapidly. Cities, schools, businesses and entire governments were shutting down. People were locked into their homes in a way the modern world had never seen. Toilet paper, bleach, hand sanitizer, etc. were going out of stock at stores around the globe. There was a COVID stat tracker on every major news outlet — number of deaths, infection rate, ICU capacity and more. It was an uncertain time… to say the least.
Meanwhile, the RedRex team was enduring this pandemic in Minneapolis — the epicenter of change. They had recently sold their AI startup and were looking to build their next venture. Why not make a product to help themselves and others through this time? Sending Zoom links, checking Slack/Discord notifications and text messaging wasn’t an ideal way to connect in the digital world. It was painful and rigid.
As the team thought more about why they didn’t like the existing tools, it was clear they all lacked the concept of location-based communication. Location is very important to how people interact. The pandemic removed that element from daily life. Usually, we pick a place and ask people to meet us there. It could be at the local brewery for happy hour. It could be meeting at Starbucks to work on a project. If you think about it, how often do you say “lets meet at ______”.
Clearly, this was a problem worth solving. And the RedRex team was eager to solve it, since it was affecting their daily lives. It inspired them to come up with a new concept: a platform of virtual buildings tied to real-world street addresses.
The Four Pillars
Virtual buildings tied to real-world addresses on a map of earth. It was an exciting idea. But, it needed more refinement before creating the product. As the team iterated on the concept, they thought to themselves:
If you have a digital building, what would be inside of it? Floors.
If you have floors, what would be inside of those? Rooms.
And, what’s inside of a room? Walls.
It’s hard to think of a building that doesn’t have floors, rooms and walls. This is a universal concept that anyone in the world can relate to. It lends itself to such a unique, yet obvious, way to store information and communicate. So many of the things we do in life are predicated on location. At the most fundamental level, RedRex is a platform built on the following four pillars:
Buildings
Every digital building on RedRex has a street address in the physical world. Buildings are represented on a map of the earth, where users can view and join public and private buildings. Each building is owned in the form of an NFT which is identified and differentiated by its unique real-world address.
Floors
Each building is comprised of floors. There is a maximum of 100 floors per building. A floor has a maximum of 25 rooms. Building administrators can add/remove floors and set the user permissions required to access each floor. They can also customize the layout and design of each floor.
Rooms
On each floor, there are rooms. A room can be owned by an individual, like an office or personal space. Or a room can be shared, like a gathering area or conference room. Room owners and administrators can close and open the room door. When the door is closed, users must “knock” to get in.
Walls
Each room has a maximum of four walls. A wall is essentially a form of functionality that visitors can use when they enter a room. Rooms come with the following walls by default:
- Hangout: For audio/video chats in the room
- Timeline: For posting messages and storing data in a room activity “feed”
- Playlist: For creating playlists with links from YouTube, Twitch, SoundCloud, etc
The goal is to support a wall “catalog” where users can pick/choose the walls they want installed in their rooms. Ultimately, users will be able to create their own custom walls via the RedRex API.
The Product
After identifying and refining the key concepts, it was clear the idea was solid. Now, it was time to build it. User friendliness and everyday use were major principles in the design of RedRex. This meant it couldn’t be a 3D world. It had to start as a 2D world in order to support all of the major platforms, not just Virtual Reality. Even the most diehard Web3 enthusiasts were not using Decentraland, The Sandbox, etc on a daily basis. Discord, a completely Web 2.0 platform, was the tool of choice for building communities in the blockchain ecosystem. There was a reason for that.
Initially, the team built RedRex to “scratch their own itch”. It was completely Web 2.0 based and the idea was to pursue a Software as a Service (SaaS) model. Just after the initial prototype was developed (in only 6 months), NFTs and decentralized applications were starting to boom. Facebook changed their name to “Meta”. Famous people started buying Bored Apes and Cryptopunks, bringing NFTs to the mainstream. A movement was starting and the world was finally starting to embrace blockchain technology.
The team looked at what they had built, and thought to themselves: “Did we accidentally create a metaverse?”. Maybe. Maybe not. Regardless, RedRex was perfect for decentralization and the team was still early in development. Wallet login was clearly better than the standard email/password authentication that most applications use. It gives users more control over their data and privacy.
NFTs are the perfect mechanism for assigning ownership to virtual buildings and everything inside of them. A key goal is to allow users to monetize their buildings and create a community that THEY own. NFTs are an ideal technology for achieving this goal.
The team was sick of big tech companies controlling and selling their data. Social media is broken. Privacy was gone. So, they decided to integrate Web3 into RedRex.
How could RedRex balance the needs of Web 3.0 users with the rest of the world still operating on Web 2.0? The answer is to allow both forms of access to RedRex. Users can log in with their email -or- their wallet. They can buy buildings with a credit card -or- their wallet. The opportunity is in creating a “soft landing” to Web3 and bringing it to people who haven’t discovered it yet. This is a core part of the RedRex mission.
Below is a list of features in the product today:
- Voice and video chat
- Text chat
- Wallet based login/signup
- NFT Gates — admissions based on NFT ownership
- Badge access system for building, floor and room levels.
- Floor architect mode
- 2D/3D virtual building map
- Building administration tools
- Shareable landing pages for buildings
- Streaming playlists
- Room door close/open and knocking
- Post timeline/feed in each room
Use Cases and Audiences
As it stands today, RedRex is a highly functional and very useful product. The company runs 100% on the RedRex platform, with team members spread across three different continents around the globe. It’s clearly a great product for communities, small or large. However, the product has a number of different uses.
Below are some of the initial target audiences:
- Web3 communities and projects
- Online event providers
- Startups/small businesses
Future use cases:
- Live concerts, shows and sporting events
- Training programs
- E-commerce and retail
- ….and so many more. We will see how people use it…
Digital Real Estate NFT
In order to have your own building, you need to acquire an address on the RedRex map. Each address comes with a virtual building. As the owner, you control which spaces are private and public. You can also customize the building with your own floors, rooms and walls. It’s your space — design it for your needs.
When you buy a RedRex address, it’s tokenized as an NFT. With this NFT you get a unique picture and 3D model of the building which is generated based on the type of property that exists at that same address in the physical world.
How real estate gets more valuable
There are a number of ways RedRex real estate appreciates in value. Since it is an NFT, you can sell it at any time in the secondary market. Think of owning a RedRex address NFT like owning a website domain.
- Network Effects — More users on the RedRex platform increases the value of all digital real estate. As more users join, the market of buyers grows. And, the product is more valuable each time a new user joins. Since this is an inherently social/community driven platform, the network effects are important to consider for increasing value to holders of all RedRex NFTs.
- Members — Building member count is another way the value of a specific property increases. Similar to a social media account or Discord server, more members in your building means more value. Aside from just total members, the type of people or audience is another important factor. For instance, if you have a building where all of the members are professional athletes or knowledge experts in a specific domain — this creates value. Someone may want to rent or advertise in your space to reach the audience you’ve curated. They may also want to buy it outright.
Pricing and Supply
Many existing metaverses create an artificial supply of land. Since the RedRex real estate NFT is based on a street addresses that you can physically visit in the real world, the supply is based on the total number of addresses on the globe. Nonetheless, there is more nuance to how that supply is made available and the price of each property. Below are some the pricing factors:
- Property Type — Each building on the map has a category like home, office, stadium, airport, historical landmark and many others. This category determines the picture and 3D model that gets generated with the real estate NFT. The art associated with the NFT and the category affect pricing.
- Notoriety — Some buildings are more well known like the Colosseum in Rome, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai or the Yankees Stadium in New York City. Others have less notoriety like a personal residence, a local coffee shop or a gym. When a property has more notoriety in the physical world, it also has more notoriety in the digital world.
- Population Density — Another great indicator of price is the population of the city in which the building is located. When a city is more dense, it‘s likely more people know about it and the demand is higher. This is not always the case, but is a solid pricing indicator.
- Real Estate Data — Taking it further, the team has thought about applying real estate data from the physical world (Zillow, MLS, etc) and using it as a factor in the RedRex pricing algorithm. Analyzing list prices, tax history, sales history, etc of residential and commercial real estate is another great signal for the value of digital real estate.
Monetizing your property
After acquiring RedRex real estate, there are a number of ways owners can monetize their property without selling it. The surest way to create a valuable property is to buy a property that is well known and build a community.
- Hosting online events (ticket sales)
- Selling merchandise and services
- Leasing space
- Sponsored floors and rooms
- Selling memberships (clubs, groups, etc)
- …and more. We will see how the community uses it…
The Roadmap
See the latest roadmap on our website here.
The Future
There are so many ways this platform can be used. Once more people start using RedRex, more and more use cases will come to life. There are applications for this product that the team hasn’t even dreamed of yet.
Supporting more devices
Soon, RedRex will evolve beyond the web browser and support other platforms natively. The goal is for RedRex to be available on all the connected devices that people use today — phones, VR headsets, watches, AR devices and more. Since the product is made with the four pillars in mind, it’s easily transportable to several different platforms. It is important that RedRex is accessible wherever you are and supports novel experiences like virtual reality.
Bridging the online and offline worlds
Since RedRex is built on a map of the physical world, there are a number of exciting possibilities with connecting the digital and physical together. Imagine if:
- McDonalds had a digital twin of every McDonalds store in the world.
- Every professional sports stadium had a digital twin and you could stream exclusive footage of a game in the virtual building.
- Companies mapped each physical office with a digital office in RedRex.
There are an endless number of possibilities when it comes to augmenting the physical world with the RedRex metaverse. It is important that we use this technology for enhancing the real-world, instead of replacing it.
