Terra Virtua AMA with Gary Bracey and Jawad Ashraf
Introduction AMA
Eric: We are now starting our AMA with @terravirtua.
Welcome @gbracey and @jawadash
Glad you can take the time to join us here.
Gary: Hi Eric
Our pleasure
jawad: yes thanks for inviting us
Eric: As with all our AMAs, we would like to start by getting to know the people behind the project. Can you tell us a bit about your background and your journey leading to building Terra Virtua?
jawad: it all started at carpark Starbucks…
Eric: ☕️
Gary: I’ll let Jawad intro himself, but we met 3 years ago in the UK when we were both involved in videogame development.
I’d been in the industry since the mid-80s helping makes games for home PCs and then consoles. Started with a company called Ocean Software
Eric: This takes me back!
Gary: Yeah, we met up in Starbucks and hit it off straight away. We shared a vision for creating a platform (originally in VR) and things sort of evolved from there
Jawad: my background is building technology companies, I hunted Gary down after hearing from many people that he was the right guy to talk to
Gary: Those ‘people’ obviously didn’t like him very much…
Eric: haha.
Jawad: I’m in Dubai, and at the time was in mobile gaming and VR, but I was fascinated by the blockchain and the way people were doing purchases in-game
and couldn’t take them anywhere
when Gary and I met we realized there was something there we could build together
Eric: Wow. TV is just 3 years or less and so much has been built out.
Gary: We both have different skills and experiences but complement each other very well.
Jawad: Well I started as a developer many many years ago
and we have a large team of amazing people building super cool things
Gary: Yep. We were tired of so many companies talking about what they were going to build, We decided to build first and then talk.
Jawad: we built it across web, pc, mobile, and VR
and launched it the same day
Eric: so guys, tell us — what is Terra Virtua?
Gary: I’ll take this one, J
Jawad: cool
Gary: [takes a deep breath] Terra Virtua is an NFT marketplace and immersive ecosystem, allowing you to trade, display, share and interact with your collectibles within PC, mobile, and (soon) VR environments. Terra Virtua is a complete platform.
Eric: getting a Ready Player One vibe here
Jawad: We actually did a private screening of that at our launch
Ultimately we think VR will be the next big thing
but its years away
Gary: Funnily enough, when we launched Terra Virtua to the world. we actually screened that movie at BAFTA for the press. Introducing it as a trailer for Terra Virtua’!
Eric: I’m curious. What games or movies inspired you two to build this?
Jawad: well ready player one of course (I’m halfway through the sequel), but anything with virtual interaction
Eric: oh right, they just released the book!
Gary: It was more about timing (in my personal view). The convergence of all these new technologies — blockchain, VR, AI, etc…
Jawad: the world of warcraft was the game where I saw a lot of people
grinding away months to get assets they could never use
now having those assets, in a way you could use forever
even give them as heirlooms
Eric: pretty compelling
jawad: was what we were thinking
Gary: And the fact that people were getting comfortable with the concept of digital currencies (in-app purchases in games)
Jawad: and they need to be interactive across every digital media. Digital ahs so much more relevant now
Eric: So tell us about the team. how big is it? where are the offices located?
jawad: We are split across multiple geographies
Gary: Thank goodness for Zoom!
Jawad: Gary and some of the team are in the UK
we have some of our team in New York
A few of us are in Dubai
Eric: Hopefully, one-day people do meetings inside Terra Virtua!
Gary: And we have community managers, etc dotted around the globe
I certainly hope so!
Eric: so there’s a main utility token to this all. Please tell us about it.
Jawad: ok so the token is called TVK
we have multiple uses for this coming, as we open up our ecosystem to allow teams around the world to make NFTs based on IP
But where the main benefits come are from staking it in our rewards program
Eric: tell us more about that
Jawad: going to do a bit of cut and paste here…
Eric: sure no problem.
jawad: Competitions
● Participate in competitions
● Auction incentives e.g. distribute % of the winning bid to losing bidders
Bonus Scheme Share of a weekly reward pool for:
● Highest vol traded (goes to end users — whoever buys more, avoiding wash trade)
● Highest individual item sold (goes to creators of art for example)
● IP quests completed
● Collections Completed
● Badges Earned
● Central Terra Gallery to be curated by a DAO by staking, giving a revenue share to DAO
Authenticity
● Bounty for authenticity — art is facing challenges where people are pretending they are someone else.
Our community will be social proof for other people and also be rewarded for identifying fraud.
IP Royalties
● Put up capital for the purchase of licenses and receive time-bound royalties for those licenses
Ambassador
● Put up capital for the purchase of licenses and become an ambassador for that product earning reputation and rewards
IP Discovery
● Earn rewards for bringing strong IP, brands, or individuals we may not know to the platform.
Non-Revenue Rewards
● The continuous reward for NFT users — receive airdrops for your efforts
● Rewards for events and contests
● Rewards for showroom visits
basically its rewards, DAO, Ambassador programs
and things like IP discovery, where if you find an IP we can work with, you get rewarded
and you can earn exclusive NFTS
Eric: Wow. so many uses.
Gary: We wanted to make the value SO much more than simply a currency. And we believe that’s precisely what is being built.
Jawad: that are not available anywhere else
Eric: What are the major milestones TV achieved so far & what are in the future pipeline?
Jawad: plus we want to make DAO central to our gallery
Gary: I’ll take it
Jawad: k
Eric: there’s a ton of ways you can earn even using the TVK token. love it.
Gary: We are proud to have licensed some top IPs, with many more on the way. We have also brought on board a few incredible and well-known comic book artists and working with them to create some unique digital art for our platform.
We want to bring multiple genres to the platform — movies, TV, Sports, Comics, Music, art
Eric: What does the market for TV NFTs look like? What are the profit sources of TV?
The NFT scene is exploding, recent figures have put NFT sales exceeding over 1m USD a crazy week, and it’s growing.
Gary: And to make this far more than simply collecting. Our platform allows for interaction, trading, sharing, communicating, and ultimately, creating communities
Gary: The NFT scene is exploding, recent figures have put NFT sales exceeding over 1m USD a crazy week, and it’s growing.
However, the sector is still considered relatively ‘niche’ in the global scheme of things. Our key objective is to get NFTs into the mainstream and create a worldwide community of collectors.
Jawad: That is our background you see
Gary was one of the guys who actually brought movies to videogames
He had the first million unit selling game based on a movie
History like that has encouraged major brands to support us
Eric: ET?
just kidding
Gary: Aaarghh!!!
Eric: lmao
Jawad: and talk about us — this will bring even more to the NFT market
https://thedailychain.com/terra-virtua-onboards-talent/
this spoke more about that part
Eric: Very impressive to say the least.
Gary: Aw shucks
Jawad: But he’s been on the set of star trek, been thrown out a meeting by Steve Jobs, etc
All these things are useful when you are trying to build out awareness
Gary: Read the memoirs when I’m dead.
Eric: haha, that’s quite an achievement
Also, you have developed your own IP. Tell us — What is vflects?
Gary: Ok…
Jawad: Vflects are something very close to our heart
Gary: What began as an avatar experiment has taken on a life of its own. Our vFlects have become a much-loved race of characters. So much so, that we are currently designing a number of them modeled upon some of the iconic licenses we have acquired. Watch this space!
Jawad: we wanted to make something that showcased every single environment
as we are working with IP, we wanted something that could be amazing in AR, VR, and 3D
And it has been embraced by the community in a way we could never have imagined
Eric: that must have felt surreal
Jawad: We hoped people would like them
But they had no game, brand to back them up
Jawad: We loved it that people loved them
Eric: So chime in on why NFT will grow some more. what makes it compelling and bound for mainstream adoption?
Jawad: and are looking to do really cool things with them
Well the main thing about NFTs is they appeal to fans and collectors
Gary: I think, if we all do our job properly, we can make the NFT market into the first mainstream sector in the blockchain. There are so much confusion and negative perception about blockchain out there, so NFTs can actually bring about a sea-change of attitude. Cryptocurrency is still eyed with suspicion but ‘digital collectibles’ are something (we hope) a lot of people can get behind. It’s a question of marketing — not just for awareness but also for educating.
Eric: do u have a list of all the IP / brands currently on board with TV?
Gary: Top Gun (and sequel), The Godfather, Lost in Space, Pacific Rim (and the forthcoming anime Netflix series), World War Z, and many more which we can’t talk about…yet.
Jawad: but we are talking to cross multiple genres, as coming back to your point
Gary: But as I stated above, we are covering many genres. Just keep an eye on Twitter!
Jawad: its still niche across every type of sector
be it sports, movies, music
and in each space, different things appeal to collectors and fans
, and that’s what we are trying to cater for
Eric: I will open the floor for community questions. Please allow 2–3 minutes for our ama room fam to post their tweets. I will mute the group after for u guys to pick the best questions to reply to.
Community AMA
Q: Do you see yourself not as a competitor but as a complement to Axie Infinity and other blockchain games? Or do you have plans to become a gaming-centered platform as well? A: There are plenty of game platforms out there. We want to compliment them, not compete with them.
compliments, working with many already. We want everyone’s NFTs to be available in our environments even if we don’t sell them.
Q: I am a digital artist and designer and would love to display my works on your platform, is this possible? please break down the steps and the requirements Thanks
A: Please go to our TG group and ask there — one of our helpful people will sort you out!
Q: At the moment, you are focused on Ethereum and Matic blockchains, do you intend to explore other new blockchains?
A: Yes we do, ultimately we want us to be pretty chain agnostic
Q: You organized an AMA session very rewarding and received a lot of questions related to utilities and technology, future vision, So now I want to ask what do you want to receive from the community?
A: This is SO important!
We need you, and I’m not referring to your money or business (although very happy to accept that, of course!). We need your input, your feedback, your constructive comments. We want to know what YOU want and how we can improve our platform. We need to understand if and where we are going wrong and how to put it right. This is intended as a collaborative process and we encourage your involvement as much as possible.
We might not always agree but we will always listen and act where we feel appropriate.
Q: We’re witnessing the explosion of the NFT hype throughout the cryptosphere and — while I believe that many are right when saying that NFTs will be on top of the next bull wave — at the same time I’m pretty sure that time will wipe out weak players and leave only the most solid projects on the field.
Terra Virtua seems to have what it takes to be a dominant force in the NFT’s market, also thanks to its exclusive collaborations and partnerships with several illustrious franchises.
Do you think the confluence of great brands into Terra Virtua will be the key ingredient to its success? Are NFTs created by already renowned artists and companies inherently more valuable than most NFTs issued by less famous (but yet potentially valuable) projects?
A: We think the big brands get eyes, but also the new talent and even influencers looking to generate merch will be key to our growth.
Q: You secured some serious backers for the projects in the funding round such as Woodstock and NGC Ventures, raising 2.5M$ in total. How will those funds be allocated within Terra Virtua, that seems like a high amount of money to be raised.d
A: It’s a lot of money, but in the context of launching a business globally, it’s really not. The bulk of this will be spent on marketing and new license acquisitions.
Q: Staking & Liquidity Mining is very popular today as incentives, so do #TerraVirtua support any, and what are the requirements? how do I get involved in Staking NFT
A: We have a program which will support staking, we will be launching info about it, do check out our discord
Q: Do you planning to attract lots of non-cryptos to join your project? If so, how do you plan to educate them about Terra Virtua and get more new users?
A: This is by far our biggest challenge. We have a strategy and just hired an excellent Head of Marketing and she is designing the strategy as we speak.
It’s not going to be easy — or quick — but we are confident we will achieve that objective
Q: On which exchanges can we find your token?
What makes you different from other defi projects?
How are you planning to stand out in the midst of competition?
A: We will be on bitmax to start with, and innovation and collaboration is what we feel is required to succeed
Q: We’re witnessing the explosion of the NFT hype throughout the cryptosphere and — while I believe that many are right when saying that NFTs will be on top of the next bull wave — at the same time I’m pretty sure that time will wipe out weak players and leave only the most solid projects on the field.
Terra Virtua seems to have what it takes to be a dominant force in the NFT’s market, also thanks to its exclusive collaborations and partnerships with several illustrious franchises.
Do you think the confluence of great brands into Terra Virtua will be the key ingredient to its success? Are NFTs created by already renowned artists and companies inherently more valuable than most NFTs issued by less famous (but yet potentially valuable) projects?
A: Firstly, thank you.
Very good points. The brands are really a marketing vehicle to raise awareness and foster recognition to migrate the sector to the mainstream. Quality of product is paramount (no pun intended) though. We want to be synonymous with quality, which is why you can see our NFTs (so far) are, I like to think, head-and-shoulders above the rest in terms of fidelity, etc.
It’s a new sector and so there are no rules. We’ll experiment constantly and see what works. But most importantly, community feedback will be helping dictate our ongoing strategy. Phew!
Q: At the moment, where you are focusing right now? building and developing products or getting customers and users, or partnerships? Could you share it?
A: All of the above! It’s a constantly shifting landscape and we have to stay on top of all these issues. Each one has sub-priorities and so it needs to be closely and carefully managed. Jawad is CTO and I don’t envy his job!!
Closing Remarks
Eric: I think that’s a wrap! @gbracey @jawadash please invite the community where can ask more questions and follow updates on this wonderful project!
jawad: https://discord.gg/E6KCj7CW9u
ANd thank you for having us guys
and also out telegram is t.me/terravirtua
Gary: Discord, Twitter, and here on TG.
Thanks so much for having us and listening. Hopefully, you know a little more about Terra Virtua than you did before.
See you in virtual space!!!
