Why Mocaverse Is Taking on the Future of Digital Identity

Transcript

Hey guys. Um, great to great to be here. Thanks for having me. Um, just quick show of hands. Does anyone who who see who has seen uh the founder of Animoka, Yatsio, speak before? Has anyone seen Yatsio speak before? Okay. Okay. Not that many. That's good actually. Um, so Yad is the founder of Animoka Brands. He's a pretty prolific speaker. You want to watch him speak. He's a much better speaker than me. So you can go on YouTube and and check it out. Um, so, uh, so given that, I'm assuming that most people haven't really heard of Anamoka Brands before. So, I'll just give, uh, quick context of who we are. Uh, so my name is Min. I'm the COO at Animoka Brands. Um, and we are probably one of the, uh, largest um, non-exchange, nonlayer 1, uh, companies in uh, in crypto. Uh, so we um are we

are the owners of the Sandbox, which is the original metaverse. Uh, and uh, uh, we invest very actively in the blockchain uh, uh, ecosystem. Uh we are chain agnostic so we across uh we invest across multiple chains. Uh and we have also over the past couple years um we're known for gamefy that was how we started our business. So we're originally a mobile gaming company uh and then we pivoted into uh crypto gaming uh and there from there we basically started expanding across uh the blockchain ecosystem. So we build um our own projects inhouse. we also actively uh invest uh and then today I'm going to talk to you about digital identity and um I guess uh probably the slides I'm going to flick through at the beginning

are probably well known to most people in this room. This seems to be a fairly crypto and and blockchain savvy audience, but um this is a very old economist um uh um uh cover page, but I think very iconic at least from our perspective, right? So 2017 obviously at this point is very very clear that the data that we all contribute to the internet every day, it has become the world's most valuable resource. Um and so um this is the world that we see. Obviously, we'll probably add Open AAI to this map pretty soon. There's a different map if you come if you we're based in Hong Kong. So, if you look at China, it's a different map, but basically, you know, the rest of the world um uh lives under the thiefs of these large tech companies, right? They

control all the data because they can match all the data across um your your user profile across all of your um your or your activities on the internet. And that's created basically, you know, what is being talked about today as the te techno oligarchy, right? the companies that basically dominate the world uh and control both from a financial and also um uh kind of uh uh um I guess at this point computational perspective uh most of the world's resources and uh you know so the problem that we see and brand's um mission uh has always been to uh bring um the ownership of data back to the user. So you know the the mission that we uh we are founded on

is to bring uh digital property rights to users. Um we believe in that mission. It's why we exist. Uh and so um we started uh you know this journey um in 2017. Um and it's clear obviously I think this room is probably familiar with with this type of concept. you know the data that we create uh creates um information that creates knowledge and obviously that knowledge has now come to the forefront in the form of of products like chat GBT and it's our belief um that uh property rights actually create better economies right uh even though I'm from Hong Kong and I'm assuming most of this room will probably have never been to China you probably have some conception of China

but even in China we have property rights right that's why we have a real estate bubble as well but Um it's our belief that uh property rights uh generate better economies right so if you actually give uh users and citizens property rights uh that will create larger better economies over time given uh the scalability of of those rights into different businesses and so um we believe that this is important for the internet era as well and this is the critical moment and this is why we are building uh and we're investing a lot of our resources into the concept of digital identity because we fundamentally believe that this is the fight that we need to fight as the web 3 community.

So we started in gaming. We thought right uh that gaming was where um we were going to take the fight to begin with. Uh you know in 2021 we believe that oh okay gamers already understand digital property rights. They already understand digital assets and so therefore they should transition very cleanly into web 3 concepts and own their own rights. And that was where we started our business. for a variety of reasons that didn't happen. Uh part of it was like uh the media in the west um was very anti-crypto, very anti-NFTs. A big part of it uh I I think was also the distribution limitations that we found in gaming with Apple uh Google and Steam uh heavily restricting uh access uh to uh basically distribution for games. So

you know GameFi hasn't really worked out yet. There have been some successful uh game 5 products but in general you know the web 3 gaming dream has not yet succeeded. So in 2023 we came across this this headline which you know at the time in 2021 we were known as the metaverse company uh and everyone was like is the metaverse dead and the answer is well we never believed in the metaverse as the version of Mark Zuckerberg which is like okay it's like a 3D you know virtual world that you exist in the version of the metaverse that we believe in is where you own your own assets and you can translate those assets and your digital identity from place to place right so I would equate it to the way we think about things in the real world. I

came here to Switzerland from Hong Kong. I can buy something. I can buy a gift from Switzerland and bring it back to my home in Hong Kong, right? That's a kind of a normal thing, but you cannot do that online, right? That is not possible in the digital world. You cannot buy a digital good and then transport that digital good back to another uh uh property uh on in in on in on the online arena. That is not possible. And that is what we believe the promise of blockchains is. And you know to the lady who speak just before me you know they're working on basically the same problem which is how do you transport your data across uh your different identities.

So this is Moverse. Um actually Moverse started off as a pet project of ours. Um you know we were NFT uh we were in the NFT space and we're like okay we're going to do an NFT. It's kind of a bit of fun. So you see the art is very fun and interesting. Um the thing in the middle is a Hong Kong taxi if you ever been to Hong Kong. And so we did this NFT. Uh and then after we did the NFT, we're like, "Okay, well, what should we do next?" And so we and this is at the time when kind of gaming, blockchain gaming was really struggling to take off. We recognized this and as a business, we were like, "Hey, blockchain gaming is really struggling to take off.

We need to do something else." And we went back to the mission of the company and the mission of the company is we want to bring digital property rights to users. Uh and so we looked at the identity space and this is um where we see digital identity today which is either you have u massive confusion. So you know the average uh American employee has a 100 passwords that they manage across multiple accounts or you um commit to subservience. Usually most some pe most people are combination of the two. Um you get free services but um that is um you know there's a cost to that. Basically the cost is that Apple and Google and Facebook make all of the money right. I created this using catchup. So I thought it was pretty good actually. I was like I I went back and

forth a little bit but I thought it was pretty good. And as the lady uh just now before me spoke about GDPR compliance and other types of uh privacy uh preserving um compliance costs are skyrocketing skyrocketing for the average web 2 app. these costs are going to become um too expensive for large uh for large single service web 2 applications to actually service over time. And with the increasing amount of content being delivered via AI, the web 2 apps that you know outside of the large tech giants are going to continue to increasingly struggle to monetize and to stay alive. And that is the reality that

we see, right? If you are a single service like you're like a football app, you only understand you understand the users's profile when it comes to football. You know they're a Man United supporter or Bayern Munich supporter and maybe you know their age, but that's kind of basically all the information you know. So the ability for you to monetize that data is very very limited. So this is the current uh situation with identity today. Uh you log in with Google, you're logging in but someone else is logging everything, right? That's what Google does. Everyone knows this. um or uh your identity is in one place but you cannot transplant that identity even though it makes so much sense right you can play the same game on the PlayStation Network and the same game on Steam and you cannot transplant that identity across right it's super

frustrating for us as gamers or and you know there are some great European exceptions I understand Estonia has a great digital ID but generally speaking the digital identities that are created by the states are are basically not good or you have your corporate identity your corporate identity is your identity in your enterprise and you can use that across multiple apps but you cannot use it outside of outside of your workplace right so this is the current status of identity so obviously um and again this is a crypto uh centric audience I'm assuming that everyone's thought about this at least a little bit is the goal is to build a user centric identity where the design principle is it's one port of identity across uh all web web pages and all chains it's a self-

sovereign identity Um and it's privacy preserving uh backed by zero knowledge proofs. You know I was very interested to hear a petia presentation before but uh but zero knowledge proofs is what we're building on um and it's interoperability. It's interoperable across all of those applications. So this is the vision that we see which is you carry your identity. Our product is called air. Um and um you can carry it from web two to web three and back. That is the goal. And actually um you know I would say there are a lot of DID solutions out there uh on the market but um you know the this is our product um it is a end to end uh account uh with identity

features that in that natively u inter natively uh integrate with web two apps right so that's really um why we think we're differentiated it's not because we don't believe that the technology is the thing that's going to win here the thing that's going to win here is distribution the thing that's going to win here is the ability to integrate with all of the applications that already have hundreds of millions of users, but they're not Google. And because they're not Google and they're not Facebook, they're getting crushed. And so we have built all these features. These are all live. Um, and so you can bring, if you're a web two app, you can bring your own authentication. We have biometric 2FA.

So to make sure that we know that you know you're you are who you are when you're logging into an application. Um and then from there if you're an application to uh you we use your knowledge proof to verify specific data about you. Are you over 18? Are you a KYC uh user? Um are you a biomunic supporter? That's basically how we how we work. And our goal is to bridge um the data silos that you've created as a user across the blockchain uh on from from vertical stacks to create effectively the network that Google has but on a decentralized basis. So our goal is you have a football app, you have a healthcare app, you have your you know your shopping mall app. What we want to achieve is to allow these

different data silos to understand that you are the same user and be able to access your data provided you approve it, right? Provided you approve it, you allow them access to your data and that will allow for them to monetize better and for you to share in that monetization. Ultimately, our goal is to take all the money that Google's making AdSense and transplant that back into uh the individual user apps that you use every day as well as to the user themselves. So, we are live already with account partners uh building um you know, we're we're mo the biggest uh place we're live right now is South Korea uh because that is a cryptonative market. So we can go to go to market with cryptonnative solutions. Um and so we're starting from

there and we're expanding globally. Um and so you you can already um go to uh certain uh apps and transplant your uh your uh identity across those multiple apps. Um and those apps will share the data and you will share in the monetization. So you know finally um and I want to say like yeah we have spent a lot of time and resource building technology behind this but I actually don't think our technology is groundbreaking right um that we have not spent thousands of hours of of of of man hours doing R&D actually most of the technology that exists today is quite welldeveloped and quite mature and so one of our belief uh one of our beliefs that um if you're uh

building something and you have to invent a lot of things, you're probably too early to build that thing, right? That's how we think about it from a commercial perspective. Um, so, you know, most of the DID technology today is pretty mature. But why do we think we'll win? Um, fundamentally when it comes to DID, um, network effect is king and distribution is queen. You have to get distribution for other people to use your ID. So, that is fundamentally what we're focused on as a company is getting distribution for the ID. And how do we use the magic internet money that we create in web 3 to um to actually build real businesses? That's really the question, right? There's so much magic internet money that's been created in this space and most of it has

been used for basically it's most of it has been wasted. Um but the the superpower of web 3 is to create incentives for people to take actions. That's really the superpower of web 3. If there's one thing that web 3 can do well, it is to fix the cold start problem of marketplaces because you have token incentives to do that. And so that's what you know at Brands honestly we're we believe we're probably one of the best best teams in the world at we understand token incentives very very deeply. So we're using token incentives to drive partner acquisition and this in will create a cross application rewards flywheel. We will create a basically what it will effectively become a global loyalty program uh that will allow for

discounts uh benefits to users on a global basis. Think about linking your Marriott Bonvoy to your airline application. That's really what we're trying to trying to achieve. We believe that partners will have a shared incentive to make the network succeed. That is again the beauty of web 3. If you're part of the network, you are uh incentive aligned for the network to be successful. Um and we you know we are um you know G GDPR compliant uh we are working on privacy compliance um across all the different jurisdictions. So this is why we believe that Animoka brands is going to help revolutionize the digital identity space.

Thank you.