A VR metaverse project from Taiwan, hitching a ride on Binance and Jay Chou

Author: @0xMavWisdom

The VR track project has regained attention with the recent CZ shoutout, and just in time Highstreet is riding the wave with a marketing partnership with Jay Chou. CoinGecko data shows that Highstreet’s native Token HIGH rose over 300% in January, and the floor price of the Genesis NFT Forever Fomo Duck Squad has risen from 0.55E at the beginning of January to the current 1.3E.

Dubbed “Shopify on a Chain,” Highstreet is a business-centric metaverse platform that combines shopping, gaming, NFT, legacy brands and cryptocurrency brands with MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) gaming experiences. Founded by Travis Wu and Jenny Guo, Highstreet was formerly known as LumiereVR, a company founded in 2015 with virtual reality as its primary means of doing business. The VR company’s predecessor coupled with partnerships with great hardware manufacturers like HTC gave Highstreet the technical foundation to build its metaverse.

Like Axie Infinity, Star Atlas and other projects, Highstreet uses the HIGH and STREET dual Token mechanism.

Token HIGH’s main uses: (1) Stake: holders can stake LP or single token, (2) Platform governance: holders will be able to create proposals and vote on the chain, (3) In-game trading: can be used to trade real estate or limited edition products within the Highstreet marketplace, with a total Token limit of 100 million (according to CoinMarketCap, Token HIGH is currently circulating around 30 million).

STREET Cred is an in-game Token of Highstreet World. There is no fixed supply of this Token, and it will be inflated appropriately as players increase and the game progresses. Players can acquire this Token through hunting monsters, completing quests, treasure hunts, etc. Players can also purchase STREET Cred with Token HIGH, but only merchants and certain levels of players can cash in STREET Cred for Token HIGH.

Highstreet World currently consists of six explorable areas: Highstreet City, Binance Beach, AMAX Alps, Asteroid 325, Animoca Archipelago, and Republic Realm. In addition to completing quests in these areas to improve player level and career level, players can also purchase houses, play battles, tame pets NFT and take part in many other activities. The center of Highstreet World is the Solera continent, and Freshmints entering the game must complete two quests, Proof of Mind and Proof of Strength, on Freshmint Island to earn the title of “Explorer” before they are eligible to enter the Solera continent. Players can currently access the metaverse platform in three ways: PC, mobile or VR.

In the metaverse track, metaverse projects with VR game metaverse are common, but metaverse projects with strong virtual and real interoperability are rare. In Highstreet World, the concept of asset mobility has a new narrative where not only funds but also commodities can flow between the virtual world and the real world.

Highstreet , integrates the shopping experience between the virtual and the real. Its NFTs are issued as Phygital (digital assets linked to real-world products), also known as physical digital NFT. The goods in the game are real brands that exist in reality, and players can redeem their game purchases for physical products or NFT. For brands, this model can turn existing products into game assets, boosting brand marketing; for players, it brings in-game shopping into the real world, blurring the boundary between the virtual and the real, and players can improve their immersion in the metaverse because of the convincing experience.

The highlight is Highstreet Market, a marketplace for Highstreet World’s redeemable limited edition products, where each item has a physical equivalent and players can access it directly through a browser. Player can also enter the market from the top of the FOMO Tower of Highstreet World by participating in the metaverse.

Highstreet Market brings the concept of DeFi to the actual product. When using the marketplace, Highstreet Market ensures liquidity by using the Bonding Curve, an automatic price discovery mechanism where the price of an item will fluctuate with each purchase. The Bonding Curve acts as an automated market maker for the AMM, always ensuring that there is a counterparty, so that both hype and direct purchases from the community or fans affect the price; and brands can customize their own Bonding Curve, making it steep or flat, to incentivize more trades or offline product exchanges.

In addition, Highstreet has set up a unique VR cryptocurrency lounge, Cyberbar, which fills a gap previously left by cryptocurrency users in face-to-face meetings. Players can meet face-to-face with potential buyers or sellers in the Cyberbar in VR format to discuss the terms of the deal and complete the purchase.

What needs to be clear, though, is that Highstreet’s current buzz has to do with the celebrity effect, after CZ’s recent AMA indicated that Binance would prefer to invest in virtual reality (VR) or metaverse games. Highstreet fits right in with the market looking for projects in hype-related tracks. Highstreet’s CEO then announced a partnership with Asian phenom Jay Chou in Twitter Space, bringing Highstreet to full market attention. But no matter how big the star or celebrity is, the celebrity effect is only temporary, and the ultimate success of the project depends on the fundamentals of the project, as exemplified by Phanta Bear, which used “Jay Bear” as its marketing slogan.

Travis Wu, founder and CEO of Highstreet, said in an interview that Highstreet is essentially a Shopify for MMORPGs, where brands can launch their own virtual stores in the metaverse they’ve built. Breaking down the barriers between the real world and the virtual world, Highstreet has the advantage of industry-leading VR technology, but also the commercial first mover advantage of the track, and as the first business-centric metaverse platform, we can expect to attract more big brand entities to build metaverse directly through the platform in the future.

Reference:

https://medium.com/highstreet-market/meet-highstreet-the-worlds-first-commerce-centered-metaverse-d92ac388f8fa

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/qt9m6Py1z0z7EbK2PDo7LQ