At The Metaverse Insider, we had the pleasure of interviewing David Taylor, Co-founder, and Chief Product Officer at Next Earth. In Part 1 of our interview, we covered Next Earth’s aims and goals, the significance between Web3 and the Metaverse, and their new, game-changing NEOS project.
As this is an exceptionally interesting time for the Metaverse and Web3 space, in Part 2 of our interview, we took a deeper dive into the world of Next Earth – exploring the reasons behind its success and what we can expect from them in the near future.
Bringing true equity to the Metaverse
Following on our discussion concerning Next Earth’s NEOS project, it is evident that there are many aspects to their business model that will help promote the Metaverse as a mainstream phenomenon. However, Next Earth is looking to further this by bringing in true equity.
Their vision of creating a fair digital life is being realized through the NEOS project and its associated token, the NXTT. A portion of the platform fees paid by businesses operating on NEOS will be used to purchase and redistribute NXTT to stakeholders – thus, creating economic circularity where landowners are compensated for the data used by these businesses:
“70% of the platform fee payment goes directly to buying by an NXTT from the market. Out of that 70%, 10% of the NXTT that is being bought is burned – and 60% gets redistributed directly to a stake reward pool.”
This means that by simply being a NextEarthean (a Next Earth landowner), these individuals can access Web3 monetization – a great step in the right direction. Next Earth is also building towards what they call progressive decentralization – where decision-making power is transferred to DAOs, and equity is maintained through closed-loop economic incentives.
The Metaverse has three primary pillars: the feeling of presence, standardization, and interoperability. However, Next Earth believes there to be a fourth requirement which is equity:
“Otherwise, we’re going to end up having five mega-corporations that own two-thirds of the Metaverse – just like what happens with Web2 right now. So, with NEOS and the NXTT the economy, we actually take care of equity, interoperability, and standardization.”
Is VR as important to the Metaverse as we think?
David elaborates that the feeling of presence will come at a later time, emphasizing that this should be the last step in the evolution of the Metaverse. It can be argued that the first wave of the Metaverse focusing on VR was a mistake; it may be an exciting concept, yet there is much work needed on the infrastructure and ecosystem of the Metaverse to ensure it becomes what it was always intended for – creating a fair digital life.
At The Metaverse Insider, many of us believe that AR will inevitably overtake VR – realizing that VR is perhaps too detached from reality concerning general use cases in the Metaverse. This links back to our conversation in Part 1; familiarity will be highly influential towards businesses and consumers alike to readily enter this new space. Here is what David had to say concerning the current state of VR:
“VR is it’s an invasive technology that makes two-thirds of the people using it nauseous –that’s never going to fly. I played with the dogfight simulator in VR on PSVR equipment a couple of years ago. I love rollercoasters and everything, but this one [made me feel motion sick] within 10 minutes”
It is clear that a technology that makes the majority userbase feel unwell may not take off. It may be the case that the concept of VR has more appeal than practicality, and only once this issue is solved, can it become a standardized way of experiencing the Metaverse.
How is Next Earth strategically positioning itself for a fully-fledged Metaverse?
Next Earth has made it clear that they aim to focus on the foundations of what really matters when building into the Metaverse ecosystem; they do not wish to entertain the concept of immersion technology or anything they consider to be a fad:
“We’re focusing on the economy and technology and not fancy stuff like VR without actual benefits. That means that our positioning feeds the fact that the Metaverse is a lot more than just a video game experience. We want to establish that the Metaverse can create a fair digital life, but it needs an economic engine – and that is us. It is driven by our native NXTT token as the internal native currency of the Next Earth Metaverse.”
In moving the economic logic to smart contracts and utilizing their native token to manage this, Next Earth has the means to reduce the need for safety and trust. This will inevitably make the Next Earth team redundant; they aim to grow and evangelize, building the foundations to remove the need for maintenance. David made it very clear that they are building for longevity – getting ever closer to reaching progressive decentralization:
“By issuing the Next Earth token, and having our own currency for our own economy, for a temporary time, we can take the role of a central bank, which means that we can make monetary decisions on how to fuel growth within the economy.”
Next Earth’s token will greatly assist in creating a decentralized economy; they look to achieve this through a form of quantitative easing, where the most promising companies will be given a certain amount of NXTT to pre-fund platform fees. The goal of this is to accelerate the growth of the ecosystem – acting as a very powerful tool. Next Earth is fully bootstrapped and is definitely not sat on the fence concerning its strategic positioning – they know where they stand and have clear goals for the future.
What can we expect from Next Earth within the next 6-12 months?
The Next Earth team has already achieved so much, yet what is to come in the near future? To recap, on 30/11/22, Next Earth unveiled its new operating system (NEOS) and launched an accelerator program and ambassador program for startups and individuals, respectively. This accelerator program provides professional support, connections to investors, and a program for building a Web3 prototype, with the best receiving an NXTT grant. On the other hand, the ambassador program involves local representatives promoting the Next Earth Metaverse – allowing them to earn a passive income from platform fees paid by the businesses they bring in:
“This is going to be the next big step in decentralizing Next Earth as a community. In the last two weeks (13/12/22), we had over 100 applicants. We are recruiting ambassadors, who will be local representatives of Next Earth, whose job will be to evangelize the next Earth Metaverse and bring in businesses to build on NEOS”
The goal is to have a NextEarthean representative in every city worldwide and scale the program to thousands of people. With exponential growth expected in the months to come, Next Earth has a bright and prosperous future. There is little doubt in what Next Earth could mean for the Metaverse; their focus on creating a “fair digital life” greatly appeals to us. We will be keeping a close eye on the Next Earth team and their subsequent ventures.
