On the left hand, fan economy, on the right hand AI, the road to building the Web5 (Web2+Web3) ecosystem of Meet48

Author: Nancy, PANews

From being highly sought after to being deserted, the business of Metaverse is experiencing a downturn after the capital frenzy, while Meet48, a social Metaverse platform driven by Web3 and AI technologies, has become a "sea-hunting" team, collecting "seafood" during the ebb tide.

Recently, in two voting events, Meet48 has accumulated about 2 million new registered wallets and a total of over 20 million NFT votes, with over 4 million on-chain interactions. Behind the impressive data growth, how did Meet48 perform in the Metaverse and what reference significance does it have for other Metaverse or struggling Web3 projects? With such questions in mind, PANews recently interviewed Meet48 COO Kai Xu.

Entertainment Democratization, the Mutual Achievement of Idol Growth and Fans

When it comes to the entertainment industry in the Metaverse track, the outside world naturally associates it with many previous celebrity participants, and there are countless cases of them "promoting" Metaverse products. Although the participation of celebrities has to some extent opened up the space for brand marketing, most products have gradually lost their appeal today, with almost no one interested, and some have even been taken to court by investors.

Kai Xu bluntly stated in the interview, "'Celebrities' are the result, and the 'celebrities' promoting the metaverse or NFTs are essentially a means of monetizing traditional traffic. Take the 'celebrity' NFTs for example, the value of these NFTs is not equivalent to the brand value of the 'celebrities' - people are investing in brand endorsements, but after purchasing the NFT, the owners cannot truly participate in the celebrity's daily life or influence their future direction. They will eventually realize the lack of practicality in these NFTs and the lack of liquidity among collectors."

Unlike others, Meet48 regards the idol market as the main narrative of its metaverse. 'Idols are products created by the community users and fans, developed over a long period of time, and have community consensus. The process itself is an experience, where users gain experience during the development process. Commercialization is also a part of the development system, where users share the value brought by the growth of idols. Therefore, idol development and Web3 consensus mechanism naturally fit together,' said Kai Xu to PANews. Based on this, MEET48 hopes to create a pan-entertainment idol development immersive social metaverse platform through AI, Web3 technology, and mechanisms, making entertainment more democratic and allowing Web3 to become more accessible to the public.

But for Meet48, entering the idol industry also means that it needs to enter a larger user market. It should be noted that Web3 technology has a higher threshold for experience and participation for most ordinary users.

To reduce user friction, on one hand, Meet48 has created a frictionless entry point. At the infrastructure level, Meet48 has developed an AA wallet built into the Dapp and has collaborated with infrastructure providers such as OKX Web3 wallet to provide a more seamless experience for non-native crypto users. Moreover, the TPS capacity and gas fees can hinder the participation of ordinary users, especially in large-scale voting activities. Therefore, Meet48 is actively seeking a mainchain that can handle high-frequency transactions and reduce transaction costs for deployment and collaboration.

On the other hand, Meet48 increases user engagement. Kai Xu explained that money and spirit are two primal motivations in human nature. Currently, most Web3 projects rely on the former to drive FOMO. However, when users' profits decline or are not guaranteed, they immediately collapse, leading to what is commonly known as a "death spiral". Therefore, in addition to money, Meet48 achieves spiritual motivation by establishing emotional bonds between idols and fans. In the Meet48 ecosystem, fan users seek not only profits but also spiritual satisfaction. When the idols they support continue to grow and achieve success, their core demands are already met, which is also commonly referred to as "working for love". If fans can also share in the profits of their idols' achievements, it is a double harvest that traditional Web2 models cannot bring.

Combining AI and Web3 gameplay to boost the star-making mode and user experience

Meet48 can give idols and fans complete control and ownership, so that the development of idols depends on the support of user votes (such as annual idol elections, best song selections, best CP, etc.), compared to the traditional artist market that relies on certain institutions and resource owners in the past, the introduction of Web3 technology ensures the fairness, justice, and openness of the election, and also enables all participants to share the benefits of idol growth. NFT can bring together and mark users with a consensus on idol culture, and tokenization can incentivize and support participants in the entire ecosystem. These aspects complement the experience gap of fans in the traditional idol market and further enhance the development space of the idol market through the characteristics of Web3.

Although the traditional star-making model seems to be mature enough from the popular trainee system and the emergence of selection programs, with the rise of new technologies such as AI, Web3, and the Metaverse, more and more entertainment industries are integrating them to promote their business upgrade and improve user experience.

As a decentralized and self-opened idol ecology in the metaverse, Meet48 is helping to popularize idol culture. Currently, Meet48 has formed a rich product matrix. For example, Meet48's AI data model can not only realize the creation of virtual idols, dance choreography, and song generation, but users can also use AI tools to create UGC content to reduce the threshold for creation and achieve profitability; the virtual theater supports users in creating performances by real and virtual idols, and provides real-time video streaming and video-on-demand uploading, and even can use related hardware devices to achieve VR; and Meet48 also introduces various elements such as virtual land, NFT, GameFi, and SocialFi in the ecology, among which Pet48 includes functions such as pet mode, AI companions, and NFT breeding; virtual land can support users to purchase and build idol cities or other worlds, DAncing supports rhythm games, social DApps, and equity competitions; Monster48 supports player battles, collectibles, and adventures, greatly enriching the platform's playability and entertainment value.

Kai Xu added, "We hope to promote the widespread adoption of the platform through the power of mass media. The bridge between Web2 and Web3 users can be connected through entertainment content, as the public can never resist entertainment. Therefore, Meet48 will launch a series of GameFi and SocialFi products centered around music, dance, and leisure entertainment, allowing more users to enter Meet48's metaverse through these products. Currently, Meet48 has collaborated with some major TV stations and streaming platforms to produce related content for the products. Imagine that users can determine the ranking of a talent show through participating in the game, and their every move in the game can directly influence the final result of the competition. That's why we hope to surpass the current encryption community as soon as possible and bring more content consumers into Web3."

In addition, Meet48 has also introduced tokenomics to further incentivize user participation. Its governance token $MEET can be used to purchase NFTs, participate in governance, and vote for idols. Voting will determine the amount of resources and voting income that idols receive. According to Meet48, they also plan to open up the entire ecosystem to allow other compatible projects to join and obtain $MEET, thereby developing or issuing their own tokens (which can be exchanged with $MEET).

Creating the Roblox of the entertainment industry, about to launch the Web3 idol election event

According to Meet48's future plans, at the event, Meet48 will start the second Web3 Idol Finals in June this year. In addition to the selection of real idols, it will also include the selection of virtual idols. He believes it will bring more user conversions and impressive results. In terms of business, Meet48 will continue to focus on AI and UGC creation, lowering the threshold for user participation in UGC creation, so that everyone can create their own virtual characters and turn them into virtual idols.

For ordinary users, idol creation has always been out of reach, because the creation of virtual idols is not easy, let alone the difficulty and cost of content production. There are not even a few companies that can afford to produce and operate virtual idols in the long term. However, the AI applications and SaaS tools to be launched by Meet48 will completely overturn all this. At the same time, Meet48 will also establish a mechanism to support high-quality virtual idols, disseminate high-quality content, and create virtual idol performances.

Kai Xu also mentioned in the interview that AI will bring about a big outbreak of virtual idol content creation, and the ecology and mechanism of Meet48 will guarantee the rights of creators, incentivize the generation of high-quality content, and these high-quality content will bring about more dissemination and traffic effects, thereby enabling more people to be aware of and join the ecosystem. Of course, Meet48's vision is not limited to virtual idols, but aims to create a more comprehensive and freer Web3 entertainment metaverse, becoming the 'Roblox' of the Web3+ entertainment field.