Building a Fairer Internet With Matera Protocol

We’ve now been building the metaverse - or as we call it now, the 3D internet - for 18 months. From simple activations in The Sandbox and Decentraland to city-scale, whitelabel high-fidelity experiences for enterprises and governments in the Middle East. We have recently announced our tech roadmap with tools to assist the creation of virtual worlds, publishing on the web, and monetization. 

In addition to creating rich, 3D virtual worlds, many of our clients also want to bring these worlds on chain. In theory, the blockchain can help them solve many challenges, such as assigning IP to digital assets with physical counterparts, protecting assets from copycats, or creating a token economy for their community. But in practice, this requires a lot of custom development, which most do not have the resources and talent for.

These clients, generally large institutions from Fortune 500 brands to large IP or government entities, need a simple toolkit to solve these problems without deploying their own smart contracts. This is why we are building Matera.

Matera is a one-stop-shop toolkit for creators to seamlessly bring their 3D worlds on-chain, powered by a scalable layer 2 infrastructure. What Immutable is for games, Matera is for virtual worlds.

Matera provides modules for creators to bring their worlds on chain:

• SDK: Integrate Matera in any content built in Unity and Unreal

• Asset IP verification: Connect IP rights of physical asset to the digital asset

• Asset tokenization: Enable a new economy in the virtual world, powered by tokens specific to each asset

• Analytics: Measure performance and ROI in the experience 

• Wallet & payments: Capture and distribute revenue in the experience

• Layer 2 zkEVM: Process millions of transactions efficiently

So how does it work?

Matera introduces the concept of assets - which can represent a simple 3D file, or a complete game scene - whatever the creator wants to monetize. Once built, creators can connect the Matera SDK to their game engine (Unity or Unreal) to bring the content on-chain and unlock new monetization opportunities.

1. Asset verification

The first step is to verify your 3D assets via the Matera creator dashboard. To verify assets, you can connect properties to make the asset more valuable: 

• Monetization data - this is powered by Matera Analytics and tracks the performance of your asset: traffic, engagement, revenue 

• Physical IP certificate - if your asset is a replica of a physical building for example

• Proof of provenance of the asset - if you are a brand, artist, or celebrity for example

This step enables creators to get a verified profile for each asset they submit to Matera, which proves to customers the assets are genuine, and not fakes or AI-generated copies. Assets get a checkmark, similar to the ‘Instagram verified’ status. Additionally, asset performance is now tracked publicly on the Matera platform.

2. Asset tokenization

Verified assets are then ready to be tokenized, and get a set of new properties:

• A certificate (NFT) representing verified ownership of the asset. 

• 100,000 Asset tokens are minted with each Asset NFT. These tokens are unique to this asset and can be distributed to supporters and fans in exchange for investment or donation. They represent the economic rights of the asset, and are backed by the properties added in the verification process (such as monetization data or IP certificate, which carry value).

Asset tokens are the backbone of the Matera economy. They are specific to each verified asset, and can be used in different ways: rewarding consumers for engagement, crowdfunding, or simply monetizing assets.

Powered by scalable Layer 2 technology

Some of the virtual worlds that Landvault is building are expected to have millions of users. This is why we built Matera Layer 2 infrastructure to increase transaction throughput and reduce fees.

For Layer 2, we will be using a zk-based rollup and are in the process of designing the solution and in advanced discussions with tech partners to be able to build and launch it as soon as possible. All transactions happening in the experience or assets (such as payments, monetization, minting, transfers etc.) happen off-chain and are then batched by Matera Layer 2 solution, before being sent back to the main chain. 

Our L2 is powered by $MATR token, used to pay for interactions taking place on the network which include in-experience payments, reward claims, asset minting, verification and asset transfers. $MATR can also be staked to claim rewards from the Matera rewards pool distributed from the fees generated by the protocol. The rewards will be distributed to creators who verify assets, to consumers who acquire and hold asset tokens as well as to $MATR token holders.

Going to market

Matera is built as a Foundation separately from Landvault as we intend for it to eventually be decentralized. But to start, Landvault acts as the sole technology provider for Matera and has partnered with Matera Foundation to build the protocol and distribute the $MATR token. The token will be issued and managed by Matera Foundation.

In the short term, we solve the cold start adoption problem by taking it to market with Landvault. Landvault builds virtual worlds for large brands, corporations, and governments in the Middle East, and all these projects will eventually be integrated with Matera. This means the first million assets will be coming from Landvault projects, which will kickstart the activity on the network. In parallel, we are building partnerships with large games and other studios that can implement Matera to bring their content on-chain.

Eventually, developers will be able to build applications on top of Matera: 3D creation tools, E-commerce tools and widgets, Royalty management tools, Analytics tools, and other marketplaces. As a first step, Landvault is building the first application: an asset token marketplace for creators to verify their assets, track their performance, and manage their Asset tokens; and for consumers to browse and buy Asset tokens they like. This will start stimulating the Asset token economy on the Matera protocol.

Next, we are raising a $3m pre-seed round on our token $MATR. We already have exciting investors confirmed in the round so stay tuned for this announcement!

Join us

Pushed by both gaming technologies and the blockchain, the Internet is about to see its biggest disruption since its inception. Real-time 3D creates a richer, deeper user experience, while the blockchain enables us to build a fairer internet. Matera aims to be the fair layer of the internet, building tools to make it easy for everyone to integrate blockchain in their virtual worlds. 

So how can you get involved? If you’re a creator or builder of 3D content - we would love to hear your thoughts, and challenges, and for you to integrate Matera with your content. And if you’re an investor interested in the 3D internet, come talk to us! 

Learn more about Matera here.

Thank you for reading,

Sam Huber - Landvault CEO