NFTs / Metaverse

December 20, 2023

The following is a letter that was sent by Protocol Gemini to email subscribers.

TLDR: Development team change-up, funding is tight, things are progressing slower than initially expected.

LETTER FROM THE FOUNDER

These past few months have been one of the most challenging periods for Protocol: Gemini as a company. Many roadblocks such as a bear crypto market, SEC regulations, and more, have prevented us from delivering on promises we made.

One of those promises was a token offering of GEMZ to use within our mobile app. Unfortunately, due to the everchanging landscape of SEC regulations, this has meant that a core funding route for a community support mobile app has been blocked. Another source of funding that has been running dry is the decrease in NFT demand on L2, lack of progress on GameStop NFT Marketplace, and general crypto market sentiment.

Additionally, as a team, we are not satisfied with the quality of Metagates and we are aware that many of you feel the same, and want to avoid a similar experience with the mobile app.

To ensure we can build quality products and experiences, we have decided to part ways with CoreBlocks as our main developers. We have been outsourcing from them since we began working on Metagates but will now focus on rebuilding with a group of developers who will share the same dedication and passion as us, with a greater focus on refining user experience and enjoyment.

As for the mobile app, we have an internal version that CoreBlocks had been working on. We have been testing internally and still have a bit to go before we are ready to show you more. The development of new features for the app, along with Metagates, has been halted until we restructure to new developers. Regardless of the halt in development of new features, Metagates will continue to function in their current state and we will (slowly) work on improvements and enhancements to the user experience.

We believe this transition, if successful, will help us build better products and grow an even stronger community.

This transition brings its own challenges – high risk, high reward. Protocol: Gemini has been self-funded since the beginning but due to a few factors, this is no longer feasible. We have begun looking for investors to support us as we build the future. For those of you wondering, I have not taken any money for myself these last couple of years. I still drive the same 10 year old car that has peeling paint as I did before all this began. I am solely dedicated to the vision.

If you believe in what we are building, we invite you to support us in this exciting journey in any way you can: purchasing merch, buying Metagates, spreading the word, playing our free experience “Into the Cyberverse” on Spatial, and more. Every little bit contributes to our ability to keep building.

We are also doing our very first limited holiday sale on Metagates 20% off (everywhere they are for sale, LIVE NOW!) and Merch 10% off (code XMAS10) for the holidays until the 2nd of January, so if you have been waiting for them to be more affordable, now is the time! Plus every purchase whether for yourself, a friend, or just to support he protocol, is reinvested towards building the Future.

We know you will have questions, and we will do our best to answer them. If you would like to invest in Protocol: Gemini, please feel free to DM me.

Thank you in advance for your continued support.

• Shrike and the team.

Protocol: Gemini - BLACKPAPER 2.0 (March 2023)

protocolgemini.com

Protocol: Gemini is a web3 project building apps and products for the web3 future. P:G aims to build a web3-based interactive 3-D world accessible from your mobile device.

It's worth reading the blackpaper to get a good understanding of the entire idea.

Think about, for example, how Google Maps has location information, and people can leave reviews at restaurants and things like that.

P:G aims to build a web3 based decentralized version of that kind of thing, and much more. Users will earn rewards, in the form of GEMz, an ERC-20 token, for providing information and engaging in the network. A play-to-earn kind of model.

A better comparison to explain what P:G aims to do might be to consider Pokemon Go, which is actually made by a competing company. Pokemon Go uses location information to sort of marry digital information to physical locations.

P:G aims to build the information infrastructure to allow users to populate the network with information about their physical reality around them.

When the infrastructure and apps are in place and ready to use, all kinds of fun and interesting things might be possible. "This network of 3D data points will have community access for any user to build their own quests, structures, buildings, and eventually NPCs. Kinda like a video game that you can see on top of the real world!"

Protocol: Gemini is partnered with Loopring, as well as Cyber Crew, and others.

Protocol: Gemini sells Metagates on GameStop NFT marketplace.

Here is an insightful look into the future possibilities of security tokens, written by Matthew Finestone at the end of 2018. While many of the ideas have not come to mainstream fruition, much progress has been made since.

From the article:

Unique to blockchain tokens:

Asset Interoperability
Programmable Compliance

Easier with blockchain tokens:

Fractional Ownership
24/7/365 Trading
Rapid Settlement
Reduced Costs

Interesting, desirable assets foster liquidity.

As we just saw, tokens allow for compliance, automation, and interoperability all across the securities stack. Is this enough to be 100x better than equity or debt crowdfunding platforms?

I’d say that, on their own, each benefit does not move the needle enough. But, in terms of reducing friction, the efforts are multiplicative, and go a long way in facilitating trading of private securities.

To be honest, I can somewhat empathize with security token skeptics. It’s easy (maybe not) to see that blockchain’s (Bitcoin’s) killer app is digital bearer instruments, where truth is purely on-chain. The most valuable thing about this type of property (money) is that it is trustless, and censorship-resistant, and un-inflatable, etc.

I think it will become increasingly obvious that financial assets will tokenize. It’s an accounting technology, it should be no surprise that we use it for…accounting. Then one day… We won’t call them security tokens, we’ll call them securities.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.whynotdrs.org/post/292492

Yesterday, @Hey_Ross discussed on the PP show his thoughts on the true use case of NFTs that scares Wall Street.

---

TLDR: "the real use case is absolutely terrifying to Wall Street. I mean it is the end... of Wall Street..."
"[NFTs are] always about putting the infrastructure in place for decentralized agreements to occur directly between asset owners without a centralized intermediary being there. "

---

transcript

PP: What's on your mind Ross? Let's hear it.

hey_ross: So can we talk about blockchain for a second and the NFT stuff, cuz I was listening to the conversation and there is a lot of use cases that were useful to a gamer culture, and interesting from an NFT and asset and, sort of like this notion of you have this digital experience that can be created around a physical good, and I think I wanted to just jump on to just talk about the real use case here. Because the real use case is absolutely terrifying to Wall Street. I mean it is the end... of Wall Street.

PP: And why is that?

hey_ross:

So, let's -- I'm gonna go through a little bit of a knowledge drop real quick. So, original cryptocurrencies and stuff like that were basically a digital currency replacement.

They use complexity and math to be built or resolve, you know, calculations around transactions that occurred on that currency. What Ethereum did is it changed it to create a contract programmable language called Solidity. Solidity is an actual language you can write applications in, so this enabled things called smart contracts. This was profound because you just went from Hey we have another currency that doesn't belong to a federal reserve, to, now we have an * indiscernible audio * model, so we can * indiscernible audio * any transaction that says things like, Hey, you know, we will actually transfer the money from my account to your account and transfer the title for this house from your ownership to my ownership, when the following conditions are met. It meets the appraisal, the inspection has been cleared, all contingencies related to financing, any holdbacks from the HOA, and you just create all these things as rules in the contract with what the conditions are to satisfy them. The user has to click and validate through a document, and they've done it with authentication of identity.

Alright, boom, you've just blown up the entire escrow market for real estate.

The GameStop * indiscernible audio * wallet was not really * indiscernible audio * have a dancing baloney or, you know, rick of spades with a banana, right, I have that NFT by the way, it's not what you think. It's Rick and Morty. It's Rick from Rick and Morty holding a spade while a giant chocolate banana dances in front of him. It's an AI generated one.

But the point * indiscernible audio *, was rules around those NFTs, around how they behave, or is it, an asset should play on open it's a very simple one. But what can come is profound. Like I want to sell shares of Butterfly.
Okay, who wants to buy them? What are my conditions of sale? Well here's my asking price and here is the minimum units I'll sell, I have a limit, I don't want to sell less than X for, $420,069, or whatever price I want to put on it is. But that becomes a direct transaction where someone wants to meet those conditions, the price, and has the method of payment that I want them to have, in a way that may be deemed validated through a third party * indiscernible audio * in escrow, and then transfer the shares to them.

Boom I've just blown up any centralized exchange. You've just blown up the entire DTC. You've blown up the notion of any centralized exchange holding a registry of assets, as opposed to your wallet itself holding the assets and the rules around those assets. So assets * indiscernible audio * become intelligent, profoundly different than just cryptocurrency.

And so, I think you have this double thing going on here, where the entire world got distracted by NFTs in sort of this hype cycle, you know similar to ICOs, where it's like, here's a new coin, boom it's worth a billion dollars, here's this bored ape yacht club and it's worth this amount, -- it's always about putting the infrastructure in place for decentralized agreements to occur directly between asset owners without a centralized intermediary being there. That's what scares the shit out of the SEC and scares the shit out of the Fed.

And this is the thing that's blowing their mind is there's * indiscernible audio * legal framework because the SEC case and a bunch of other things around tokenizing assets have already created the legal framework for this to happen. So now they need to show some sort of impact that really harms people and there's none there. So, I think they kind of can see it coming. Like I said, the ball is in the air, they're just waiting for the window to break.

In case anyone reads this in the future, I have completed moving my GameStop Wallet crypto / NFTs to another wallet. Below is a top level guide on how I was able to achieve it before GameStop sunset their wallet.

• I moved IMX content (Illuvitars & D1SKs) to the email version of the IMX wallet {whos private key can be opened on metamask}. All you have to do is sign up via email / magic wallet on the Immutable Marketplace. Make sure you register it to an email you won't lose access to as well as back up and passphrases and private keys after you make it.

• I moved standard, L1 NFTs and my remaining crypto to my MetaMask and Loopring Wallets (you might as well secure your Loopring Wallet ENS during this process while you're at it). This applies to all L1 NFTs as well as L1, ETH network cryptos.

• For any L2 currency like IMX tokens, I had to move them back to L1 as ETH before I could withdraw them to another wallet. You only have to do this if the wallet you're moving to does not support IMX tokens. Here is a full guide that Immutable provides on how to do just that.

• You should still back up your GameStop Wallet Private Key and Passphrase somewhere safe.

Remember, you have until **October 1st** to access your Passphrase and Private Key. The app will be removed from the market on November 1st. Here is the posted alert message in case anyone has not read it on wallet.gamestop.com:

"Due to the regulatory uncertainty of the crypto space, GameStop has decided to remove its iOS and Chrome Extension wallets from the market on November 1, 2023.

We advise that all customers ensure that they have access to their Secret Passphrase by October 1, 2023. Any customer with access to their Secret Passphrase has the ability to recover their account in any compatible wallet."

If you have any questions or would like to suggest an alternative guide, please feel free to comment and link below! Let's continue to help each other out! 💪🏼

Full Collection Link: https://explorer.loopring.io/collections/0x79945f77c2f2f8aa724d7cf84124fcae061e6954

Thanks to awesome apes on the discord, I've also expanded my knowledge and collection into Layer 2 and Loopring's offering like Red Packet NFT drops.

My first collection after teaching myself is called: Red Bandana Gorillas
(I'm sure you all get the reference 😉)

I'll be dropping apes from the set periodically as their NFTs get 100% claimed or timed out. At the time of writing this, APEX here has been redeemed 32/88 times. Get him before he's gone!

Greetings Apes!

NYTEMODE here again with an intro post to this community and talking about my quest to become a Creator on GameStop's NFT Marketplace. At this point, I think I've been denied about 2 - 3 times but that was well before all of the new knowledge I've gained around NFTs.

Since then, I hit the internet and self-taught myself damn near everything and I am now a featured and sometimes trending creator on another marketplace called KnownOrigin.

I've played a lot of video games and I love to tell stories with my projects. Below you'll find links to some of my projects that I'll be using as examples the next time GameStop's applications open up. It'd mean a lot to me if some of you would simply check them out. Supporters are always welcome, but not required.

My first ever NFT Project: KAWAII ROBOT FRIENDS
Link: https://kawaiirobotfriends.com
10,000 Unique Robots
Price: 0.001 ETH

KnownOrigin Portfolio: https://knownorigin.io/nytemode

Stories Within

ELITE EIGHT: Future Cybernetic Soldiers Saving the World
Collection Link: https://knownorigin.io/collections/nytemode/elite-eight
Price: 0.08 ETH

Sentry Wolves: Chibi Mecha Wolves
Collection Link: https://knownorigin.io/collections/nytemode/sentry-wolves
Price: 0.008 ETH

The Remainders: Post-Apocalyptic Band of Survivors
Collection Link: https://knownorigin.io/collections/nytemode/the-remainders
Price: 0.08 ETH

+more

I've already met some great apes in this community and they've even helped me test and update my projects to realize that yes, they all support the GameStop Wallet! All of these in particular are on Layer 1, but they can be moved to Layer 2 and used in projects like Metagates. I have a few already ported over and hanging inside mine 👍🏼

Please let me know if you have any questions! Thanks for reading! 🖤💜

If you're a gamer or looking forward to the happenings of PLAYR and you haven't signed up yet, you should! (open to US residents only but our international apes have used VPNs to sign up!)

https://playr.gamestop.com/