Animoca Brands Is Aiming For Social Media Behemoths, In Its Current Web3 Expansion Ambitions
“You will continue seeing us take that approach as we sort of, you know, try to shepherd companies into Web3,” said Animoca Brands chairman and co-founder Yat Siu.
Yat Siu, co-founder and chairman of Animoca Brands, indicated that his company will continue to “shepherd firms towards Web3” in order to accelerate the internet’s transition into an open Metaverse.
Siu has long campaigned for a more open Metaverse, rather than a closed one dominated by huge centralized Web2 firms. Siu’s central claim is that decentralized Web3 platforms and technology, such as NFTs, allow people to retain ownership rights over their data and content online, rather than having it controlled and used by companies like Meta (formerly Facebook).
Siu made his fresh remarks earlier today at the third day of the Australian Blockchain Week event. The NFT proponent spoke about the true worth of Yuga Lab’s BAYC NFTs, the limitations of Web2, and Animoca’s ever-growing portfolio of enterprises and investments during his presentation, which was hosted by Caroline Bowler, the CEO of local crypto exchange BTC Markets.
When questioned on Animoca Brands’ roadmap moving forward
Siu said that the firm is still “super early” in its long term goal of building an open Metaverse. But emphasized the importance of speeding up the process due to the risk of having large centralized firms dominating the virtual sphere:
“You will continue seeing us take that approach as we sort of, you know, try to shepherd companies into Web3. A lot of this is driven by ‘how do we accelerate the adoption of web3?’ because one of the bigger risks as we see it, is that if people don’t move into space quickly enough then inadvertently we will perhaps also create another kind of elite.”
Adding to his point, Siu sounded the alarm bells on major firms that don’t want the decentralized and open Web3 movement to happen, as he argued that many of their business models are built around the monetization of user data.
“There are very large centralized organizations who don’t want this to happen because they make money from our data. [from their point of view] Data is not a property that we should own. Data is a property that they should own and they can manipulate because that’s how the entire business is constructed,” he said, adding that “they’re the ones that we have to worry about from our perspective.”
According to Siu, one of the most effective ways to challenge the centralized Metaverse corporations is to onboard as many people as possible onto Web3 until it evolves into a sort of “global trading framework,” as users become acclimated to the freedom and capacity to own a stake in the space.
He warned once more that moving in the opposite direction would strengthen centralized businesses and give them a tighter hold on the metaverse space in the future, prolonging what had already happened in the web2 era:
“If most of us decide to, you know, just exist in a closed metaverse or in a closed ecosystem entirely, then actually we live by their rules. And it would be hard to break out because they end up sort of manipulating and controlling that network effect, as we have seen today with some of the large tech companies.”
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