In this episode, web 3 and crypto developer numbers growing in 2021, 2017 Walmart VR proving the metaverse has been around for a while, InWith Corporation unveiling contact lenses that let you seamlessly transition between real life and the metaverse, and so much more!

Episode 7 Keywords: 2021 web 3 development ecosystem, Walmart VR shopping, InWith Corporation Metaverse wearables, Metaverse contact lenses

Welcome to the metaphysics podcast. The Metaverse and web three are bringing about the

biggest revolution since the internet itself. With your hosts Paul the prophet Dawalibi And Jeff the

juice Cohen. We will be bringing you the latest Metaverse, business news and insight into what it

all means. The meta business podcast starts now.

From the boardroom to the metaverse. This is the meta business podcast. I am

Paul Dawalibi. I'm joined today by my friend co host, Jeff, the juice Cohen. For those of you who

are new to the podcast welcome. What we do here is we cover the most pressing, Metaverse, news and

topics of the week. But we look at all of it through a business and C suite lens, we dissect,

we analyze the implications of everything happening in the metaverse sector. For our

returning listeners. Thank you guys for tuning in every week. I know we're just This is Episode

Seven. We're just a few episodes in here. But we really appreciate it. If you guys have gone to

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will surface to the top of the list and others will discover the podcast. So Jeff, how you doing

this week

doing good first podcast of the new year. So excited to get going. I think we have a

lot to live up to. I mean, we both agreed that our last episode was our best one yet. So we'll see if

we can keep the momentum going. Or if that was just you know, a one time thing and never hit hit

those highs again, like we peaked like journey. one hit wonder

that's true. I you know, I keep forgetting I've done a few shows now. And I keep

forgetting to wish our listeners a happy new year. But it's because it's all just kind of melded into

like the end of the year in the new year. We we didn't stop we didn't take a break, we keep

putting out episodes, rain or shine holiday or not New Year or not. You guys can always expect to get

a metal business podcast episode. So let's jump into it. Jeff, we have, we have a good number of

stories here that I really want to get to. And and I really like this first one, it's very different

from anything we've sort of talked about so far. And the headline here is what's the healthiest

chart in crypto, the developer account. And this is an article that was from coin desk. And it says

here an annual report from venture firm electric capital says the total number of new developers

jumping on the blockchain in 2021 broke previous highs. I'm going to scroll down here. This is all

the number of web three monthly active developers since 2009. If you see this chart, obviously,

we've seen huge increases in the last year. But that's a 75% increase since January 2021. To

today, so in the last year, and almost 8000 new monthly active developers operating in the web

three space. I mean, what's the what's the takeaway for you here? Jeff, what do you sort of?

So when you look at this, what do you conclude?

There's a couple of interesting things here. One, if you you know, can you pull it back

up? Ah, yeah, sorry. So I guess for you guys not looking at it, it'd be worth you know, checking

out. It's interesting how the chart really it plateaus for basically two years. So what the

chart looks like you see typical exponential growth basically from you know, the beginning of

Bitcoin or blockchain kind of coming out until January 2018. And then from January 2018, to

basically January 2020. So for two full years, the chart like, essentially plateaus. And so the

number of developers developing kind of these web three blockchain type apps was basically flat for

two plus years. And then it goes vertical, again, which is very interesting. I guess it probably,

you know, if you look at the chart versus the price of Bitcoin or Aetherium, you'll probably see

I'm sure, between 2018 and 2020. You know, that was kind of the crypto winter where you had a lot

of these things getting crushed, you know, after what was the early height. So that's my one

takeaway. Just looking at the chart visually. Takeaway. Number two, obviously, more developers

is great. You know, that that's just should be a given. The more developers we see adopting this

technology, the better that is for the ecosystem, the more likely we do get we get better apps and

better games, better technologies. That's great for everyone. And then the third takeaway I have

is, it's crazy how low this number is. And I saw someone pointed this out on Twitter, probably it

was with the same chart. But if I'm reading this correctly, it's basically saying there are only

20,000. Developers for web three on Yeah, total. Yeah, that so there are more developers on that

work at Apple. Amazon or Facebook, then the entirety of web three. So what that means to me

is, number one, we still are very early in this game. And to these people are about to make a ton

of money because there are going to be in high demand with every company, pivoting to the

metaverse and having a metaphor strategy, you want to be one of these 20,000 people. And if you're

not one of these 20,000 people, you probably want to learn the skill set, because that is going to

be in high demand. So those are my three, you know, I didn't look at this chart before we talked

about it. So those are my three hot takes.

I love it. I think it's super insightful. I don't know how hot it is. Because I

do. I couldn't agree more. Right? Like, I think this is such a leading indicator. And it's like

classic for old tech folks. Like classic Steve Ballmer moment, you guys, I don't know if you

remember. There's this sort of video of him on stage yelling developers, developers, developers,

and like some Microsoft conference. And, you know, it was kind of a silly video. But a big core of

you know, Microsoft strategy at the time was, you know, cording developers to, to write for

Microsoft Windows and build, you know, applications on top of windows and sort of this

philosophy that the more developers that support your platform, the healthier the whole ecosystem

is going to be. So like, translated to this, this is great news, right, seeing 75% growth in a year

of the developers who are building web three stuff means hugely promising future means, you know,

call it a leading indicator. Everyone's extremely bullish, right. That's kind of obvious. I think,

to your point, though, and this is where I think you were super insightful. It's not too late.

Right? Like, you're not too late to this, whether you're a developer, whether you're an investor,

whether you're just you know, professional working in some other business, you are so early to this,

right? If you're looking at the metaverse space right now, or web three, and going, hey, you know,

what do I want to do here? What can I do? Where can I go work? First of all, the options are

basically endless. Second of all, you haven't missed the boat at all, like, not even close,

because to your point. I mean, Facebook said they're hiring 10,000 People just for their new

Metaverse initiatives, you got to assume a lot of those are going to be developers, right? Even if

half, only half of them are developers 5000 on a current base of 18,000. Right, like, you're gonna

you're going to see huge numbers as a percentage basis coming into the ecosystem. So definitely not

too early I, I really like seeing this kind of thing, because it's the kind of metric that most

people pay no attention to write, but is extremely telling of the health of a trend or the health of

some future, you know, outcome. It's one of those things that you just don't try, like, everyone

talks about the billions of dollars flowing into the space. But I think even more telling than that

are the number of developers who are operating and building stuff. They're

absolutely, you know, 100%. Let's,

let's talk about there was much more to talk about there. I just think it was

important for us to highlight for for our listeners, let's talk about Walmart. The second

story here, I think was super again, kind of interesting. In terms of the headline. The

headline was that Walmart VR shopping video is old news. But so is the metaverse. This is from the

verge. And they're referencing a clip from 2017. And it says it shows how aged the metaverse

already is. And you know in this video, it's supposedly how Walmart envisions shopping in the

metaverse. So you have this virtual avatar, browsing shelves of virtual groceries, they you

know, they they put the items into the shopping cart. And, you know, it says responses to the clip

I'm reading directly from the article here. responses to the clip have been suitably mocking

criticizing the VR experience for its pointless skeuomorphism and outdated visuals. And it is four

years old. To be fair. It was shown at South by Southwest, which is a huge tech conference, tech

and entertainment or media conference. But what do you think of sort of the second part of this?

Jeff, let me ask two questions. One, you know, is there any part of this Walmart Metaverse that you

think four years later was super, you know, ahead of its time, like, like, like they were Oracle's

and second of all,

so I'll give them some credit that the fact that they were putting out a video about the

metaverse in 2017 makes them shockingly like somewhat, pretty early, especially for a big

company. That's not what you would call tech, particularly tech savvy. So give them some credit

for that. Having said that, I do like this has now resurfaced itself and sort of become a meme. You

know, now that the metaverse is such a big buzzword, I did watch that video and I was like,

wow, this is terrible. And even someone who's clearly, you know, bullish enough on the metaverse

to, you know, co host, a weekly podcast on it. I was thinking to myself, this is this is not good.

Like my wife saw the video was like, Is that is that the metaverse thing that you all are doing

the podcast? Like that doesn't seem cool. So I didn't love that I had to explain No, not the

metaverse, or at least I hope that's not how the metaverse turns out. But it's kind of got me

thinking like, is it just because it was poorly done? Or is it like, why would anyone need to go

grocery shopping in the metaverse like, is it just past like that or not something that you would

need to do in a metaphor? So clearly, it's going to be a worse experience, because there's no

reason you would have to do that.

I mean, those were kind of my two follow up questions, right, which is the one which

I think we've touched on before, but I think it will be a recurring question of like, does the

metaverse capital M need to be a one to one like, you know, imitation of the real world? Like,

because to your point, right? Like, why? Why do we need to go grocery shopping at Walmart in the

metaverse, right? You could you can do that just fine from a web page, right? Or from a physical

Walmart. But again, if you don't want to have to go to the physical Walmart, you could you could

the webpage serves that purpose, right? Like, what is what does a Metaverse do better? Other than

maybe provide a more, you know, life like like, IRL experience, right? Like it's closer to

actually going shopping. But from a utility standpoint doesn't seem that much better. The

second part of my question is, like, is the metaverse already old news, right? The headline

sort of alludes to this like, Hey, this is not new. Right. This is old news. And I'm curious if

you

get the chance to the second question first, I think no, I don't agree that it's another

is a classic example of something I think we've seen and we've touched on another episodes. The

the sort of old guard of gaming media is very anti web three blockchain Metaverse, it seems to me and

so they love putting these click Beatty titles out and kind of punching down and be like, Oh, see, is

this really what you want for the metaverse see? It's not that great. Like, so I think there is a

bit of that. We'll call it a boomer kind of old school. Gamer media attitude play here. And it

works. It's click Beatty, it gets it gets clicked. So I I can appreciate that. On the first question,

I kind of forgot what your question was. But I wanted to kind of caveat to what I had said about

why would you want to go grocery shopping in the metaverse do you need to do mundane tasks like

that? I remember a couple years back when EA put laundry in The Sims people you know at first like

Well, that's ridiculous. Like why would anyone want to do that? And it actually ended up being

like a highly requested feature and something that drove a lot of engagement. Which is borderline

crazy because nobody likes doing laundry in real life. You don't need to do laundry in the

metaverse. That's one of the benefits of being in a digital world. Your clothes don't get dirty. And

if they do, you can just you know click a button. You don't need to go do laundry. But it was very

popular. So to me it's a it says maybe there will be grocery shopping in the metaverse, but it needs

to be a gamified experience. There isn't people like doing laundry and Sims because it was

gamified it was part of their their avatar their family, their everyday life. Whereas this was just

some SXSW thing that they you know, they put up on a screen there was nothing behind it.

Is it fair to say that if you are going to imitate real life in the metaverse that

the fidelity of the experience starts to matter, whereas it might not otherwise. Like, like if

you're creating a fantasy world, it's not real, like meaning it's not it's not. It's not drawn

from the real world in any way. Right? It's totally made up. It's totally fantastical. the

fidelity of the experience matters less than if I'm saying you're going to go to Walmart in the

metaverse where now, if it doesn't look and feel like a Walmart, if the person you're interacting

with doesn't look like the greeter at Walmart, right, and the the fidelity, fidelity of the

experience is super high and the graphics are super high. Right? Like, does it start to matter

if if we are replicating real life experiences or is that dude that's a really

interesting point. I don't know if I can make a blanket fit. But I think your take make

sense where it's basically like, it needs to be more if it's going to be something realistic. Like

I'm walking to the gas station or driving a gas station, putting gas in my car like another thing

like you would think nobody wants to do in the metaverse. It needs to be super realistic where

I'm like, wow, I really feel like I'm going to the gas station putting gas in my car. Whereas if I'm

like flying as a dragon and then like blowing fire out of my face like you're like, well doesn't

necessarily matter that I know I'm in a video game like this is pretty cool. Yeah, I'll buy that.

I'll buy that.

Well, this this is sort of a good tie in with with this next story, which I thought

was interesting only because it sounds so fantastical and you know, CES is sort of we're in

the middle of CES now. And we're seeing a lot of sort of announcements for new tech. And the

headline here this was a press release in with Corp shows off the ultimate Metaverse wearable at

CES 2022. Like right away that caught my eye obviously, right you you're the one that sent me

this story. Ultimate Metaverse wearable. And then the sub headline dropped drew me and even more

said, electronic contact lens platform could be the ultimate way to view the future metaverse.

And, and so, you know, I want to discuss this, Jeff, but I want to frame it in, you know, on the

business of esports, which is our sister podcast. We have talked and I've spent a lot of time sort

of talking about how accessories hardware, for the most part gets largely ignored, right. It's the

software and the experiences and the games that people talk about a lot, because that's mostly

what we interact with in hardware feels sort of interchangeable to people, right. A mouse is a

mouse a keyboard, a keyboard, people have preferences, but it doesn't make big news with the

metaverse. You know, we've talked about how we may see this renaissance in hardware this sort of come

golden age of hardware that's going to make the metaverse possible. When you see a headline like

this, what do you think of like soft contact lenses that are going to allow us according to the

press release, I'll word for word here, enabling easy transition from real world to Metaverse at

will like is this. Is this marketing? Do you think we're close? Do you think? You know, I'm just

curious what your take is on on something that sounds this fantastical?

My take is? I'm innately skeptical, as I think you probably know so, you know, and maybe

people who are listening don't know yet. But I am a little skeptical of things. So like, my first

take is probably something like this is too good to be true. And it's also coming from a press

release put out by the company. You know, so you have to take that with a grain of salt. This isn't

someone used it or an article written by a third party press. If this actually is true and works,

its revolutionary, right? Like this is sort of what we've what we've all been been thinking is

coming at some point is hey, I'm walking down the street. I have something on my eyes, whether it's

glasses, lenses contacts seem to be actually be the least invasive. And I could just go into the

metaverse or or AR Because I am I am we've talked about this in other episodes like I am. I'm a

believer that there's an AR component to the metaverse where, you know, it might be putting

digital things into our physical world, not necessarily putting us into a digital world all

the time. But to me, you know, this press release just screams of a lot of hype, and I not sure I

believe it.

Well, this is the this is one of the photos they had lit. So showing, like a

contact lens with essentially circuitry.

It's up to you with that right now. Would you put it on your eyes? Yes,

I would actually in a second I would. What I what I wonder is that, you know,

it's fascinating to me, because I believe in this future, right. And I believe the problems are not

just software, we spend a lot of time talking. I think we've probably spent all our time talking

about software. And we talk about blockchain and we talk about crypto and we talk about gaming,

right? All essentially software products. But fundamentally, we've had little conversation

around how do we how do you access the metaverse, right, what is the gateway? And other than, you

know, meta slash Facebook's Oculus product and a few other sort of smattering of VR headsets.

There's not a ton of discussion, right? There's Enrile that has some AR goggles. There's, you

know, a few other small players here and there. But it's not like the technology problem has been

solved, right? Like we're all talking about the metaverse as if it's, it's it's just a software

problem that's coming tomorrow, right? We just as per our first story, we just throw more developers

at it right? And it's all just going to happen. I think that's a beautiful thought. But until we

have something like this contact lens. I don't know if we're truly going to have the capital and

Metaverse where I'm very curious and intellectually curious is like, how do you power

these things right like this. This is great this contact lens but

just put a charger in your belly but

what powers this thing, right like and so there's like there's there's, I think tough

hardware problems to solve still I love the idea of this future. I think, if I see whitespace, you

know, we, you know, we always like to, I think talk about where there are investment

opportunities where there are opportunities to make money. No question, you know, building

software around the metaverse to that first story, there's opportunity. But I just think there's so

much whitespace still around all the hardware that's going to get people on into that into that

those worlds, right. What is that? What are the gateways, the physical gateways, the hardware

gateways?

It's definitely the hardest problem to solve. And I, which kind of leads me to think that

there may be only a few companies on the planet that can solve it that are great at making

hardware at scale? Like, I don't know, maybe there's a reason why not so many people are going

after is because it is the harder part. Like I don't know, would you invest in a hardware

startup? That was look, would you invest in this company actually, right? If they came to you right

now, no idea what they're worth no idea, anything about this company? Besides this press release?

Would you? What valuation would you put on this company knowing only what we read? So

just now, what I've learned as as you know, being a VC for many, many years, is

where I don't want to be investing in the science, right? If the science isn't figured out, it's too

early to be investing as a VC right? And yeah, I get it, maybe there are some funds that specialize

in that, but they're structured for that, right? The expectations are different, the the risk and

return profiles are different, the investors go in there. For the most part, most VCs shouldn't or

most angel investors, most investors in general, shouldn't be investing in science. So like if this

contact lens is still at Sinai stage, right? Like, there's still science to be figured out before you

can actually make this. That's too early, right? Too early to be doing it. And and I don't fully

agree that only the biggest companies can solve these problems, right? I think biggest companies

will buy a lot of the small companies solving smaller problems that lead to sort of the bigger

solution, right? Maybe in with his figured out how to embed, which is what it sounds like how to

embed circuitry in a soft contact lens. And it's some other company that has figured out, you know,

how can you power this from, you know, the movement of your eyelids or something like that,

right. And it doesn't doesn't necessarily have to be a one all in one solution. But I think it's a

piece of the ecosystem that is ignored. And I will continue to say that, because I think there's a

ton of opportunity here in terms of the metaverse on ramp. I don't know if we're willing to like,

purposely ignoring, but it can't just be Oculus, right. Like I just, I can't believe that that's

going to be the only on ramp to the metaverse and it's not your browser, because then it's not true

Metaverse, right?

I was gonna say it depends on your definition of the metaverse. It kind of gets if

you if you're thinking about web for web three, quote unquote, you don't necessarily need these on

ramps to get to the metaverse as we've sort of defined it, then then you do,

Jeff, that's, that brings us to the end of this week's podcast. It flies by every

week. For our listeners, guys, just again, make sure to subscribe. So if wherever you get our

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