Koji Conversations 29 - DigitalAX, the Open Metaverse, & Web3 Fashion with founder Emma-Jane
Primer: Emma-Jane MacKinnon-Lee is the founder of DigitalAX, an ecosystem championing Web3 fashion. In this episode of Koji Conversations, she shares about the various components within the ecosystem, her philosophy, and the importance of decentralization.
DigitalAX
An ecosystem for Web3 fashion in the open metaverse
They are building on top of Ethereum and Polygon
Has a NFT fashion marketplace powered by a Global Designer Network DAO consisting of hundreds of fashion designers
Introduced quest-to-earn and wear-to-earn where fashion can be taken into gaming and other virtual environments to earn a yield (e.g. ESPA, their eSports platform, and PODE, which is focused on virtual land offerings)
Will have a physical fashion side that intersects with DeFi to generate yield
Building an in-house Metaverse publishing platform called Digifizzy
Building DASH, an interoperable transformation file format architecture that allows fashion items to be worn across different realms
“So instead of it being exploitative and controlled by big brands at the top, it's [DigitalAx] really focused on hiring indie designers and how they can release products to the market, and then sharing ownership with the buyers of those products.”
- Emma-Jane MacKinnon-Lee
Differences Between An Open And A Closed Metaverse
One year ago, people were wondering what’s the Metaverse and whether would it materialize
Now, people are thinking how to accelerate the timeline for the Metaverse, with companies like Facebook rebranding to Meta
A closed metaverse is set up to benefit the select few at the top. Those who are not at the top loses out
Web3 leverages the principles of the blockchain — transparency, provenance, ownership. It allows anyone to participate in it
The Role Of Fashion In This Digital Realm
It’s fashion that advances Web3 principles
It benefits those who design, create, buy, collect, and wear them
Traditional fashion industry is top-down while Web3 fashion is bottom-up
Web3 fashion is composable with DAOs, NFTs, and DeFi
DigitalAX’s focus is on building the protocol-level layers of the infrastructure itself to ensure that it is decentralized
Digital fashion in itself is not transforming the industry. It has existed for a number of years as a rapid prototyping process to mix and match different garments before physically creating the final version
Digital fashion did not took off as there was no way to embed the value layer with digital fashion itself. Web3 has transformed the entire process to ensure that this new industry is fully decentralized
Fractional Garment Ownership (FGO)
💡 Fractional Garment Ownership (FGO) leverages ERC Protocol standards across the Ethereum Blockchain and Polygon Network for breaking down a master ERC-721 digital garment into its programmable and composable ERC-1155 elements of materials, patterns and textures.
FGO is all about composability
It leverages features of the blockchain itself to create new concepts and incentive mechanisms where creators, designers, and wearers can interact with fashion in completely new ways
Other designers can come in to use the open source library and take the different patterns and materials to form their master garment
Web3 fashion removes all the barriers for designers. At the final point of sale, everyone that contributed to the fashion or garment itself will receive a royalty for their work
This is held in contrast to traditional fashion, where only people who are situated at specific points in the supply chain will receive value (i.e. workers stitching away in a factory are exploited and do not receive the value for the work done)
Interoperability Between Different Gaming Engines
Interoperability is a key feature of the Metaverse. Without it, all we have are silos
For DASH, they are looking at the technical interoperability layer because the file format, transfer, and exchange between different game engine software is not optimized
DASH is a file format transfer architecture. It is not a standard, because they don’t believe that the Metaverse is going to be built on just a few standards
Engineers, researchers, and developers can come in to contribute mathematical models that make designs interoperable. They will be rewarded for doing so
Will be turning DASH into a DAO and open sourcing it
DigitalAX And The Digital Ecosystem
Making sure that the next iteration of the internet is fully decentralized and owned by everyone who is interacting with it
The Metaverse is a persistent environment that we interact and immerse ourselves in
“It's about making sure that the next iteration of the internet is not the same catastrophe and disaster that Web2 is.”
- Emma-Jane MacKinnon-Lee
Their focus is on how the fashion will bring about more value to the designers who produced it and the people who bought it. The team is looking at wear-to-earn
Building an indie gaming and modding ecosystem where content is open source and interoperable between different application environments
Users can engage in different wear-to-earn models and perform quests. Depending on their outfits, it might unlock a different experience or access to different levels in the game/social environment itself
ESPA is a decentralized eSports platform they are building. Gamers can purchase digital fashion items and bring them into games. Depending on the rarity level of the item, it unlocks different features and quests within the game
Another example is PODE. It focuses on how the indie game environment could leverage on Web3 value mechanisms like NFT, DeFi, etc. into the content itself
Where Is Her Attention Directed At Today?
The DigitalAX team is very dynamic
Build in public —> iterate —> gain market feedback —> battle test it live in the market —> iterate
Currently focused on the indie gaming and modding scene. Just launched Indie Modder’s Guild (IMG), an entire community and guild of indie game devs and modders
Will be integrating the wear-to-earn and quest-to-earn models with the fashion created by the Global Designer Network DAO
If I’m Not An Artist/Dev, How Could I Get Involved?
Become a Metaverse dweller — a user/owner in the Metaverse economy
Generate value through ESPA and PODE by using the content and fashion assets, engage in quests-to-earn and wear-to-earn and get a yield in MONA and other ERC-20 tokens
Another important part is governance. DigitalAX is not a DAO yet and is progressively decentralizing
Where Can Listeners Go If They Are Interested?
DigitalAX twitter and her personal twitter account
Their Discord server and their Medium blog
Any Last Comments?
Have to make sure that they are advancing Web3 and decentralization principles at every stage of what they are doing
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