Someone has earned the first bucket of gold in the meta-universe.

Not long ago, some netizens posted a screenshot of the training of "the first lesson of meta-universe" on the social platform. As can be seen from the picture, the course has 1175 active users, 370 new users, 2673 paid users and 7292 new users. Today's income is 91000 yuan, with a cumulative income of 1.596 million yuan.

This is not the only case. As long as you search "meta-universe" on social platforms and knowledge communities, you can see a large number of course advertisements. For example, on a paid APP for knowledge, there is an online course called "six lectures in meta-universe", and the number of students is as many as 42000. The price of the online course is 24.9 yuan. According to a rough estimate, the revenue of the course is more than 1 million yuan. Not only that, some bloggers have launched meta-universe popular science videos on Douyin, Video account, Bilibili Inc. and other platforms, and have also harvested a lot of traffic.

In order to have an in-depth understanding of the course, the author signed up for the meta-universe course on a certain platform as a learner and got in touch with the relevant staff. When they want to know the source of the course content, operating mechanism, profit model and other detailed information, the staff began to evade words, and even blackened the author at last. After visiting several teaching teams one after another, someone finally wanted to share this secret business.

The following is the story of a cosmos course team in Chengdu:

In fact, the course team used to be a blockchain company whose main business is to provide technical support for a number of digital trading platforms in the industry. At the beginning of this year, when the concept of meta-universe became hot, they began to notice that some people in the community run by the company were talking about meta-universe, but it was still a very basic superficial topic.

With a keen sense of smell, the company quickly organized a team to prepare the meta-universe-oriented course content. Why can it be transferred from blockchain to meta-universe?The other party vowed to analyze what the two have in common-virtual, "invisible, untouchable, sounds forward-looking."

In the initial stage of the project, team leader Simon (pseudonym) and several colleagues first shared some information in the community, and then collected online materials to make a "novice guide", which was unexpectedly popular. "many people began to ask if they could have some in-depth practical courses to seize the dividend of the meta-universe first by learning. As a result, they quickly launched courses such as "the easiest cognitive upgrade into the meta-universe", "in-depth advances in different fields of the meta-universe" and offline closed-door small classes "from beginners to diggers."

According to the internal staff, three sessions have been held before the offline small class. Nearly 20 students will be enrolled at the end of each period, with tuition fees ranging from 2000 yuan to 3000 yuan. The course contents include skills, programs and macro policies. Skills courses mainly teach NTF and chain games (blockchain games, also known as gamefi); project courses analyze classic cases and project returns; and macro policies mainly analyze market changes and industry development.

The person in charge Simon stressed:"offline classes are not our main source of profit. After graduating from the course, if the students want to open their own studio, we will provide technical or financial support to the students to collect the project commission. Generally speaking, we take 30% of the project share. "At present, the proportion of students who choose to start a business at the end of each period has reached 20% to 30%. Among them, one of the students set up a NFT studio after graduation, with a monthly income of more than NT $100,000.

That's for sure,The absurd story of the meta-universe is still going on.In addition to the meta-universe course, books related to the meta-universe are also springing up. The meta-universe and meta-universe pass set (all 2 volumes) has been sold in JD.com and has received more than 10, 000 comments so far. As netizens commented: "the meta-universe is so hot, I'm going to buy a book and have a good look at it."

Interestingly, whether it's selling courses or publishing books, this group of people have one thing in common:Most of the content they spread is very similar, and many trainers or authors are mostly from the blockchain field.For example, most of the low-alcohol entrepreneurs who have been very popular in recent years have turned around from the e-cigarette track.

First, the hot meta-universe has become a "basket"

Not the hottest, only hotter-the aunt, who had just been baptized by the blockchain, began to talk about meta-universe again. So, what on earth is a meta-universe?

The so-called metaverse was first put forward by Neil Stevenson, an American science fiction writer. In 1992, Stevenson described the meta-universe in the novel Avalanche: by wearing headphones and eyepieces and finding the connection terminal, Stevenson can enter the virtual space simulated by computer and parallel to the real world. The author saidPeople of the future will communicate with each other in the form of virtual avatars in an immersive digital world.

To this day, there is still no accepted definition of meta-universe. Some people literally define Metaverse as Meta + Verse, a virtual universe that transcends reality, while Zuckerberg defines Metaverse as the next generation platform after the mobile Internet, or the figurative Internet. Roblox, the first share of the meta-universe, is listed in the prospectus."identity, friends, immersion, low latency, diversity, anywhere, economic system, civilization"Eight elements to describe the virtual world.

that,Why did this concept suddenly catch fire this year?It all starts with the game company Roblox. Since its establishment in 2004, Roblox has been working hard to build a meta-universe-like gaming platform. In March, the company officially landed on the New York Stock Exchange, becoming the much-anticipated IPO of U. S. stocks in 2021. On the day of the listing, the share price soared 54%, with a market capitalization of more than $40 billion. With this as a starting point, the world's tech giants are scrambling to lay out meta-universe tracks.

Of course, the most sensational thing is that Facebook Inc changed his name and set off the most wonderful part of the meta-universe. In October, Zuckerberg announced that he would take the prefix of meta-universe Metaverse and change the name of Facebook Inc Group to "Meta". This move is enough to show Zuckerberg's determination to bet on meta-universe. He said: "Meta Universe is the next frontier of technology, just like when we built social networks." "

Several at the same timeNVIDIA Corp is also marching into meta-universe.Earlier, a video of a public speech by Huang Renxun, CEO of NVIDIA Corp, was scanned on major social platforms. The reason is that in this video, Huang Renxun used a 14-second "virtual human" stand-in, while the "virtual human" is very lifelike and unnoticed. Although the video is intended to promote the software platform Omniverse, which creates virtual space, it exposes NVIDIA Corp's purpose-to power the whole universe.

We turned our attention to China, and the major Internet giants are also rubbing their hands. At the end of 2020, Ma Huateng threw a new concept to the industry-the all-true Internet. Tencent CEO Ma Huateng said in the internal publication, "an exciting opportunity is coming, the development of the mobile Internet for a decade, is about to usher in the next wave of upgrading, we call it the all-real Internet." "

And byte beats. In April this year, Byte Jump Strategy invested nearly 100 million yuan in Code Qiankun, a mobile game developer. The company is known as the "Chinese version of Roblox" because it operates a UGC creation platform called "restart the World".

This is only the beginning of Zhang Yiming's conquest of the meta-universe-- August.Byte Jump spends a lot of money on the acquisition of VR startup PicoThe deal is likely to be the largest acquisition in the VR sector this year; in November, Zhongxi (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. made industrial and commercial changes, with a new byte jump wholly owned subsidiary, Beijing Quantum Leap Technology, and a number of other shareholders. According to the official website, Zhongqu Technology is a VR digital twin cloud service provider, which also belongs to the meta-universe.

In additionHuawei, HTC, Baidu, Inc., NetEase, IncAnd so on, the technology giant announced the exploration of meta-universe. Ding Lei, founder of NetEase, Inc and CEO, responded in a conference call in the third quarter of this year that NetEase, Inc had prepared the technology and planning for meta-universe, and when the time was ripe, "NetEase, Inc may run faster than anyone else." "

The meta-universe is hot. Heavenly eye inspection shows that since September this year, Tencent, Li Auto Inc. and other companies have concentrated on applying for meta-cosmic related trademarks. As of November 9, more than 550 enterprises have registered metacosmos-related trademarks, of which about 420 have been added in the past month.

What's even more amazing is thatThe concept of meta-universe detonated the secondary market, as long as the share prices of listed companies exposed to the concept soared.In September, Zhongqingbao, a veteran Shenzhen game company, posted on its official account that it was about to launch a meta-universe game called "Wine Master" with a winery as its core. Over the next two months, Zhongqingbao's share price soared to the sky, rising by 362%. As of Nov. 17, the company had a market capitalization of more than 10 billion.

According to public statisticsThere are more than 30 concept stocks in the A-share market.The multi-meta universe concept stocks represented by Chinese online, Jiachuang Video, Hengxin Oriental and other companies have performed strongly. As long as the relevant companies with the concept of meta-universe, the stock price is "a little bit".

Therefore, a number of listed companies have set up relevant project teams on "meta-universe". Perfect World posted a number of metacosmos related positions on a job search platform in early September, involving metacosmos system planning, human editor responsible persons, system planning, etc., and the products mainly focus on games.

To this dayThe meta-universe seems to be a basket in which anything can be put into it.

Second, VC into the meta-universe, this is a bubble game?

The meta-universe craze began to sweep the investment circle. As you can see, a stroke of related financing was born.

In June, Yuanxiang Weisi, an Internet startup focused on Quanzhen, received 40 million US dollars in angel round financing, with Tencent, Hillhouse Venture Capital, Wuyuan Capital and Banyan Capital participating. Founded by Yao Xing, vice president of Tencent Group and president of AI LAB, the company focuses on introducing cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, cloud rendering, video codec and large-scale systems engineering into the digital world to provide consumers with an unprecedented interactive experience online and offline.

In August, Sequoia Capital China seed Fund and Hillhouse Venture Capital jointly led a company called Motphys, an action physics engine company. The company was founded in October 2020, has independently developed action physics engine technology, the founding team from the industry's leading sports game company Keystone games, the core team in the long-term competitive game project development has accumulated a wealth of experience

In September, augmented reality (AR) technology company Nreal announced the completion of round C financing, raising more than $100m. This round by NIO Inc. Capital, Yunfeng Fund, Hongtai Fund jointly led investment, CPE Yuanfeng and several strategic investors to follow the investment, Jinpu Venture Capital, Hillhouse Venture Capital, Sequoia Capital China Fund continues to add investment. As early as 2017, Xu Chi left Silicon Valley and started Nreal, cutting into the hardware track with AR glasses.

Financing cases are inundated, why do investors take a fancy to meta-universe?It doesn't seem hard to understand. Meta-universe not only includes 5G, artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing and big data in the digital economy, but also integrates the forward-looking layout of VR, AR, brain-computer interface, Internet of things and other technologies. It is estimated that by 2025, the market size from games, corporate communications and advertising in meta-universe will reach at least $82 billion.

According to a partner of a well-known VC institution in Beijing, the company has roughly sorted out the investment map of meta-universe, which is roughly divided into seven levels according to the development process of meta-universe: science and technology at the bottom, followed by hardware carriers, systems, software (including data and algorithms), content, communities, and business models. "so far, meta-universe is just a prototype, and now many start-up projects are mostly focused on technology and hardware. "

"betting is a good thing, but when too many laymen flock to an industry, it is often mixed with a lot of speculation and unprofessionalism, which is not necessarily a good thing. "says an entrepreneur in the MR field.

This is also a headache for many investors. "We firmly believe that there is no problem with the general direction of meta-universe, and it is possible to run out of large companies in the end. But now the stories of these projects are hard to impress me, and I can't convince myself to participate in a game in which there is a good chance that it may be a bubble. "said one investor who has been following the entertainment sector for a long time.

Not long ago, Ma Jie, vice president of Baidu, Inc., who is in charge of Baidu, Inc. 's Yuan Universe business, issued a warning at a public event that according to the Gartner technology maturity curve, Meta Universe is currently at the pinnacle of expectation.

He even gave a specific time, "by the second half of next year or the year after next, this bubble is bound to burst." "maybe when the tide goes out, we can find out who is swimming naked.