Preface:

Web3 refers to the third generation of the Internet, also known as the "smart Internet" or "intelligent Internet." Compared with the traditional Web2, Web3 pays more attention to user personalized experience, data privacy and security, and provides more intelligent functions and personalized services.

For traditional brands and IPs, Web3 brings new opportunities and challenges.

On the one hand, Web3 provides more opportunities, such as better meeting customer needs, improving customer satisfaction and loyalty, and enhancing brand awareness and value. With the help of intelligent Internet, traditional brands and IPs can better understand customer preferences and needs, provide more personalized and high-quality products and services, attract more customers and enhance brand competitiveness.

On the other hand, Web3 also brings some challenges, such as higher technical requirements, stricter data privacy protection, and more complex security management. Traditional brands and IPs need to upgrade their technology to meet the needs of the new generation of the Internet and strictly comply with the requirements of data privacy protection and security management, otherwise they may damage customer trust and loyalty and reduce the brand image and value.

1. Traditional brands/IPs’ attempts at Web3

IP (Intellectual Property), originally meant intellectual property, is now extended to be a general term for all famous cultural and creative works (literature, film and television, animation, games, etc.).

According to the summary in the article "A Comprehensive Inventory of Traditional Big Companies' Layout in Web3 and Metaverse", the author extracted several important traditional industry categories. These include brands of all consumer levels in four major categories: clothing, luxury goods, car brands, and food and beverages.

It can be seen that traditional enterprises of all types have a strong interest in Web3, a new entry point, but their attempts in this field vary. Some enterprises regard this as an important investment direction, allocate funds to purchase Metaverse land, directly participate in project financing, and some choose to acquire Metaverse-related emerging companies. Most enterprises' attempts at Web3 focus on NFT or issuing in the form of Pass cards, and increasing interactivity through Gamefi mini-games.

In addition to consumer brands, there are also some technology companies exploring the direction of Web3 and the Metaverse. Facebook is one of them. It is almost all in Web3 and even changed its company name to Meta to announce their new direction to the world.

In addition to these companies, many celebrities also use their IP influence to enter the Web3 field, such as Stephen Chow, Jay Chou, Wilber Pan, JJ Lin, etc. Most of them use their own influence to cooperate with the project party to release NFT.

2. Branding of Web3

We often say that a Web3 project needs to be run as long as possible. In addition to the strength of the project, it is also necessary to make the project popular. This is also a high-frequency word in the communities of various Web3 projects. "Popular" is actually mainly about improving the user base. If a project wants to win over Web2 users, there are two necessary steps.

a) Let Web2 target users know about the Web3 project (to build influence and IP value)

b) Let the target users of Web2 invest/participate in the project (consumption/investment)

From these two steps, we can find that when the emerging Web3 projects are still working hard to promote and build their own external influence to let more users know about their business, the Web2 projects entering Web3 have automatically skipped the first step of IP building, and attracted countless people with just a name, and even set high thresholds from the beginning to maintain their high-end genes of Web2. For example, when Tiffany sold its own "NFTiffs", not only was the price 30ETH/piece limited to 250 pieces, but also required people who held the CryptoPunks series to buy it. The means of luxury marketing were fully utilized to exclude most people and make the ownership of NFT a symbol of identity.

3. Blockchain project life cycle

The current web2 to web3 product conversion is mainly focused on NFT and Gamefi. NFT is concentrated on the ETH chain and the BSC chain. Some projects also choose other side chains of Layer2. The settlement method is mainly the chain currency itself. Although Gamefi is mostly sold in the form of NFT, due to its original return mechanism, whether it is a single currency, dual currency, or even a multi-currency system, they are more likely to be regarded as venture capital and calculate their payback period. As a profit-driven investment project, it must have its life cycle, and most people even acquiesce that Gamefi is relatively short-term.

From this point of view, Web3 and Web2 projects are far apart. When buying a light luxury bag or a watch, most people don’t consider when it will pay back, because in addition to maintaining value and bringing use value, they also have added value such as brand value and identity symbol.

So for Web3 projects and virtual products, can they also have or draw on these types of added value?

Perhaps we can get inspiration from Aiko's ten tips for P2E game economies:

1. Interest-earning assets should have a return decay or life cycle, and return calculation should be relatively difficult

2. The raw materials and return on interest-bearing assets should be more diversified

3. Keep economic value within the ecosystem as much as possible

4. Recognize users’ strong desire for value and transform them into “value investors”

5. Rent-seeking through controlling the financial ecosystem and stabilizing the ecosystem with fee income

6. Create a more robust, complex, and active business system and collect taxes to stabilize the ecosystem

7. Fully tap into user emotions around character assets to achieve continuous non-investment consumption

8. Actively seek external business expansion to achieve non-investment external cash flow introduction

9. Second, token distribution, governance rights, and performance should be linked to game users and participation

10. Maintaining the stability of the exchange rate of the game currency against the legal currency and forming stable expectations are important responsibilities

4. Outlook

For a mature brand, it must include multi-dimensional touchpoints, and the blockchain technology support and user expansion required for these parts will take a long time. From the perspective of social factors, the development of remote work/consumption/entertainment/education has been promoted to a certain extent due to the epidemic in recent years. It can be foreseen that even after the external factors disappear, remote work and consumption will affect future living habits and consumption patterns to a certain extent.

This trend is also consistent with the development of the experience economy. People are shifting their pursuit from the practical value of things to the demand for experience and services. For enterprises, Web3 is a new opportunity for enterprise transformation (creating new product added value, environmental protection value, etc.)

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