Metaverse Innovation: Prosperity and Promise - Metaverse Industry Development Summit successfully held in 2022

Author | Chen Lishan Layout | Wang Jilongyan

On August 10, 2022, the “Metaverse Innovation: Prosperity and Future - Metaverse Industry Development Summit 2022 and “Global Digital Collections Research Report (2022)” was successfully held. The summit was co-hosted by 01 Think Tank, Zhongguancun Blockchain Industry Alliance, and ForeChain.

Bai Liang, CEO of 01 Think Tank, said that the metaverse has developed into a hub for digital technology innovation and evolved into a new business model. Under multiple factors of technological innovation, policy encouragement, and capital investment, the metaverse has shown an initial boom in digital technology infrastructure, software, hardware, and content. Digital collections and the development of the metaverse are associated to a certain extent. The development of the metaverse will further enrich the content of digital collections and innovate the forms and models of digital collections. Currently, digital collections have sprung up on the market, and their standardization, compliance, and sustainability have attracted great attention from the industry.

In this context, ForeChain, 01 Think Tank, Zhongguancun Blockchain Industry Alliance, and “Lujiazui” magazine jointly published the industry report “Global Digital Collection Research Report (2022)”. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Digital Finance Laboratory, Hengqin Digital Finance Research Institute, and the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications Science Park Metaverse Industry Collaborative Innovation Center acted as academic guidance units, and cooperated deeply with Spark Chain.

At the conference, ForeChain blockchain architect Yuan Jianwen and Chen Lishan, blockchain analyst at the 01 think tank, jointly presented the report's core data and opinions. Yang Bizhu, senior engineer at the Institute of Engineering and Communications Technology of the China Academy of Information and Communication Technology, explained the development trend of digital collection infrastructure using “Spark Chain Network” as an example.

There were some trending changes in the NFT market in the first half of 2022. The secondary NFT market showed a downward trend in trading volume, transaction volume, and daily active users. From a platform perspective, OpenSea, the only NFT trading platform in 2021, is currently being challenged by other new trading platforms.

In terms of the domestic digital collection market, it has been exploding since 2022. According to incomplete statistics from 01 Blockchain and Forechain, there are currently 998 digital collection platforms in China, of which 825 digital collection platforms were added in the first half of 2022. Looking at the digital collections that have already been distributed, the number reached 15.3692 million digital collections in the first half of 2022, an increase of 551.67% over the previous month, and the total circulation reached 653 million yuan, an increase of 1735.16% over the previous month.

The top 50 virtual digital people ranking (second issue) was also released at the conference. Virtual human technology is one of the basic technologies of the metaverse. It has become a prerequisite for the metaverse to achieve immersion and participation, as well as an important way to metaverize offline industries. In order to better discover the value of virtual digital people in China, the organizer released the virtual idol top 30 list (phase 2) and the virtual employee top 20 list (phase 2) on the basis of continuous tracking of the virtual digital human race track, and will continue to track this track and update it every quarter.

Jin Jian, director of the Industrial Internet and Internet of Things Research Institute of the China Academy of Information and Communication Technology and Secretary General of the Zhongguancun Blockchain Industry Alliance, gave a keynote speech on “Data Revolution and Meta Universe”, discussing the importance of data and how to harness the value of data, and pointed out that the metaverse is a new vision and blueprint put forward by all mankind for technological development, industrial transformation, social governance, environmental change, cosmic perception, etc., and is also a spatial form of the advanced digital economy.

Liu Yang, acting director of the Hengqin Metaverse Industry Development Class Office, delivered a keynote speech on “Prospects for the Development of the Hengqin Metaverse”, pointing out that Hengqin's construction of a metaverse super experimental factory is a step in developing the metaverse industry, and introduced that the Super Experimental Factory platform is open and can better verify existing metaverse-related products and technologies.

Wang Juan, Secretary General of the Digital Economy Committee of the Beijing Computer Society and Chairman of the Policy Group of the Zhongguancun Blockchain Industry Alliance, delivered a keynote speech on “The Future Space of Digitization in the Metaverse Industry”, pointing out that the development of the metaverse should be a new dimension rather than an old concept. We need to break out of our exhaustive inner circle. While innovating, we must consider issues of industry supervision, policy restrictions, and compliance, and promote the construction of new digital infrastructure to carry the development vision of the metaverse.

Chen Xu, founding partner of MetaZ, a metaverse and future asset think tank, delivered a keynote speech on “Looking at Metaverse Development from a Competitive Landscape”, analyzing the competitive landscape from several aspects of the external environment, infrastructure, core technology, and application scenarios, and pointing out that with the development of the metaverse, the competitive landscape has also become more complex and profound. This is an inevitable product of social and economic development, and a natural manifestation of the digital economy and the digital world to the explosion period.

Xu Bin, Chair Professor of Computational Media and Art at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Director of the Metaverse and Computational Creativity Research Center at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, delivered a keynote speech on “Seizing the Metaverse and Reconstructing New Cities”, discussing how augmented reality technologies such as AR and VR can change the development of cities and economies, and showcased the results of the digital metaverse using the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology's physical digital metaverse as an example.

Zhou Wenjiang, Deputy Secretary General of the Zhongguancun Blockchain Industry Alliance, pointed out that after the explosion of digital collections, it is quite normal to gradually return to rationality. With the gradual improvement of the digital collection industry supervision mechanism, the value of digital collections will be better reflected. As a social organization, the Zhongguancun Blockchain Industry Alliance will be a booster for the development of compliance in the digital storage industry and contribute to the continuous development of the industry.

Xiao Sa, a senior partner at Beijing Dacheng Law Firm, pointed out that the legal risks in the digital collection industry are mainly in the secondary market, and some copyright-infringing works are constantly being sold, challenging the bottom line of the industry. It also called on the digital collection industry to slow down and gradually adapt to the regulatory environment and legal environment.

Wang Fenghe, senior partner of Beijing Yingke Law Firm, pointed out that the digital collection industry is currently facing an inverted industrial development situation. Relevant departments and related entities, including investors, NFT minting platforms, and trading platforms, should standardize the development of digital cultural products with a more inclusive attitude.

Wang Yueming, an expert from the Digital Economy Working Committee of the China Productivity Promotion Center Association, pointed out that at present, the value of digital collections has not been fully reflected, and user enthusiasm has declined. In the future, we should start with three mechanisms: transaction entity review system, issuer registration system, and transferee approval system to regulate the healthy development of the digital collection industry

Du Yu, a former venture capitalist at Sequoia China and author of “Web 3.0 Empowers the New Era of the Digital Economy”, proposed that practitioners and participants in the digital collection industry should raise legal awareness, and that relevant regulators and associations should issue guidance as soon as possible to clarify the development rules and path of the digital collection industry. At the same time, Internet giants and technology companies also need to play an exemplary and leading role.

At the end of the conference, Zhu Jiaming, chairman of the Academic and Technical Committee of the Hengqin Digital Finance Research Institute, made a concluding statement, pointing out that we cannot use the traditional concept of the business cycle to understand the digital economy. In the digital economy, every cycle produces new products and shows explosive power in the short term. When people's attention was completely absorbed by the new product, the next updated product appeared again. Therefore, in this field, the most important thing is not to follow the cutting edge, but to be able to create the cutting edge.