The first rule of Fight Club is there is no fight club. Similarly, an increasing trend amongst web3 companies is to not even mention the w-word.

Much of the trend is owed to the less-than-stellar connotations the public has with terms like non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and blockchain, but a growing number of companies are advancing the trend because they’re advancing the tech. In the case of Metropolis World, they’re advancing the trend by building capital cities in the digital age that you may or may not know run off of web3.

“Our differentiator to these metaverses you see out there is that we’re very big on web2.5—the idea that it’s easy to access our world,” Rashid Ajami, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Metropolis World, said to me in a recent conversation. “You don’t need VR goggles or a very convoluted platform to access us.”

The idea is, you’ll just access Metropolis World, and if the fact it’s built on blockchain intrigues you—fantastic! You can learn all about how it works under the hood. For everyone else, the web3 component will run in the background, and people may or may not realize its existence.

“Every property in our world has lore, stories, content, and beautiful art—so much so, that even the chairman of Tate has invested with us,” Ajami said. “You’re entering a world that’s easy to access and also rich in content. We’ve brought on board hundreds of cool founding citizens—people like Steve Aoki, Yung Gravy, BLOND:ISH, Time Out Magazine—who all contribute to the ecosystems.”

Metropolis World is one of many startups such as Decentraland, the Sandbox and Voxels that are trying to capitalize on the estimated $66 billion metaverse market, which Statista defines as “the next iteration of the Internet” where “the physical and digital worlds come together.” The market and consumer data provider estimates the metaverse will grow to $82 billion this year. Yet metaverses are typically difficult to access, require a good amount of crypto knowledge, can be glitchy and have limited interactive capabilities at this time. Like much of crypto in general, it’s still intimidating and not for the faint of heart.  

source: Statista

One way Metropolis World is helping its users contribute to the Metropolis World ecosystem is through the newly created Persona Parlor—something Ajami calls “avatar membership,” where creating an avatar unlocks digital and physical products, content and experiences from hundreds of real world brands and creators.

“We’re all about bringing together a really vibrant community of creators and brands and allowing you to access their products through customizing an avatar,” Ajami said. “You own the avatar on the blockchain but it’s being done in a way where you don’t need to know about blockchain or NFTs. We wanted the user experience and UI to feel like a game, where you create your avatar base and can then customize it with all of these different items.”

The company provides two sign-up options, which, according to Ajami, are the degen and non-degen options. “If you already have a wallet, you would connect it and utilize it, but you would still sign in with an email. We’re keeping it a bit traditional because it allows you to have your profile and build it out while also using your existing wallet.”

However, a lot of folks don’t have a crypto wallet, much less know what one is. 

An example of the Persona Parlor interface

“We have a lot of web2 partners who probably know nothing about setting up a wallet,” Ajami said. “They’ll create their account using an email, their wallet gets generated in the background, and they’ll never need to worry about that stuff.”

With the lack of emphasis on web3 itself and more emphasis on a quality product, Ajami hopes users will experience the claiming of an item more akin to checking out when making an online purchase. The only difference is, Metropolis World is using blockchain to power its transactions.

“We’ll handle the gas fees and the entire process in the background, but if you do then decide you want to know more about web3, take home your wallet, the keys and all of that, you can take that next step,” Ajami said.

A major difference between Metropolis World’s marketplace and the traditional minting process is that unlike a traditional mint where people come, mint once, and the experience is over, Metropolis World drops will occur on a weekly basis.

“Every week, we’ll drop a new fashion line from a different creator or brand, tell the story, explain what it unlocks and what you’re getting in the real world,” Ajami said. “It becomes a series of drops you’re engaged in over a long period of time, versus these big drops you see once and have no one care as they later move on to the next project. What we’re building is more like an ecosystem.”

Part of that functionality relies on an integrated relationship between the digital and the physical. Every digital item in Metropolis World unlocks either a physical product, an experience or something that’s exclusive to the company.

An example can be seen through some of the community’s DJs, where the only way to hear their mix is by owning the NFT. You can then trade it or sell it to other people and the DJs can monetize those transactions.

“We have some DJs who would never be able to make money on a DJ mix,” Ajami said. “I know myself from my career, it’s just non-existent. But if you could come to Metropolis World, see a Steve Aoki DJ mix, see there’s only 1,000 copies of them and know you need that item, it becomes like vinyl—very limited. You could own that DJ mix for a while and later on, you could sell the asset on to someone else.”

Read more: The Past, Present and Future of the Metaverse: A Conversation with Peter Ludlow, the Original Virtual World’s Reporter

Creator partners like the American DJ and music producer Aoki first work with Metropolis World to determine how much they want to be engaged in the creative process with the team’s in-house designer who creates the traits. They get an idea of what the creator wants and work back and forth to make sure they’re happy with their line. Then, the creator decides what exclusive content they can provide Metropolis World that their line will unlock. The final step is the pricing.

“We supply the pricing, whether it’s free, more premium, or something where there’s only 100 Steve Aoki t-shirts at a very limited edition,” Ajami said. We decide all of that information and then the creator is put into the platform.”

He continued, “Creators will have profiles when they launch, so you’ll be able to go to Steve Aoki’s profile, see what he’s about, and purchase his items. We then do a revenue split to create a new economy.”

Another unique element helping power that new economy is the base of the avatar—which is soulbound to each user—meaning it cannot be traded. Metropolis World does this to help eliminate the floor price of the avatar so they can scale to millions of users and allows all of their inventory to be tradable.

If your base avatar is soulbound to you, it becomes part of your digital identity—something young people are really starting to embrace and put more energy behind. So much so that being able to obtain the physical version of digital items was becoming glaringly important. It’s why every digital item in Metropolis World is replicated as a high-quality physical item that can be ordered and delivered to you.

Charitable giving could soon benefit from this relationship between digital and physical goods, Ajami said. “We’ve got some really cool charities coming on board,” he said. “By owning their item, you’re donating to the charity and then you’re wrapping it on your avatar.”

He continued, “For example, for one charity we’re talking to now—Project Sunshine—we would create their digital items, tell their story, and by purchasing the item, you’re donating all of that capital to the charity while also receiving a digital collectible you can wear and represent in your games—like on Roblox eventually—or on your social media with filters.”

Part of Metropolis World’s push is to make the process interoperable so that every item in the world can be taken with you into games and different virtual environments.

“For the younger generation we followed, right now it’s kind of boring in terms of how you donate to charities,” Ajami said. “You might text some number to donate or see ads on tv, so for the younger generation especially, Metropolis World could present a really cool way to get them into philanthropy.”

All the while, NFTs are powering the backend of the platform, and you don’t need to understand them or understand web3 in order to immerse yourself in Metropolis World.

“Let’s say you do want to redeem or trade an item,” Ajami said. “Typically with that, you’d need to sell the NFT by listing it on OpenSea. All of that will be done through your Metropolis World profile, and it’s just done without the knowledge of needing that knowledge. It’s just, ‘Oh, cool. I can redeem the physical version of this item,’ or “I want to sell this.’ It’s like StockX: We look at StockX and we’re like the metaverse version basically.”

Recently, a popular influencer partner posted a video of Metropolis World to a completely non-web3 community as a way to start testing how accessible a web3 world would seem to people not in web3.

“It was really interesting to start to test the understanding of ‘I control and own my assets,’ but without needing to worry about blockchain, the gas fees and instead letting all of that exist on the backend,” Ajami said.

Especially in a bear market.

“For us, we don’t mind the bear market because we believe we have a very quality product that has a strong utility,” Ajami said. “We see the current climate as an opportunity. It’s why our tag phrase is ‘Join the evolution.’”

He continued, “The idea is an ‘evolution’ is everything that’s happened to date, so how do we get to that next level of what avatars can be while tying it to a larger audience. That’s the challenge we face and we’re just beginning that journey.”