MetaFactory — What’s Coming in 2021
Although it has been a crazy year, 2020 has marked the emergence of exciting new trends and opportunities in the crypto space including the exploration of DAOFi (the combination of community governance and decentralized finance protocols), the explosion of personal/social/community tokens, and of course, the unarguable potential of NFTs as an asset class.
MetaFactory sits at the intersection of these trends acting as a community-owned culture studio focused on the creation and sale of digi-physical goods that celebrate crypto. Artists of all types are invited to create products that promote their art, community, project, protocol, token, etc. We abstract away all the logistics with our network of fashion houses and production partners in California and Sweden, so creators can focus on their craft while MetaFactory facilitates creation, fulfillment, sales and support.
$ROBOT is the MetaFactory Governance Token by which community members decide on token mechanics, reward schedules, partnerships, platform features, treasury use and more. It is also the vehicle by which value is captured, distributed, earned and shared. Creators receive $ROBOT based on the success of their product(s), buyers are rewarded with $ROBOT for their patronage, and the community earns $ROBOT by helping to curate the marketplace. Revenue from product sales are used to buy back and provide liquidity for $ROBOT, which support ongoing community rewards. Fund management is entirely under the control of the community members via the MetaFactory DAO.
We have completed airdrops to all project supporters thus far and a Balancer Smart Pool was recently created to provide liquidity for $ROBOT. You can learn more about $ROBOT here.
MetaFactory was born out of a desire to cultivate crypto culture. Its form and function is continuously shaped by its community. Amongst the chaos of 2020, we collectively explored new ideas, found new creativity, discovered new opportunities, created new products, experimented with new technology and design patterns, made new friends and colleagues, and built a home to celebrate all the amazing, funny, insane, stupid and wonderful things that make crypto… well, crypto.
We thank everyone who contributed and supported the project in 2020 and we’re excited to provide a sneak peek into whats in store for 2021.
BRANDS
Vaunker by Van
MetaFactory will be kicking off the year with a new brand auction in collaboration with Van. Inspired by cyberpunk aesthetics, Vaunker aims to turn visually appealing, digital art into physical products and apparel.
Vaunker draws inspiration from cyberpunk themes, tech/utility wear with a nod to eSports and gaming. Technical patterns, neon colors, minimalist iconography and geometry combine to create the foundation of the Vaunker style.
Vaunker collections will be released in waves with each wave representing a unique set theme building on the brand style guide. All brand members will have access to the Vaunker style guide and be able to use the design elements to submit new product ideas.
The first wave will include three different tee designs available for direct purchase — ONI, RAD and XXX — and one exclusive, custom designed hoodie, NEO, reserved for brand members who participate in the Genesis auction. The upcoming Genesis auction includes a number of goodies from limited edition NFT(s), $VAN tokens and of course, $ROBOT as well. Brand members will also get access to exclusive drops and promotions by the brand and by Van directly.
The Vaunker Genesis Auction will go live on January 2nd, 2021 -so get your ETH ready!
Wicked Sunday Club by Twisted Vacancy
Wicked Sunday Club (WSC) was the first MetaFactory brand launched in collaboration with celebrated crypto artist, Twisted Vacancy. WSC is a new cultural experience promoting cooperative management and collective creation for the good of the brand and its members.
The WSC Genesis shirts are currently being finalized and represent the second signature product offering that include our dedicated physical hardware, directly sewn into the garment for tracking authenticity and provenance. The community have also created the ‘Twisted Dreaming’ Joggers and the newly released ‘WSC Pully.’
Expect more exciting new merchandise, as well as some special art drops by Twisted Vacancy himself in 2021.
EXCLUSIVE DROPS
$ROBOT & $GEAR Exclusive Releases
$ROBOT, the MetaFactory governance token that powers the community, can only be earned by contributing to the project through product design, the purchase of products, project contributions and soon, marketplace curation. Individuals can also support the project by purchasing the token directly and/or supplying liquidity by adding their $ROBOT to our Balancer Smart Pool. Users who provide liquidity receive $GEAR — ROBOT liquidity pool tokens. We will be creating an entire collection of exclusive $ROBOT and $GEAR apparel drops. Users will be required to hold $ROBOT and/or $GEAR in order to access the respective product releases.
Only the most loyal will be able to drip in the finest threads!
The Vacation Station
The new Playstation 5 is one of the most coveted new products this holiday season and is currently sold out everywhere. MetaFactory has gotten its hands on one of the first consoles and treated it to a custom paint job transforming it from a plain old PlayStation into the new and improved ‘Vacation Station.’ The plain white covers of the new PlayStation 5 have been custom designed by artist, AATIF, with beautiful summer scenes turning the bland console into an engaging art display and conversation piece. The Vacation Station is beautiful inside and out, providing an enjoyable experience for all whether a gamer or not.
Mandem
MetaFactory is greatly inspired by streetwear trends and culture. And the product of choice for the majority of hype beasts out there is definitely sneakers. Sneakers, however, due to their complexity and wide size variety are definitely one of the more tricky items to produce, especially on a smaller scale. We are happy to annoucne that we have partnered with Mandem Streetwear to offer our first digi-physical sneaker drop including a custom designed physical sneaker by the Mandem team and a complimentary CryptoVoxels digital wearable designed by Pixls.eth.
Community + Artist Collaborations
MetaFactory is a huge supporter of the community / social token movement and recognize it as one of the emerging trends for 2021. These tokens present an exciting opportunity to experiment with decentralized governance, fair value distribution, incentive design and more in an effort to shape the future of web3 and beyond. We believe that high quality apparel and merchandise promotes and strengthens a community. MetaFactory provides a frictionless opportunity for ANY community, project or individual to create, produce, sell and deliver custom merchandise worldwide. Additionally, MetaFactory’s approach creates aligned incentives and leverages the network effect between communities in a positive sum way.
MetaFactory provides a frictionless opportunity for ANY community, project or individual to create, produce, sell and deliver custom merchandise worldwide.
In the past, we have supported projects such as $YFI, $MEME, $BASED PrimeDAO, $YAM, the MetaCartel and collaborated with many artists including Van, Rare Designer, Alotta Money, Twisted Vacancy, Skeenee, Spaced Painter, Hexeosis, Coldie, ToxSam, Jivinci, Shortcut and many more. We have a number of new exciting collaborations coming 2021.
If you own or are involved with a project that is looking to create branded apparel and merchandise for your community, please get in touch!
CURATION MINING
In addition to the existing rewards, our community has proposed a new reward pool dedicated to ‘curation mining’ — an ongoing, action based way for the MF community to earn rewards for curating the MetaFactory marketplace.
Here’s how it will work:
- Designer makes a proposal for a product drop
- Curators can “charge” the proposal by staking their ROBOT tokens on them. The more ROBOT that gets staked, the faster it charges.
- Once the proposal builds up enough charge, it will go into production and pre-orders/sales will open.
- Curators who staked on that product will get X ROBOT per dollar sold, proportional to how much “charge” they contributed.
(This is essentially a form of Conviction Voting)
This new mechanic will empower our community to decide which products make the cut and/or are released for sale first. It also increases incentive alignment among all MetaFactory community members by creating demand for $ROBOT, reducing supply through staking mechanics, increasing overall product design submissions, rewarding active curators, and promoting product sales.
MetaFactory recognizes the need for a strong initial inventory and constant inflow of new designs in order to create an engaging and lasting experience. As such, we have partnered with MetaFactory community member and voxel master, Sinkas, to bring all the designs from his T-Shirt Project to life as the ‘Voxtees’ Collection.
FASHION 3.0 + NEW HORIZONS
Metafactory’s explorations in apparel design and production have highlighted opportunities for innovation, from the way garments are designed, to how they’re sold. As the legacy fashion industry faces up to a hefty waste problem, visionaries in the field are stepping up to implement decentralization, fair value distribution, and other principles familiar and foundational to our own ethos.
In 2021, we will be introducing more sustainable production methods via a network of independent producers. Our goal is to enable production and fulfillment to occur based on where the buyer is ordering from — EU orders are handled by our European partners, Asian orders by our Asian partners and so on. Our focus on pre-sale and made-to-order production has also eliminated our need to maintain excess inventory, reducing waste and overhead.
Additionally, new fashion design software enables MetaFactory to create realistic 3D renders of all our garments before going into production. We can source and pull in ‘real world’ fabric options to evaluate the physical characteristics (look, shine, weight, etc), resulting in an agile prototyping process that saves on time and materials.
There is also innovation in garment design itself. Fashion moves through trends fast, but structurally has been slow to change; the industrial revolution brought ready-to-wear to the masses, but the actual patterns remain largely the same since Western-style tailoring’s beginnings in the 1500s. This has also contributed to fashion’s waste, as we unpack fashion’s equivalent of “planned obsolescence”: garments that don’t adapt to bodies in motion and fluctuation.
Cue Rickard Lindqvist, PhD., a fashion designer and visionary that we are excited to be collaborating with. His Kinetic Garment Design respects a moving body, without changing the silhouettes we’ve grown to love. MetaFactory is calling it Fashion 3.0.
Rickard and his team have been creating and open sourcing new product templates (‘sharewear’) based on these concepts. For an upcoming MetaFactory release, artist Winston Chmielinski, aka Weseeclearly is creating our first piece, the “New Horizons Jacket,” based on kinetic garment design principles. The design of New Horizons is an allusion to the precipice of potential on which we all find ourselves standing.
THANK YOU!
We want to thank everyone who supported us on our journey in 2020 and helped to make MetaFactory what it is today. We’re excited for the future and invite all of you to join the ROBOT family in 2021!
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LEARN MORE:
Shop: https://shop.metafactory.ai/
Community: https://discord.gg/bhn8Xr9
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheMetaFactory
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themetafactory/
Governance Forums: https://gov.metafactory.ai/
