Bilibili tests "High Energy Chain" and launches "Metaverse" business

In response to the sudden popularity of the Metaverse concept, many leading domestic Internet companies have announced their participation in it. Among those that have recently publicly entered the Metaverse are Baidu's immersive social app "Xiran" and NetEase's first announcement of its next-generation Internet technology architecture for the "Metaverse".

Bilibili has also quietly started its metaverse dream. Tech Planet has exclusively learned that Bilibili is testing the related metaverse business "Gaoneng Chain". A person close to Bilibili told Tech Planet that Gaoneng Chain is a digital native community built for new applications, culture, games and digital assets. It will also support community governance in the future.

Judging from the introduction of the test screenshots, "Gaoneng Chain" is a "metaverse ecosystem" that aims to create an open, innovative, and all-encompassing digital native community. Blockchain is the essential underlying technology for building the metaverse.

In addition, it should be noted that the High Energy Chain will also be applied to the new generation of digital world "Metaverse" that will be launched soon, and Bilibili's Metaverse is about to be unveiled.

At present, the vision of the High Energy Chain is to provide a channel for digital assets to be put on the chain, welcome diversified applications to join the ecosystem, realize the cross-application circulation of digital assets, and provide users with diversified usage scenarios and display stages. Become a "sovereign identity authentication + asset library" for organizations or individuals.

Bilibili has its own thoughts on the Metaverse. "Currently, it is mostly discussed by the media and capital, and few product developers discuss the Metaverse, because there must be sufficient product and technological breakthroughs to realize the Metaverse, which cannot be achieved in the next few years, but it can indeed bring users a better experience and a better vision, giving users more choices," said Chen Rui, CEO of Bilibili.

What is different about Bilibili’s Metaverse?

Bilibili's Metaverse is based on blockchain technology. Simply put, blockchain, as an important underlying technical support, plays an important role in identity authentication mechanism, economic system construction, and creator value protection. Bilibili hopes to complete the layout of the core components of the Metaverse through blockchain technology.

According to what we know, Bilibili's Metaverse ecosystem (High Energy Chain) includes a new generation of applications, culture, games, and digital assets, which is also the mainstream application ecosystem of the current Metaverse.

Specifically, the Metaverse ecosystem of Bilibili can provide users with services in six directions:

The first is to put original works on the chain, which can prove the uniqueness and legality of the creator’s content, similar to the “copyright notarization” function jointly created by Tencent ISUX Original Library and Tencent Blockchain.

The second is to create an NFT collection exhibition hall, where you can show your NFT collection to others, similar to Alibaba's Ant Chain NFT and Tencent's Huanhe.

The third is to show your identity to others in a low-key manner. The specific form of this service is currently unknown.

Fourth, owning a virtual pet may be similar to the experience of QQ pets, providing users with a unique virtual cat.

Fifth, it is to interact with idols. It may provide users with a virtual imaging space, allowing users and idols to have a zero-distance interactive experience in a specific virtual space. The addition of virtual idols is not ruled out.

The last one is digital identity, which is a digital identity created for users through blockchain technology. Identity information and other data are permanently stored on the chain, and the ownership of the data belongs entirely to the user.

The other three major application scenarios of Bilibili's Metaverse ecosystem are digital collectibles (NFT), digital identity, and the new generation of digital world "Metaverse".

In addition, Tech Planet also learned that Bilibili's Metaverse ecosystem also provides block browser services, which can search transaction hashes, contracts and validators, and transaction records will be displayed in real time on the page.

At the same time, the Metaverse Ecosystem of Station B has proposed three technical solutions. The currently public one is the private key custody solution. In order to help ordinary users improve the security level of private key management, the High Energy Chain adopts a design solution that replaces users with centralized private key management. Two technical solutions, smart contracts and trusted cross-chain, are still under testing.

It can be seen that through blockchain technology, Bilibili has realized applications in multiple scenarios such as NFT, block browser, digital identity, etc., and these scenarios together constitute the metaverse ecology of Bilibili.

For Bilibili, is the Metaverse business easy to do?

"I think the most important thing in the concept of the metaverse is to have a self-circulating content ecosystem supply. This is not something that can be accomplished by one company. After all, to create a new metaverse world, there must be a lot of creators, and they really need to be able to make money in it. This is the concept that the B station ecosystem has always adhered to. For example, the virtual anchor is such a case. The up-host uses motion capture to transform into another image, and is later loved by many people." Chen Rui said.

Chen Rui believes that if there is a metaverse world, it must have a lot of content to keep users coming back, so a self-circulating content ecosystem is needed. Currently, Bilibili already has such an ecosystem and has formed a community of 270 million people, so Bilibili is indeed one of the companies in China that is more suitable for the metaverse.

Combined with the above-mentioned statements made by B Station’s senior management on the Metaverse, as well as the actions taken to test the Metaverse ecosystem, the Metaverse has become the business direction that B Station will focus on in the next step.

B Station's Metaverse benefits from the huge number of young users behind it. Li Ni, COO of B Station, revealed that one out of every two young people is a B Station user, and young people have become the main consumer of the domestic Internet. The number of young paying users in B Station is growing steadily, and its value-added service revenue in the first quarter of this year increased by 89% year-on-year. Exploring commercialization routes based on the Metaverse is a good attempt. For example, it can be applied to the personalized dress-up of B Station and sold to users as NFT. Similarly, the popular content of UP masters can also be set as NFT for sale.

In addition, Bilibili's metaverse application scenarios are built around topics that young people are interested in, such as NFT, virtual pets, idols, and the digital world, and it is constantly developing new gameplay and scenarios, which will give young people more metaverse gameplay and ensure the sustainability and stickiness of Bilibili's metaverse ecosystem.

It can be seen that the core users of Bilibili's Metaverse are mainly Generation Z. As to whether the Bilibili App will be included in the High Energy Chain or combined with it, it remains to be seen.

It should also be noted that blockchain is only a part of the metaverse ecosystem. The construction of the metaverse will not happen overnight. Bilibili also needs to strengthen construction in VR, AR and other aspects to make the metaverse cake bigger and better.

Currently, many Internet companies are planning to build the Metaverse. In August this year, ByteDance fired the first shot in the largest acquisition of the Metaverse in China. It spent about 9 billion yuan to acquire the Metaverse concept company "PICO", which is also the largest acquisition in the domestic VR track this year.

Subsequently, Tencent was revealed to be recruiting for Tianmei’s new project “ZPLAN”, which was later confirmed to be Tencent’s Metaverse project, focusing on social + games, and was led by Yao Xiaoguang.

Baidu is not to be outdone and recently launched the Xirang App, which focuses on a multi-person interactive virtual world. Unlike Bilibili's blockchain-based metaverse, Baidu is building its metaverse ecosystem around VR.

In any case, the Metaverse is still in its infancy. Whether it is Bilibili, Tencent, or ByteDance, their current layout is to lay the underlying foundation for the construction of the Metaverse. However, as a ticket to the next Internet era, the competition and investment among various companies in the Metaverse track are bound to become more intense.

(Note: The pictures captured in this article show the services being tested at the time. The specific services will be subject to the official announcement after the launch).

Text | Chen Qiaohui