Above: A field trip to an Egyptian pyramid in High Fidelity.
Image Credit: High Fidelity
High Fidelity has raised $35 million in funding for its open source platform for building distributed social virtual reality worlds. The platform leverages blockchain technology to enable VR developers to create linkable experiences that can be easily deployed across platforms that also adhere to the open, transparent, and secure ledger technology.
The funding comes at a time when VR is struggling for the attention of consumers and gamers, even as technologies such as augmented reality, esports, and gambling — not to mention traditional games such as PC online games, console games, and mobile games — vie for the dollars of investors.
Like many visionary VR fans, High Fidelity wants to usher in the Metaverse, or the universe of virtual reality worlds. And it’s starting small, with simple VR spaces. Earlier this year, I went into a VR place called Rust, a nightclub with a live performances from DJs and audience of people from around the world. There, I interviewed CEO Philip Rosedale and danced with total strangers.
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Above: High Fidelity dance floor. Dean Takahashi is in there somewhere.
Image Credit: High Fidelity
Thanks to Rosedale’s track record, for this round of funding High Fidelity won the confidence of Galaxy Digital’s EOS Ecosystem Fund, new investor Blockchain Capital, and existing investors Breyer Capital, IDG Capital Partners, and Vulcan Capital.
Rosedale started the virtual world Second Life at his prior company Linden Lab in 2003. Its success spurred hundreds of copycat virtual worlds, but most of them didn’t survive, except for Second Life, which continues to thrive. Second Life’s denizens have created $4 billion in transactions to date.
But this time, Rosedale wants to do something bigger. There’s been a financial bubble around virtual reality, starting back in 2014 when Facebook spent nearly $3 billion buying Oculus VR. VR systems like the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive debuted in 2016 with fanfare, but consumers didn’t buy.
In spite of that environment, or perhaps because of it, an old hand like Rosedale has been able to raise a hefty round of funding. It’s all about the dream of connecting more than a billion people in the immersive experience of social VR, which lets you view a virtual space in three dimensions along with all of your friends.
“By collapsing distance, creating new spaces in which we can join together, and bringing people at a distance into real human contact, VR will transform the world. We will go to school, attend events, entertain each other, and build entirely new worlds together, all from within VR,” said Rosedale, in a statement. “To reach this scale and to deliver safely on such a promise, VR must be decentralized, including deeply using blockchain technology.
Galaxy Digital will guide us capably in adopting that technology and creating the right partnerships with the larger blockchain ecosystem, for example the EOS blockchain where we are currently beta testing integration.”
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Source: Venture Beat