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Mona has raised $14.6 million to build a metaverse platform for 3D creators. It’s all about building worlds, not walls.
Justin Melillo, CEO of Mona (spelled MoNA by the company), sees it as a way to build an economy for artists and collectors to participate meaningfully in a shared digital universe. Mona opened to creators in October and has more than 3,000 users building virtual worlds in its metaverse. The artists can turn around and sell their worlds, which are all connected in the Monaverse, Melillo said in an interview with GamesBeat. I spoke to him on a phone call while he was traveling in a taxi through NFT NYC in New York last week.
“Mona is a Web3 metaverse, world-building platform and network built for creators by creators,” says Melillo. “We make it super easy and also free for any creator to build mint and sell a high-quality virtual world as an NFT”, or non-fungible token.
The company does not sell virtual land or tokens. It doesn’t charge creators upfront, and it builds tools, systems, and protocols for the open metaverse.
“We see creators and developers as the backbone of the metaverse,” Melillo said. “So we’re really excited to take a different stance on things and move the conversation away from this emphasis being placed on artificial scarcity, selling land and even selling passes for a maker to build. “
The scarcity economies make no sense for Melillo, because the metaverse should be limitless.
“There is no end to virtual land. And so we just want to be able to support creators as best we can,” he said. “I saw a lot of platforms taking advantage of speculation and land scarcity. And that’s what really motivated me to want to start Mona, and really put the focus on creator. .”
Creators have made more than $500,000 since October by mining and then selling their tokenized virtual worlds.
As a creator, you can build in your existing toolset and upload those assets to a template that Mona has created. That requires no coding for the creator. From there, the creator can mint the world as an NFT via Ethereum or Polygon. The 3D assets and data are stored on IPFS and decentralized. The creators can list their virtual worlds for sale on the OpenSea marketplace for NFTs.
“By selling the tokenized worlds, creators also get cash and perpetual royalties on every resale of their world,” Melillo said.
Filecoin Forum
San Francisco-based Mona also partnered with decentralized cloud storage network Filecoin to send an open call to artists, architects and gamers to drive the creation of new 3D art spaces as part of Filecoin Forum, the largest metaverse build bounty. ever – with over $200,000 up for grabs.
Mona provides a platform and network for creators to build, manage, and sell interactive metaverse worlds as NFTs. The world building platform is free for anyone to create and access via their web browser, and creators can store their metaverse worlds on the Ethereum or Polygon blockchains.
Creators use Mona to build and showcase photo-realistic architectural works, mesmerizing art, dynamic 3D gardens, immersive quests, unforgettable virtual events and concerts, and mysterious escape rooms.
The metaverse refers to an interconnected network of virtual worlds where individuals can interact with each other online. While many companies want to take advantage of the metaverse by selling land, real estate, and other virtual assets, Mona is committed to creating an open metaverse that requires no purchase to enter or use.
The Mona team has been building publicly since day one, and their platform allows collectors to invest directly in the creators of experiential virtual worlds. This allows creators to freely develop their art and earn a living building in the metaverse without financial constraints.
“Our mission at Mona is to make the metaverse a social network where creators can thrive. A place to build worlds, not walls,” says Melillo. “With the closing of this round, we will continue to expand our vibrant global community of builders as we bring thousands of new creators on board for the open metaverse and Web3. The metaverse doesn’t have to be from big tech companies — it can and will be a place for everyone.”
“Mona’s vision for the metaverse – a real-time 3D social network experienced in sync with others – innovates on the legacy design space of previous blockchain-based digital environments. It is a zero-to-one upgrade for creators and participants of digital environments, potentially created by Mona’s open standards and powerful tokenization tools,” Collab+Currency’s Derek Edward Schloss said in a statement. “Mona’s metaverse has the potential to change the way society, culture and economy merge in a new digital paradigm.”
Melillo is a 3D artist and former set designer for Drake and Charli XCX. In his previous roles at Magic Leap and DreamWorks Animation, he helped build the world’s first AR digital human AI (called Mica, a truly amazing virtual creation) and volumetric recording experience with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Melillo is an industry expert in augmented reality (AR) experiences and has collaborated with musicians such as Sia, Lizzo, Pearl Jam, Cardi B and Maroon 5.
investment climate
The oversubscribed round was co-led by Protocol Labs, Archetype and Collab+Currency. Other investors include Placeholder, OpenSea Ventures, Polygon Studios, ConsenSys, Venture Reality Fund and other crypto-native funds and angel investors.
Ash Egan, founder of Archetype, said in a statement, “The Mona team is improving metaverse experiences and pioneering a new distribution channel for Web3 creators. We are excited to support the Monaverse capture metaverse mindshare around the world.”
Other investors in the round include Placeholder, Rogue Capital, Synergis, a_capital, Palm Tree Crew Crypto, Venture Reality Fund, SV Angel, Fourth Revolution Capital, OpenSea Ventures, Polygon Studios, LongHash Ventures, Taavet+Sten, ConsenSys Mesh, Big Brain Holdings , Everyrealm, Ready Player DAO, POAP Ventures, Gaingels and The Gray Trust. Angel investors include gmoney, Rahilla Zafar, Conlan Rios (founder, Async Art), Miles Anthony (founder, Decentral Games), and Dennison Bertram (founder, Tally).
“Mona is building the tools, systems and protocols to grow the open metaverse,” said Juan Benet, CEO of Protocol Labs, in a statement. “We are proud to support their innovative work developing the infrastructure for creators and developers to build and own the open metaverse. We will all spend countless hours in the high-quality virtual experiences hosted on Mona.”
Melillo realizes that he may have just barely started raising money now that the crypto winter has arrived and businesses may have a harder time raising money during a recession.
“There is definitely a bit of economic change going on. We were able to close the round just before Terra” collapsed and sparked another sell-off in cryptocurrency markets.
“Obviously there are a lot of speculators in the crypto markets and there is a lot of speculation about metaverse and NFTs. I think it gives us a great opportunity as an organization that is really working hard to build a better future for the open metaverse,” he said. “I am very grateful that we have that opportunity. And now that the market is shaking out other speculators or bad actors, I’m very grateful for that.”
The competition
Many things are called metaverses these days. Melillo sees the metaverse as an interconnected network of virtual worlds, many of which will support the physical world.
“What Mona fits in is that it’s committed to building the infrastructure to help the open metaverse grow,” he said. “Not only do we focus on the tooling and infrastructure, but we also have the highest quality multiplayer experience all accessible in the web browser. So once an artist has created and created his or her world, it goes live right on our website, where you can share your worlds with just a URL link. So that allows anyone to start a multiplayer hangout where you can have hundreds of people join a multiplayer environment within one of your worlds.”
The company has customizable avatars through a partnership with Ready Player Me. It also has voice chat and text chat. It also has token gated access, which is really great for people who want to actually sell tickets or even token gate virtual worlds based on NFT or ERC 20 ownership.
“You can also link to external platforms and websites and bring everything back to this concept of an open metaverse,” he said. “Many users don’t want to stay in one silo environment, so we make it easy for anyone who wants to build a world to link to other websites as well.”
As for competition, there are Minecraft and Roblox, but in those worlds you don’t see such a wide variety of art. And other worlds tend to focus on the land sale and artificial scarcity model.
“We feel we have a significant competitive advantage,” he said.
But he doesn’t mind having a lot of competitors because he wants the open metaverse to be a big, big thing.
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