MATERIA.ONE Update: Land Auctions Have Been Postponed

Staramba land auctions have been suspended

Earlier this year, I was invited to take part in the beta test of the virtual world called MATERIA.ONE, by a company named Staramba, which is better known for its 3D scanning systems and motion capturing. I signed a strict NDA (non-disclosure agreement) as part of that beta test, so I cannot share anything that I saw when I paid a visit to the platform. You can read more about the demo here on the Staramba website.

If you don’t remember, MATERIA.ONE (formerly known as Staramba Spaces) is banking heavily on celebrity endorsements, including Paris Hilton and Hulk Hogan.

It would now appear that Staramba is among the companies who have been impacted by the slower-than-anticipated consumer uptake of virtual reality. Today I got an email from the company, which stated:

We announced some time ago that we are going to launch our next auction for spaces in our VR world called MATERIA.ONE in summer 2019

As we announced in our corporate news earlier this year we need to adapt our strategy. As current market research shows, VR is growing strongly, but it is yet to become a mass market. So in line with our mission to create the best VR world for our community and to enforce our USPs against competitors, we decided to postpone development of certain product features into the near future. As a result we will also not organize another auction of virtual spaces this year or in the near future.

This does not mean we will not do any auctions in the future at all, but rather at a point in time when it makes sense for you as current and potential investor in such property. We will keep you posted.

Now, I have absolutely no idea what “USPs” stands for. From the context, it would appear to be something associated with intellectual property, perhaps? I don’t know.

Look, I am just going to come out and say it: I don’t believe that Staramba is ever going to be able to get MATERIA.ONE off the ground. Being good at 3D scanning and motion capture is one thing; building a virtual world from scratch is another. The whole idea of buying virtual parcels of land associated with celebrities was a crazy one to begin with. Why would anybody spend their hard-earned money to buy MATERIA.ONE’s cryptocurrency and then spend it on so-called “bidding rights” to virtual plots of land associated with Paris Hilton, Hulk Hogan, or some soccer star, with absolutely zero guarantee of any interaction with the actual celebrity?

I notice with amusement that over 254 spaces are still up for grabs in the Paris Hilton sector. (The last time I checked, it was 412, so obviously somebody has thought that investing in this was worthwhile. I am of the opinion that greedy crypto investors will put money into anything if they think they can make a buck off it. Hellooo, CryptoKitties?)

Given the lacklustre response, I can understand why Staramba has called a halt to the proceedings. This whole project needs a complete rethink.

If you’re interested in following the progress of MATERIA.ONE, you can visit their website, or follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

MATERIA.ONE Update

In my email today, I received an invitation to be one of the early beta testers of MATERIA.ONE, in exchange for filling out and signing a non-disclosure agreement, which I did.

If accepted, I will receive a Steam key to access the technical closed beta demo before the end of the month. I’m actually very surprised I was even asked, since I am not an investor in Staramba or an owner of any Staramba tokens, their in-world cryptocurrency. And, as any regular reader of my blog knows, I have been casting a rather skeptical eye at this project so far.

The NDA means that I will not be able to share anything I see or experience within MATERIA.ONE on this blog, sadly. (This is similar to the NDA that we had to agree to before Sansar officially opened its doors to the public on July 31st, 2017.)

So, wish me luck! If I am accepted, then I will be one of the first people to actually get to see what all the fuss is about. If not, well, no big deal.

In the meantime, I will maintain radio silence about the project.

Staramba Spaces Is Now MATERIA.ONE—But There’s One Small Problem

The ongoing story of Staramba Spaces has taken another strange twist (and if you haven’t been following the saga, here is a link to all my previous blogposts about this social VR space).

Yesterday, Staramba (the company behind the as-yet-unreleased social VR platform) proudly announced that they were changing the name of the service to MATERIA.ONE:

MateriaOne

There’s just one small problem. The website domain name MATERIA.ONE is already in use by a Romanian leather fashion site!

In other words, Staramaba evidently did not do a rather basic business check on whether or not the domain name of their newly-renamed metaverse was available! Seriously, WTF?!??

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Staramba Spaces Will Launch Their Alpha Platform By the End of This Year

Staramba Spaces has just announced that there will be a demo, closed alpha version of their platform launching by the end of this year. Only those who have purchased Staramba tokens will have access to the alpha, as explained by their CEO in a recent YouTube video:

Well, it only makes sense that those who have invested in Staramba Spaces’ cryptocurrency will have priority access to the alpha (Virtual Universe is essentially doing the same thing).

However, it’s still not enough to tempt me to purchase Starmaba tokens.  I’ll wait and watch from the sidelines, as I intend to do for all the other blockchain-based virtual world platforms. Again, I warn any potential investors to do every single scrap of their homework before buying into any blockchain-based virtual world platform.

If you’re interested, you can follow Staramba via Instagram, Twitter, Medium, Facebook, Reddit, or Telegram. Or just visit their website for more information.