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Next Earth Launches ‘Metaverse as a Service,’ Plans $60M Venture Fund

source-logo  coindesk.com 21 April 2022 12:20, UTC

The Next Earth metaverse created a replica of the earth with about 5 trillion tiles and minted non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to let users buy pieces of that virtual land.

The project has now launched a formal business to offer metaverse-as-a-service solutions and launch a $60 million venture fund to build out the globe.

Since its launch in last July, Next Earth said it has grown to over 300,000 landowners and more than $10 million in revenue. For comparison, Animoca Brands-owned metaverse The Sandbox hit 2 million registered users last month.

With a fresh development push, Next Earth represents one of several novel approaches to capitalizing on metaverse mania.

The new umbrella company, Limitless, will have two arms: Limitless Capital, a venture fund that plans to raise $60 million to invest in startups interested in joining Next Earth, and Limitless Network, which will launch an application programming interface (API) suite in the coming months to help onboard companies into Next Earth.

Limitless could also offer its backend metaverse technology to large companies looking to build independent metaverses.

Read more: A MetaMask Founding Architect Is Building an Interoperable ‘MetaMetaverse’

“I think that most metaverse [projects] are just trying to recreate ‘Second Life’,” Limitless co-CEO David Taylor told CoinDesk in an interview. “Instead of doing that, we’re going to create a middleware layer for the metaverse. Through our API connections, any business small or large can connect to Next Earth.”

Taylor will share the reins as Limitless CEO with Mike Vitez, who also serves as IT director for Next Earth.

NXTT token

The project launched its own utility token, NXTT, at the end of January, which currently has a self-reported market cap of $181 million, according to CoinMarketCap. The token and NFT capital could self-fund the $60 million venture capital fund, said Taylor, who served as Next Earth’s token architect. However, Next Earth would rather build out its network through outside investors.

“If we are to believe that the metaverse is an industry that is currently being born … then we need to enable network effects through a bunch of investors into our ecosystem,” said Taylor.

Limitless is currently assembling the management team for the venture fund with plans to launch the vehicle by September. The fund will help Next Earth receive exclusive rights to onboard startups that will launch their own tokens within the ecosystem, said Taylor.

He said Limitless is also ideating a future $200 million NXTT token fund to back companies that want to join Next Earth without launching their own tokens. The basic idea is the companies could launch within the native token and Next Earth would match those earnings as a source of funding.

“We see that the big battle of the market is not between us and The Sandbox or Decentraland. The big battle is between Web 2 and Web 3,” said Taylor. “We are focused on making all Web 3 metaverses interoperable. And onboarding companies to the Next Earth metaverse is step one of that.”

coindesk.com