CYBERJAYA: Dindran Kumar has tapped big on Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse realm, by indigenously designing a futuristic digital watch collection.
A first in the country, the local-born Dindran's virtual Crypto-Shox (C-SHOX) is a self-designed, one-of-a-kind non-fungible token (NFT) watch created by Echelon Cipher.
It is set to capture especially the tech-savvy, newer generation who are already into Facebook chief executive officer Zuckerberg's transformation into Meta.
"This C-SHOX accessory lives on the Ethereum network. This project comes with a pre-built Decentralised Application (DApp) for NFT holders to utilise and plug-to-play for an immersed experience.
"Our virtual, digital watch holders will be able to bring this art-and-tech strapping onto their metaverse identification (Meta-ID) in this futuristic, altered world concept that has been brought around by leading space technology giants (like Sandbox, Decentraland and Meta)," said Dindran, 34, chief executive officer and founder of ETokina Consultancy.
He is trading the C-SHOX at the Ethereum currency of 0.1 ETH (or equivalent to 0.1 x the current price x RM4.2 rates).
Ethereum is a global, open-source platform for decentralised applications, with a vision to create a world computer for anyone to build applications with data distributed and publicly accessible.
The Ethereum price today is US$3,176.45 with a 24-hour trading volume of $11,350,784,409. It has a circulating supply of 120 Million ETH coins.
Dindran said that the unique C-SHOX brought a unique twist to the NFT scene, whereby, the NFT holders were allowed to paint, colour and design their own desired master-piece.
"NFT's are generated art concepts, via artificial intelligence or 1/1's (one out of one), by the original makers/creators and come with a pre-determined set of designs, colours and attributes, depending on their creative direction.
"The C-SHOX collection, however, breaks this stereotype, by generating different traits for this watch collection.
"Owners can then sign a one-time upload onto Echelon Cipher's server providing their own design direction for that particular watch piece," Dindran explained.
Dindran has teamed up with O2O eCommerce chief executive officer and founder Khor Ren Jin to aggressively promote their C-SHOX, to be officially launched on Feb 14 – Valentine's Day.
As part of their launch promotion, Dindran said Echelon Cipher and C-SHOX collection were giving away 'Whitelisting spots' via their discord server.
"This is an excellent 'public drop' gift For Valentine's Day and all tech lovers!
"Users can utilise the watch for real-time applications like world time, date and an owner wallet-ticker is present.
"The C-SHOX will be stored on the watch creator's Interplanetary File System (IPFS) server, overlapping the genesis skin.
"There are also in-app skins that holders can change from time to time to suit their personal preferences.
"Users will have to connect via Metamask to sync the C-SHOX token, and holders may also then buy/sell/trade directly on the 'OpenSea' NFT online marketplace via the DApp browser," said Dindran.
He added that C-SHOX allows holders to gain access to the Cipher-Market and secure limited goodies or merchandise offered.
"They can also gain access to the holders-only forum where the latest Crypto-NFT related matters can be discussed.
"Additionally, holders can utilise the Augmented Reality (AR) function via their mobile phone camera to see the watch preview at hand.
"This concept, brought by Echelon Cipher, is indeed interactive and unique on its own within the NFT atmosphere," he said, adding more information could be obtained via the Echelon Cipher website (https://discord.gg/echeloncipher).
The metaverse is a virtual-reality space where physical and digital worlds come together - in which users can interact with a computer-generated environment and other users via Facebook's Oculus virtual reality headsets.
The metaverse is basically the world where your digital self - or avatar - can reside, move around and interact real-time, synchronously with other people who also have their own avatars in the virtual world.
The metaverse in the novel 'Snow Crash' is a three-dimensional (3D) virtual reality space accessed through personal terminals and virtual reality goggles that have a lot in common with the 'Oculus Quest' and other VR headsets.
This 3D space appears to its users as an urban environment created along a single hundred-meter-wide road, the 'Street.3' aka Web.3.
The metaverse will be driven by diverse forms of technology such as cloud infrastructure, software tools, platforms, applications, user-generated content and hardware.
In addition to the technical requirements, the metaverse will include various user experiences including, but not limited to, entertainment, gaming, commerce, social interactions, education and research.
Zuckerberg believes that the metaverse application, that allows mass participation, is expected to be a reality by the end of the decade, but it could also be much sooner than that because foundational elements are already in place.
"The metaverse allows a user to enter a huge virtual shopping mall with millions of others, purchase a unique digital item and then sell the same digital item a few weeks later inside a completely different virtual world.
"Buyers/sellers may use platforms such as OpenSea, Pentas, MagicEden, etc to trade these digital goods.
"Echelon Cipher is poised to take on the digital-verse as a 'watch accessory provider' to the metaverses that will soon come to life," said Dindran.