Celebrating One Year of Atlantis World — The grassroots, community-powered, public good metaverse!
Introduction / backstory
It’s been a wild ride so far, that started out when co-founder Rev met CJ during KERNEL Block III last May. CJ, previously swept into builder mode during DeFi summer one year earlier, was obsessed with the mission of bringing DeFi to the metaverse, making it more fun and accessible with the belief in mind that Web3 driven real world utility- that could equip everyday people with the tools they needed to become sovereign, financially independent individuals- is what made the metaverse truly the metaverse.
“If our virtual reality could operate in synchronicity with- and provide positive impact to- the real world and our daily lives, aren’t the two ultimately on a trajectory to become one and the same?”
…He thought, with the additional focus in mind of designing an economy with gamified incentives that could actually regenerate the planet itself, starting with ocean sustainability and leading to the carbon capturing Great Forest of Atlantis.
CJ, driven by the mission of capturing DeFi and regenerative crypto economics in a virtual world environment, was overheard by Rev energetically pitching his vision to investors, during a KERNEL feedback session- which became known as office hours and still today regularly features some of the brightest minds, and biggest cheque books, in Web3.
Rev’s mind immediately started racing with passion, ignited by curiosity, and excited by the magic the pair might co-create if they joined forces and united the best of their products to build one ACCESSIBLE metaverse that would stand the test of time.
Rev was focusing on building a lightweight-first, 2d pixel battle game that was token-gated and targeted at specific NFT communities- together with our lead game artist Ilayda and a small team of early contributors.
The problem with existing, 3d and immersive metaverses is that they set a high-cost barrier to entry because of a requirement for strong hardware. Buying the latest iPad, gaming PC or VR headset is a challenge even for the average family in America, never mind regions in the world where the income average is much lower. Beyond that, the pair started to realize that outside of income and the availability of money, actually in most of the world the tech / hardware itself is simply not available. CJ was in Zimbabwe and Tanzania during the early days of building Atlantis World… if his MacBook were to break, he would have no chance to buy a new one!
Rev approached CJ with the foundations of a much grander vision…
“What if we didn’t just bring DeFi to the metaverse? What if we brought all of Web3? And made it available to everybody?”
Inspired by Gather, and called to action by unfit-for-purpose social incumbents failing to adequately serve Web3 communities, the pair also began to explore the potential of token-gated social events, and voice/video chat connectivity in-game.
The Web3 Social Metaverse was born. CJ and Rev joined forces, together with Ilayda, and started to sketch out the first iterations of the new, united and energized Atlantis World.
It was the dawn of a new era.
Early Traction & Fundraising
It wasn’t long before Atlantis World debuted early iterations of the product in hackathons, winning awards like Best DeFi Project on Polygon, as well as prizes from Aave, Audius & Rarible at HackFS and NFT Vision Hack.
Rev and CJ began to grow the ecosystem, team and community from day one- with the vision in mind of connecting Web3 with social, gaming and education in one lightweight virtual world that’s accessible to everybody- curating the best projects from across the Web3 stack and integrating them inside of Atlantis.
Receiving hot interest from investors, the pair decided to put values above all else, taking a radical and tough path Atlantis World continues to walk- or run- today!
Deciding ultimately that a huge private investment round might lead to pressure from VCs to hyper monetise, sell user data and generally make decisions not in the best interest of the community… The team turned down multi-million dollar deals and began to explore creative ways to sustain their independence with community, values and longevity in-mind!
Then came the headlines!
Turning away from traditional VC, private investor led fundraising Atlantis World instead designed and put into action a simple, yet creative, formula on their mission to gamify the Web3 stack, ultimately with the goal in mind of onboarding more users into the wider ecosystem:
Build something of value for Web3 communities by gamifying the leading underlying protocols and governance mechanics, as well as co-create harmonious social game spaces for meaningful discourse and connectivity -> present a modest deliverables based estimation of the time, resources and money it would take to make it work -> ask the communities (mostly governance and/or committee led) to support and offset some of those costs after the fact, enabling Atlantis World to prioritize the collaboration and integration whilst remaining independent.
Building with grassroots community powered growth and ecosystem development at the core also presented a new and unusual value proposition to Web3 communities: bringing them all together, united, in one virtual world would enable huge network effects for all. These network effects represent the unbreakable spirit of Atlantis: sharing, togetherness, sovereignty, harmonious collaboration vs devastating competition, harnessing the power of the collective and fearlessly protecting public goods. After all, Atlantis World was founded by merging two projects, communities, visions and powers into one. Atlantis World is fundamentally an experiment to show the world that there is a better way… Remember that if you want to go fast, you should go alone, and if you want to go far, you should go together!
It’s also important to note that Atlantis World native blockchains and protocols are currently curated based on user / community activity and on-chain metrics like TVL to build an accurate game twin of products and primitives bringing forth and leading the Web3 stack. In the future, we’re exploring to enable any developer to seamlessly integrate and maintain their application within Atlantis itself, though there are a lot of security challenges. We also believe in the power of people designing, creating, customizing and owning their own spaces within Atlantis World.
Community Before Everything!
Atlantis World is a relatively unique experiment powered, funded, fueled and shaped wholly by the community. The current game version is token-gated exclusively to Founding Atlanteans, who hold a Founding Atlantean Scroll NFT after a successful mint on Polygon back in January, as well as a curated and growing list of some partner communities. There have also been recent opportunities to earn the access, such as completing the Optimism “Getting Started” questing flow in-game and claiming a Quixotic Optimistic Explorer NFT.
Founding Atlanteans are the closest members of the community and receive some special perks: from a randomly generated 1 out of 4 core guild assignment into a social club with private, token-gated spaces inside of Atlantis World, as well as exclusive partner perks/gifts and future airdrops!
Community is the beating heart, highest priority and strongest aspect of Atlantis World with over 7300+ individual contributors to Gitcoin grants, 20k+ Twitter followers, 2000+ active beta testers on the Alpha build, 7000+ early access sign-ups for the private Alpha launch and almost 8000 regularly pruned Discord members attending calls and team AMAs.
Actually, speaking of community calls, 2 lucky community members actually won a trip from the United States to Mexico to complete their PADI scuba diving certification together with CJ at part of the world’s second largest barrier reef system in Cozumel, a famous and globally loved dive location!
Atlantis World covered the cost of flights, accommodation and the PADI course itself- with the group diving four times and seeing magnificent marine wildlife such as sharks, sting rays, lobsters, puffer fish, eels and others! You can catch up with the full video on YouTube:
Conference, Podcast & Interview Highlights
What Are The Goals & Vision of Atlantis World?
Atlantis World is building the Web3 social metaverse by connecting Web3 with social, gaming and education in one lightweight virtual world that’s accessible to everybody.
Essentially, a mobile-ready pixel metaverse that could be stored on a pen drive and played seamlessly on most devices (even an old laptop), combining social features with incentivised interactive learning to onboard users into the Web3 ecosystem.
From creating a first ever Web3 wallet, connecting to new blockchain networks for the first time, bridging assets across chains, depositing into DeFi markets, trading assets on DEXs, trading NFTs using popular marketplaces as well as displaying them in-game and voting in DAOs… all is possible inside of Atlantis World in a gamified way.
We’re building quests and designing novel, reputational and fun incentives so that users can be rewarded for interacting with and learning about these kinds of applications and use cases in-game.
Imagine every time a user is guided through the process of using a DeFi protocol by a scripted non-player character, exploring the Web3 ecosystem as an MMORPG game world, they might earn some tokens, an NFT badge or wearable or an in-game perk (such as a mount, super-power or any other kind of experience enhancer). DAOs could also leverage this to increase participation in their governance, especially when combined with other Atlantis World features like token-gating and voice chat!
The core goals of Atlantis World are essentially to onboard more users into Web3, for example from the 3.4B+ user gaming market, with interactive story-rich gameplay and intuitive, fun learning quests supported by novel, reputational incentives as well as servicing existing Web3 communities with token-gated social events and boosting participation in DAO governance.
Atlantis World believes deeply in accelerating the creation of sovereign individuals globally, equipping people with the tools they need to be financially and otherwise independent.
A Deeper Look Inside Atlantis World
Atlantis World has been building for over one year, with grassroots community powered growth and ecosystem development at the core. Having recently successfully launched an iteration of the early product together with Optimism; over 2000 people took part in an in-game questing flow inside of OP City to onboard users onto the Optimism network, guide them bridging ETH from main-net to layer 2 to pay gas and successfully transact on the network, and claim a reputational proof of quest Quixotic Optimistic Explorer NFT.
What’s Next For Atlantis World?
Saying true to the vision, no matter what. That’s the spirit of becoming a true Atlantean- authentic, resilient, and unstoppable. Moving forward, Atlantis World plans to embark on a new chapter of growth and product development, continuing to iterate and make the community happy as a core priority.
Among many other upcoming big updates, Atlantis World are excited to reveal more about a curated access Alpha launch in August 2022, followed by weekly community activities powered by ecosystem partners… Think about quests, events, perks, and fun campaigns!
Experimenting is at the core of Atlantis World, thus- stay tuned for more interesting novel features together with an upcoming Atlanteans NFT character collection and further AtlanteanDAO governance delegation, ensuring to build in harmony all together as well as further gamify questing incentives to make the experience more engaging and rewarding!
Atlantis World is built by people, just like you… counting on your support to keep on building the open and accessible metaverse, powered by community supporters.
Every voice, every person, every feedback matters… All together co-creating the future, opening doors for humanity and regenerating the planet.
Get Involved With The Community
If you’d like to be among the first one to learn exciting news, development updates, ecosystem partner perks and exclusive Atlantis World events, make sure to follow the social channels below and turn on the notifications to stay informed!
Website | Wiki | Play the Alpha | Discord | Twitter | Telegram | Media Kit
Become a core contributor
Atlantis World is a work of art built in harmony by community and core contributors- brave, intelligent and committed software engineers, game developers, artists, hackers and dreamy enablers of ultimate, interoperable network effects!
Believing in creating sovereign individuals, building network states, protecting digital public goods powered by open source, and abstracting the complexities of the “wild west” away with gamification and intuitive, interactive learning to onboard the next decade of true people into the unstoppable, empowering world of Web3.
Atlantis World fights for freedom by making the tools needed for sovereignty available to everyone- one educational onboarding experience at a time! Beyond that, providing value to the Web3 space by boosting participation in decentralized governance and co-creating harmonious social game spaces for meaningful discourse and video/voice connectivity as a core focus!
At the moment, Atlantis World is mostly on the hunt for senior game developers, senior DevOps / front end / QA engineers, research driven UI/UX designers, game artists, content marketers as well as some other roles! Ensure to check these open positions, which is a work in progress and currently being updated, as well as email info@atlantis.world if you have any questions or a custom role that you’d love to apply for!
Final note from the team
We’d love to take this opportunity to thank the closest members of our community for powering this journey, our Founding Atlanteans (scroll NFT holders) and founding ecosystem partner network that have supported us with grant funding. Remaining independent, community first and value driven means the world to Atlantis, and so do all of you. Thanks for making our dreams come true, we’re just getting started, and building the future harmoniously together with you makes waking up every day and working long days, nights and weekends worth it!
