Terra Virtua AMA Recap
CryptoDiffer team
Hello, everyone!š
We are glad to meet hereĀ
Co-founder and CEO of Terra Virtua, Gary Bracey
Co-founder and CTO of Terra Virtua, Jawad Ashraf
Co-founder and CEO of Terra Virtua, Gary Bracey
Delighted to be here.
Co-founder and CTO of Terra Virtua, Jawad Ashraf
Hi, a pleasure to be here!
CryptoDiffer team
Q1: Can you introduce yourself to our community ?
Co-founder and CTO of Terra Virtua, Jawad Ashraf
Hi all, im jawad ashraf CTO of Terra, background is ive been building tech companies for many years and have a huge interest in gaming and collecting
I was a programmer in an earlier life and have worked to build tech in disruptive spaces
and we think the true ownership of all digital assets, and then true interaction for the mass market is key to making an ecosystem like terra global
Co-founder and CEO of Terra Virtua, Gary Bracey
Hi. I’m the CEO of Terra Virtua, co-founded with my colleague Jawad 3 years ago.
My background is videogames, having been in that business since the early 80’s (yes, I’m THAT old!)
I headed up development at Ocean Software in the early days and key to our success was licensing of well-known IP
So games like Robocop, Batman and Jurassic Park came from that stable
CryptoDiffer team
Q2: Can you briefly tell us what is āTerra Virtua and what is Terra Virtua Kollectā in 3-5 sentences?
Co-founder and CEO of Terra Virtua, Gary Bracey
Terra Virtua is a NFT marketplace and immersive ecosystem, allowing you to trade, display, share and interact with your collectibles within PC, mobile and (soon) VR environments. Terra Virtua is a complete platform.
Co-founder and CTO of Terra Virtua, Jawad Ashraf
Kolect is the token that will power our ecosystem, and be used in multiple use cases to engage the community, generate rewards, and power the programs we will be launching
theres alot to it, and we have medium articles about the ways it will be used
CryptoDiffer team
Q3: Let`s now talk about the milestones you have achieved so far and about your upcoming plans
Co-founder and CEO of Terra Virtua, Gary Bracey
All of our NFTs are developed to the highest quality/fidelity. Most of the objects are in super hi-res 3D and beautifully animated. Also, we provide utility for NFTs. Rather than just buying a collectible and stashing it unseen in the cloud, we have a number of really cool environments which allow you to interact with them.
We are proud to have licensed some top IPs, with many more on the way. We have also brought onboard a few incredible and well-known comicbook artists and working with them to create some unique digital art for our platform.
We have achieved a great deal so far. Launching our 3D PC platform and marketplace with our unique NFTs called vFlects; expanding our ecosystem with features like the AR app were huge for us! One of big achievements was to sign partnerships with Hollywood Studios bringing them to the NFT Space for the first time, securing amazing, world-class IPĀ – thatās a serious milestone!
Co-founder and CTO of Terra Virtua, Jawad Ashraf
Major milestones for the tech include launching our web platform, the mobile app, our PC 3d fancaves, terradomes, galleries (3d spaces in high fidelity) and also we have VR ready to go
CryptoDiffer team
Awesome, a lot of updates to come out!
Thank you for great answers!
I think it is time to start community questions round!
Cryptodiffer Community
Building this project for 3 years is laudable. What challenges, difficulties and lessons learned did you have as a team? Why did you decide to launch the project this year and not sooner or later?
Co-founder and CEO of Terra Virtua, Gary Bracey
It’s been a helluva journey! The volatility of the crypto market was a serious challenge, and we had to actually pivot our business a little as at one point, but we always had a clear goal and although we’re not there yet, we’re certainly getting there and the journey has become an adventure!
Cryptodiffer Community
What genres of digital art is Terra Virtua focused on today? What is your strategy for cooperation with famous people in the field of sports, art, music?
Co-founder and CTO of Terra Virtua, Jawad Ashraf
Right now we are focused on the top artists in the crypto space, and ALSO mainstream artist who have great work and we want to take them along the into the journey of digital. We even work with them to animate their work. IN terms of areas, we have some amazing stuff coming in music, sports and gaming. We having been working with many brands to get the products right.
Cryptodiffer Community
Do you have a strategy to reach big offline commerce industries? Considering that even with the exponential growth of e-commerce most of the transactions worldwide involve those industries. Are you already partnering with one?
Co-founder and CTO of Terra Virtua, Jawad Ashraf
To an extent, most things are online or want to be, and we are actually very very used to working with large brands. As NFTS are niche, we are going wide, with a lot of partnerships with people not big into ecommerce. ie. even if you look at the Paramount Godfather twitter, they are talking about us.
Cryptodiffer Community
Most of users are still not aware with Blockchain & its related projects So,HowĀ platform create awareness about their project with NON-CRYPTO users too?
Co-founder and CEO of Terra Virtua, Gary Bracey
This is key to our startegy. Our mission is to bring NFTs to the mass-market and that is the biggest challenge of all.
Fortunately our management team has a great deal of experience with the consumer market and recognise that UX/UI is key to success in this regard, so we started with the onboarding and made the process as simple and frictionless as possible. Our next task is to educate and inform so the mainstream understands the advantages of NFTs compared to traditional in-game digital collectibles.
There is a lot more but those are the 2 key aspects
Cryptodiffer Community
How will terra virtua build a thriving community that truly cares about and supports the project for a long time, rather than just gaining temporary benefits?
Co-founder and CTO of Terra Virtua, Jawad Ashraf
Its by continual partnerships, and also expanding out the ecosystem to engage our audience in different ways, ie. imagine a new album release and people in our community, artists, making covers officially endorsed by the brands themselves
Cryptodiffer Community
Can you list 3-4Ā deadly features that make terraĀ project stand out from its competitors? What competitive advantage does your platform have that make you feel the most confident in yourself?
Co-founder and CEO of Terra Virtua, Gary Bracey
We provide an ecosystem for the NFTs we produce
We make very high-fidelity, 3D animated NFT modelsĀ
We license well-known and identifiable brands and partner with those licensors to create unique experiences where possible
We understand the mass-market and expect to help mass-adoption of NFTs on a global basis (big ambition!)
We have a lot of excellent relationships in the entertainment and sports worls and leveraging those to create new innovative products
We also have key relationships with a number of top comicbook artists and so will gbe bringing them into the crypto world
Cryptodiffer Community
Art is sometimes subject to copyright and intellectual property. In Terra Virtua these aspects are also considered or is it an open world just like the internet itself?
Co-founder and CTO of Terra Virtua, Jawad Ashraf
We are actually all about this. We cant go full wild west crypto as there are a lot of copyright issues and we need to protect our artists, brands and consumers, so we are much more rigorous, which can annoy people who dont want to sign any form of contract
Cryptodiffer Community
What tools does Terra Virtua offer for developers and digital item creators? Do you provide support to the creators?
Co-founder and CTO of Terra Virtua, Jawad Ashraf
Yes we do, and work with creators to make cool things, we are working on some special projects with some top artists. Watch this space
Cryptodiffer Community
Cryptocurrencies are still viewed with distrust. Can the NFT market change the current state of affairs, increase trust and attract new people to the crypto space?
Co-founder and CTO of Terra Virtua, Jawad Ashraf
As long as its positioned right, people are used to coins, and digital assets if they have an Iphone! Its about education, and also the crypto community to engage better with the mainstream. Thats what we are doing, its one of our primary goals
Co-founder and CEO of Terra Virtua, Gary Bracey
Absolutely. As a result we try and avoid too much mention of blockchain on our website – at least until folks grasp the real-life advantages of the tech.
And we don’t promote cryptocurrency at all for the very reasons you describe. As I mentioned in an earlier answer, it’s as much a question of education as it is awareness. We certainly have our work cut out!
Cryptodiffer Community
Are you planning to promote your project in different countries, where English is not good? Do you have a local community for them to better understand your project?
Co-founder and CEO of Terra Virtua, Gary Bracey
Certainly! We will be appointing local community managers within each key territory and also sourcing local IPs that will resonate better from continent-continent. It’s not just about the tech, it’s as much about pandering to each culture
Cryptodiffer Community
Studying information about your project, I drew attention to the fact that you outsourced the development of Terra Virtua technologies, API for developers, etc. Could you share with us why and what kind of āstudiosā that create technologies that lie at the heart of your products?
Co-founder and CTO of Terra Virtua, Jawad Ashraf
we have worked very closely with a team, and they are like family now. We essentially intend to keep everything with this studio for our core work, but in future our ecosystem will open up to allow other teams to build nfts, with usĀ and our primary partners helping them along
Cryptodiffer Community
What tools does Terra Virtua offer for developers and digital item creators? Do you provide support to the creators?
Co-founder and CEO of Terra Virtua, Gary Bracey
We are working on that. Our dev roadmap is enormous and so we have to prioritise with the resources we have available. But certainly those tools are very much in the roadmap , as well as APIs, etc. But probably not until mid-2021
Cryptodiffer Community
What features or technologies does TERRA feature against hackers?Ā Defi is great but I think super thieves often enjoy difficulties and challenges!
Co-founder and CEO of Terra Virtua, Gary Bracey
I think we’re all paranoid about hacking attacks. Fortunately, Jawad’s background is in cyber-security and so we are taking whatever measures we can. But never complacent
Cryptodiffer Community
I see that you collaborate with PARAMOUNT and UNITY, large companies, can you explain this relationship better?
Co-founder and CTO of Terra Virtua, Jawad Ashraf
Lots of big brands have given us their support and trust, based on our track record. They are backing a team who have done it before.
Cryptodiffer Community
Concerning the recent 3D PC platform called vFlects, how will this platform be beneficial to a normal crypto user or is it only meant for those in the art world?
Co-founder and CEO of Terra Virtua, Gary Bracey
vFlects are themed automaton characters, each with a set of unique and amusing animations and customisations. They each have a designated level of rarity dependent on their individual properties. There is a backstory which will be revealed very soon. However, they seem to be proving very popular with collectors and we have some more amazing vFlect characters in the pipelineā¦
Cryptodiffer Community
Is the community involved in creating NFT games and models? Can NFT holders participate in governance and voting?
Co-founder and CEO of Terra Virtua, Gary Bracey
That is very much a strong feature of the TVK token. Please read about it on our site
Cryptodiffer Community
The NFT market and collectible gaming market is difficult to penetrate.Ā
Many toys and brands are owned by large companies. Do you have partnerships or advisors that can help you gain adoption?
Co-founder and CTO of Terra Virtua, Jawad Ashraf
We work with some of top people in hollywood, and beyond. A lot of doors are open, we just have to educate and show where we can add some real value. This can be tricky at times
Cryptodiffer Community
What is your plan to attract traditional artists? What incentives does TerraVirtua offer to facilitate this transition?
Co-founder and CEO of Terra Virtua, Gary Bracey
We have to show them first, the advantages of working within our blockchain-based system. We’re not having to just enlighten the mainstream to attract mass-adoption, but we also have to gain the trust of artists and creators so they have confidence in the system. It’s a slow process, but we’re making great progress!
Cryptodiffer Community
In our time, art is subject to copyright and intellectual property. Does Terra Virtua also take these aspects into account?
Co-founder and CEO of Terra Virtua, Gary Bracey
Absolutely. We have legal contracts with all of our creators as we need to ensure there is no copyright theft. One key problem in this regard are those artists who wish to operate anonymously as they have no legal recourse if someone infringes their copyright.
It’s a real roller-coaster, but we are adopting best practices for the protection of creator and purchaser alike.
Cryptodiffer Community
How will terra virtua build a thriving community that truly cares about and supports the project for a long time, rather than just gaining temporary benefits?
Co-founder and CEO of Terra Virtua, Gary Bracey
We need you, and Iām not referring to your money or business (although very happy to accept that, of course!). We need your input, your feedback, your constructive comments. We want to know what YOU want and how we can improve our platform. We need to understand if and where we are going wrong and how to put it right. This is intended as a collaborative process and we encourage your involvement as much as possible.
We might not always agree but we will always listen and act where we feel appropriate.
Cryptodiffer Community
Are Terra Virtua compatible with other NFT oriented projects? Will I be able to view, store items from other projects in Terra Dome and Fancave?
Co-founder and CTO of Terra Virtua, Jawad Ashraf
We are working with many other platforms, we think working together will make us all succeed.
Co-founder and CTO of Terra Virtua, Jawad Ashraf
thanks for the questions everyone – if you have more please come to our discord, and we have a great team with a lot of info for you
Co-founder and CEO of Terra Virtua, Gary Bracey
Great questions – thanks for indulging us!
Cryptodiffer TEAM
Thank you for you answers, it was an insighfull session
Thank you everyone who participated, great questions as always!
