Tim Segewitz: CeDeFi in Metaverse and Gaming

During the past few months, I have been researching about?CeDeFi ?use cases in different industries. Many interviews have been conducted with experts in the gaming industry as well as?Metaverse ?and?DeFi ?ecosystem’s pioneers; with the goal of creating a brainstorming database for the future.

CeDeFi is the abbreviation of Centralized-Decentralized Finance and it refers to bringing the functionalities of both systems together. using CeDeFi we can have the privilege of an innovative financial product while it’s meeting the regulations.

In this article, I will share the insights that I have gained by interviewing? Tim Segewitz ?, Head of the Metaverse at? STYLE Labs . $STYLE Protocol is a decentralized infrastructure to bring NFTs into usability across multiple metaverses. It is A tokenized ecosystem to enable 3D creations across Web 3.0. Tim is also one of the founding members of? vVv ?which is an NFT powered and community driven venture capital.

Mahsa: “How CeDeFi will create the next frontier of Esports in Metaverse? If we can create a Centralized-Decentralized Finance prototype in games which connects the digital wallet of the gamers and their centralized bank accounts, how will iyt change the gaming industry?”

Tim: “CeDeFi is centralised-decentralised finance. It’s a bit of both. CeDeFi can be great for the Esports space; because if we implement DeFi, it could get a bit complicated due to lack of regulations. This topic will emerge a bit more in the future. In 5 to 10 years, countries and states will get involved, and we will see the outcomes of integrating CeDeFi.

This concept is the perfect merger between decentralized and centralized finance, and it brings cool functionalities with it. There are pretty huge financial services which will emerge out of it. Let’s say we have an Esport competition event in the Metaverse. The Metaverse will be needed to handle all the computing power. Prices should be pretty clear. Should it be crypto? Should we use stable coins? We don’t know how exactly it will look like in the future, and that’s why I’m also personally pretty excited about that.

I used to be a hard gamer in the past. For about 10 years, I played World of Warcraft. I stopped in 2016 when I entered the blockchain space. It was the beginning of the last bull run, before the actual ICO crash in 2017. Right after that, we had a pretty long bear market.

If we have nice play to earn games in the Esports industry, Metaverses could handle Esports events. My biggest concern is that all the metaverses don’t have the capability to actually make an Esports event there at the moment. There are so many things that need to be taken care of: The Metaverse should have the computing power or should be streamed; There needs to be marketing for the events; the metaverse needs to be emerged, and the game has to run inside the metaverse smoothly for everyone who’s participating. Will the game be rendered in cloud computing? So many technologies will be involved, and that’s the fact I love about this topic.

Mahsa: “?How will Metaverse change the human interaction with Media as well as the financial services?”

Tim: “?Most of the people are enjoying media on their smartphones, which are in their pockets and are two-dimensional. You can scroll down on Instagram and Twitter. If you really think about what a Metaverse can do with your media, it’s like, the imagination cannot really stop somehow. You can do so much in the metaverse, and it will be, in my opinion, social media 2.0.

We don’t know when it will reach its full potential. If you have a goggle on, and you want to experience the Metaverse with your whole body and not just with your eyes, you can have guessers in your hands and stuff like that. When you walk around with your avatar, it will be like the movie “Ready Player One”. The main character jumps into a suit, puts the goggles on, and just walks around in the metaverse or in the virtual world.

The Ad space will be revolutionized as well. You walk around somewhere inside the Metaverse and there are some advertisements; maybe from some crypto lawyers, a game or some media outlets. Oculus is pretty expensive for most people right now. When the goggles become affordable for the mass population; we can say that the biggest step has been taken for the mass adoption of the Metaverse itself. If you can afford the tech and have the entire technical requirements at home, you can enjoy the media in what is called the social media 2.0. With all the experiences which will get built there like apps and games.

When it comes to Metaverse, the imagination is infinite. You can drive a roller coaster. You can do everything there. I’m really positive about the Metaverse. But we also need to talk about the negative effects. People might feel lonely when they put down the goggles because they only have Metaverse friends. I don’t know how the mental health of people will be affected. The human brain works or corresponds to dopamine. On Instagram, if we post something, our brain puts out dopamine. Then we want the next dopamine shot and if you cannot create it, you get to a negative mental state.

Regarding the financial aspect, there is definitely an infinity of ideas when it comes to using financial products in the Metaverse. What we do at STYLE Protocol where I work as the Head of Metaverse and the Chief Marketing Officer is that we create fashion for other brands. We create 3D designs of jackets, hats, cars, glasses, headphones and bring true interoperability to your NFTs by utilisation and monetisation.

Our 3D designers can literally create everything for the Metaverse. You only need a base rig to emerge a 3D model out of it for the metaverse. So, if you have a 3D model of the iPhone, we could create that in the Metaverse for your usage and your avatar itself. And then you can obviously sell the product in the Metaverse, which then can also be exchanged to stable coins and the local coin of that specific Metaverse. The imagination is endless because we don’t have that many regulations in Metaverse at the moment.”

Mahsa: “What would be the reaction of professional game players as well as the non-tech-savvy people to this new Gaming frontier? What if we can actually create a CeDeFi prototype which connects users’ in-game digital wallets to their centralized bank accounts? Would gamers like this or not? Will it encourage normal people to become professional gamers?”

Tim: “I’m going to use World of Warcraft which is an MMORPG role play game as an example here. You can play it with a character in a virtual world which is actually a kind of Metaverse. And what a gamer needs to understand before all the other things in the game is the real bank account.

The Metaverse itself is a decentralized platform where the blockchain technology is the foundation. Most, if not all, of the assets there are NFTs. So, that is the biggest problem in my perspective right now. Most of the gaming industry and also the gamers put the NFTs a bit to the side. They say, Call of Duty works well; they do their Esports competitions where players can make millions of prizes. So, why should they enter the Metaverse when they actually have Call of Duty and have a big prize pool? That is the question that I asked myself when I was a gamer and didn’t have any clue about NFTs and the Metaverse.

The next thing is the game publisher or players need to understand what NFT in the Metaverse can do for them. In my opinion, customization tools where you can create stuff on your screen and wear them as an NFT in the Metaverse will be doable. When people feel unique in the virtual world, they’ll get more attached to it. That’s why there are skins in games like Fortnite or Call of Duty. A friend of mine has a gun in CSGO, which costs $14,000. That’s a lot of money for a game which is actually centralized. I would never buy a gun from a game which is centralized and if I do, I don’t really own it.

That’s the most important thing we need to teach the gamers because when they buy a skin for $15,000 using the blockchain technology and the Metaverse, the asset will be in their wallet and doesn’t belong to the gaming company. They get obviously a royalty in the future, which is like 10 to 15% (depends on the company itself). When it comes to using the real bank account, the problem would be the user experience and the user interface in the actual game. So let’s say you’re in a Metaverse and you have a QR code in front of yourself where you can actually buy an item or buy shoes or any wearable. Your bank account transfers five USDC or five euros, which will then be converted to stable coin and goes into the wallet. The UX and UI should be so easy that even my mom who is 47 can also make a transaction in the metaverse. If it feels easy, we will see the real mass adoption of CeDeFi in Metaverses.”

Mahsa: “What are some obstacles regarding banking in Metaverse games which need further research? For sure it will take some years until we reach the full potential of this technology; But what aspects should be researched to accelerate the progress and the mass adoption?”

Tim: “The most difficult obstacle is that nobody really knows how it will be regulated. The biggest banks, even in Germany, don’t know how to handle the concepts inside a Metaverse. We have this rule that if we hold a cryptocurrency for one year, then it’s tax-free. I don’t know how exactly it is in other countries, but some tech stuff will take more than a year. So many important decisions should be made regarding the regulations.

Germany can even be considered one of the crypto-friendly countries. So, we can say that the obstacles are somehow related to where you live. I didn’t really pay taxes the last four years on crypto at all; because I’m just holding. Another thing would be the fact that we, as the whole Web3 community, don’t actually know which stable coins will be regulated in our country. For example, Bitcoin is in my opinion just a store of value. We can’t have smart contracts on it; so it won’t be suitable for Metaverse and games. Countries and company leaders and Web3 communities need to figure out the obstacles and to accelerate the adoption.”

About Crypto Diva

I’m already in the Future… Meet me there! Blockchain Technology is my passion and I have dedicated my career and research path to DeFi. My ultimate goal is to encourage more female professionals in the DeFi industry.

As the Marketing Manager of?Paycer Protocol , I’ve got the privilege of being in close contact with CeDeFi experts who are creating the foundations the future financial world. I love to make the impossible possible and i’m willing to go the extra mile for that. Be my companion in my DeFi journey and I’ll show you everything.

Peace & Love,

Your Crypto Diva

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