Apple Vision Pro is about to be released. Which VR/AR encryption projects are worth paying attention to?

In a narrative-driven market atmosphere, it doesn’t matter if we are in sync, we just care about the same direction.

Written by: Shenchao TechFlow

Apple Vision Pro is really coming.

According to Apple’s official website, the Vision Pro will be on sale in all Apple offline and online stores in the United States on February 2, and pre-orders will begin on the 19th.

This product, Vision Pro, is a device that integrates AR and VR. Users can play games, watch movies, work, and experience the functions of VR in a fully immersive way. They can also use the sensors on the surface of the headset to view people and objects in the outside world. Project into the virtual world to realize the AR function.

As a leader in the technology circle, Apple’s product updates often have varying degrees of impact on manufacturers in the ecosystem, stock prices in the capital market, and even consumers’ daily behaviors. It can also be seen as a vane for technological development.

The encryption market, which is good at utilizing narratives, will naturally be affected by this AR/VR trend.

It is less than a month before the product is officially released. According to the rhythm of advance hype of encryption projects, it is time to start paying attention to projects related to AR/VR concepts.

The following will explain how AR/VR is related to crypto projects, as well as take stock of projects worth paying attention to.

Why might Vision Pro be a narrative catalyst?

Theoretically, the hardware equipment made by Apple cannot be directly related to most encryption projects in the short term.

Indeed, the encryption project can neither participate in the industry chain of Vision Pro hardware manufacturing and R&D, nor does it have the energy and strength to launch supporting software simultaneously when the hardware is launched. It does lack a solid correlation in fundamentals.

But in a narrative-oriented market atmosphere, it doesn’t matter that we are in sync, we only care about the same direction.

If you do AR/VR, I just need to be related to this concept; if you have other cooperation with Apple, it will be easier to attract the attention of funds.

You may think this is a bit far-fetched, but learn from history.

On June 5 last year, Apple held a WWDC developer conference and announced multiple software and hardware updates such as Apple Vision Pro, new Macbook Air and IOS17 at the conference.

Before the conference, the news that “VR equipment will be released” has already been warmed up, and major media have been rushing to report it a week or even a month before the conference.

Since good VR/AR effects require a lot of computing power for calculation and rendering, with this wave of expectations, RNDR, which is directly related to distributed rendering, has reached its peak moment.

Judging from CMC data, from May 12 last year to the end of the day of the Apple conference, the price of RNDR tokens increased from around 1.7 to 2.7, a typical logic of “ambush before telling the story, sell after cashing in”.

History does not simply repeat itself, but at least it always rhymes with the same rhyme.

If it was expected that the device would be released in May last year, then when the time comes now, the Bitcoin spot ETF has passed, the bull market expectations have not completely dissipated, and the Vision Pro has been officially released…

Related project tokens may usher in another wave of short-term speculation.

So, which projects are most likely to benefit from Apple and the AR/VR concept? We will take inventory of projects that may benefit based on one or more of the following reasons:

1. Direct cooperation projects with Apple and business counterparts;
2. Expected to be able to provide AR/VR content, such as games (metaverse), videos and other media;
3. It is expected to provide AR/VR related hardware, industry chain and ecological help;
4. Weakly related to Apple, such as being on the App Store and integrating Apple Pay.

Render Network ($RNDR): an old friend of rendering professionals

The Render Network behind RNDR mentioned above is naturally the first project that needs to be emphasized.

In fact, as early as 2 years ago, we made a special video to introduce Render Network. At that time, RNDR was far less familiar than it is today, and the token price was also at a very low price.

Although the value of RDNR has been discovered for a long time, the main business of its projects has basically not changed:

In the face of massive image rendering needs from organizations and companies around the world, through blockchain and smart contracts, we match rendering demanders with idle graphics card holders around the world, so that idle graphics cards can take on the task of image rendering. Complete rendering work through the sharing economy.

This is the concept of “decentralized graphics rendering” that we often talk about.

It naturally matches the AR/VR rendering needs of Apple’s Vision Pro. It was hyped through the press conference in May last year, and now it is also worthy of attention. It is also the most relevant project in this narrative.

In addition, Apple can actually be counted as a customer of Render Network, which provides distributed GPU network services to support Apple’s AR content creation. This commercial partnership is also a FoMo point; at the same time, Render Network’s Octane The rendering application is also available on the Apple Store.

Another piece of trivia is that OTOY, the parent company behind Render, is located in the same state of California as Apple.

Being in the same technology circle, professional rendering business, and commercial partnerships… RNDR’s relevance is indeed very high. However, considering the current market value of the RNDR token of US$1.5 billion and the relatively stable price of the token in the past month, it needs to be treated more as a Beta income.

CEEK VR ($CEEK): VR streaming platform with content and hardware

Founded in 2015, CEEK VR is a streaming media platform based on Ethereum and BNB Chain.

The project mainly focuses on the content creation field of artists. Content creators can upload their works through CEEK VR and connect with fans around the world through blockchain-based copyright protection and control; fans pay CEEK tokens to collect and On-demand content from artists.

At the same time, there are also top stars such as Lady Gaga on the platform, who have gained more market attention due to their top-notch demonstration effects.

It is worth mentioning that CEEK itself is also involved in the sales of VR headsets. Users can order related equipment on its official website to watch the content on its platform, which has a somewhat integrated feel of software and hardware.

The project itself originated on Ethereum and integrated BNB Chain in 2022; at the same time, CEEK itself also has cooperation with Deutsche Telekom, Apple and Universal Music in streaming media business, and is in line with AR/VR storytelling in terms of equipment and business There is a higher degree of fit.

In terms of token performance, the price of CEEK has barely changed in the past month, with the market value staying at around 45 million. Compared with RDNR, which provides infrastructure capabilities, CEEK is more consumer-oriented and can be used as an application product.

Among crypto projects, the valuation of infrastructure projects is often higher than that of applications; however, given that CEEK has only one-third of the market value of RNDR and is directly related to VR narrative, it is still an object worthy of attention in this round of Vision Pro narrative.

OVER ($OVR): AR + map of the real world

OVR is an AR and virtual reality (VR) platform built on the Ethereum blockchain that blends the physical and virtual worlds.

The platform allows creators and brands to come together to build the next generation of the Internet, augmenting physical spaces with AR technology for gaming, socializing, and commerce.

OVR leverages community-driven 3D mapping technology to provide users and builders the opportunity to own real estate in the AR Metaverse and explore new frontiers of Web3. Specifically, OVR provides an innovative 3D geolocation mapping framework called “map2earn” that allows users to create 3D maps (OVRMap) of physical locations by taking photos with ordinary smartphones. Each OVRMap will be owned by its creator. , and expressed in the form of NFT.

Users can conduct various activities on the map, such as marketing and gatherings, etc. This part is similar to the land in various Metaverse projects.

At the same time, the project’s platform is easy to use, allowing users to publish AR content simply and intuitively. For developers looking to build more interactive AR experiences, the OVER Unity SDK enables them to easily take advantage of all Unity Engine features and build dynamic experiences.

In addition, OVR also supports real-time AR capabilities, AI avatars, motion capture interactions and hyper-realistic NFT assets; the project also provides game experiences like “OVR Treasure Hunt”, similar to the popular AR game “Pokemon Go”.

It is worth mentioning that the OVR token seems to have started speculation, with an increase of nearly 80% in the past seven days, but its market value is only about 10 million. It can be seen from the public information that the number of tokens currently circulating in the market is less than 1/4 of its total number of tokens, so there will still be great dilution pressure in the long term;

However, if you focus on the short-term AR-related narrative, considering that its market value is less than a fraction of RNDR, OVR is actually a relatively good choice for Degen.

Somnium Space CUBEs($CUBE): virtual world supported by mainstream VR devices

Somnium Space is an open source platform that allows users to purchase digital lands, houses, buildings, and numerous in-game assets. It provides an immersive VR experience where players can build, program and monetize environments while exploring the creations of other participants.

Unlike traditional multiplayer VR games, Somnium Space hosts all players in a vast VR universe where users can create fully programmable, customizable, independent VR experience environments.

Just looking at the land parcels on the official website, it is easy to think that this is not much different from the general Metaverse project.

But the project actually also sells VR headsets. After wearing the devices and using the software provided by the project, various contents on the land can be displayed in VR.

It is worth mentioning that Somnium Space’s own hardware specifications and prices are relatively high, and it also supports 3D printing; it also supports other mainstream VR devices, such as Oculus VR and VIVE.

In terms of software, the client of the project has also been launched on Steam, which not only expands the audience base, but also enters the mainstream players’ horizons.

In contrast to the relatively rich fundamentals, the price of its token CUBE has not changed much in the last month or year; with the blessing of Apple’s short-term narrative, a market value of 10 million similar to OVR may also exist with the possibility of violent fluctuations.

Other gaming projects worthy of attention

The above projects are basically strongly related to AR/VR hardware, but there are some other projects that are more related to games or the metaverse. With the blessing of technology, there are signs of entering VR games, or they may be related to Apple’s concepts, but The correlation may not be strong.

However, due to space limitations, here we briefly list the tokens according to their market value, and explain possible relevant reasons:

$APE: The parent company behind Yuga Labs is well-known in the circle, but one piece of information that is easily overlooked is that the company cooperated with a technology company called Improbable to develop the Metaverse game Otherside. In 2022, this technology company will adjust its strategic business to the fields of AR/VR and metaverse games.

$VR: The token name is VR, but its actual full name is Victoria VR. It is a VR-based MMORPG game developed using Unreal Engine. The game will launch an early bird version in April this year, but VR demonstrations of certain game scenes will be launched in January, which coincides with the narrative time of this article.

$REVO: Revomon, a monster battle game that supports VR and mobile devices, similar to Pokemon Go. Recently, the pledge amount of its token REVO has reached a record high, and 15% of the total supply of tokens is locked by pledge, which may also be a catalyst for its price changes.

In addition, the metaverse game concept itself is easily related to AR/VR, and there are so many projects. The above are just a few typical projects. Readers interested in this narrative can refer to Coinmarketcap’s narrative list to further view other coins;

At the same time, the well-known Twitter user @layerggofficial also released a list of related projects on the eve of last year’s Apple Developer Conference, which also mentioned other projects not covered in this article.

After half a year, the same narrative is coming. In addition to changes in market value, most of the tokens in this list can actually continue to benefit.

Finally, I would like to remind you that VR/VR narrative is very sensitive to time nodes, and related low-market value projects may change drastically. Please DYOR before participating.