Our Editors had the chance to interview Jimi Dee, Founder & CEO of a blockchain-based human-centric metaverse Vault Hill. Within the recent Facebook metaverse hype, we have seen a lot of metaverse projects. Choosing the best out of the rest we have Vault Hill, a project with a good potential to be the best in terms of metaverse implementation. We asked Jimi many basic but important questions, read through the interview below to know more about Vault Hill.
Q. Please introduce yourself?
Hi everyone, I am Jimi, Christian, married and father to 2 adorable toddlers. Bsc in Computer science, MSc in Advanced computing, MBA at the University of Warwick (finishing up dissertation). Certified blockchain architect, certified NFT expert and AWS Cloud Practitioner.
Ex Barclays – Led the divestment of Barclays bank and Absa (South African subsidiary) with a budget of £3.2m and cost savings of 25%.
Founder/CEO of vaulthill.io where we are building a human-centric metaverse. An extended reality blockchain-based metaverse designed to make you feel more human.
What do I mean by that – a metaverse designed to make you feel human by leveraging the basic human instincts. We are bringing everyday brands/products/services to users to explore and experience.
Q. What is Vault Hill?
Vault Hill is a blockchain-based human-centric metaverse designed to enhance the human experience through augmented reality (AR) and extended reality (XR). Vault Hill consists of the Vault Hill City (VHC) which is the metaverse, the ecosystem, and the NFT marketplace which will be fully decentralised. Our mission is to revolutionise extended reality (XR) experience by creating a constructive metaverse that focuses on the basic human instincts which allow users, content creators and developers to explore their unrestricted creative freedom whilst monetising their creation in a secure ecosystem.
Vault Hill city will be a world where users can design their own unique experiences; explore their fantasies and also enjoy activities they do in the physical world such as interacting with other users, attending events, playing games, curating arts, and so much more. Users can also own a piece of the virtual world by buying the VHC virtual land; own and transact with the native cryptocurrency, $VHC token, as well as achieve what they’ve always desired in the physical world while earning real money.
All transactions within the Vault Hill ecosystem will be recorded on the blockchain and settled between Ethereum wallet. Our platform is very safe and secure as we passed our Smart Contracts and Security Analysis in an audit that was conducted by Hacken (see our assessment report). The result confirmed that Vault Hill’s Smart Contracts are well-secured as no critical, high or medium security issues were found. This means that users and investors can safely transact on our secure blockchain platform.
Q. What exactly is an extended reality blockchain based metaverse?
An extended reality blockchain-based metaverse is an immersive 3D virtual environment where users can create fun experiences, purchase and trade virtual assets and services using cryptocurrencies which gives virtual items real economic value. The blockchain technology allows decentralisation which makes users experience more autonomy within digital spaces.
This is what Vault Hill offers – a virtual world where users can feel more human with each visit, and where they can acquire digital assets in form of NFTs.
Q. What are some of the features of the metaverse, the Vault Hill City?
There are several features that have been designed for users to explore in Vault Hill City. First is the virtual land that users can buy, and land owners have total creative freedom to build their choice edifice that other users can explore and enjoy.
We have already partnered with various brands who will be establishing their virtual office in the metaverse especially for digital wearables, and for improving health and wellbeing in the metaverse. This is because out of the seven Districts that users will be able to explore in the metaverse, only two Districts will be launched first in Q1 2022 and these two involve digital wearables and health and fitness. Hence, work is already underway with fashion brands, luxury watchmakers, fitness companies, and personal trainers to have the two Districts up and running. The two Districts are District Omega (vitality) which represents the desire to thrive physically and mentally, to be calm, active, and to feel healthy; District Beta (play) represents the desire for fun, thrill, entertainment, and to de-stress.
The other five Districts in VHC are: District Alpha (curiosity) represents the desire to learn, achieve, grow and be better; and District Pi (idealism) represents the desire for social justice, causes, what’s “right”. District Delta (romance) represents the desire for intimacy, sex, beauty, and aesthetics; District Sigma (imagination) represents the desire to influence others, to change things, and to lead others towards a smarter way of living; while District Kappa (community) represents the desire for companionship, connection, relationships, community, and belonging. As evident from the human instinct theme of each district, the VHC is offering a rich user experience designed to enhance the human experience – users can explore their fantasies and also enjoy activities they already do in physical world via simulated extended reality (XR) experience. Accessing the metaverse is easy as users can fully immerse themselves in VHC using a VR headset.
Q. How did your team come up with this idea? Are there any previous experiences in the same industry?
It all started back in Q4 2017 when I got into Crypto. I stumbled on virtual land and bought a few across various platforms. At the time, one of the plots were $200, fast forward to Jan 2021, one of those sold for $10,500; it wasn’t the return on investment (ROI), that was surprising, it was VALUE, someone somewhere had place the value on that plot of land. It got me thinking of what other use cases and problems can be solved with blockchain, virtual land as an NFT and incorporating extended reality. I got a very small team together and we started bouncing ideas back and forth and came up with the mantra – enhancing the human experience and tied our metaverse to 7 basic human instincts. That was the birth of Vault Hill
Q. What is Vault Hill City Marketplace?
The VHC marketplace is where people can buy, sell, exchange digital assets as Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) using the native cryptocurrency, $VHC token, or other cryptocurrencies of choice.
Q. There are a number of metaverse out there, how does Vault Hill differentiate from the others?
Vault Hill is the first ever human-centric metaverse. Unlike other metaverse that focus only on one activity such as gaming, Vault Hill City combines all aspect of your reality, and it is also the first virtual world with urban planning and development benefits to ensure users build on their Virtual Land (VLAND) respectfully. This is what differentiates it from other projects. Users who own virtual land in Vault Hill City will have total creative freedom on their parcel to build anything they can imagine (e.g., fitness centres, fashion studio, art galleries, museums, libraries, etc.) while earning returns as other users interact with the projects on their land. Land owners can also choose to hold their VLAND (potentially) to sell later at a higher price in the marketplace.
Q. Building a metaverse need extensive AR capabilities. How strong does your team stand with this or do you have any external development partners?
Rightly said! Extensive AR and XR capabilities are non-negotiable in building a metaverse which is why we are very deliberate in our hiring process. Our team consists of intelligent and notable individuals with extensive experience in XR and AR, some of which have been recognised nationally and globally. We are very deliberate about hiring the best people to accelerate the metaverse development. Our most recent key hire is the President of the Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality Association (VRARA), who joined Vault Hill as a Senior software engineer, XR.
Q. How can someone own a piece of land in Vault Hill city?
People can buy the VHC virtual land ($VLAND) during our Initial Land Offering (ILO), that is, the public $VLAND sale, in Q1 2022. Only 10,000 VLAND has been created to be sold across a four-year period, and out of this, just 570 will be available for purchase during the ILO. Limited parcels of $VLAND have been created to ensure scarcity and adequate value creation for users and investors. More information will be provided soon on the public $VLAND sale.
Q. What is the significance of VLAND in VHC ecosystem?
Owning a VLAND in VHC affords the land owner to own digital assets in form of NFTs which they can either build on, or keep to resell at a higher rate later. For example, we have partnered with several businesses to provide AR offerings for their products and services in the metaverse. This means that these brands will own $VLAND in the VHC metaverse where they will establish their brands and earn as users interact with, and purchase their products and services. So, brands looking for an opportunity to own a piece of the virtual world and connect with a wider range of audience can buy a parcel of $VLAND in our metaverse.
Of course, individuals can also own $VLAND and build whatsoever they desire on it. They will equally earn as users interact with and patronise their creation in the metaverse.
Q. What is the status of the project development? What is your next planned event?
The development of our human-centric metaverse is still ongoing and we have the best hands on this as our team consists of outstanding and notable individuals that are highly skilled in what the project entail.
This is a really busy period for us at Vault Hill and events are happening simultaneously. Right now, our priority is the public sale of our native cryptocurrency, $VHC token, scheduled for January, 2022. The $VHC token public sale is structured as a staged approach with the Initial Decentralised Offering (IDO) first on SUPERLAUNCHER and LITHIUM launchpads, followed by the Initial Exchange Offering (IEO) on COINSBIT. Work is still underway to add five other launchpads for the public sale in order to provide accessibility and security to early adopters.
Q. Do you have any exchange listing plans?
Absolutely! Decentralised – Uniswap and Quickswap (adding Pancake later on), Centralised – Coinsbit (we are in conversations with Bitfinex and Bitmart). We are working to add more and we will update our amazing community as we progress.
Q. Any message for our readers?
Join the first ever human-centric metaverse where your imagination is limitless! Buy our public token sale scheduled for January 10-14, 2022, and watch out for our public land sale that will commence shortly after. We are up to something huge and everyone is encouraged to be a part of this. You may also follow us on our socials for the latest updates – Twitter, Instagram, Telegram, Discord and LinkedIn.