# MF Mirror Post 1

## Introduction
Hello & welcome to the MetaFactory's Mirror!

In our first post, we'll be guiding you through what the MetaFactory is, where we've been & we're where going. We'll also inform you about our governance token, $ROBOT & what you'll be able to do it with it. We're excited to discuss our vision for making fun new realities, so let's dive in!

## What is MetaFactory?
We call ourselves a "digiphysical culture factory." The term "digiphysical" is meant to designate something that is both digital and physical at the same time.

On the surface, MetaFactory is a web3 based crypto merchandise shop. When collaborating with us, we handle everything from production to distribution. We take on the upfront costs while providing a streamlined process & all we need from you is a design. Once submitted, our manufacturing partners provide the materials for the physical item. Our devs create a digital version that's minted as an NFT for you to use in your favorite VR environment.

As we go into this article, you will see that what we are and do, and how we plan to evolve -- it goes much deeper than what you see at surface level.


## How did MetaFactory Emerge?
MetaFactory emerged as a result to a common problem in the crypto conference space: merch. As a nascent industry, it was common for event organizers to scramble last minute to get swag created. Often the resulting product was poor quality. The vision of MetaFactory is rooted in providing a high quality solution to this problem.

In the beginning, we went with the name, "SwagDAO." The concept was to provide a simple streamlined process for creating merch. We focused on providing value to crypto event organizers since we attended many of them. We also sought to fix many of the problems readily observable in the legacy fashion world: poor quality and bad habits. In this world, the supply chain is mired in unsustainable production methods and dependent on an exploited labor force in less priviledged areas of the world. We wanted to fix this.

We set out to do this with collaboration partners who shared our values. While making things easier for them, we would be delivering them (at no cost) high quality products manufactured and distriuted sustainably and with ethical labor.

SwagDAO was rebranded to MetaFactory through a Twitter competition that resulted in the onboarding of one of MetaFactory's primary visionaries. To paraphrase him, the name MetaFactory allowed it to take on a more fluid and generic disposition which enabled it to be a "factory of factories" -- one that is both digital and physical and coordinates other factories in the crypto space. It would be a "brand that is defined not in and of itself but by the sum of each individual brand and community operating within its ecosystem."


### Inventing the web3 Supply Chain
A big part of our vision for the future is to create an operating system for a decentralized supply chain. One that abandons old world practices & adopts a new view. Rewarding every contributor with equity for making fun realities. While making sure operations on a daily basis are eco friendly, produce less waste, and do not exploit laborers in remote areas of world.

This will render the wasteful, unsustainable, and unethical practices of centralized legacy systems obsolete. Our model aligns incentives across each stage of the supply chain, offers far greater financial rewards to every person who contributed value to the process, and decentralizes profits away from corporate executives and re-distributes them to participating communities, consumers, and individuals who contributed to a project. The "genetic makeup" of centralzied legacy fashion is rooted in waste and abuse of human dignity-- we will provide higher quality products that are stamped with cryptographic evidence of eco friendly and ethical production and distribution.


### Past Milestones
A variety of unique takes and insights were offered by core members of our team regarding significant past milestones in MetaFactory's history.

DAOFREN (CryptoAccord), characterized by one of our founders as “the soul and torch bearer of MetaFactory,” discussed hitting $1mil in USD sales revenue. Namely, that it was not even noticed or celebrated. Rather, the team was so focused in its work that they did not even acknowledge the achievement until well after passing the milestone. “We didn’t even have a pizza party,” DAOFREN joked.

NiftyFifty, one of our lead technicians and designers, references the overwhelmingly positive reception and success of "The Bomber Hoodie" and the Sushi Merch drop as examples of projects that netted buyers of this merch far more money in customer reward incentives than they had spent on the merchandise -- in some cases, to the tune of $70k in $ROBOT rebates for spending a few hundred dollars.

Drew Harding, one of the founders, discussed the importance in the breakout and understanding other crypto groups saw in what MetaFactory was doing. The recognition of innovation and value in MetaFactory's work and the acknowledgement of the massive potential it has to proliferate its supply chain process and philosophy into other industries of the legacy world served as both positive reinforcement and additional motivation.

Jin, one of the critical team members leading MetaFactory's efforts to standardize NFT wearables, references the success of MCON in Denver. "By day two or three almost everyone was rocking MetaFactory swag."

MetaDreamer references the launch of $ROBOT and the overwhelming success it enjoyed in addition to the onboarding of WeSeeClearly, a crticial team member onboarded into MetaFactory who was not crypto native and came from the legacy fashion world with great motivation for creating a solution to the unsustainable and unethical practices that are common in the industry. "Wes has really helped level up our production capacity and instill a lot of ideas on establing physical MetaFactory microfactories while introducing us to cutting and bleeding edge technologies on the fashion side of things."

Wes referenced the overall determination of the team to build a new system of supply chain that sheds the waste and violations of human rights so common in the legacy fashion world.


## What is our vision for the future of MetaFactory?
To quote Nifty, "MetaFactory is a lab of ideas and innovation disguised as a crypto merch store." The grand, over-arching vision of MetaFactory is best described by MetaDreamer, who wants to see it become a global phenomena "DAO Operating System" brand not owned by any central entity or authority, but by the people and communities who contribute value to it and participate in its ecosystem.

We want to provide an effective model to decentralize profits away from corporate executives and revitalize the supply chain with sustainable methods that do not violate any laborers at any step of the process. We would like to see our model applied to other industries in the shameful and primitive legacy world.

In pursuit of realizing these goals, we are establishing MetaFactory "microfactories" throughout the world. The first one already exists in Berlin. There are plans to proliferate these microfactories all throughout the world.

These microfactories will be used to move production of our merch to an in house operation which any holder of $ROBOT can partake in. Distribution of products will be further simplified as an order will be processed by the nearest microfactory.

These microfactories will expand our scope beyond the legacy fashion world. They will also serve as community centers and production locations of other things. They will be places of innovation and creativity accessible to all $ROBOT holders. They will serve as hubs that are both production factories and art studios, equipped with workstations, 3d printers, virtual reality headsets, media toolkits and equipment, art related tools, etc.

Anyone holding $ROBOT will be able to check into these microfactories and utilize the resources we make available there. These facilities are meant to give tools, resources, and connections to people in our community and people who currently do not have access to these things. We feel as if this will unleash a great wave of creativity and innovation that will bring fresh insights and perspective into the MetaFactory community/ecosystem.


### Innovating 3D Wearable Interoperability Standards
We see a clear trend emerging as NFTs become more mainstream. We anticipate that the average consumer will come to not only want, but to *expect* their purchases of physical fashion goods or apparel to be accompanied by digital NFT replicas of those items. The concept of "digiphysical goods" will go mainstream. Consumer demand will drive many major fashion and clothing brands into the NFT arena.

The beginning of this can already be seen. Luxury brands like Gucci, Burberry, and Louis Vuitton have already started their initial forays into the NFT space. MetaFactory is positioning itself to be a leader in pushing interoperability standards forward, with a focus on building with intention vs speed running the gauntlet. We see wearables as an extension of your decentralized identity. They need to communicate and interface with your avatars, personal data, reputations, etc. We're utilizing ceramic to provide the data layer for Web3 that allows us to link a single 'master' NFT, and update the metadata (file types) in real time. In other words, we can future proof the NFT and provide support for increasing platforms and/or ones that don't exist yet. We can then utilize our standard to offer the same "we handle all logistics/cost" approach to deploying interoperable wearables to communities and collaborating brands for all their favorite worlds and platforms. For legacy brands... gotta be down with the culture and vision, otherwise fucc zucc.

### Expansion and Adoption of Our Model, Method, and Philosophy
The web3 based model of supply chain and brand decentralization MetaFactory is developing can be tailored and molded to nearly all other industries. MetaDreamer discusses the 2015 - 2016 era of cryptocurrency and how blockchain was recognized and pitched as the next big innovation in tech that could solve the costly and persistent problems of wasteful, unsustainable, and unverifiable sourcing/labor practices in supply chain. Namely, that despite the promise of blockchain to solve these problems, nothing came to fruition. "All they did was take the legacy paradigm of supply chain and replicated it on blockchain. It basically did nothing," he explained. "We are going to deliver on that original promise which faded away into obscurity -- we are delivering it now as we speak, it is constantly evolving and improving."


## $ROBOT
### Overview of Token Evolution
One of the most exciting aspects about $ROBOT is the success and appreciation in value it has enjoyed despite a complete lack of any any marketing or "shilling" of it. At the present time, the primary function and purpose behind $ROBOT is to create consumer and community incentive in purchasing our products or collaborating with us on a merch drop and value-aligning each step of the supply chain process.

In regards to the customer -- they are rewarded with a 42% "rebate" of the value of their purchase in $ROBOT. They can use their rewards to participate in our ecosystem, sell the token back to MetaFactory, put it to work by providing liquidity and earning $GEAR, or hold it to utilize in conjunction with new utilities that will be introduced to $ROBOT tokenomics.

Collaboration partners have the same options available to them with the $ROBOT they earn by working with us. For every dollar in USD revenue a project generates, a set amount of $ROBOT is put aside and allocated to the project. 70% of this $ROBOT allocation is given to communities who work with us and 30% is divided up internally to the MetaFactory team members who contributed value to the project. If held properly, the 70% $ROBOT allocation for a project will far exceed the USD revenue that a project generates.


### Future Tokenomics and Utility
Some of the most exciting and promising elements of our entire project are the new utilities that will be incorporated into the tokenomics and utility of $ROBOT. Beyond serving as an "access pass" to MetaFactory microfactories discussed earlier, new innovations to our governance token will introduce great value to $ROBOT holders, further decentralize our organization, solve some problems MetaFactory is currently facing, and introduce a new staking mechanism that will allow $ROBOT holders to earn a share of each merch drop they stake behind.

One problem we currently face is keeping up with inbound interest and inquiries from external groups seeking to collaborate with us and utilize us as a high quality, zero cost, sustainably sourced, and ethical merch solution. The volume of inbound interest exceeds our current bandwidth.

Further, we do not currently have a formal curation process as to making decisions about which groups we take on as collaboration partners. These determinations are currently being handled by members of our core team in a "on the go" manner. We are going to fix this problem by distributing the process of project curation to all holders of $ROBOT.

By gamifying project curation through $ROBOT we solve three problems: 1) the process of choosing new communities to work with will be decentralized away from the core MetaFactory team and redistributed to the MetaFactory community of $ROBOT holders; 2) time spent by members of the core team can be re-allocated elsewhere as the community takes on this time consuming process; 3) we will formalize a currently informal process. We believe the collective wisdom and insight of the community will prove to be a superior method of curation than our current process.

The second exciting feature $ROBOT will obtain is the ability for holders to stake their $ROBOT to projects they find interesting or promising. Doing this will earn them a cut of the overall sales and enable stakers to acquire more $ROBOT consistent with the proportion of their stake. Furthermore, it will create an organic method of marketing through creating incentive for stakers to promote the projects they stake into. Stakers will want to see these projects be successful. As such, they will take it upon themselves to creatively market these projects in a healthy manner, one that does not come off as insincere shilling.

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## Closing Thoughts
When you think of the concept of "digiphysical goods," what comes to mind? If this article achieved its goal, then you would understand that "digiphysical merchandise" is something purchased that you can wear in both the real world and in the virtual metaverse. The digital form of your purchase will come in a new standardized NFT format that will enable you to wear it in any metaverse, on any platform. It will exist within the context of culture and community that is value aligned in their desire and effort to see the world be a more sustainable, less wasteful, and better place to be. Expressing yourself through our cutting edge brand of digiphysical goods is a declaration that you share our values: we want to see the world be a better, more fun place-- and we want you to build it with us.