Deus Ex Machina Reimagined

god from the machine

“Deus ex machina is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence.” - Wikipedia

Funding has always been a pressure point for Medallion XLN and throughout our lifecycle, I always come up with elaborate plans to secure funding. In 2019, I found out that Stanford University had classes on Venture capitalism, taught by a real life venture capitalist. The plan was obvious, take that class and pitch Medallion XLN to him as my captive audience. Only one problem, because I’ve always been focused on building the technology, I didn’t know how to explain what Medallion XLN actually is. I mean, it’s a blockchain, but it’s more than a blockchain, and it has multiple use cases. What am I going to do, pitch all the use cases? New plan - take a class on Branding for the spring semester, then take the Venture Capitalist class in the summer semester. Genius! So I take 8 weeks of continuing education classes at Stanford University for Branding in preparation for my pitch to the Venture Capitalist class the next semester. On the final day of my Branding class, it was time to test my metal. So I pitched everyone in that class an unrefined version of Medallion XLN and…nothing. Everyone looked confused. “… I don’t get it.” Never the type to be discouraged easily, I drill down on what they don’t understand. I commandeer the chalk and blackboard and start drawing graphs and Venn diagrams. I draw two stick figures with arrows that illustrate the transaction mechanism between two people. I write the algorithms and do some basic trigonometry. I carry the one. “Why don’t they get it?” Empty stares. The professor makes a joke about how the idea is too complicated, and the whole class laughs. I don’t know when to quit, so I block the door. “Nobody is leaving until they understand what Medallion XLN is!” All my classmates walk around me. As the professor is about to turn off the lights in the classroom with me standing in the doorway, he comments in his British accent, “I get what you're going for, but the explanation is too bloody complicated, mate!” What … a … hater * scoffs. So the time between the Branding class and the Venture Capitalist class, I brainstorm how to simplify the idea so that anyone can understand it. At this time, Mark Zuckerberg sent his android replica to get grilled in Congress for the Cambridge Analytica scandal. “That’s it!” Own your data! Reclaim your digital sovereignty! The gates of heaven opened and harps began to play. Then a little cherub flew down and kissed me on the forehead. True story! Humphrey talks was in that branding class with me, validate my story with him.

The Newsletters are killing two birds with one stone. This phase of my plan is to use these newsletters to grow the community. Everyone seems to love the research papers, therefore I can write research papers as articles! I usually expect the super detailed research papers to be the worst performers, but they always rise to the top. Today’s topic is figuring out the most scalable platform to write XR Apps. I’m searching for something that can be interoperable between the web, mobile, and VR headsets. My intention, in this case, is to apply Medallion XLN’s blockchain to XR in an attempt to wrestle Metaverse market share away from Meta.

For context reasons, let’s explore the history of VR. In 1965, Ivan Sutherland wrote a research paper he called “The Ultimate Display.” Where he described an immersive virtual world that allowed the viewer to interact. Three years later, he created the first AR / VR mixed reality Head Mounted Display (HMD) called the “Sword Of Damocles”, because of its heaviness. In the early 1990s SEGA, the famous game console, experimented with a VR Headset, but it was never released. Imagine playing Sonic The Hedgehog in VR? Virtual Reality remained stagnant as a technology until about 2012 when Oculus Rift famously crowdfunded their VR headsets, then were subsequently purchased by Facebook. Amazing breakthroughs happened in VR throughout the 2010s, with Apple releasing the AR-Kit for their devices and Google releasing AR-Core for theirs. The killer App for AR came when Pokémon Go was released to extreme global pandemonium. Since Meta bought Oculus, they have been able to release amazing VR headsets to a large mainstream audience. After over 50 years of stagnation, Virtual Reality is finally taking off 🚀.

Ivan Sutherland demonstrating the Sword Of Damocles in 1968

Web Graphics Library (WebGL), is a JavaScript library that allows developers to build 2D & 3D vector graphics in the browser. The graphics are powered by the client's hardware Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). The Central Processing Unit (CPU) would be overwhelmed by all the linear algebra and matrix multiplication it would have to do, so those processes are distributed onto the GPU. WebGL gives 3D developers the ability to create interactive games, data visualizations, physics simulations, and amazing art. Every point in a 3D scene is known as a vertex in an X, Y & Z axis. If the camera is in the default position, Y is up and down, X is left and right, and Z is forward and back. Multiple vertices connect to form primitives that become defined by the light that bounces off its fragments, which create shadows and the appearance of depth perception. WebGL is a low-level library which makes it extremely difficult to build the types of interface you want without extreme amounts of code and knowledge of advanced mathematics. 

WebGL provides the ability to run high quality 3D vector graphics in the browser

Using WebGL in combination with THREE.js allows for the streamlined creation of advanced Mixed Reality interfaces. THREE.js is built on WebGL, but focuses on ease of use and accessibility. Three.js simplifies the complicated workflow of WebGL and combines a variety of features into a single library. React Three Fiber combines the power of React’s component library with the power of THREE.js & WebGL’s rendering library to create immersive 3D scenes. GLTF files can be imported from 3D modeling software and then converted to a web friendly .glb file which can then be programmed into the web app’s 3D scene. Very impressive, but no way games built with Javascript can compete with games built to run natively. Enter WebAssembly, which provides the APIs to interact with low-level languages such as C-Sharp (C#) used to build games in the Unity game engine. Along with gaming, Unity is used to render 3D models for film, architecture, engineering & construction. Popular video games built with the Unity game engine include Hearthstone, CupHead, Hollow Knight, and mostly Indie games. WebAssembly can also interact with C++, which is the programming language used to build the Unreal Engine used by AAA developers to build games such as Deus Ex, Bio Shock, Borderlands, Gears of War, Final Fantasy VII Remake and so much more. By using the APIs available to WebAssembly, games no longer have to be built with hardware in mind. As long as the computer has a Browser that supports WebAssembly, any application that is built on current hardware can be scaled for the next generation of performance by building games directly in the Browser. 

Lastly, when we understand the role that Artificial Intelligence will play in the future of the Metaverse, we might have a chance to compete with even the largest tech corporations with tools built by…. the largest tech corporations. GoogleAI allows for 3D scenes to be rendered from a collection of photographs of a real world environment. The scenes are hyper-realistic. AIs of this kind allow for Procedural Generation for the 3D environments. For example, a dApp that allows ownership of land in the Metaverse can create an exact replica of the real world and add whatever unique twist to that world. NVIDIA’s light transport AI allows for the placement of millions of light sources into a 3D rendered environment. Creating an even more ultra realistic interface that can realistically render a busy New York City intersection.

Google AI render from a collection of images

NVIDIA AI light transport

When I finally got my opportunity to pitch Medallion XLN to the VC, I had the branding figured out, but what if someone else already pitched a version of Medallion XLN? Overthinking as I do, maybe the idea is too boring, maybe they won’t get it. My favorite video game at the time was Horizon: Zero Dawn which had such an immersive world, I wanted a VR version. Inside the pitch deck, I added Virtual Reality. More for shock and awe than actual application at the time. I thought that was the best way to communicate the many use-cases that Medallion XLN has by applying a VR component. This was before Facebook chose to focus on the Metaverse, and they were focusing on their failed Libra project. If this fundraising session went well then Medallion XLN would’ve been the world’s first blockchain-powered Metaverse…but It didn’t. The investors liked the idea, but needed a prototype. Since then, a lot of hard work, planning, building, refining, starting over, and building again has gone into Medallion XLN’s development. The funds we raise from the ICO will be used to further build out the team with talented engineers in the realm of machine learning, blockchain, and Extended Reality interfaces. After the ICO concludes, we can focus on the next phase of our plan, and build constructs to empower our decentralized community. Medallion XLN solves the unsolvable problems, Deus Ex Machina! 

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