CARV: Reshaping the Value of Data, Leading the New Era of Gaming and AI

In this somewhat special Bull Market cycle, what kind of market are users facing?

It’s obvious: too much infrastructure, too few applications.

The popularity of TON ecology mini-games this summer seems to be a counterattack by users to the “grand narrative”: no matter how the cycle is stacked, better participation and more intuitive returns are still the core demands of users.

But in the current era of fragmented attention, being seen by more people is itself a rare ability: TON simple gameplay does not mean simple operating logic behind it. With the total user base of BANANA, a TON ecological casual game, surpassing 10 million and the DAU (daily active users) exceeding 1.1 million, we also noticed the hero behind its popularity: CARV.

It is understood that BANANA has successfully attracted a large number of seed users through precise advertising placement and KOL promotion on the CARV platform, and has achieved natural rise through the recommendation mechanism and UGC/sharing activities. Currently, over 90% of users come from natural rise channels, and the total number of accounts associated with CARV ID exceeds 1.3 million.

Such transformation is undoubtedly attractive, and it can also encourage more people to further understand CARV: rise.

As a modular identity Data Layer specifically designed for gaming and AI services, CARV, on the one hand, promotes the return of data sovereignty to users, data privacy protection, data tokenization, and value release to stimulate user participation. On the other hand, it serves as a bridge for data, efficiently matching users with gaming and AI products, bringing data benefits to users, and promoting the development and innovation of gaming and AI.

In fact, by distributing profits to users in real money, CARV has triggered widespread participation in innovative data value distribution. Successful cases such as BANANA are happening one after another: currently, the CARV ecosystem has over 900+ cooperative projects, and millions of users win generous rewards through sharing data, participating in social activities, game live streaming, AMA conferences, Beta testing, and other methods, while the project obtains high-quality data and enables healthy development of traffic.

How is this specifically implemented? Is this model sustainable? With the TGE approaching, is now a good time to participate in CARV? How specifically can one participate?

This article aims to delve into CARV and explore the operational logic and driving factors behind its impressive achievements.

Not small at all: $50 million in financing, 900+ ecological cooperation, nearly tens of millions of users

First, let’s take a look at the fundamentals of CARV.

First, let’s look at the financing performance. We can see that CARV has performed very well in terms of both funding and team composition.

According to the current disclosed information, CARV has completed multiple rounds of financing, attracting a total of over 50 million U.S. dollars in financing, a substantial amount in any Web3 track.

In addition to funding, CARV’s financing lineup is more impressive: it has not only attracted support from a group of encryption VC including Tribe Capital, IOSG, ConsenSys (Metamask), HashKey Capital, but also gained favor from Web2 giants such as Alibaba. In addition, we can also notice that among the many participating parties, we can also see the presence of many gaming giants, such as doublejump.tokyo (the developer of Japan’s largest chain Oasys), Animoca Brands, MarbleX (NetMable), IntellaX, The Sandbox, etc., further demonstrating CARV’s recognition in the gaming industry.

It is worth mentioning that CARV has also attracted the leading investment of Vertex Ventures, a venture capital firm under Temasek, which is a 100% state-owned investment company of the Singapore Ministry of Finance. Its investment in CARV also to a certain extent demonstrates the Singapore government’s follow-up on the project.

Overall, CARV’s narrative logic and future development have been recognized by many institutions, and the stronger funding/resources support has also provided a solid foundation for CARV’s continued positive development in the future.

Beyond institutions, the more important dimension of evaluation comes from the ecosystem. In this regard, we have also seen the amazing coverage of CARV in Web3 games and the AI zone.

According to official statistics, the CARV ecosystem has cooperated with over 900+ games and AI projects, surpassing many popular new public chains in terms of richness (according to SolanaProject data, there are currently 405 projects in the Solana ecosystem). It also covers a number of well-known Web2 / Web3 enterprises in terms of the quality of cooperative projects.

Gaming zone, according to statistics, CARV has cooperated with hundreds of top global game studios in Depth, including but not limited to MarbleX, a Block chain subsidiary of the Korean mobile game developer Netmarble, the Korean Web3 mobile game developer IntellaX, and Block chain games Illuvium, Apeiron, Splinterlands, Genopets, Delysium, Drawshop Kingdom, Big Time, and Ultiverse.

In addition to Cara, the generative AI assistant launched by the AI zone itself, the AI projects in the CARV ecosystem are also shining. We can not only see the cooperation with Google AI, but also native projects like Aethir, Inferium AI, UneMeta, Coinbase encryption AI SDK, etc. As a data identity middleware, CARV will explore and build a new era of data value together with AI projects in the ecosystem.

In the current situation where Web3 is struggling to introduce incremental users, games and AI, as two tracks that are closer to users, are enough to attract customers, and the dazzling ecological choices make CARV demonstrate a strong competitive power comparable to the scale of traditional Web2 Internet products.

On the one hand, CARV has a large user base: 01928374656574839201

According to official statistics, CARV provides services to 10 million registered players, among which the CARV ID casting volume on opBNB, a multi-chain identity solution for aggregating Web2 and Web3 launched by CARV, exceeds 3.1 million. The total number of users of CARV protocol is 3.3 million, and CARV Play, another flagship product built on CARV protocol, has 2.5 million users. The mobile app has been downloaded 1.3 million times.

On the other hand, CARV’s ecological users have shown extraordinary activity:

According to statistics, CARV has a total on-chain volume of 240 million transactions on opBNB, Ronin, Linea, and more than 40 other chains. This impressive data propels CARV Play to its position as the “largest Web3 game distribution and social platform”.

Since the beginning of the year, CARV revenue has reached $6 million, from the .play name service on CARV ID mint and opBNB, as well as revenue from integrated CARV Play, Infinite Play, CARV games, and BANANA mini-games.

In the Node public sale in June this year, CARV sold 38,000 Nodes in a very short time, ultimately closing with a total value of over $36 million.

In addition, in the recent Airdrop event jointly held by CARV and Binance Web3 Wallet, the event attracted over 500,000 users to participate within 48 hours, ultimately attracting over 1.4 million users to participate enthusiastically.

It can be seen that CARV has achieved remarkable results from the institutional side, application side, and user side.

Based on the achievement, let’s explore the driving force behind the impressive performance of CARV through the dimensions of the project’s track, project narrative logic, and specific implementation path.

Harvard Elite Entrepreneurship: Focus on Games and AI, Innovate Data Value Allocation

Web3 often says a sentence: the essence of investment is to invest in people.

This also applies to CARV. Behind the impressive financing, the powerful team configuration of CARV also plays an important role.

CARV co-founder and COO Victor Y. attended Harvard Business School in the United States and worked at McKinsey. He is also a serial entrepreneur, having founded a company that was acquired by a Fortune 500 company within two years. He has extensive experience in venture capital, AI, consumer, hard tech, and encryption fields.

CARV CTO has extensive experience in the field of encryption. In 2017, he worked on the Block chain live streaming product LINO (which was later acquired by TRON), and also participated in the development work of the Cosmos project. He then joined Coinbase and was responsible for the Private Key department, and also participated in the development and implementation of L2 Base.

CARV CGO is mainly responsible for rise and operation, with rich operation experience and resource accumulation in the game field. He has served as the core business zone of well-known game companies such as Tencent Games, Garena Games, and Electronic Arts. The download volume of the 3A and mini-games he operated has exceeded 1 billion.

The birth of CARV is inseparable from the era of data explosion, the lack of data ownership and data value.

According to the Internet Data Center’s prediction, the global data volume will reach 175 ZB by 2025. As the Internet penetrates more aspects of life, people’s behaviors are recorded in the form of data, and nearly 90% of the data worldwide is generated by individuals.

In the information torrent, users generate data, and users should be the owners and beneficiaries of the data. However, as the Internet penetrates more aspects of life, human behavior is recorded in the form of data. Centralized enterprises hold massive user data and profit greatly from it. The true creators of the data not only suffer from privacy breaches but also cannot benefit from their own data.

In 2021, Victor at the time was still studying at Harvard Business School. He keenly captured this pain point and began to devote himself to building a trap solution. On the one hand, he promoted data sovereignty to return to users, and on the other hand, he helped users say ‘no’ to a monitored and violated world, achieving the sharing of data under the premise of privacy protection and obtaining the value generated by data circulation.

This idea quickly received responses from several early core members, including CTO and CGO, and the prototype of CARV began to take shape.

And in the process of exploring the value of data, CARV once again discovered the huge demand for data from games and AI.

On the one hand, data is like the lifeline for the rapid development of games and AI. In the game industry, data analysis for player behavior can greatly improve the quality and user experience of games. In the field of AI, data is the foundation for training and optimizing AI models.

On the other hand, the high demand for data in games and AI also gives data greater value. As games and AI mature, the demand for data in these two fields is constantly rising. This data-driven model further makes data a valuable asset.

After understanding the mutual needs and achievements between data and games, AI, CARV’s solution to return to data sovereignty and innovate the value distribution of data becomes clearer, namely:

CARV as an innovative Data Layer solution, is committed to building an efficient matching platform between games, AI applications, and users:

For users: CARV empowers users with complete control over personal data, enabling them to decide how their data is used and shared under the premise of privacy protection, and to obtain economic benefits through data sharing and transactions. User data is no longer a passive resource, but an asset that can be actively managed, from which users can receive tangible returns.

For applications such as gaming and AI, CARV provides a way to obtain high-quality data. Developers can access real data that has been authorized by users, which not only helps applications better understand user needs, but also enables precise market positioning and user engagement, thereby promoting the healthy and sustainable development of applications.

Since then, a secure, transparent, and efficient data ecosystem has gradually unfolded.

So, with the great blueprint drawn, how will CARV specifically turn the ideal into reality?

CARV: A modular identity Data Layer focusing on gaming and AI

Specifically, CARV is building universal modular identity and Data Layer for games, AI, and many other fields. In order to achieve data sovereignty for large-scale users and empower game projects and AI development with data intelligence, CARV has three main pillars to drive a virtuous cycle of users and data.

• CARV protocol: Modular Identity and Data Layer
• CARV Application: The flagship product of the ecosystem built on the CARV protocol.
• CARV Labs: Achieve ecological prosperity through incentive measures and further promote a virtuous cycle of user and data rise.

As a modular Identity and Data Layer (IDL), the CARV protocol adopts a modular design, completing processes such as data verification, identity authentication, storage, processing, model training, and value distribution through five modules: identity layer, storage layer, computing and training layer, execution layer, and validation layer, providing underlying support for the entire CARV ecosystem.

The identity layer is the starting point of the CARV protocol and is responsible for user identity verification and authentication.

By supporting Web2 social login, automatically creating AA Wallet, etc., CARV further drops the user threshold, creating a smoother and more seamless ecological entry experience for users.

After joining the CARV ecosystem, users will be guided to create an on-chain identity, CARV ID. Worth mentioning is that CARV ID adopts the ERC-7231 design, a standard proposed by the CARV team and approved by the Ethereum Foundation, highlighted by its verifiability, multi-sig aggregation, and composability, supporting more than 40 networks of both Web2 platforms and Web3. Ownership, role behaviors, social relationships, past experiences, etc. of users can be authorized, verified, and generated into digital identities and credentials. This design achieves the aggregation of multi-platform data of Web2 and multi-chain data of Web3, enabling users to seamlessly switch between different platforms, and further enhance the liquidity and efficiency of data.

The storage layer is responsible for aggregating and storing user data. After the data is verified at the identity layer, it will be aggregated and only visible to the user. CARV supports a variety of data storage solutions to ensure cost-effective, secure, and accessible data storage.

The computation and training layer is responsible for ensuring that user data is securely processed in privacy-enhancing technologies. In CARV, data processing is handled by a TEE Node cluster of Decentralization, and the results are then published to the blockchain with TEE proof, Timestamp, and random numbers to prevent double-spending attacks.

The verification layer is responsible for verifying the results and includes more than 40,000 on-chain decentralized community nodes to ensure that user data operates in a decentralized manner, meets user expectations, and ensures privacy.

And the execution layer ensures that all data transactions are securely recorded on the blockchain and verifiable, allowing participants to share rewards in a decentralized and transparent manner.

The CARV protocol aims to facilitate data exchange and value distribution in the gaming and AI fields. After the CARV Token TGE, it will continue to build the Identity and Data Layer (IDL), which includes a self-built new consensus layer and data storage layer, and uses on-chain Decentralization Nodes as the Decentralization sorter and storage validator to promote Cross-Chain Interaction information verification and ensure secure data processing.

Based on the CARV protocol, CARV will build multiple flagship products to efficiently match data and demand in specific scenarios, while providing concrete demonstrations of how data empowers product development, generates real monetary returns, and is distributed openly and transparently to users.

CARV Play, as the first flagship application, is one of the vivid examples: as a game player portrait and game distribution platform, CARV Play has listed 900+ products and has 2.5 million players. Every day, massive users explore rich game combinations and exclusive activities through the platform, and get various rewards, physical gifts or ecological rights while having fun. Meanwhile, the game project party can also understand the needs of players through user participation, and conduct efficient game display and information distribution, thus building a game community.

In addition, the recent success of the TON ecosystem’s BANANA mini-game is also inseparable from the support of CARV: by fully promoting the advantages of CARV Play, CARV Protocol, and the CARV mobile app with over 3 million registered users, BANANA quickly and accurately reached the target audience, achieved viral expansion through recommendation mechanisms and user-generated content (UGC)/sharing activities, and reached 10 million monthly active users within 4 weeks of launch.

Outside of gaming, CARV has also launched corresponding products in the AI zone: Cara is a generative AI assistant built on the CARV protocol, and under comprehensive privacy protection, user data can be used for artificial intelligence (AI) training. Users can receive corresponding rewards when sharing data and participating in AI training, and can also customize AI service experiences based on their unique needs and preferences.

In addition, the key role in the competition of developer ecosystem is the effective ecological incentive around developers, which is a necessary measure to promote ecological innovation and prosperity.

Based on this, CARV Labs launched a $50 million Ecological Accelerator Program this week, which further promotes the rise of users and data by providing abundant resources and financial support to high-quality ecological projects. The program is supported by top blockchain venture capital funds such as HashKey Capital and Consensys.

CARV Labs’ most recent investment is leading game studio Telgather. Telgather is committed to innovating the gaming experience through innovative approaches such as Pay&Play to Earn, Social to Earn, and bringing more revenue, which perfectly fits CARV’s vision of Decentralization and player-centric gaming. By integrating CARV ID and personalized advertising SDK, Telgather will further provide players with true game ownership, seamless cross-game experiences, and opportunities to monetize game data and earn revenue.

The combination of the two is not only another example of CARV empowering the development of games as a modular identity data layer, but also will be committed to creating a new era of Telegram games and building a strong and vibrant ecosystem in the future.

In addition, CARV Labs will also guide developers to explore more innovative business models, among which the highly anticipated TG Advertising Network is the most prominent. This product aims to connect advertisers and publishers, and with the support of the CARV Protocol, users who share on-chain and off-chain data (with comprehensive privacy protection) will receive cash incentives, enabling the CARV Advertising Network to provide precise user acquisition and targeting services for advertisers.

In the foreseeable future, CARV will attract a large number of developers to participate and will freely explore various possibilities based on the CARV protocol, injecting more driving force into the rise of the CARV ecosystem.

Multiple milestones achieved, Token TGE is imminent

Of course, compared to reviewing past achievements, community members are more concerned about future expectations.

What is the potential for CARV to continue to develop positively in the future?

We can get a glimpse from its updated roadmap on the official website.

Technical aspect: In the third quarter of 2024, CARV protocol Beta version will be released, including open SDK/API access, support for multi-chain interoperability, integration of ZKP, etc. By the fourth quarter of 2024, the team will focus on building a dedicated modular blockchain that supports storage layer and execution layer.

In terms of ecology, in addition to actively seeking cooperation to continuously expand the ecological game and AI map, another important milestone for CARV is the Token TGE, which will be conducted in the second half of 2024.

For any project, Token TGE is an important event that determines the long-term development of the project, and how to better give back to the community is the highlight of Token TGE.

So, should we actively participate in the upcoming Token TGE?

The enthusiastic response from the community has already provided an answer.

The reasons can be divided into three parts:

First, CARV Token has a real application scenario as a value base.

As the native token of the CARV ecosystem, the total supply of CARV Token is 10 billion, serving as the exchange medium within the platform. It is not only an important incentive for users, but also can be used for multi-chain gas fee payment and game asset purchases within the ecosystem, or converted to veCARV via stake, and used for participating in community decisions and ecosystem activities through veCARV.

Secondly, from the past performance, CARV has shown full respect for the community and has been quite generous.

On the one hand, 50% of the total supply of CARV Token is evenly distributed to the community and Nodes; on the other hand, in the previous Node sale, CARV also launched a 6-month treasury 100% buyback plan for the first-time Node purchasers. All eligible active Node operators can choose to apply for an 80% ETH or 100% CARV Token buyback within 7 days after the end of the 6th month, once again fully demonstrating the project’s consideration and maintenance of community interests.

More importantly, in this transparent Airdrop of CARV, CARV encourages users to bind accounts to achieve data aggregation, while ensuring that rewards are distributed to real users. Binding more accounts will result in higher scores, which also means more substantial Airdrop rewards.

In addition, CARV has introduced a variety of measures to promote fair distribution: on the one hand, CARV has launched a mechanism for witches to surrender themselves, encouraging multi-account witch users to proactively report their behavior and receive the originally designated 15% Token allocation. Those who fail to report within the deadline will lose their entire Token allocation eligibility; on the other hand, CARV has partnered with Gitcoin to analyze on-chain witch behavior and further distribute TokenAirdrop to those who truly contribute to the network’s development and sustainability.

With the expectation of good returns and a low threshold for participation, actively accumulating Airdrop chips has become the current choice for many community members.

So, how can users participate better?

Currently on the CARV Airdrop page, users can switch between four chains (Ronin, opbnb, zksync era, Linea) and earn SOUL rewards through check-ins, mintCARV ID, account binding, inviting friends, completing game tasks, etc. SOUL can be exchanged for CARV Token in the future, which means that the more SOUL accumulated now, the higher the expected future returns.

But with the advent of the Snapshot, there is not much spare time for users to accumulate SOUL by completing tasks. The community’s focus on obtaining CARV Token income is more on the Node aspect.

Anyone can become an independent Node operator by participating in the Node sale, verifying that the Node is an important part of the CARV ecosystem, responsible for verifying TEE proof to prevent system manipulation and ensure fair distribution of data value, and providing a secure Decentralization data environment for high-quality games and applications.

At the same time, up to 25% of the CARV Token supply will be allocated to Node rewards, not only releasing 50% in the first year (which is 12.5% of the total supply), with a token redemption period of 150 days, and an investor unlock period of 6 months, and a team unlock period of 9 months. NodeToken unlocks earlier than investors and teams, which fully demonstrates the maximum sincerity CARV shows through the Node sales model and user profit sharing.

Apart from TokenTGE, there are various reward activities in the CARV ecosystem to encourage active participation from users. Infinite Play is the culmination of these activities: users can stake to earn revenue, with longer staking time resulting in greater returns. Users can earn revenue by participating in governance voting through Vote to Earn. Furthermore, users can accumulate experience points by completing different game tasks to earn Play to Earn revenue. While enjoying the fun of the game, users can truly experience the charm of data sovereignty and Decentralization autonomous community.

It is worth mentioning that, previously, CARV, in collaboration with Revolving Games, InfiniGods & Valhalla Foundation, XPLA, OVERTAKE, Aethir, and many other high-quality projects, conducted an additional Airdrop event for Ecodrop pt 1 within the ecosystem, which received widespread support from the community, and rewards worth 2 million US dollars were distributed to actively participating users.

And currently, according to the official website blog post, the CARV Ecodrop pt 2 event is coming soon. In this event, CARV has also teamed up with six high-quality ecological game projects including Space Mavericks, Lazy Games, Super Champs, Goat Gaming, Terminal, and BeraSig. Participants can join in the sharing of an additional reward worth 500,000 US dollars by actively participating in game interactions and completing related tasks. Apart from the Token TGE, participating in CARV Ecodrop pt 2 is also a good way to explore the ecology in depth and win more rewards.

All in all, in today’s global digital wave, data is an eternal business. And under the premise of the increasingly sharp contradiction of privacy leaks and monopoly of Internet giants in Web2, the Web3 solution aimed at returning data ownership to users, protecting user privacy, and promoting more equitable distribution of data value is bound to stand out.

From the perspective of the project itself, the foundation of CARV is very solid. Not only is the team configuration and financing lineup very strong, but the project also targets the game and AI tracks, which are in line with the development needs and user preferences of its modular identity and Data Layer. In addition, the project’s narrative appeal should not be underestimated. By innovating the way data value is distributed, it provides real and substantial returns, which undoubtedly can attract more users to follow and participate.

Currently, the project has accumulated a considerable amount of momentum in the community, which lays a solid foundation for its future development. Especially with the successful promotion of the BANANA project, CARV Protocol has attracted more followers. With the arrival of Token TGE and the gradual implementation of various milestones, CARV may usher in its own flywheel effect, promoting rapid development of the project in terms of products, ecosystem, and users.

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