The Space is the World's First Large-Scale NFT Pixel Art Game Governed by Radical Markets

LOS ANGELES and TAIPEI and HONG KONG, May 31, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Space (www.thespace.game) is officially open to the public today: the world's first NFT pixel art co-creation canvas where anyone can tokenize and trade pixels under Harberger Tax and Universal Basic Income (UBI).

Powered by Matters Lab, the creator behind the biggest successful application of blockchain social media in the world with over 100,000 content creators and other co-creation NFT projects, The Space will reimagine the pixel graffiti wall as a foundation for a new attention economy in web3.

Inspired by Reddit r/place, The Space goes beyond a collaborative canvas to become the first large-scale experiment of a radical market on blockchain. Two unique rules govern The Space based on radical market economics:

1. Every pixel NFT is always on sale.
2. The current owner can set the price for his/her pixel, and pay tax for a percentage of the price.

Pixels are tokenized as ERC-721 tokens (Planck) and traded under Harberger Tax with ERC-20 tokens ($SPACE), where the owner of each plot must mark a price for his plot and make it available for purchase. They must also pay a tax, set at a certain percentage, of their plot price.

The majority of the tax is then redistributed to all pixel owners in the game as Universal Basic Income. Originally proposed by Glen Weyl and Eric Posner, radical market economics is one answer to the monopolization of private property by a wealthy few.

"The centralization of Web2 and the disappearance of online public spaces is terrifying. We no longer live in a physical world, but spend most of our hours interacting in the metaverse. Our digital world no longer has a public space. The Space is our vision for a truly decentralized, self-sustaining community in a public space," says Annie Zhang, award-winning journalist and founder of Matters Lab.

Since December 2021, The Space has launched 11 game-test events. Over 1,800 content creators participated and colored at least 35,000 tokens as pixels. Although these test launches did not include real money or tax mechanisms, they revealed how players collaborated with each other to tackle problems and create artworks together. This is one of the core goals of The Space: to create a self-sustaining and decentralized community.

Plans are underway for players to own and govern The Space completely through SpaceDAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization). Players will decide the rules of the game, the Harberger Tax rate, UBI ratio, canvas size, and the use of Community Funds. Members will also be able initiate bounty programs and recruit third-party developers.

During a test launch in March, fifty Taiwanese artists co-created on The Space and their final artwork was minted as NFT on akaSwap. Proceeds of this event went towards helping displaced adults and children.

To find out more about the project, visit The Space showcase at Booth 319 at Consensus 2022 by CoinDesk from June 9-12 in Austin, Texas. Visitors can claim $SPACE tokens at the conference.

Read The Space white paper, or follow us on Medium and @thespace2022 on Twitter for the latest news and insights on NFT and web3.

About The Space

Powered by Matters Lab, which was established in 2018, The Space's mission is to enable a truly decentralized, self-sustaining community in a public space for content creators to monetize their digital assets with complete control through the next evolution of the Internet, web3. Other initiatives include using decentralization tools to protect digital rights, designing a self-governing system and community, and inventing models for a new creator economy.

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Emilie Hsu

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SOURCE Matters Lab