Flora Fang The Future Envisaged in "Ready Player One" Is Coming True

Flora Fang has been crowned multiple roles during her crypto venture. Currently, she is the Chief Operating Officer of Highstreet, an e-commerce centric MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) Metaverse project launched in early 2021, where brands – both traditional and crypto – can establish virtual storefronts within the Metaverse of the Highstreet World, and in-game items are products produced by real life brands and sold as NFTs. The project has received investments from traditional players including HTC, Cherubic Ventures and Mechanism Capital, as well as top brands in crypto such as Animoca Brands, Binance Labs and others.

If you cannot quite picture how Highstreet exactly works, imagine the classic life simulation video game The Sims. The only difference is that 'commodities' in the Highstreet World will have real value by virtue of the fact that they are produced with real brands – it could be a Fendi Peekaboo Bag, or any products bearing the LVMH brand, or a piece of land from an established property developer... Highstreet is currently working with a broad range of top-tier celebrities, and luxury and sports brands to construct the Highstreet World Metaverse. For example, a sports brand from Europe has requested Highstreet to clone a European city in its Metaverse, complete with stadiums, training centres and its iconic IPs and so on. Highstreet is also talking to a top Asian singer wishing to build his fantasy playland in the Metaverse.

Flora is also the Managing Partner of Avalanche Asia Star Fund, a fund which focuses on investing, incubating, and supporting the development of the Avalanche ecosystem. Avalanche is the fastest smart contracts platform in the blockchain industry, as measured by time-to-finality, also hailed as challenger to the Ethereum network in the crypto world, with the launch of multiple million- dollar Avalanche incentive programs, and is expanding rapidly in the entire blockchain system.

Flora explains the distinction between'blockchain'and 'crypto', the former being an infrastructure and the latter being an asset class. Focusing more on the technology, innovation and user experience, she has always envisaged how the world can be reimagined like the future presented in Ready Player One, a 2018 Steven Spielberg movie where humans spend a significant part of their daily lives in a Metaverse- like world. The incubation of Highstreet had drawn significant inspiration from the film.

"The game world is essentially a metaverse itself in that sphere, be it League of Legends, MapleStory and so on." Highstreet's positioning is unique in that," we focus on the commerce and real estate perspective in the metaverse, where regions are built in collaboration with brands. Each region contains homes that players can own and take part in the area's economic growth and earn passive income. Highstreet turns retail into gaming, paving the way for a metaverse worth living in."

The Highstreet team operates and works on a truly remote and global space – with members of its team working around the global clock in San Francisco, Vancouver to various cities in Asia and more.

Speaking of VR, of which the development plays a vital part in the metaverse for a more seamless and immersive user experience, Flora is a huge fan – owning 4 Oculus VR headsets in total! "Everyone should explore VR. It's an entirely new world where there are so many things you can do, especially for gaming enthusiasts." Flora travels with multiple headsets with her. VR games are a part of the Highstreet team's teambuilding activities, and "we try to shoot each other in the game", laughs Flora. "Our engineers [can get] stressed out, so it's great for teambuilding and just having fun."

A frequent speaker at blockchain and technology industry events, the one advice that Flora has to offer to women is "go for it". "Honestly, I don't think there are any real obstacles for women who want to go into crypto. However, it is true that there are not that many women in this space, so we do look forward to having more women coming onboard."

The Highstreet team operates and works on a truly remote and global space – with members of its team working around the global clock in Vancouver to Taiwan, Dubai, China, Vietnam and more. The project has completed several milestone activities in April, announcing multiple partnerships and a few drops to the community. Flora and her team have also been working on a charity project collaborating with the celebrity Coffee aka Mr. White – which has gained over 2 million followers on Instagram alone.

Originally from Canada and born to Taiwanese parents, Flora Fang has recently relocated to Beijing, but most of the time she's been working in a highly 'decentralised' manner – frequently travelling around the world across different continents and timezones including North America, Asia, the Middle East – sometimes in a golf course or even snow mountains.