Bringing Cannabis to the Metaverse and Blockchain – Cannabis News, Lifestyle

Entrepreneurs are bringing cannabis into the metaverse and onto the blockchain. Mitch Ngo, CEO and co-founder of Golden Ark, is one of those people. His company is developing a supply chain model that uses blockchain technology to source and track cannabis products. They are also building a metaverse for cannabis connoisseurs. “The goal is to build a cannabis community,” says Mitch

“You go to WeedMaps; You enter your location, you get a link to the pharmacy’s website, that’s it. We want to take that to a whole different level where you actually jump in. We have a brand that has a real lounge, a Metaverse lounge. You can go in and shop, you can actually look at a product, you can look at whether it’s blockchain or not, you can see where it was, where it was grown. We can control that part of it. The consumer can go into the lounge and talk to each other and say “how is the product etc etc”. So you can check it from there. There are many layers.”

What is the blockchain?

Mitch Ngo’s inspiration comes from personal history. When his father was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer, Mitch provided him with cannabis edibles to ease the pain. But he was concerned about the provenance and safety of the edibles he gave to his ailing father. This is when he started thinking about using blockchain to manage the supply chain.

Basically, a blockchain is a peer-to-peer secure bookkeeping ledger – private and anonymous, but also public and open. Tracking the movement of cannabis and its derivatives throughout the economy is a momentous task. A blockchain system has built-in redundancy, increases system reliability, and requires little human input and therefore low risk of human error.

Bringing cannabis into the metaverse and onto the blockchain means assigning different digitally unique tokens. The blockchain would have individualized tokens for every seed, plant, waste, labor, processing, and almost every step of the process up to and including retail product sale.

“What we’re doing on our side is we’re trying to implement blockchain from seed to sale, and we’re also trying to put the genetics on the blockchain. So if you claim you’re selling Blue Dream, we should be able to identify it and let you know if you’re actually smoking Blue Dream,” says Mitch.

“And none of what we do technologically is brand new. We’re just trying to put everything together to make it work together.”

What is the metaverse?

When most people think of the Metaverse, they probably think of Facebook. But that is not the case.

“The Facebook metaverse is a VR metaverse,” says Mitch, “They want you to be submerged like the Matrix. As if you were in virtual reality and really didn’t need to move. You can sit on your couch with your glasses on all day and it’s just like real life. We’re like Fortnite. Or Grand Theft Auto. You’re just playing a video game. When you hear metaverse, we’re talking about that metaverse. Like a video game.”

“For us, we have a really cool metaverse where you actually get a lounge … places you could hang out, you could hang out with your friends, and it’d be like you smoke weed and I smoke weed and I’ I like ‘Hey, what are you doing on Friday?’ and you’re like ‘nothing, let’s go hang out.’ So we’re both in my lounge and I’m like, ‘Let’s play poker,’ and then we’ll both jump onto my poker table, maybe our webcams are on, we’re smoking.”

“The important thing about the lounges is that you and I play poker, and then we could actually play crypto. So if we can get a good game with seven or nine of us, it’s a fun Friday night. We’re all in our houses, we’re all smoking, we’re all talking weed, we’re all having fun, we’re listening to music, I mean we’re just trying to make it easy and fun, and when we talk about community everyone needs theirs own community. And in return we need to build a huge community to just normalize it.”

Bringing Cannabis to the Metaverse and Blockchain

Mitch’s company has developed a technology called Arkthenticate that offers a way to authenticate cannabis products. The idea is that cannabis packaging is a QR code that the user scans into their phone. The code takes them to the Arkthenticate website, where they can see the history of the product and find its origins.

Additionally, if you are the first purchaser of the product, you may receive an NFT. (An NFT is a non-fungible token, a type of financial security for digital data stored on a blockchain.)

“We have already tested our Arkthenticate technology to ensure the QR code system works. And that works. We enabled it to allow consumers to scan a QR code, log into the Arkthenticate website, enter their wallet address, and then request the NFT for the product. It’s going really well so far.”

What the future holds for bringing cannabis to the metaverse and blockchain

Mitch Ngo isn’t the only one bringing cannabis into the metaverse and onto the blockchain. Many cannabis entrepreneurs are discovering the freedom of the metaverse. Big internet companies like Facebook and Google ban advertising and promotion of cannabis. Facebook’s meta-community standards prohibit content that “attempts to buy, sell, trade, donate, or give away marijuana, or that asks for marijuana.”

But the Golden Ark metaverse is free and decentralized. And it’s only just beginning. Whether you are building a community or collecting NFTs, there is something for everyone.