What Is Highstreet (HIGH)?

TL;DR

Highstreet is a play-to-earn (P2E) commerce-centered metaverse that combines shopping and gaming. Highstreet’s products are phygital, meaning they can exist in both digital and physical forms. While the digital form can be purchased as in-game items at a fraction of the cost, the physical form allows the players to make real-life purchases from within the game itself. Highstreet also partners with department stores around the world to bring mainstream shoppers into the metaverse. Players will find select collections with special tags that allow buyers to redeem and claim free digital assets in Highstreet.

Introduction

Many shoppers today enjoy the frictionless checkout experience at e-commerce platforms. However, some traditional brands are struggling to keep up with the trend. To bridge the gap between offline retail and the Web3 space, Highstreet is tackling commerce in a few different ways.

What is Highstreet?

Highstreet is a play-to-earn (P2E) commerce-centered metaverse that brings phygital (physical and digital) shopping into the world of video games. It acts as a bridge between offline retail and the Web3 space by introducing physical products from millions of traditional and crypto brands into its virtual world. 

Highstreet is an evolution of LumiereVR, a computer vision-based VR retail company established in 2015. The team has focused on building a commerce-based metaverse with components from various household names and established brands. On Highstreet, players can shop, trade, use, or craft NFT in-game items and forge their own digital identities. With direct integration to existing e-commerce systems, players also have the choice to redeem these items in real life at partner stores. 

How does Highstreet work?

Over the course of this decade, consumer behaviors have shifted drastically, with each generation becoming more digitally inclined than the previous. Highstreet is offering an easy entry to the metaverse with very little expenditure. 

Physical products like t-shirts and sneakers can now be tokenized into NFTs and reach more customers around the world. To transit their products into the metaverse, Highstreet will tokenize the item into two fractional NFTs. The first fraction is sold for a relatively lower price and serves as an in-game item for players in the Highstreet World. The brand will profit from the sale of this NFT with no decrease in inventory or added expense.

The second fraction acts as an e-commerce event trigger. Once a player purchases the second fraction, an order will be placed to the brand’s existing e-commerce backend system. The Shopify integration feature allows players to redeem the physical products they purchased from virtual shops at the brand’s offline stores. This seamless transition from physical stores to the web Highstreet is pioneering a novel phygital business model that bridges department stores to Web3 like never before.

Highstreet also features a launchpad for newer and influencer-lead brands looking to expand their businesses. Highstreet Market is a curve-based marketplace for limited-edition products. It uses Street Smart bonding curves to ensure the liquidity of products. Under the automated price discovery mechanism, an item’s price will move with every purchase. This means that the hype, community, or following can directly affect the price. At the same time, brands can customize their own bonding curves to be steep or flat to incentivize more transactions or offline product redemptions.

What is the Highstreet World?

Highstreet World is the gaming layer on top of Highstreet’s e-commerce infrastructure. It’s made up of hexagonal tiles that spread across its entire map. All regions are built in collaboration with brands as an extension of their existing e-commerce presence. As of September 2022, commercial regions in Highstreet World include Binance Beach, AVAX Alps, and Animoca Archipelago.

Players can level up their Player Level and Class Level by completing quests. They can also acquire properties in the regions via the Initial Home Offerings (IHOs). In addition, Highstreet offers an immersive experience by allowing them to visit their homes via compatible VR headsets. Moreover, they can decorate their homes with in-game items, hang out with friends, stream videos at their virtual homes, and hatch their virtual pets.

Homeowners can also enjoy in-game benefits and potential earning opportunities in the Highstreet metaverse. For example, they are entitled to a portion of the 3% transaction fee allocated to residents for every transaction that occurs in the region. 

What is HIGH?

HIGH is the native utility token of Highstreet. It’s a multichain token with a maximum supply of 100 million that gradually unlocks as the project develops. 

HIGH tokens can be staked to earn rewards, and can be used to purchase in-game items on the Highstreet Market and real estates in the Highstreet World. It is also used for progressing to various regions in the gameplay and accessing exclusive events in the Highstreet metaverse.

Closing thoughts

Highstreet offers an easy way for brands to extend their online presence to attract new customers and seamlessly establish virtual storefronts within the metaverse. As the project matures, the phygital experience it creates could potentially change the landscape of e-commerce platforms and onboard more users to Web3.