Abstract: The funeral industry ecology will evolve a new metaverse parallel to the real world in the future. This is a huge "trillion-level incremental market", and it may also be the largest life parallel metaverse for all mankind in the future.
"The real death is that no one in the world remembers you"--Disney movie "Dream Travel"
Death is not the end of life, forgetting is. Whether it is a solemn funeral or the annual Qingming Festival sacrifice, the physical space and time separated by yin and yang, and the cumbersomeness and limitations of traditional sacrifice sweeps also make forgetting a reality in today's society.
Is there a way to make the memory of the lost relatives and loved ones cross the geographical gap between physical time and space and traditional cemeteries?
In the three consecutive years of the new crown epidemic, "Internet tomb sweeping" has become a way for many people to worship their ancestors and their deceased relatives. The metaverse under VR virtual reality, AR augmented reality, and XR mixed reality is quietly changing people's concept of sacrifice through the "network tomb sweeping" spawned by the new crown epidemic, and technologically changing the family ties carried by tombs and sacrifices. And the precious traditional family culture inheritance model.
It can be imagined that in the future metaverse, human beings will obtain digital immortality through digital virtual avatars. In the future, offline cemeteries will be moved online, offline funerals will be moved online, and cloud sacrifice sweeping will be expected to evolve into a "meta-universe sacrifice sweeping", which will replace offline sacrifice sweeping because of its convenience and sense of ritual. Mainstream, and the way to susten and commemorate the love of relatives and friends will no longer be just the Qingming moment, but upgrade to virtual reality interaction with the AI digital avatar of the deceased relative through the metaverse, and reproduce the brain knowledge of the deceased relative through AI technology. Consciousness and memory storage to communicate across time and space. The eternal future of human digital life will not be a myth, then the funeral industry will be completely subverted, and it will completely evolve into a parallel metaverse space for all human beings.
Investing is in fact investing in the future. The reason why we pay attention to the funeral industry is that the problem of natural birth, old age, sickness and death brought about by the current aging society is a need that is about to break out and needs to be solved urgently. The development of emerging information technology and metaverse technology also seems to have brought subversive changes to the industry, and this change will bring about substantial growth and even subversive growth in the market size and space. For investors in Metaverse domain, it will be an excellent opportunity to intervene to capture the explosive growth of the Metaverse.
1. Population Aging and The Quietly Emerging "Internet tomb sweeping"
The innovative service of online "Internet Tomb Sweeping" first started in 2013. It is really hard to imagine that the traditional funeral business can be combined with technology to finally build a new product form of Internet technology.
There is no doubt that the funeral industry will be one of the excellent usage scenarios of the Metaverse.
The laws of business have been showing the truth that behind a good product there must be a group of excellent companies as a system, and there must be complete business logic and value logic behind it. We first focused on the traditional companies of Web 2.0.
For example,Fushouyuan, a Hong Kong-listed funeral company, has revenue and net profit attributable to the parent of 2.326 billion yuan and 720 million yuan in 2021, an increase of 22.9% and 12.1%, respectively. Even affected by the epidemic, this company has grown for the ninth consecutive year since its listing in 2013, which proves that the funeral companys are good investment target to cross the bull-bear cycle.
Investing is not valuing the present, investing is valuing the future. The central question for industrial opportunities is, can there be a more imaginative future? From the perspective of capital, the trillion-dollar funeral market is driven by the general trend of population aging. Let’s take China as an example. According to estimates by the World Bank, by 2035, China’s population over the age of 60 will exceed 400 million, accounting for 40% of the total population. 28%, the proportion of people over 65 years old in the total population will exceed 280 million, accounting for 20% of the total population, entering a super-aging society.
By 2050, the elderly are expected to reach 520 million, accounting for about 48% of the total population, and the elderly account for about 10%, and the aging is accelerating. According to experts from the China Funeral ,the scale of China's funeral industry alone will reach 1 trillion yuan in 2025.
American investor Peter Lynch once talked about a US stock company headquartered in Houston called SCI (Service Corporation International) with a market value of HK$82 billion, mainly engaged in funeral services. Needless to say, funerals are just in need. Peter Lynch said that whether it is a cemetery or funeral items, it is a good business.
Obviously, the global funeral industry is a super big track, and what we are more concerned about is that,taking the epidemic situation as an opportunity,under the trend of the combination of emerging Internet information technology, traditional funeral companies have launched Internet cloud sacrifice Internet products. The innovative value of online sacrifice sweeping lies in that through network technology, it can quickly meet the needs of users, enrich the soul of the living, expand the funeral industry through the Internet, and bring new value space.
In 2022, we observed that metaverse companies are beginning to intervene in the funeral industry. YieldDAO will launch Paradise Land metaverse based on its 0xSPACE virtual space, bringing a new immersive virtual reality user experience, 3D virtual world and virtual real estate concepts, Opened a new gameplay and business model, and the immutability brought by the blockchain is the first step to realize digital immortality
2. Singularity's Value Revaluation, Disruptive Innovation Industry Metaverse
In his famous management book "The Innovator's Dilemma", Clayton Christensen put forward a theory that in an industry, "disruptive innovation" often occurs, and whoever can grasp it can stand. In the tide of the times, if you can't keep up, you will be eliminated by the times.
A more accurate statement of "funeral industry" in the future may be "life misses the universe", the symbol that subverts tradition is the key word in the name - "life", and with the empowerment of emerging technology, a new key word has been added "" Metaverse". The "funeral industry" is transforming into a veritable "parallel metaverse of human life".
From the perspective of a bystander, what kind of "disruptive innovation" will there be in the traditional funeral industry? Before the epidemic, the funeral scene had been solidified in most people's minds, and it was difficult to imagine what kind of fundamental innovation could exist in this industry.
Until the epidemic in the past two years, Fushouyuan's "Cloud Tomb Sweeping" product was quietly accepted under the catalysis of the epidemic. YieldDAO, a metaverse enterprise, began to launch the Missing metaverse on a small scale in 2022, which vaguely made observers feel that future funerals A new paradigm of business is coming.
Going back to the origin of the funeral industry, what are the needs of the people in its essence? The answer is not uniform, but one thing is recognized,that is,worship and miss the loved ones who have passed away. Such a simple need is a spiritual need, can it be better satisfied by means of technology? If it is done,such technology and products will undoubtedly be good.
Cloud sacrifice sweeping service,the imprint left by the deceased on future generations is no longer limited to epitaphs,cloud ,cloud photo albums, even life stories, micro-movies, etc. can be designed as products online. In the sacrifice after the funeral, the cosmic technology can create a virtual sacrificial sweeping scene. At the same time, through the online 3D virtual memorial hall, the related items of the deceased are digitized and empowered with technology. Such memories may never fade.
In funerals and memorial services, in addition to the traditional form of expressing grief, VR headsets,the Internet of Things,and holographic projection technology can also be used to restore the holographic images of virtual humans and realize cross-time and space dialogue between the deceased and the living. This experience is What a traditional funeral doesn't have. It will better satisfy the deep grief and emotion of the living for the deceased.
In the future, this kind of virtual reality scene will greatly change the frequency of people expressing remembrance and longing, and people will not be limited to expressing their thoughts and worship during the Qingming Festival. At the same time, the virtual reality communication between the living and the dead through time and space through AI technology can also create a better family cultural heritage.
Returning to the category of business, if such "metaverse" products become more and more popular,then it is very likely to become a new model of funeral services in the future. Especially in the context of the metaverse, whether it is the interaction between virtual reality and deceased relatives traveling through time and space, or the possibility of the future metaverse cemetery, it will subvert the entire ecology of the funeral industry.
When the ecology is subverted, it depends on who can see and seize the opportunity. This also means that the frequency of commemorating deceased relatives and friends will increase significantly, and the sacrificial gifts and arrangements for deceased loved ones and relatives and friends in the virtual space will also increase significantly. The demand for technology will increase substantially.
If the scale of the traditional funeral industry in the past is expected to be in trillions, then the future "parallel universe of all human life" is expected to be in the scale of 10 trillion or even trillions.
3. The Rise of Industry Metaverse,Human Beings Will Achieve "Digital Immortality"
Technology is eager for new products, capital is looking for new exports, and users are looking forward to new experiences" - this is the main reason why the concept of "metaverse" exploded this year.
The traditional cemetery is an industry based on the monopoly of regional land and license resources. It has developed serious path dependence for decades, and the market is closed and extremely fragmented. "Cloud tomb sweeping" represented by American SCI and Hong Kong stock Fushouyuan has gradually been quietly accepted, but there are still high costs and poor returns. For "Internet +" simple c web pages, the user experience and acceptance are still not good.
By providing a new immersive user experience, 3D virtual world and virtual real estate concepts, Metaverse has opened up a new gameplay and business model. The immutability brought by the blockchain is the first step in realizing digital immortality. Therefore, the funeral industry will have a future. There are large-scale product and service upgrades and fierce competition for traffic,and Metaverse, which has mastered advanced platform products and traffic portals, will have a dimensionality reduction blow to the traditional cemetery business.
The emerging thinking/worship metaverse service will break the regional restrictions. Taking the industry metaverse leader YieldDAO as an example, the use of XR, AI blockchain and other metaverse technologies is promoting the arrival of "disruptive innovation". At the moment of singularity this will promote the evolution of traditional funeral participation into a new metaverse parallel to the real world, which is a new huge "ten trillion incremental market"
Paradise Land, the pioneer of the industry metaverse under YieldDAO,will be a memorial&cemetery Industry Metaverse that integrates multi-dimensional attributes such as VR/XR virtual reality sacrifice sweeping、digital immortality on the chain、AI virtual life interaction、NFT will/genealogy、virtual real estate、virtual family social networking ...etc
It is understood that YieldDAO will build a new decentralized partner agency sales system based on Web3 technology and DAO organization based on the NFT digital badge-DragonCapsule
From the perspective of emerging industries, the upgrading of the traditional funeral industry represented by SCI and Fushouyuan is opening up more and more development space. And YieldDAO, represented by emerging industry native metaverse manufacturers, uses technology empowerment and combines with traditional funeral culture to bring about a real industry metaverse revolution, completely opening up a new imagination of "parallel metaverse of human life" space