Drive into the metaverse: Alibaba and SAIC-backed EV brand IM Motors open IM Valley to further embrace blockchain technology

IM Motors, the advanced intelligent pure electric vehicle brand backed by China’s largest automaker SAIC and e-commerce giant Alibaba, announces that it will officially launch its Drive-to-Earn reward scheme while Mileage Mining mode starts on August 7, 2022 for IM Valley, a metaverse built for car owners to earn digital “stones” while driving. It marks the completion of IM Motors’ Customer Share Option Plan, or CSOP, an initiative to bring the power of data back to the owner with real-life rewards and incentives.

According to the reward scheme, IM car owners can spend up to 6,800 stones plus 10,000 CNY for an autonomous driving system with lidars, radars and OrinX chips for their vehicles.

‘Drive-to-Earn’ in the metaverse

The term ‘Metaverse’ is not new, having actually appeared 30 years ago in the popular Sci-fi novel Snow crash by Neal Stephenson. However, what IM Motors is building in its metaverse, also known as IM Valley, tells a different story: How driving can be innovative, interesting and rewarding.

IM Valley, the virtual place where IM owners can explore new driving experiences, is powered by advanced blockchain technologies. From 17 July, IM Motors will launch its IM GO! segment in both its mobile and brick-and-mortar IM Motors Experience Centers across China, launching several new features and ways for IM owners to experience the metaverse through driving.

Mining of kilometers allows IM owners to drive to earn with 210,000,000 stones, or 70% of the total supply of 300,000,000, available for mining.

Once launched, Stones drop in batches every 10 minutes in this mode. The total offer will not increase but will be halved every four years. Each Stone Drop will be “shared” between participating IM owners. The idea behind this is that the more they drive, the earlier they participate with more contributions in mileage, the greater the chance they will win more Stones.

Educational mining was first launched on August 21, 2021 on IM APP with 30% of Stones available for this educational blockchain game-like mode. It also adopts a “dual token” scheme. IM owners earn crystals, the “in-game token”, through a variety of tasks such as registering, posting articles, sharing community ideas, and participating in online/offline events. After collecting enough crystals, IM owners can enter a Blind Box Lucky Draw to win stones or stone pieces. More than 10,000 IM owners have won nearly six million Stones via the Blind Box Lucky Draw so far.

IM GO! is a dedicated segment in IM APP, where IM owners can find more new fun ways to mine stones. Such new scenarios as MOVING ART, BEST HIGHWAY, CITYLIFE and TechDay will be launched soon. Also, IM owners can earn The Egg Reward in various daily driving scenarios, including uploading Carlog photos, using SNAKE MOVE driving mode, wandering designated online galleries and more.

As IM Motor’s innovation in the worlds of Web3 and metaverse continues, the exploration of combining advanced technologies to empower its car owners may bring a new landscape to the entire automotive industry: How blockchain technology can advance the development of data rights validation and mitigating privacy risks.

Self-developed chain for data security and privacy

IM Valley Chain is where all stones are generated, which is a proprietary blockchain developed by IM Motors to protect data rights and values ​​of IM owners. The chain consists of nine nodes with more to be added in the future. By adopting a consensus mechanism, each node works independently, protecting data completion while all transactions are compatible.

The chain ensures that all transactions of Stones are recorded on the chain with a unique hash rate for each transaction while all nodes are published for validation. The chain verifies each node with a ledger before packing a certain amount of transactions into a block, which is attached to the end of the IM Valley Chain to confirm the completion of a transaction. Data security, information protection and immutability and unforgettability of transactions are all ensured based on elliptic curve algorithm and hashing algorithm through the public key encryption algorithm to protect all users’ data rights and equality.

Mining of kilometers is powered by a smart contract on the IM Valley Chain. For example, in each batch of Stone Drop, the mileage extraction batch code is used as the input while the mileage is as the subtotal. There are N winning cars in each group of mining. Based on random numbers (including snapshots of key data, hash rates of transactions, etc.) generated by the blockchain, the results will then show N series numbers of mileage that win Stones. Such data will be measured continuously before being used as a weighting factor to drive data contributions.

Data collection and privacy is crucial today. IM Motors publishes IDPP, a data and privacy plan, to strictly protect car owners’ data security using blockchain technologies. It also claims it will never use biometric technologies (including facial, fingerprint and voice metrics) for its vehicles.

Embrace technology and inward for the future

Technology brings innovation and also fosters a highly engaged community.

Back in 2021, IM Motors worked with totalab artist Fei Yining to launch its first NFT “IM Crossing: The New Totem”, a community-generated artwork featuring IM car owners. Totem by the IM Valley community features users’ profile pictures as part of the artwork. IM Motors also plans to collaborate with more emerging artists, designers and its community to launch new digital collectibles in the future. By then, such NFTs will be auctioned off or donated to charity, such as donating to environmental organizations as an effort to promote the IM community and attract more people to adopt a green lifestyle. “IM Crossing: The New Totem” is recorded on the IM Valley Chain in video form as a digital collectible.

To promote a green yet rewarding driving experience, IM Motors will expand its Drive-to-Earn rewards scheme to allow IM owners to redeem various rewards with Stones, including hardware upgrades, premium services, limited editions, digital collectibles and Experience Day events etc.

As IM Motors builds a leading blockchain-powered public data rights validation platform for the Chinese automotive industry, it never stops exploring opportunities to embrace new technologies to inspire society for a greener future.

– END –

About IM Motors

IM Motors, established in December 2020, is an advanced intelligent pure electric vehicle brand. It was jointly founded by SAIC Motor, Zhangjiang Hi-Tech and Alibaba. As a pioneering automaker embracing blockchain technologies, IM Motors strives to explore the frontiers of advanced automotive technologies and build a worldwide community for IM owners to share and grow together.

Website: https://www.immotors.com/