Virtual Worlds
To (I expect) no-one’s surprise, it appears that I am on a Web3 roll. It’s about time, I’d say. Web3, and the concept of a ‘Metaverse’ more specifically, is the most exciting thing to happen to the internet in quite a while. But here’s the thing: it isn’t an easy concept (or topic, or ‘type of web’) to understand or explain, but instead (I realise more and more) a new lens through which to look at the world. Or a new world entirely, if you prefer, with its own rules and component pieces, similar to those of Web2.0, but altogether different at the same time. Or, as VC and Essayist Matthew Ball writes: ‘a successor state to the mobile internet.’
So here’s what I am attempting to do: instead of tackling the Metaverse, or Web3 as a whole, head on and in a single edition, I am approaching the topic from the sides, looking at different sub-aspects of it, and hoping that in so doing I’ll end up explaining it in its entirety. First came NFTs, quite a long time ago. Then there was DeFi and, most recently, DAOs. Now… Let’s look at something stranger: Virtual Lands.
Virtual Worlds
There’s been virtual lands and worlds since before the Bitcoin whitepaper was even conceptualized. In fact, there’s been virtual worlds since before the internet had a visual interface, back when it was all text and you could play text-based adventure games like Zork. The concept of a world separate from ours and inside our computers is as old as computers themselves; it’s the beating heart of computer games, whether they mention this explicitly or not.
But let’s fast-forward in time to right before the rise of Crypto and the blockchain, and the appearance of (and subsequent success of) games such as Roblox, Fortnite or, before that, Minecraft. These are all games in which players can build their own worlds, tailored to their preferences and, most importantly, with an embedded social element. Looking at Roblox’s success might give you an idea of just how impactful this idea of ‘building a world for you and your friends’ can be: according to the company’s earnings report, in the first quarter of 2021 users spent nearly 10 billion hours playing Roblox. More significantly, they spent $652 million on Robux, the games’ virtual currency, buying digital assets such as weapons and clothes and hats for their characters. Fortnite has seen a similar level of engagement, cementing itself as one of the world’s top games, with 350 million registered players.
These two games (virtual worlds, to be more precise, because that is exactly how they’ve been marketing themselves) have one thing in common that positions them undoubtedly within Web2.0, no matter how much they try to convince us of the opposite: in both Roblox and Fortnite, players can spend thousands of hours building worlds and thousands of Euros buying skins and weapons and in the snap of a finger it could all disappear; Roblox and Fornite are under centralized authority—they are owned by someone (a company), and can, without notice, simply pull the plug.
Which leads us to their Web3 successors and, by extension, the beginnings of what one day we will call the Metaverse: Decentralized Virtual Lands.
(Decentralized) Virtual Worlds
The key difference between off-chain and on-chain virtual lands or worlds, then, is clear and impossible to set aside or reconcile, unless off-chain worlds decide to go on-chain: in one your effort, time and money is subject to erasure by a corporation’s whims, while in the other it is forever yours, and no-one else’s, as guaranteed by a blockchain. And here’s another difference: Virtual Blockchain Worlds (VBWs) are not actually games, like Roblox or Fortnite or Minecraft, but so much more: they are social platforms, actual worlds where you can own or rent land, build businesses, stores, buildings, houses, hotels even — all in service of a fun experience for you and your friends, at least for now.
Think about them this way: buying and owning land on a virtual blockchain world is akin to buying and owning hosting space on the internet, but decentralized and in 3D, where your avatar can enjoy 360 views. ‘Land’ in these worlds is just that; it varies in shape, size and build height depending on which world you’re operating in (they all have their own set of built-in rules and parameters); you can buy it and sell it and rent it, just like you would in the ‘real’ world, first during the platforms’ initial land offerings (ILO), and once that’s passed, through secondary markets such as OpenSea. All you need is a Metamask installed, and enough crypto.
Putting the ‘Verse’ in Metaverse.
As hinted above, there’s not one singular Virtual World, but a multitude of them. As things stand now in Q4 of 2021, there are multiple on-chain worlds sucking most of our attention and slowly building the infrastructure of the upcoming on-chain metaverse. The largest, most impactful (and expensive on a digital m2 basis) by far is Decentraland.
Decentraland runs on the Ethereum blockchain, with its own currency (MANA) and legal infrastructure ran using smart contracts (i. e. if you buy land on Decentraland, you own said land much, or even more so, like you would own land in the real world. In fact, land on this platform is quite expensive, but more on that later.) Then there’s two other key players in the space, which follow similar rules, with slight variations: There’s The Sandbox, self-defined as a community-drive UGC (user generated content) voxel system; and Somnium Space, which functions similarly to the other two, but is focused primarily on providing a VR experience, with its 2D mode mainly for world exploration purposes. Other virtual worlds include:
- Netvrk
- CryptoVoxels
- OVR
Why Virtual Worlds Matter, And What They Can Turn Out To Be
It’s actually quite easy to dismiss these on-chain virtual worlds as distractions, just as it was easy to do the same when social media first got started. But just like it was the case with social media, virtual worlds have the potential to revolutionize the way we interact with the internet and with each other. People already spend millions of hours in simulated environments each day (as mentioned in the introduction of this edition, when discussing Roblox, Fortnite and Minecraft), and billions more in other types of social platforms. What would happen if we were to combine the two, plus add a monetization layer, then an ownership layer? A true meta-world, one that functions much like our own, but on the internet.
This is where NFTs come in. When you buy a digital asset in off-chain virtual worlds, you don’t actually possess full ownership of that asset—it can be taken away at any moment’s notice. But NFTs change the game entirely—they are a vehicle through which to guarantee ownership of a digital asset in the internet and, by extension, inside these virtual worlds. Land itself is an NFT in Decentraland, The Sandbox, and others. But it goes beyond that: anything and everything you buy or build in these virtual worlds is actually yours, and no-one else’s; from skins to clothes to buildings to anything in between. That, my wonderful readers, is called an economy. Not a real-estate economy, but a full-fledged, fully functioning, comprehensive economy.
You can buy land on one of these virtual worlds and build a concert hall in it, then rent it out to virtual-world famous (or real-world famous, see Fortnite’s Rift Tour), and sell event tickets. You can build museums or galleries, and hang billion-dollar NFTs on their virtual walls, and have people pay admission, as Sotheby’s already did in Decentraland. You can even get lucky (or smart), and purchase land in the Times Square equivalent of this virtual world, and sell ad space on the buildings you’ve built there—just like you would in the real world.
Taking all of this into account, it is no surprise, then, that some people are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy up the best parcels in these virtual worlds, betting for a future in which we all live in said worlds more than we do in our own real world.
Back in 2018, Decentraland saw its highest land sale ever—a parcel adjacent to Fashion Street, one of the world’s most frequented locations sold for 2,72,000 MANA, or $210,762. Now that land is worth upwards of $1.2 million. Just recently another patch of land in Decentraland, EST #4229 sold for 618,000 MANA, or $2.4 million. Since January, the average land price has jumped from $166 to $2403, hitting a $5000 peak back in September. As a whole, and as of April 1st of this year, all time trading volume in virtual land assets amounted to 200,902 ETH ($337.5 million), according to Hackernoon.
Is this speculation? Or are these buyers betting on a full-metaverse future? I honestly can not say. Most likely, it’s a bit of both. What I can predict, though, is the following: these worlds are not going away. In the coming years we might see the fall of the current players, the rise and fall of new players even, but if things progress as they’ve been doing, virtual worlds will end up being a key way in which we interact with each other, just like social media is today. Will they be the only way in which we interact with each other? Will the future as speculated in Ready Player One or Snow Crash (where the word ‘Metaverse’ comes from, by the way) come to be? That, I cannot predict.
INTERESTING LINKS
The World Needs to Crack Battery Recycling, Fast
TikTok’s Next Big Move? To Become Facebook
29 of the Best Science Fiction Books Everyone Should Read
Amazon and Apple handed $225 million in Italian antitrust fines
Spotify debuts a ‘Netflix Hub’ featuring music and podcasts tied to Netflix shows and movies
What do employers need to know about global mobility?
Everything you need to know about The Great Resignation
European tech companies should be minting more millionaires
The rise of the lone wolf VC in Europe
Dear banks: this is why you’re still losing out to fintechs
European Parliament’s IMCO backs limits on tech giants’ ability to run tracking ads
Facebook’s lead EU privacy supervisor hit with corruption complaint
French Uber drivers protest stalling of privacy complaints
Tech investors can’t get enough of Europe’s fizzing startup scene
MONEY STUFF
Addressing mental health with digital therapeutics, ieso raises $53 million
B4B Payments acquired by Banking Circle
Crowdcube does some raising of its own, nets £10 million to fuel European market entry
Turkey’s ultrafast grocery service Getir does some shopping of its own – snaps up ailing Weezy
Healthcare booking and management platform and Docplanner snaps up Hubert Burda Media property Jameda
Employee referral platform Intrro warms up to $2.2 million in new funding
Using open data and AI to improve underwriting, Continuity raises €5 million in seed round
Helping growing companies grow even faster, recruitment marketplace Muzzo raises €2.1 million
European rooted Conduktor corrals Apache Kafka with $20 million in Accel led round
Payhawk continues to spread its wings, raises $112 million in new capital
Portuguese founded Sword Health brings in $163 million at $2 billion valuation
Internet economy-focused tax automation service Fonoa raises $25 million
Backing the creative economy, Edge Investments announces first close of £100 million fund
Material Evolution raises $3.4 million, aims to curb CO2 emissions in the cement industry by 85%
Kompas Ventures launches $160 million sustainability-focused fund aimed at early-stage startups
Consumer analytics platform Uncrowd raises £3 million
whFinnish third-party logistics startup OGOship raises €4 million
Πηγή: Gonz Sanchez
seedtable.com
Για μετάφραση: translate.google.gr
