Metaverse Virtualizes Human Life

All of a sudden ‘Metaverse’ has become such a big deal across the world with businesses and consumers increasingly adopting the virtual world life. In 2017, Microsoft acquired the social media platform — Altspace VR, which according to Wikipedia largely consists of user-generated spaces called “worlds”, that can be visited by other users. Necessity for a metaverse can be associated with the fact that the virtual world and reality today has blurred lines between them especially since the start of pandemic.

Large institutions have been keeping a close watch on the Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) space for a few years now. Facebook, in late 2021, even rebranded its name to ‘Meta’ signifying the increasing competition among private companies in the virtual world. Arguably, it catapulted the popularity of the metaverse industry. The combined market cap of cryptos representing Metaverse stands at $31 Billion according to CoinMarketCap. People, especially gamers, started making money with blockchain-native games like GameFi. Such games are often promoted in the realms of play-to-earn models.

What exactly is ‘Metaverse’?

Metaverse is a concept that virtualizes human life. Sounds boring? Well, I would argue, there’s more than what meets the eye. The concept of ‘virtual reality’ doesn’t end with games. In fact, it starts with games, if I may. Today metaverse extends itself to host virtual lands, virtual concerts, virtual shopping centers among other world orders that are gradually finding its place in this parallel world. According to this Forbes report, real estate prices on metaverse rose over 700% in 2021!

To the uninitiated, gaming till recently, involved in-game items or merch where real money was used to buy it without the capability to trade. With blockchain technology though, a high level of decentralization gradually flowed into the ecosystem where you now have trillion-dollar crypto projects like Bitcoin empowering community driven approaches in various projects as opposed to decisions taken by a centralized authority. This in turn has allowed for wider creativity and innovation from a large number of users instead of a few managing directors.

Today we are seeing online gaming platforms like Axie Infinity are extremely popular with in-game tokenization of assets (they are built as layer 2 applications on layer 1 network like Ethereum). Instead of fiat, users are buying and trading tokens in the form of cryptocurrencies. Such games not only help you to kill time but also pay you for your time. Some of the popular Metaverse projects/platforms are:

1. Axie Infinity

2. Sandbox

3. Decentraland

4. Opensea

5. Star Atlas

6. MyNeighbourAlice

Non-Fungible Tokens – A Popular Use Case in Metaverse

NFTs, a popular and distinctive use case on metaverses, are traded as tokens across various decentralized platforms by creators, users, and investors. Creators are now able to monetize their contents in a fair way on top of being able to automatically earn a certain % of royalty of their choice every time it changes hands.

Celebrities, for instance, have shelled out thousands and in some cases millions of dollars to buy ‘virtual properties’ on the metaverse. Snoop Dogg, Paris Hilton and brands such as Nike own lands worth millions of dollars. A fan of rapper, Snoop Dogg, reportedly bought a land on the metaverse next to the rapper’s land on Sandbox for $450,000!! Then there is the idea of a digital museum on metaverse to enable users to display and trade their arts. Beeple, a notable NFT artist, sold his art for $69 Million which is one of the largest sales ever in NFT space.

Grayscale, an established crypto investing firms, has stated that Metaverse could be a $1 trillion market opportunity in the future. At this time, we may or may not be one of the earliest investors of cryptocurrency. But we are definitely early as far as metaverse and NFTs are concerned. Hence you are encouraged to explore this space more and take advantage of it as early as you can. 😊

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Opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author(s). They do not necessarily purport to reflect the opinions or views of Shardeum foundation.

About the Author : Siddesh is a Computer Science student & freelance web developer who believes in the future of Web 3.0. He loves to contribute to the growth of Web 3.0 by creating content on finance & cryptocurrencies. You can check more on his Web 3.0 focused content here.