The metaverse economy: NFTs spur growth of societies within immersive virtual worlds

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The metaverse creates a collection of virtual environments, including immersive 3D encounters, which are interconnected and readily navigable.

  • The metaverse prospects open up enormous potential for everyone since the thriving internet economy will allow participation in this collective future.
  • The metaverse economy requires the capacity to travel freely and trade between worlds with various laws and rules to thrive.
  • Fashion was one of the first industries to see the economic possibilities of NFTs and the metaverse.

Technology has always remained at the forefront of enhancing communication and human engagement since the turn of the century. The internet has not just enabled individuals to interact with friends and family all over the world in real-time, but it has also fueled global economic innovation.

Read: The metaverse and the evolution of modern technology

More technologies come into the limelight daily to boost the quality of life and shared experiences. The metaverse is becoming increasingly popular in the IT sector and among friends and family.

The metaverse creates a collection of virtual environments, including immersive 3D encounters, which are interconnected and readily navigable. It will allow people to do things they could not do in the physical world with people you can’t be with physically. You’ll be able to hang out with friends, work, play, study, shop, and do other things in the metaverse.

The metaverse has the potential to open up new creative, social, and economic opportunities.

Several tech businesses, like Meta, are already thinking about the future and how to make the metaverse a reality. It is not a single product that one firm can produce or own on its own, and if it is to flourish, it must be open and interoperable.

This interoperability will require collaboration and cooperation among businesses, developers, artists, and legislators. The process will occur in stages since many items and infrastructure will only achieve full operation for another decade or more. The metaverse prospects open up enormous potential for everyone since the thriving internet economy will allow participation in this collective future.

The metaverse and NFTs’ outstanding and rapid evolution

A normal day in the metaverse – a common immersive digital world – may soon mirror the familiar world in which people live. Thanks to significant developments in virtual reality and 5G connectivity, people will visit retail malls, travel across town, meet friends in cafés, and exchange connections in startlingly natural ways.

Metaverses have existed in the form of multiplayer internet games for decades. However, the world may soon reach an era of immersive experiences almost indistinguishable from the actual world, spawning new kinds of engagement for gamers and non-gamers.

Individuals settling in the land, interacting socially, exchanging products, and asserting ownership rights already appear in prototype next-generation metaverses such as Decentraland and Somnium Space. A functioning economy remains crucial in any civilization (virtual or physical).

Therefore, the economy in the metaverse banks relies on digital properties’ authentication. These properties include one’s metaverse home, automobile, farm, books, clothing, and furniture. The metaverse economy also requires the capacity to travel freely and trade between worlds with various laws and rules to thrive.

NFTs, records of digital ownership kept in the blockchain, will form the backbone of the metaverse economy, allowing for the validation of goods, property, and even identity. Each NFT is protected by a cryptographic key that is hard to erase, duplicate, or destroy. This security provides the robust and decentralized verification of one’s virtual identity and digital belongings required for metaverse societies to succeed and communicate.

Beyond the hype of multi-million-dollar digital art auctions, the relevance of NFTs may lie in allowing the beginnings of true human civilization to develop in the metaverse. The civilization would find ground in free marketplaces (for ideas, services, and products), autonomous ownership, and social contracts.

Eric Anziani, the chief operations officer of Crypto.com, observes that NFTs began with the digital art aspect but will be far more potent with time. Consequently, in the future, NFTS will be the tool that depicts every digital asset in virtual environments. As a result, the metaverse and NFTs offer enormous opportunities and possibilities.

Read: Blockchain and the metaverse: A symbiotic relationship with unending possibilities

Decentraland creates a brave new world of property development

Decentraland creates a brave new world of property development. www.web3africa.news
Decentraland creates a brave new world of property development [Photo/play.decentraland]
People conversing by fountains, customers in fashion stores, joggers on beach promenades, and casino croupiers tempting customers to high-stakes gambling may appear visible when strolling around Decentraland.

These encounters are the unintentional outcome of virtual real estate development by individuals who have acquired property and created habitats that have piqued the interest of other Decentraland residents.

The experience is far from hyper-realistic. For instance, developers of Decentraland admit that the planet is still in its “Iron Age.” Even at these early stages, the promise is evident. People flock to intriguing areas in the metaverse, just as they do in actual societies. Moreover, like in Beverly Hills or Paris, popularity inevitably raises the value of virtual land.

The adjacency of land is a fundamental economic idea in Decentraland and other metaverses. All metaverse parcels are adjacent to others at a given place – within finite geography. The restricted availability of property causes scarcity. Consequently, scarcity allows property values to increase and fall per the global rules of supply and demand.

According to the Decentraland manifesto, a foundation is constructed for a social experience with an economy powered by existing land ownership and content distribution layers.

The property transactions that power the metaverse get operationalized via NFTs. These tokens give more solid proof of ownership than any land deed.

More importantly, one cannot fake metaverse property rights because they lie in writing as smart contracts and NFTs get programmed.  Users know they own an asset and can adequately prove ownership. Additionally, one can establish ownership rights per the rules and circumstances of the virtual environment.

Interactions in the metaverse economy create a world of unlimited opportunities

The consequences of this real estate revolution are already reverberating powerfully. Republic Realm, a virtual property investment group, paid over $900,000 for a plot of land in Decentraland in June. Republic Realm, a subsidiary of the investment firm Republic, is transforming the land into Metajuku. This is a virtual mall modelled after Tokyo’s Harajuku area.

Such activity suggests that real estate investment trusts (REITs) may soon sniff out possibilities in the metaverse. Property values follow economic activity, which is rising in Decentraland. The founders specifically intended this when they launched their virtual world in 2017.

The manifesto of the metaverse states, “Decentraland’s value proposition to application developers is that they may fully capitalize on the economic interactions between their apps and consumers.” “To facilitate such economic exchanges, the platform must enable the trading of three commodities: money, products, and services.”

Fashion was one of the first industries to see the economic possibilities of NFTs and the metaverse. Burberry made NFT items for the Blankos Block Party video game, while Louis Vuitton released LOUIS THE GAME, its own NFT-studded video game.

Furthermore, RTFKT, the metaverse’s customised shoemaker, creates limited edition NFT footwear.  People can use the sneakers in virtual spaces that have already sold for millions of dollars.

With such pace in the metaverse’s Iron Age, the commercial model for virtual worlds based on NFT technology guarantees unimaginable economies of scale.

Only five months ago, there were 100 million crypto users worldwide.  Now there are over 200 million users. Therefore, there is a conviction that the next surge to a billion or two billion will occur through metaverses. Consequently, the process will merge virtual worlds with blockchain technology, particularly NFTs.

Read: The seven most important technologies driving the metaverse

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