Over the past 2 years a exciting new term has entered the crypto lingo the Metaverse, and you might be wondering what the heck it is and what it actually means for crypto. So if you're curious to know more, then stick with me here because I'm about to dive deep into its every little detail and tell you exactly where you can go for hidden treasures. This ,you don't want to miss. I need to give you a disclaimer before I talk about the metaverse. I am not a financial advisor , I'm just an educator and this blog post is written with the sole purpose of providing you factual information. Please contact a financial advisor if your portfolio has been killed. If you're new here, you might be feeling a little bit lost right My name is "MrCrypt "and I am your crypto geek here at the cryptolibrarynow . I pass on the knowledge of cryptocurrencies, exchanges, DeFi, protocols, NFT's and market analysis are just a few of the topics I tackle on the daily basis. Now enough with the intro. Let's get it on , Let's unpack this metaverse and see what's in it.
Mark's Metaverse -:
The term metaverse is just about everywhere these days, and this is largely the fault of Mark Zuckerberg, who announced that Facebook was rebranding to meta at connect 2021 in late October. In the announcement, Zuckerberg introduced the concept of something akin to a Facebook 2.0 a new and alternative facebook model that aspires to bring the Metaverse to life and help people connect, find communities and grow businesses, all the while shoveling their personal data onto the company servers from whence it will be turned into money. Now, in Meta's own words, quote, "the Metaverse will feel like a hybrid of today's online social experiences, sometimes expanded into three dimensions or projected into the physical world. It will let you share immersive experiences with other people, even when you can't be together and do things together you couldn't do in the physical world". Now, I'm not the biggest fan of Facebook in general, as might be obvious. However, I do have to respect its latest developments but more on that later. Now as it pertains to crypto, Facebook's rebranding to Meta saw multiple NFT(if you want to read a more indepth blog post on NFT please click on me) and VR related coins shoot up in value in a short period of time. Decentraland's native token manner, for instance, saw a price appreciation of over 400% soon after the meta announcement was made. Christmas certainly came early for some. Now, you might be wondering, what the heck is this metaverse thing? How does it work? How does it relate to our beloved crypto verse and most importantly, "Mr Crypt", Could this be the next big thing? Well, let me explain. I'll start off by saying that there are many differing opinions, various conceptualizations, and a plethora of definitions when it comes to the Metaverse. Thus boiling it down to one simple sentence is no easy task. But that being said, I will do my best to give you the most all-encompassing and clearest explanation possible.
What is Metaverse ?
According to a recent presentation by the Wall Street Journal, the metaverse is loosely defined as quote, "an extensive online world where people interact via digital avatars." Sound familiar? If you were a Sims video game lover then this shouldn't be too complex to fathom. Now, while I do believe that this definition by the Journal does encapsulate all the primary fundamental elements of what makes up the Metaverse, it does seem a bit basic. Thus, as always, I'm tempted to go the extra mile here and provide you with my own in-depth analysis. And now for a bit of history. The term metaverse is a portmanteau word made-up of meta and universe, and it was coined by American writer Neal Stephenson and first used in his 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash. Snow Crash is a VR inspired novel where humans portrayed as avatars, interact with one another and with artificially created software agents in a three-dimensional virtual space that is supposedly viewed as a metaphor for the real world. Now this next part is a bit dystopian in the novel Stevenson's Metaverse. Appears to its users as a primarily urban environment developed along a 100 meter wide road called The Street, which spans the entire circumference of a dark and perfectly spherical planet. Users of this metaverse can access it through personal terminals that project a high definition virtual reality through special goggles worn by the users who experience the Metaverse entirely from a first person perspective. Now, another more recent representation of the Metaverse is the one portrayed in Steven Spielberg's 2018 sci-fi film Ready Player One. Ah, what a great watch that is. Venue in both snow crash and Ready Player 1, the Metaverse is portrayed as something akin to a hypothesized and somewhat futuristic iteration of the Internet. As a completely AI infused and augmented reality or AR focused space in Ready Player 1, the Metaverse constitutes a root of escapism. From a world ravaged by climate change and an unprecedented fossil fuel crisis rings a bell, doesn't it? But of course, before you jump to any rash conclusions, remember that this is only a film one would assume. Now, jokes aside, the metaverse is conceptually growing at an incredibly rapid pace, both in cultural awareness and financial terms. And since the idea of a metaverse oriented reality is slowly but surely starting to become more mainstream, with several big data companies embracing or at least experimenting with it, some analysts are calling the metaverse the next big investment theme in both the crypto and traditional tech spaces. This is because, according to Igor Tastic, founder of Metaverse advisory firm Neta Ventures, the idea inherent in the Metaverse goes beyond the simple implementation of AR and VR technologies. In fact, in a recent interview, Tasic argued that Metaverse inspired technology has the potential to become an ultimate, Experiential equalizer in the first half of the 21st century by integrating people's physical and digital existence in a hybrid virtual experience. According to a report by bitcoin.com, Morgan Stanley, one of the biggest investment banks in the world has also announced that it now considers the Metaverse, together with all of its related products, as the next major buzz concept in the world of investing. Now this is all great news, but the question I'm particularly interested in is. How does all this relate to crypto? Well, I would argue that the simple answer is that some blockchain based gaming protocols could potentially be considered as the true pioneering forces when it comes to the development of Metaverse ecosystems as a whole. And while it's all very well that major tech players such as Meta and Microsoft have recently staked their claims to the Metaverse. The truth of the matter is that some early visual inklings of the Metaverse could already be witnessed in popular online games such as Minecraft, Second Life, World of Warcraft, and even Run escape. Which leads me to my next point. The happy marriage between the Metaverse gaming and non fungible tokens. Now, in my opinion, the combination of these three primary elements gives us a clearer glimpse into what the most authentic Metaverse form will look like. An apology, Stephen. It's not quite your ready player 1 I'm afraid and you too. Bill Stevenson, I loved your novel, but your metaverse just isn't it for me. Rather, the metaverse can be defined as something a bit more akin to an online arena where decentralized finance, or defy reigned supreme, and as a virtual domain that fuses together cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology, augmented reality, NFTS, and gaming.
NFT's and Metaverse -:
Now, for many, the term NFT conjures images of digital artworks, pixelated collectibles, and funny looking ape figures tied to what seems like an inordinate sum of money and in some cases, I can't really blame them. Any-who, virtual realities and gaming spheres have ultimately opened up the playing field for NFTS to actually start experimenting with their built in functionalities and leverage their respective in-game utilities. This is primarily because, apart from the manic digital art frenzy that NFTS are found themselves caught up in, the architecture inherent in an, NFT grants the holder , A digital certificate of verifiable ownership over an asset in the virtual realm. Thus, if we assume that the metaverse is a parallel augmented representation of the real world, it can also be thought of as an extension of it and in a similar vein to what happens with ownership contracts in the real world, NFTS allow holders to use and leverage their assets, be it a valuable crypto punk or board ape avatar, a plot of digital real estate or an in-game item within the Metaverse environment. Thus, I'm tempted to say that NFTS and the Metaverse will continue to be somewhat analogous in their future development and will most likely carry on growing hand in hand. This is ultimately because NFT based meta verses that incorporate crypto assets and blockchain into their underlying technology can usher in an entirely new economic framework and a cutting edge financial paradigm within their respective ecosystems. In fact, while metaverse like environments have existed in massive multiplayer online games for quite some time now, the implementation of blockchain NFT'S, digital assets and virtual reality in the sector is not only drastically altering, who can participate in and enter these environments, but also demonstrating the real world market value of the assets. The interactions and the experiences earned in the digital realms of blockchain games. But at this stage you might be asking yourself what makes a blockchain metaverse? So fundamentally different from those more traditional environments found in games such as The Sims and Runescape. Well, there are three key features of the blockchain build metaverse.
Key Features of Metaverse -:
Designers of blockchain based meta verses have generally sought to distinguish their VR worlds from all previous iterations and have placed emphasis on these primary elements, decentralization, user governance, and real world value. Now, early virtual worlds were owned and fully controlled by centralized companies. But on the other hand, blockchain metaverse is tend to be decentralized, with some or all of the inworld items being built using blockchain technology. In essence, this means that blockchain metaverse is themselves tend to diverge from the mainstream business structure and value extraction models typical of today's gaming industry. Indeed, the unique architecture of blockchain games can open up more equitable engagement opportunities for all players, which also means that ownership of the Metaverse space is shared equally across its user base. When it comes to user governance, games like Decentraland, for instance, make use of decentralized autonomous organization or DAO models, as well as governance tokens to help put the players themselves in charge of the game's future road map through governance systems. In this way, the Metaverse environment can in turn, become much more than just a simple crypto game as it can potentially turn into an entire society led by its own economic and leadership models. Now, in order to properly explain the real world value element of the blockchain metaverse, I will be referring to three main examples here axie Infinity, the sandbox and network and FYI folks, I must stress that I'm not personally associated with these projects in any way, shape or form. Anything you hear me talk about here does not equate to financial advice, so please do bear that in mind.
Axie Infinity -:
Now Axie Infinity was arguably the blockchain gaming project that originally kicked off the game fi and Metaverse trend several months before any of these tech giants announced their aspirations to build a metaverse. I must admit though, that aesthetically axie isn't much to look at when compared with many other startlingly realistic games. In fact, it primarily revolves around Pokémon inspired characters that fight and breed in a straight forward game of strategy. This NFT game is rather simplistic, however. It has thus far generated approximately 27 and a half thousand ETH in trading volume on opensea alone and counts over 30,000 active traders. The root of Axie's success stems from the fact that it gives users the ability to earn by playing the game. A revolutionary economic advancement. This is especially so for many players in countries such as the Philippines, where it exploded in popularity earlier this year as the pandemic locked many out of work and their means of subsistence. Now it's almost impossible to say exactly how many users are playing the game, but what can be tracked on chain is the sheer volume of axie NFT's traded. These metrics are indicative of the real-world economic utility and intrinsic value of gaming NFT's as financial assets that can be generated on the blockchain through gameplay and sold on the market in exchange for real money and it is indeed games like Axie Infinity that show why tech Titans are progressively gravitating towards the concept of the metaverse, as they essentially offer anyone the possibility to change not just how they work, earn and spend, but also the fundamental ways in which they live, plan and run their lives. All thanks to the power of NFT gaming and ultimately the Metaverse ecosystem. OK so that's axie ,then we have the sandbox.
The Sandbox-:
Now the blockchain gaming sector has seen explosive growth over the course of 2021. This as non fungible tokens and play to earn gaming helped create new income opportunities for people around the globe, while also ushering in a new cohort of users to the Crypto space one project that's deeply involved in gaming and that's been building its own advanced metaverse structure is sandbox. The sandbox is a blockchain based virtual world where users can create, buy, sell and trade digital in game assets such as plots of virtual land. The sandbox began as a 2D mobile game where users could build their own virtual worlds. To date, the sandbox has amassed over 40 million users, and it's also still available on mobile today. As the sandbox evolution. Following the crypto bull run of 2017, the Sandboxes development Company Pixel announced its plans to turn the sandbox into a 3D game built on the Ethereum blockchain, where every in-game item used and created by players is a non fungible token. In 2018, Pixel was acquired by gaming software development company and NFT VC heavyweight ANIMOCA brands. Since that time, the sandbox has raised multiple multimillion dollar funding rounds, led by some of the most well established entities in space and what I find particularly appealing about the sandbox is it's , Virtual land based metaverse. Lands are pieces of digital real estate within the sandbox metaverse that players can buy to build experiences on top of . This essentially means that players can populate their lands with in-game assets to create authentic gaming experiences. The important thing to note here is that each land is classified and stored on chain as an NFT that lives on the Ethereum blockchain, which makes lands tradable and fully customizable. The sandbox has thus far accumulated over 45,000 ETH in trading volume, and that's just on opensea. The current floor price for a plot of land on the sandbox is sitting at over 3.2000 sand tokens, or just over $13,000 at the time of shooting. Users can build on top of their land plots, host events such as concerts and private parties, and essentially architect their entire virtual reality experience. Users can trade their land plots for earth or sand tokens, or even rent their virtual NFT properties out for a fee. This is once again a clear indication of the use case for NFT's as a verifiable proof of ownership over in game assets within a metaverse structure. This in turn also means that landholders can derive both active and passive value from their sandbox NFTS and showcase their full suite of economic utilities within the sandbox. Metaverse. Pretty cool.
Netvrk -:
Now lastly we have network. This is still a relatively young project, but I do, however, find its metaverse ecosystem to be rather fascinating. Netvrk is a Metaverse focus project founded by Michael Katseli, Linus Cheem, and Ian friend. Network describes itself as quote, a social virtual world and platform with powerful creation tools and infrastructure to easily create share, experience and monetize creation. Network's primary goal is to allow users to leverage NFT's and in game land tokens to generate passive revenue via leasing their property or by selling their NFT's, thus creating an entirely metaverse centric economy. This metaverse project furthermore let's users buy assets within its virtual domain, which can include buildings, offices ,vehicles, houses and pretty much anything you can think of. Similarly to the likes of De-centraland and the sandbox, land tokens are perhaps the most valuable commodity in the VR World within netvrk. Now imagine being able to use the platforms tokens to purchase land in prime real estate hotspots such as acute studio loft overlooking the beach, or a penthouse right in the heart of the city. Well, with netvrk this is all very possible, which just makes me think about the inevitability of the mainstream adoption of VR environments, augmented reality, and ultimately of the Metaverse in our everyday lives, from work to sports to art and leisure. But hopefully not in a ready player 1 fashion, because I for one, would not want to be racing for my life.
Metaverse will eventually become a part of our everyday life ?
Now that's it for most on the Metaverse today, guys, this has been all the rage recently and I just had to give my two cents on it. I'll also be following up this blog post at some point with a deeper dive into some of the projects building their VR ecosystems. So do keep your eyes peeled for that. Putting the hype to one side for a second, I do believe that the Metaverse and the development of augmented reality environments is somewhat inevitable, especially as it pertains to the gaming industry. Therefore, I fore-see this space growing at a rapid pace over the course of the next few years, but I will say this not every project and crypto looking to build its own metaverse will succeed in the long run, so try not to fall too easily for the hype and be sure to do your own research before diving into your chosen virtual world. That being said, I find the metaverse to be a captivating concept and I would not be at all surprised if at some point in the not too distant future. That's the post done for today, folks, but I'm sure you'll have plenty of questions, so please don't hesitate to let me know and shoot me a comment down below and what do you think of the Metaverse? Where do you think the space is heading? Are you looking to get a plot of land somewhere? If so, where? I'm really curious to know and remember to share this article to as many people as possible it motivates me to make more such inetersting content on crypto.
To read more such interesting articles please pay a visit to https://www.cryptolibrarynow.com/
Thank You , Keep learning keep growing .
Your post was upvoted and resteemed on @crypto.defrag
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit