What Is The METAVERSE?
The term metaverse was actually coined in 1992 by science-fiction author Neal Stephenson in this book Snow Crash. The metaverse is a virtual world as part of a shared or “communal” digital reality. This includes virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) platforms and technologies that allow you to create an avatar that represents you. This avatar will interact and engage with this digital world.
This world will include aspects of social media, shopping, advertising, commerce, NFT trading, real estate, education, hanging out, playing, etc.
When we think about the Metaverse, terms such as The Oasis from the book & movie Ready Player One and the movie The Matrix (1999) come to mind.
These are different iterations of the same concept, humans plug into a shared virtual world where they can interact with each other and with the surrounding digital environment. The Matrix’ version of the metaverse is a much more sinister and dystopian version, whereas The Oasis is more fitting to the metaverse realms that we see being developed nowadays.
What does the metaverse mean within the blockchain and crypto industry? In crypto: blockchain technology, cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and video games are connected and interlinked within these metaverse realms.
The combination of video games with NFTs and cryptocurrencies resulted in the blockchain-based play-to-earn model. This play-to-earn model has obviously gained significant traction because it can generate more than a traditional salary for many players, and especially during the pandemic where many workers were, in one way or another, removed from the workforce. This digital world allowed and is still enabling many people to still earn a living for their families.
Axie offers a play-to-earn model in which Pokemon-like Axie creatures battle, build and hunt for treasure. You can own the characters that battle and breed them to grow your “army” and you can own land within the metaverse world to farm for resources and potential tokens. Each creature and land is an NFT and you are rewarded with Smooth Love Potion $SLP (a cryptocurrency).
Decentraland is a virtual world comprised by traversable, 3D virtual spaced called LAND on which owners can create static scenes, games and interactive dApps. You can create, experience and monetize content and dApps on Decentraland. You can create a customized avatar and interact with the virtual world.
TheSandbox is similar to Decentraland, you can create and monetize assets and gaming experiences. TheSandbox also allows you to purchase and customize land. SAND focuses on a community-driven platform with user-generated content and games.
VulcanVerse is a open-world massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) written with lore. You can purchase land in VulcanVerse and your Vulcanite creatures can forage for NFTs that give you extra benefits and features. Once a player reaches a certain XP level, the player becomes eligible to earn $LAVA for all their in-game actions.
My Neighbor Alice is a multiplayer builder game, where anyone can buy and own virtual islands, collect and build items and meet new friends. Inspired by successful games such as Animal Crossing that allows the players to experience the game play but also allows the players to purchase and collect NFTs.
We can’t have a metaverse article without mentioning Boson. Boson Protocol focuses on decentralized commerce (dcommerce) by automating digital to physical redemption using NFTs encoded with game theory. This will bring an incredibly useful feature to the metaverse realm (currently will be featured in Decentraland), allowing users to purchase items in the digital world and redeem them in the physical world.
Nakamoto offers an in-house suite of play-to-earn-games and offers developers a platform to easily deploy their own play-to-earn gaming creations. Additionally, they will launch the Nakaverse which will be a virtual and immersive gaming world that’ll hold in-game economies and features such as ammunition stores, NFT galleries, shopping malls and more.
These protocols and platforms allow you to jump into their virtual world and exist digitally. Hopefully in the future we’ll be able to have your avatar teleport in and out of different worlds, and we’ll be able to work, study, play, socialize, and transact in these digital realities.
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