Pavia: Revolutionizing Ownership With the Metaverse, Cardano’s Answer to Sandbox and Decentraland
Background
Pavia is a project built on the Cardano blockchain that immerses users into the metaverse, an in-game world owned by its users who are free to build whatever they can imagine. By using non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to represent pieces of land in the in-game world, Pavia grants the ownership of its entire metaverse to its user base.
Like Ethereum, Cardano is a general-purpose blockchain that supports smart contracts and enables NFTs, Decentralized Finance (DeFi), and everything else under the Web3 umbrella. Cardano utilizes a proof-of-stake protocol and, unlike most other general-purpose blockchains, it is separated into 2 layers: the settlement layer (CSL) and the computation layer (CCL). The purpose of separating tasks between these two layers is to allow for greater scalability in the long run. Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano and a co-founder of Ethereum, envisions Cardano being a scalable and sustainable blockchain that is suitable for global use and built to last for centuries. While Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin is known for his “move fast and break things” approach, Cardano takes a slower approach, involving a greater degree of research and planning before rolling out the final product.
Developed by the Pavia team, Pavia was launched in September of 2021. The Pavia team largely consists of pseudonymous team members who have not yet doxed themselves, with the exception of two. CEO & Co-Founder Paul Manuel, with a background in gaming and years of experience at Unity Technologies, and Ross Simpson, Pavia’s community and marketing manager, have both revealed their identities and regularly appear in Q&As on Pavia’s YouTube channel.
With a total of 26,000,000 $ADA in sales volume, Pavia is the largest metaverse project on Cardano and is also the fourth largest NFT collection on the entirety of Cardano. Betting on Pavia means not just betting on the metaverse, but also counting on the success of Cardano as a whole.
Tokenomics
Pavia features a map of 100,000 land parcels that were sold in three separate installments between October 2021 and February 2022, each selling out almost immediately. Each land parcel exists as an NFT held in a user’s crypto wallet, granting the users equity and ownership over the entire Pavia world. Users may hold onto their land, buy, or sell it on secondary marketplaces like JPG Store, or can build upon it in the metaverse. Upon sale, land parcels could be minted in sets of 9 plots to form a 3x3 square on the map, known as an estate. Users who own estates are able to upload an image which appears on the map over the plots they own.
In addition to land parcels, the Pavia ecosystem features a native utility token called $PAVIA, which is available for trading on Cardano’s largest decentralized exchanges including Minswap and SundaeSwap. With a total supply of 2 billion $PAVIA tokens, the distribution is as follows: 25% for Community Airdrops, 25% for Liquidity and Utility, 30% for Project Development and Ecosystem, and 20% for the Pavia Team and Advisors, which may only be released following a lockup schedule.
Utility
Beyond being tradable assets, Pavia land parcels have endless potential in the Pavia metaverse. As the foundation of the Pavia map, land owners may build whatever they please on their plots in-game. Likewise, the $PAVIA token is more than just a cryptocurrency: as the native utility token of the metaverse, it can be used to purchase in-game assets created by other players, pay for exclusive events and experiences, and more. While the official Pavia metaverse is not yet finalized in its entirety, the Pavia team has released a few tools for users to experiment with:
- The Pavia 3D Model Viewer Tool allows users to upload files of items they plan on importing into the game, such as a custom-made Pavia-compatible asset (PCA) or a structure for their land plot to see how it would look in-game.
- The Pavia Builder Tool enables users to create a scene featuring multiple pre-loaded and/or custom-made PCAs that might resemble what they plan on building on their land plot. Currently, the Pavia team is developing a new and improved builder tool that is expected to be released this year.
- The Pavia Playground, recently released in Q2 of 2023, allows users to enter the Pavia metaverse for the first time and view what is being built. As of now, the Pavia Playground is a limited-area prototype environment in the map’s central plaza where users can hang out.
The building potential for land in Pavia is limitless: users can build a store and sell custom made PCAs and accessories; they can host exclusive live events and have other players purchase tickets with $PAVIA; and companies can even use land in Pavia to create places or events where they can sell and promote their real-world products and services, something several high-profile companies have done in other metaverses recently.
Progress & Developments
Since Pavia’s launch, there has been a steady stream of developments and milestones reached for the project. The releases of the Pavia 3D Model Viewer Tool, an early version of the Pavia Builder Tool, and the opening of the Pavia Playground are just a few examples of the progress made on this metaverse project. Since March of 2022, the Pavia team has been consistently uploading to their YouTube channel, clueing in their user base on upcoming projects. Through their channel, they have released trailers and sneak peaks of recent developments, and have held monthly podcasts featuring Q&As and developer updates.
One of Pavia’s first major developments was its partnership with ReadyPlayerMe, a leading avatar platform enabling users to create a cross-application avatar which can be used in hundreds of different games and apps. ReadyPlayerMe allows players to upload a selfie, which it will then use to create an avatar resembling their likeness.
More recently, Pavia hosted its first-ever live event in December of 2022, taking place at the main plaza in its metaverse. The event was a huge success, attracting roughly 1000 users to join and view the progress themselves for the first time.
In the coming months, the Pavia team has several exciting developments planned for its metaverse, including the full release of the new and improved V1.0 Pavia Scene Builder Tool, cross-chain interoperability with an initial focus on NFT-based assets, and the eventual first phase of early access rollout for the finalized Pavia world.
Market Analysis
When compared to the leaders in the metaverse space, Pavia appears to be significantly undervalued. Built on Ethereum, the leading metaverse world is Sandbox, which has seen its land purchased by Adidas, Ubisoft, Binance, and Gucci, among many other companies that are building experiences to sell and promote their products in the digital world. Decentraland, the second largest metaverse world, is also built on Ethereum and has seen its land bought by Samsung, UPS, and Sotheby’s. With Decentraland’s launch in February 2020 and Sandbox’s launch in November 2021, both projects have had the final releases of their metaverse worlds available and playable for the public for some time now.
Based on the calculated Map Values, obtained by multiplying the total supply of NFT land parcels by the current floor price, it appears that Sandbox and Decentraland are valued at ~27x and ~21x greater than Pavia, respectively.
Looking at the sales volume of these 3 metaverse projects since 2021, it appears that the trading of land parcels in both Sandbox and Decentraland has fizzled out. In July of 2023, Sandbox, Decentraland, and Pavia had totals of $481,179, $296,791, and $50,362 in trading volume for land parcels, respectively. Sandbox had ~9.5x and Decentraland had ~6x the amount of trading volume for land parcels than Pavia did in the month of July — numbers that don’t quite justify Sandbox’s 27x and Decentraland’s 21x valuation multiples over Pavia’s numbers.
Looking at the number of unique wallets holding land in Sandbox, Decentraland, and Pavia, all three projects have followed a similar trajectory. A steep increase towards the end of 2021 brought plenty of new metaverse investors, which Pavia has managed to maintain just as well as both Sandbox and Decentraland. Currently, Pavia still boasts just under 18,000 unique holders who have been invested in the project for about 18 months now, placing it just in between the 24,086 and 8,039 holders of land in Sandbox and Decentraland, respectively.
Challenges
Pavia faces two broader challenges that stand as obstacles to its success:
- Firstly, the greatest challenge would be that the metaverse concept was a passing trend. The rapid rise in popularity seen in 2021 was simply an overhyped wave of investors, and that same level of interest in metaverse projects may never be renewed. While this is a possibility, the numbers of unique wallet holders and the degree of the development in the space indicates that this is unlikely. Sandbox, Decentraland, and Pavia alike have maintained tens of thousands of unique holders who persisted through the recent crypto winter. The additional validation from companies like Gucci, Adidas, and even JPMorgan, creating a lounge in Decentraland, shows that the concept of the metaverse may be here to stay.
- The second greatest challenge facing Pavia is the competition. Sandbox and Decentraland have already secured a great deal of interest in the metaverse space and have maintained their dominance to this date. Pavia also faces incumbent challengers on its own blockchain; Cornucopias, Cardalonia, and CardanoVillage are just a few of the many other metaverse projects being built on Cardano. However, by total sales volume and number of unique holders as well as overall progress in development, Pavia stands far ahead of these competitors. Furthermore, there is likely a lot more money entering the metaverse space, and considering how close Pavia is to releasing a product similar to that of leaders Sandbox and Decentraland, it’s plausible that Pavia will capture a good chunk of it.
Conclusion
Pavia is a solid metaverse project with a consistent and dedicated team that is close to releasing a finished product. By representing pieces of the map as NFT land parcels, Pavia enables its players to own the entire metaverse. The Pavia ecosystem is complete with a native utility token that can be used to purchase custom-made assets, access live events or services, and more.
With the incorporation of ReadyPlayerMe for avatar creation, numerous tools to experiment and build with PCAs, and the Pavia Playground where users can actually enter the metaverse and explore an early-access area, Pavia is closer than ever to an official release. Not only is Pavia close, but it’s closer than a lot of other metaverse projects, and it is not far behind from the leading metaverse projects, Sandbox and Decentraland. Both Sandbox and Decentraland have been available to the public for only a few years, a milestone which Pavia is on the cusp of reaching.
As a metaverse project soon-to-be released with all of the same major features (ownable land parcel NFTs, native utility token, avatars, and custom assets & accessories) and a dedicated user base of just under 18,000 unique holders, Pavia is a comparable up-and-comer to the dominants of the metaverse space. With Sandbox having ~9.5x and Decentraland having ~6x the amount of sales, Pavia is a lot closer in size and popularity to these two metaverse leaders than their >20x valuation multiples indicate.
Pavia’s land parcels and utility tokens are clearly undervalued assets and remain mispriced in the market. Being not only the largest metaverse project on the Cardano blockchain, Pavia is also the fourth largest NFT collection of all time by sales volume on Cardano. Trailing just behind the two largest metaverse projects on Ethereum, Pavia will soon be the first and largest officially released metaverse on Cardano. With a series of positive events for the crypto space standing ahead of us, from the looming approval of the first spot Bitcoin ETF to the next Bitcoin halving in 2024, it will be exciting to see where the market is headed. As new investors pour into the space again and the latest crypto winter becomes history, it’s likely that Pavia’s discount will be left behind with it.
References
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