What’s everyone doing in the CryptoVoxels Metaverse?

MetaCat

Published in

Coinmonks

10 min readSep 25, 2021

Author: DawnXue（@dawnx666）

Translation: Chyn Chiou-Yeu（@C_Chyn）

Foreword

My two previous articles dealt with CV Analysis without providing any background information on CV, which I realized might have been quite unfriendly for people who knew little about CV. This is why I am writing the current article.

This article will introduce CV in three aspects:

- What is CV?

- What can parcel owners do in CV?

- What can players or visitors do in CV?

What is CV?

Cryptovoxels , often abbreviated as CV, was founded in April 2018 by Nolan Consulting, a company headquartered in Wellington, New Zealand. The team was founded by Ben Nolan (Figure 1).

Liu Cixin, author of The Three-Body Problem, once said that “humanities have two roads before them: one outward to stars and oceans, another inward to virtual reality.” CV is one of such virtual realities. As of now, there are more than 5000 parcels of land on 20 islands (see Figure 2 for a map). More than 90% of the parcels have been sold.

CV is based on the Ethereum chain. There is public and unalterable records for every transaction and every ownership, linking to every wallet address (comparable to bank account numbers) by every users. This is why anyone can download the transaction and ownership data from the chain without official permission. In addition, permission from the account holder is not necessary to view transactional records (including counterparty, time, and content) and properties (including NFTs outside CV) of any wallet address. All historical data of a parcel can also be accessed as long as you know the parcel ID. CV is a marvelous creation on the foundation of Blockchain, itself a great invention.

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What can parcel owners do in CV?

Investment

Just like in real life, land and realty are always linked to investment in the virtual world. CV is no exception. Purchased parcels can be resold on the secondary markets, creating active trading with significant volume. The average price of parcel sales in August 2021 is around 2.2ETH, or USD 7,100, CNY 45,800 (using the exchange rate for 31 Aug 2021). Here are some of our interesting findings on parcel sales.

As of August 2021, we’ve found 622 wallet addresses that had bought a parcel and then sold that parcel. Total profits (selling price minus buying price) from those 622 addresses add up to 3.89 million dollars. However, not everyone made money. You can see below the top 10 wallet addresses in rate of return (Figure 3), the top 10 wallet addresses in rate of loss (Figure 4), and the best and worst parcels in terms of rate of return (Figure 5).

Figure 3 :the top 10 wallet addresses in rate of return(From left to right：The serial number；The number sold；Purchase price；The Selling price；profits；Rate of return）

Figure 4：the top 10 wallet addresses in rate of loss

Figure 5：the best and worst parcels in terms of rate of return

Surprisingly, the top 10 in rate of return are all above 14,900% with the top 1 at 130,192%. The wallet address with the highest rate of return has only ever bought and sold one parcel — Number 2302 on the southern seashore of the main island. The parcel was bought at 0.11ETH in 2018 and sold at 10ETH on 31 Aug 2021, making a 90 times rise in terms of ETH, combined with 14 times rise of EHS in terms of USD, leading to a 1391 times rise in USD.

One parcel with significant loss was Number 1205. Bought at 3.49ETH in September 2020, it was sold at only 0.4ETH in the next month, a price significantly less that the average price that month. Why was it sold at such a low price? Only the owner knew.

(Note: when collecting the data, we found that some wallet addresses only have selling data, which means the parcel was transferred to the wallet from another, which may or may not has the same ultimate owner. Because we cannot know about the ownership or possibly transaction price of such situations, these are not included in the statistics.)

Construction

Compared to the real world, construction in CV is less troublesome, less time-consuming, less laborious, and less expensive, while providing for much more freedom for creativity. There are three main types of feature (or material) in CV: voxels (3-dimentional pixels), images, and audio — the latter two can be directly uploaded.

Voxels have two types: those that come with CV and those that must be uploaded from elsewhere. The former (coming with CV) includes mostly bricks of different colors, which can be used by directly clicking on them. The latter (uploaded from elsewhere) must be created by dedicated software, such as MagicaVoxels. Although it is friendly to new users, but it takes some practice to construct refined objects. Once you’ve mastered MagicaVoxels, you can build anything you want. Here are a few interesting examples.

The first time I used MagicaVoxels, I was instantly attracted. After trying a bunch of functions, I made my first voxel, a red table with a smiling face on this, which I brought to a wedding ceremony on CV.

Figure 6：a red table with a smiling face

But this is nothing compared to the impressive architectures, such as the following.

https://www.cryptovoxels.com/play?coords=N@645W,182N,-0.5U

A seaside amusement park (Figure 7) with red castles, romantic fireworks, exquisite taverns, sailing ships, merry-go-arounds, fountains, rainbrows… Link: https://www.cryptovoxels.com/play?coords=N@645W,182N,-0.5U

A panda park (Figure 8), not far away from the seaside amusement park, with a huge panda sitting by the sea, surrounded by a few smaller panda, grassland, and bamboo. Link: https://www.cryptovoxels.com/play?coords=N@586W,236N

The CV headquarter of Real Vision (Figure 9) that looks exactly like a small European town. Link: https://www.cryptovoxels.com/play?coords=N@352W,51S,3.5U

Figure 9：The CV headquarter of Real Vision

A carefully-decorated seaside restaurant called haolinju (Figure 10). The first floor has marble walls, long tables, square stools. The second floor has a separate dining room with a round table for eight. The third floor is a barbeque space with beer and foldable tables. Link: https://www.cryptovoxels.com/play?coords=W@562W,280N,5F

Figure 10：A carefully-decorated seaside restaurant called haolinju

The elegant Whale Garden (Figure 11) where a huge whale float above the Chinese style garden, with clearly visible details such as Chinese-style windows. Link: https://www.cryptovoxels.com/play?coords=N@414W,339S

These five are only examples of many fascinating buildings. Construction requires no purchased material and no teams of works. It won’t take months or years. It doesn’t require computer programming. As long as you have imagination and you’re willing to learn to use the software, you can build something like this. If you want to feel the sense of accomplishment from creation, all you need to do is to put your mind to designing and building.

Operation

Buildings in CV, according to their names, are mostly galleries, headquarters, towers, gardens, houses, shops, clubs, museums, and MVBs, apart from other types such as amusement parks and restaurants.

Most buildings’ interior matches their exterior, but some buildings don’t have actual operation apart from their featured appearance, such as restaurants, amusement parks, and residential houses. A few others have function other than their appearance. For example, Marble Tower is a tower, but it is used for exhibitions.

Therefore, we divide the buildings into four categories according to their actual operations: exhibitions, shops, events, and HQ branding.

Exhibitions. Artists or collectors show their artwork at venues with possible updates. Curators sometimes hold exhibitions according to the situation of the building (Figure 12). For crypto art, display in the virtual reality of CV is only natural. For the owner of the property, the building and curation constitute a tailored virtual exhibition.

Link to mnotArt Community Gallery: https://www.cryptovoxels.com/play?coords=SE@711W,561S

Link to HORIZON: https://www.cryptovoxels.com/play?coords=E@6533W,72N

Shops are the most connected to the outside world. Visitors can click on merchandise and jump to outside link for purchase. For example, in Vox Walk, items are placed in standardized cells, creating a feeling of shopping. Items for sale convey the vibe of virtual reality: all kinds of voxels such as clothes, shoes, and headgears. Another shop, CryptoPunk.shop specialize in punk, where items from different collectors are put on display for sales.

Link to Vox Walk: https://www.cryptovoxels.com/play?coords=N@6488W,121S

Link to cryptopunk.shop: https://www.cryptovoxels.com/play?coords=NE@40E,27N

Events are usually organized outside CV. Guests are invited, venues are selected, and finally the event is held in CV just like in any other online or on-site venues. One example is the recent wedding of two NFT virtual persons, a great success built on attracting visitors to the virtual world. Link: https://www.cryptovoxels.com/play?coords=N@802W,233N

HQ branding. Some of the headquarters really do deserve their names. Real Vision has an exquisite red-brick villa. Mintbase has a nicely-decorated front desk with eye-catching LOGO in their lobby. Rare Pizza shows a picture of pizza next to their front desk. I think the branding works because I was interested enough to research what Real Vision does and where Rare Pizza sells their pizzas.

As of now, interactive activities are still rare on CV and many activities are getting similar. Exhibition is the most common in interactive activities, followed by shopping. For both of them, the most important consideration is traffic. Fortunately, CV has seen dramatic increase in traffic from a year ago (Figure 16). Since March 2021, monthly traffic has stayed above on million. CV is getting more prosperous by the day.

What can players (visitors) do?

CV is very easily accessible. As a visitor, all you need is a computer and internet connection. Go to CV’s official site at https://www.cryptovoxels.com/ or any of the links above, and then you’re in the virtual world.

You can freely fly in CV. Just press F.

In CV, you can go to exhibitions, go shopping, attend virtual events, and experience the joy of building something. CV itself is like an exhibition where the buildings are like 3D artworks. Using the flying functions, you can see its every angle.

Inside the buildings, there might be collection of CryptoPunks, exhibition of artworks and many other possibilities. In virtual events, there are even more possibilities: parties, photography, cyber clubbing, and even online wedding. Even if you’ve never bought any land, you can create your own parcel to enjoy building by logging in through imtoken: https://www.cryptovoxels.com/account/spaces

Final Remarks

For the past three years, the CV team keep developing the virtual world, where parcel owner build with their imagination and technology, attracting more and more visitors. But how can we go farther on this road to virtual reality? I believe more possibilities lies with diversifying the operations of venue and stronger connection with the real world, so that CV becomes more playable to everyone after the initial honeymoon period.

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