The Metaverse and its Evolution
The concept of the Metaverse is not an entirely new innovation as thought by many. It was first deceived in a Bestselling Novel by Neal Stephenson and had its first real-life project with the video game Second Life, which began back in 2003.
Second Life, considered by many to be the first metaverse created, involves people creating virtual avatars to represent themselves, allowing them to interact with objects, places, and other people. Even before Second Life, projects such as The Palace, where users can interact with one another, also using an avatar to represent themselves, became popular due to people’s ability to meet others from all over the world and give themselves a new identity.
This was a catalyst to many other virtual world chat rooms that featured different rooms or places for people to travel to and interact.
Where we are now
Now, metaverses have become so much more advanced and are not limited to only interacting with the people and environment around them, but even creating virtual items to be bought, sold, and used in the platform; buying and selling land to monetize it and sell items from, hold concerts and other events, and much more.
At the moment, there are several metaverse projects, each with their own special functions that makes them unique. Here are some of the most popular metaverses projects known at the moment, all decentralized and built on the Ethereum blockchain.
Photo Credit: Cryptonomist
Decentraland
Decentraland is a virtual reality platform where users “create, experience, and monetize their content and applications,” which is highlighted in their whitepaper.
The platform has LAND available for sale, which is a non-fungible digital asset and is used by developers as a base to build on top of. Users can then use their LAND to create museums, games, shops, and many other advanced structures, and the only limitation? Their imagination. Estates can be created by connecting two parcels of adjacent LAND, and are especially useful when building bigger structures that don’t fit on one parcel alone.
It is important to note that LAND is scarce as it is a non-fungible digital asset, just like other NFT art that you may be more familiar with, and has a set number that can be bought and sold, which ensures the values of the LAND parcels are stable.
Just like many other projects, Decentraland has its own native currency, MANA (ERC-20), that is used to buy LAND and all other transactions within the game.
Photo Credits: Forbes
The Sandbox
Although not yet released to the public, the Sandbox is already one of the most popular metaverse games out there, which may be due to the previous success of their two mobile games, The Sandbox (2011) and The Sandbox Evolution (2016), which collectively amassed 40 million downloads across Android and IOS. The Sandbox also resembles the popular games Roblox and Minecraft, and make it their goal to disrupt the market of these games by providing real ownership to creators over their creations as NFTs and rewarding them for their contribution to the ecosystem.
Creators achieve the aforementioned “true ownership” over user-generated content (UCG) by creating and securing their creations in the blockchain and smart contracts through these three comprehensive, yet easy, products.
- Voxel Editor (VoxEdit): A powerful 3D voxel modeling and NFT creation package available for both PC and Mac, allowing 3D objects to be created and animated by users, such as humans, animals, foliage, vehicles, and tools and items. Objects created by users can then be exported to The Sandbox from VoxEdit and become NFT game assets.
- Marketplace: Just like a traditional online marketplace for anything else, a marketplace is a place for users to upload, publish, and sell their VoxEdit creations as NFTs. They are then put on the market as ASSETS and are sold once an initial sale offer is set.
- Game Maker: Possibly the coolest feature, The Sandbox game maker lets users build amazing 3D games free of charge. Thanks to the accessible visual scripting tools, users do not need to code to create 3D games quickly for all to enjoy and be apart of building the vast metaverse of The Sandbox.
$SAND (ERC-20) is the token used within the game for all the interactions and transactions within the ecosystem. The Sandbox also names their building bases LAND, where they can create their assets, interactive experiences, and assets. LAND in The Sandbox is also a non-fungible digital asset that is verified on the Ethereum blockchain. Players who build/assemble UGC also create ASSETS, a token with the main utility of serving as creation elements in The Sandbox Game Maker.
Photo Credits: Nikopartners
Axie Infinity
Not only the most well-known on this list but in the crypto world is Axie Infinity. Axie Infinity is the most popular “play-to-earn” game out and has been for a long time. This game is very much different from Decentraland and The Sandbox, as it is first and foremost a competitive game and not necessarily a socializing platform.
In Axie Infinity, players buy and breed “Axies,” which are the name of the monsters. They then use Axies to battle each other to win in-game currency called smooth love potions (SLP), which can then be used to exchange for fiat cash. Just like its metaverse counterparts, Axie Infinity also has land that can be bought and sold. Land acts as a home or operation base for Axies and may have resource nodes spawn randomly, leading to the discovery of different resources that upgrade the land itself and Axies. Some items can be placed on top of the land that increases the stats of Axies. Like all the other things in this article, Axies, SLPs, land, and land items are all non-fungible digital assets and can be bought and sold on the in-app marketplace and other marketplaces such as OpenSea. Axie Infinity also has its token, Axie Infinity Shards (AXS), which acts as an in-game currency and can be used as currency to buy the Axie Infinity marketplace.
Photo Credits: Space-Metaverse
Space
As a newcomer in the game, Space is an exciting opportunity for many existing, new, and potential business people looking to expand or start their businesses. Just like Decentraland, The Sandbox, and Axie Infinity, Space has a unique objective, which is to provide users with decentralized and immersive event and commerce experiences.
As a metaverse catered to the arts, Space aims to provide powerful builder tools that allow users to design and create immersive commerce spaces without barriers to make shopping experiences as realistic and fun as physically going to the store. Beyond developing tools that make creating an immersive commerce space easy, Space will also implement powerful tools for selling products and managing orders. Users can share their designed spaces as templates for other people to use for different business use cases.
Although not yet fully developed, Space has already acquired partnerships with many top fashion brands, art galleries, musicians, music festivals, beauty brands, and influencer events to create a foundation for different industries to enter the metaverse and create equally rewarding experiences in the virtual world.
Land can also be bought like the other metaverse listed, which can also be monetized and used to host anything you imagine — the opportunities are limitless.
Currently, users can choose from a selection of avatars that best represents themselves, design and create their own spaces, import 3D models from Sketchfab into their space, upload pictures, gifs, and emojis for others to enjoy, or just to express themselves! Although the functions are still limited, many functions will quickly become available as the project progresses, so make sure to stay tuned!
There’s no better time than now…
As you may have only recently heard of the metaverse due to its adoption by many of the world’s biggest companies, the metaverse is nothing new to those who have been paying attention, and chances are, you have probably heard of or partaken in a metaverse without even knowing it! Moreover, there are many new and existing metaverse projects that are available to enter, and they are all equally impressive and innovative! The metaverse craze is only beginning, so get involved soon be one of the early adopters!
