CHAPTER 6
Enter the Metaverse
Robert Doyle was a career real estate agent before he took a 180-degree turn and began speculating on virtual land and Metaverse businesses. The irony in that statement is too real. Doyle is one of the many early Metaverse adopters whose competitive advantages are simply being interested in the new technology, diving deep into learning about emerging projects, and putting their money where their mouth is.
We should note that Doyle isn't your average crypto-Joe. He operates more than 500 blockchain nodes, has invested in nearly 200 crypto projects, and runs a crypto advisory firm. So he's not a novice by any means. But his story is not too different than many others who have entered the Metaverse before the masses.
Doyle was featured in a Business Insider article for the unique assets he acquired in a Metaverse called Polka City. Polka City aims to be the “Grand Theft Auto for cryptocurrency”—a reference to the wildly popular video game franchise that revolves around rising through the ranks of a system to develop power. Like most Metaverse projects, Polka City sold NFTs of their in-game assets before the game was developed. They did this in order to fund the immense undertaking of designing a video game. These in-game assets ranged from jetpacks and taxis to hot dog stands and gas stations.
When Polka City announced that minting these NFTs was underway, Doyle had his sights set on the revenue-generating assets. Specifically, he purchased a car repair shop for $23,000 USD and a bank for $3,500 USD. When Polka City is a fully functioning game, these two businesses will generate revenue at a predetermined rate—the car repair shop at 3,750 $POLC per week + 0.00001% for every citizen, while the bank splits a 25% share of all the bridge fees of people converting another crypto into $POLC.
Robert Doyle is a small business owner in the Metaverse. Even though Polka City is in development, like a strategic speculator who buys land in a booming area of town, his assets are already appreciating based on the demand for this Metaverse. The appreciation on these assets alone has netted him nearly $100,000 USD. These profits are held in $POLC—the game's currency—which he could, of course, liquidate. But like so many others, he's here for the long game.
Doyle is just one of the many early Metaverse adopters who is finding fringe opportunities across the landscape of different Metaverses out there. These are not all blind bets. With the right due diligence on the development team, the strength of the community, and their ability to deliver on the roadmap, people like Doyle are finding diamonds in the rough. Now, these diamonds' worth is still speculative. But they're diamonds nonetheless.
Naturally, it's hard to dispute that the majority of Metaverse early adopters are looking for financial incentives. But we caution you from assuming it's the only reason that people are entering the Metaverse.
For example, what was the financial incentive for Ryan and Candice Hurley to get legally married in Decentraland?
The Hurleys had an interest in Decentraland and the Metaverse that they explored often. Therefore, their incentive was the precedent they set by paving the way for a new Metaverse use case. They will go down in history as the first wedding on a blockchain-based Metaverse platform, joining the ranks of two other notable blockchain marriage proposals. The Disney World Bitcoin Conference in 2014 hosted the first blockchain wedding, writing “For better or worse, 'til death do us part because the blockchain is forever.” onto the blockchain. Second, in 2021, a California couple who worked at Coinbase wrote a smart contract on Ethereum to issue tokenized “rings” as NFTs during their wedding. The Hurleys are now added to the canonical history of blockchain weddings. By being Metaverse early adopters and taking the risk on their idea, they've reignited the vision of a world filled with virtual weddings. The Hurleys exemplify the behaviors of Metaverse Interest Geeks discussed in Chapter 3, “Why You Should Care About the Metaverse.”
Related to this, there's a long-term opportunity for Rose Law Group, who handled the legality of this marriage and hosted the wedding on their Decentraland property. Cointelegraph described their work on the project:
The law group developed a “meta-marriage framework” by incorporating a “Virtual Premarital Agreement,” which identified the couple's virtual identities and digital assets as recorded on the blockchain. Meanwhile, a “Meta-Marriage License” identified, recorded, and tokenized the couple's virtual identities and place of marriage on the blockchain as a nonfungible token.
Rose Law Group is vying to establish the virtual wedding industry—a concept that could make marriage as accessible as tying the knot in Las Vegas and as limitless as the Metaverse is. They benefit from the knowledge learned through coordinating this event. Not only did they face challenges regarding the legality of this digital marriage (which may not be legally binding), but they also faced technical difficulties in handling the 2,000 attendees. The team that will win the market for virtual weddings will surely be the ones who've experimented the most, understand where the friction lies, and formulate resolutions for all of these hurdles.
Lastly, let's not forget about the 2,000+ attendees who can say they were at the first Meta-Marriage in Decentraland. As thanks for attending, some (not all) were given a POAP NFT to show they were there. POAPs, which are a proof-of-attendance protocol, are tokens that prove you experienced a blockchain-based event. There's an entire subgenre of NFT collectors who simply like amassing proof that they were early adopters of the Metaverse.
As you can see in just this one Metaverse use case, there are multiple motivations for each of the participants. The one common throughline for all of them, though, is the Metaverse event they co-experienced. Each participant now has another reason to talk about Decentraland. Each participant has a story to share with others who don't understand the value of the Metaverse. That's what makes these current moments of experimentation so special.
The purpose of this chapter is to show the wealth of people building experiences in the Metaverse and the variety of use cases they're creating. We want you to understand that there are more ways of getting involved in the Metaverse at this point than simply buying some property there. Yes, getting involved can be just investing. But it can also be as simple as buying a VR headset and exploring a virtual equivalent of your interests like poker, networking, or brain games. If you want to go deeper, you can find developers and design your own space. You can go even deeper and work with companies like Boson Protocol (which we'll discuss later in the “Decentraland” section) to literally build an e-commerce store in Decentraland that will deliver physical products.
The point is that there's more than one way of entering the Metaverse right now. And this chapter will cover a wide variety of use cases from the practical to the possible to the downright visionary.
Not all Metaverses are created alike. So we've first organized the Metaverses by overarching category, with use cases to color in the possibilities in each. The Metaverse categories are as follows:
- Sandbox Metaverses: Open platforms that allow for a high degree of freedom in what users can build, how they express themselves through their avatars, and what they purchase through in-game economies.
- Gaming Metaverses: Virtual video game environments with clear goals and missions for players, but also featuring economies for players to earn in the game.
- Miscellaneous Metaverses: Platforms that don't fit any of these categories but offer a unique experience that will likely be integrated across other Metaverses.
Of course, most Metaverse platforms don't fit nicely into any single box, but rather incorporate bits and pieces of each category.
What you'll quickly come to realize is the amount of optionality in Metaverse platforms you can try. This optionality makes it unwise to invest oneself entirely into one platform. Some people believe highly in the outlook of certain Metaverses, like the DCLblogger who has built an entire brand and business around Decentraland. But when you're in the learning phase, it's best to try a few different platforms.
Ultimately, there are fringe Metaverse opportunities everywhere, as long as you're eager to try new things. With that being said, let's dive into the different ways you can begin entering the Metaverse today.
Sandbox Metaverses
Sandbox Metaverses trace their lineage back to sandbox video games. The term, of course, gets its name from the nature of a sandbox that allows kids to create whatever they want within the confines of the sandbox. Sandbox games, think Minecraft and Roblox, provide players with an open world to explore and create. Although sandbox games give users tools and assets that are the foundation of the experience, there is no predetermined goal set by the game's developers. In that sense, a sandbox game's sole mission is to inspire creativity. It's like a deck of cards. The structure is set. There are only 52 cards and a couple of jokers. But how you choose to play with that deck of cards is entirely up to your imagination.
You can say that sandbox games, in a way, crowdsource the game's development. This enables sandbox games to grow by network effects. Every time a user creates a new game or event within a sandbox environment it becomes an opportunity to attract new users, while also giving existing users another reason to spend that extra hour in the game.
Where sandbox Metaverses differ from sandbox games is in their integration with a blockchain. All of the land and assets within a sandbox Metaverse are minted as NFTs and tracked on the blockchain. This provides a true sense of ownership and scarcity for in-game accessories and digital assets.
Sandbox Metaverses market themselves as uncharted territory and the freedom to stake one's own space and create whatever you desire on your land. Whereas ownership is the driving force, it's the promise of community that is the retaining feature.
Although there doesn't yet exist a true Metaverse in the sense of a MirrorWorld where every single economic driver in the real world now exists in a virtual world, sandbox Metaverses are the closest thing we have to “the Metaverse.” Because sandbox Metaverses provide so much freedom to their users to create what they want, they also have the most creators building unique things. We can't discuss all of them, but we will explore some of the most prominent and interesting ones. So buckle up and let's venture into the first of many sandbox Metaverses.
Decentraland
Decentraland benefits greatly from being the earliest blockchain-based Metaverse, in addition to being up and running at a time when most Metaverses are not. That provides us with a wealth of information to explore in this section.
When Ariel Meilich and Esteban Ordano started the project in 2015, their goal was to create a platform owned entirely by its user base and developed based on the ideas of the community. While the primary narrative shared by the mainstream media is that Decentraland is one of the many Metaverses capitalizing on an absurd digital land boom, Decentraland was not created at a time when people cared about buying digital assets. Instead, it was created at a time when we all collectively worried about the Big Tech platforms owning and controlling too much of our digital livelihood.
Decentraland (DCL) is a browser-based virtual world that currently allows exploration of Genesis City—the first map in DCL. Genesis City is composed of 90,601 plots of user-owned land that are connected by public roads and loosely themed by districts. Districts are meant to organize the types of experiences, businesses, architecture, or owners that inhabit the areas. For example, some of the larger districts include Aetheria (cyberpunk district), Vegas City (gambling district), Festival Land (music district), Battleground (gaming district), and Fashion Street (shopping district).
Aside from the land and every object in this Metaverse having the potential to be a scarce asset represented by NFT ownership, Decentraland is unique in that no single entity or corporation can decide the future of Decentraland, not even its founders. Rather, this Metaverse's development decisions are handled by the Decentraland DAO (which stands for “decentralized autonomous organization”). From their website, it states that “The Decentraland DAO owns the most important smart contracts and assets that make up Decentraland—the LAND Contract, the Estates Contract, Wearables, Content Servers, and the Marketplace. It also owns a substantial purse of MANA, which allows it to be truly autonomous as well as subsidize various operations and initiatives throughout Decentraland.”
Users who hold either LAND (Decentraland's plots of land) or $MANA tokens (Decentraland's currency) are given an amount of voting power (VP) respective to their share of assets held. With their VP, users can then govern proposals for DCL. If you visit https://governance.decentraland.org, you'll find a long list of active proposals. Some of these proposals are as simple as asking to put a certain location as a “Point of Interest” on the official DCL map, while others are more complex and ask for a grant to build out their idea.
For example, a play-to-earn game called Decentraland Snap was proposed by Yemel Jardi and meant to incentivize DCL citizens to become virtual photographers. It's a weekly contest where photos or videos taken in Decentraland are entered into a competition for prizes. The proposal talks about how this could help Decentraland as a whole create more user-generated content to share with the world, in addition to creating an economy for collecting and valuing Decentraland photography native to the platform. Yemel and his team asked for a $5,000 USD grant to build out the tech needed for the project, which ultimately received 85 percent approval from the DAO.
We want to make it clear that every experience in Decentraland does not have to go through this governance approval process. If you own a parcel of land, then you can build whatever you'd like there (within the software limits). For beginners, they offer a Builder Tool with premade assets you can drag and drop onto your parcel. For the advanced, the Decentraland SDK offers more optionality for importing the 3D assets you've created. As we'll address shortly, there are many ways to build in DCL.
In an interview with NBCNews, Sam Hamilton, the head of community and events for the Decentraland Foundation, describes, “The underlying philosophies of Decentraland are for the people to take back control of the internet and decide in which directions it goes,” Hamilton said. “The way I see it personally, it's the next generation of social platform.”
When you enter Decentraland for the first time, whether as a guest account or via connecting your Ethereum wallet, you'll probably notice the sparseness of the world. You aren't being inundated with stimuli like when you open Instagram. It doesn't seem like a lot is going on. It's difficult to know where to go or what to do. Finding another person to speak with takes time. And getting them to speak to you is another challenge in and of itself. For these reasons, many first-time visitors instantly write Decentraland off.
To Hamilton's point of it being “the next generation of social platform,” you might question how it could possibly be a social platform without a lot of socializing going on. How will this Metaverse replace the current Internet destinations we all visit?
First, “replace” is the wrong way to think about these Metaverse platforms. “Extend” is the better word. Decentraland extends the current communities, interests, or experiences we gather around—whether these are digital or physical in nature.
Although Decentraland crossed 500,000 monthly active users in December 2021, at any given time they average just a few thousand concurrent active users. This means that experiencing DCL to its fullest potential is less about wandering around and more about going there with a clear purpose at the right time. In our opinion, the best way to experience Decentraland is through the https://events.decentraland.org page. Here you'll find all of the current and future events going on. Because so much of Decentraland is undeveloped, using this page to port directly to places that have been developed and are running an event makes for a better first experience.
During the last week of March 2022, in partnership with UNXD, Decentraland hosted the Metaverse Fashion Week (MVFW). The goal was to create a digital stop on the global fashion week tour that is more accessible to the global crowd. MVFW incorporated all of the same experiences we expect from a Paris or New York Fashion Week—runways, afterparties, and pop-up shops—except in the digital destination of Decentraland.
Hugo Boss, Tommy Hilfiger, and other major brands participated in MVFW. With the help of companies like Threedium who specialize in scanning physical objects into digital 3D file formats, these brands outfitted their model avatars in digital wearables that reflect their physical garments. And some of them even commercialized their digital fashion, selling NFTs of the garments for players to equip in Decentraland.
The larger trend they're experimenting with is determining whether NFT fashion can be a new revenue stream in Metaverses like DCL, but also operate as a digital storefront for their physical fashion lines. To test this theory, the fashion brands partnered with a company called Boson Protocol, which is creating a means for virtual commerce to deliver physical products. Boson is creating an almost trustless protocol that enables smart contracts to exchange crypto assets for services, goods, digital products, as well as physical products while minimizing the need for intermediaries.
In other words, consumers can purchase an NFT in the Metaverse and redeem the digital asset for a physical product or service. While the Boson Protocol is their smart contract system, the actual product is the Boson Portal. The Boson Portal is a fully customizable brand platform for hosting Metaverse commerce right alongside virtual events and experiences. Think of the Boson Portal as a Shopify store for the Metaverse.
Should Boson or another company prove this tech to be efficient and easy to use, they effectively will have created an e-commerce bridge where Metaverse users can shop both for their avatar and for their physical selves in the same Metaverse environment. You can imagine the idea of a Metaverse shopping mall where we browse stores, make impulse purchases, and receive these goods at our doorstep.
Decentraland's fashion district is already lined with companies who are sitting on virtual properties waiting for Metaverse commerce to take off. Today, if you take a visit to Fashion Street on the far west side of Genesis City, you'll see the beginnings of what could become a Rodeo Drive type of fashion destination. The street is lined with advertisements from the most recognizable fashion brands: Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana, Tommy Hilfiger, and so on. But there's no shopping going on. You cannot enter the buildings. There's nothing to click on or buy. It's a ghost town waiting for the gold rush to come. Still, companies are taking major bets on DCL's fashion district. The Metaverse Group, a subsidiary of Tokens.com, notably scooped up a 116-plot estate in the fashion district for nearly $2.5 million USD. Republic Realm is building a shopping center called Metajuku on a 259-plot estate near Fashion Street, which they feel could become the epicenter of Metaverse commerce. Metajuku already rents space to JPMorgan.
For fashion, the major question still remains whether people will want to do their shopping in the Metaverse. One area that hasn't encountered this problem is the gambling industry.
Located not far from Fashion Street is Vegas City—the gambling hub in Decentraland. Naturally, these two districts are just a stone's throw away from one another, separated only by District X (the red light district, which is apparently where some people spend their casino winnings). So while Republic Realm has bought a large estate in Fashion Street, Boson Protocol has bought an entire block in Vegas City and will be opening shopping centers there too.
The main difference between the fashion district and the gambling district is that the gambling district is in operation and people are using it. The leading team in Vegas City is Decentral Games (not associated with Decentraland), which owns various casino properties in DCL including Tominoya Casino, Atari Casino, and the ICE Poker lounge. Back in February 2022, Business Insider reported that over the last three months Decentral Games brought in more than $7.5 million USD in gambling revenue. Not only that, but they also account for a third of the active users in Decentraland.
Gambling has been one of the few verticals to show monetary traction in the Metaverse. Decentral Games' properties are fully functioning casinos that will deal you hands of blackjack and spin the roulette wheel. Furthermore, they're a case study on effectively incorporating NFTs and digital assets with Metaverse experiences, all while driving commercial behaviors. To be eligible for winnings in the ICE Poker lounge, bettors must own and equip one of the ICE Poker NFT wearables. The poker games are free to play, but winners can earn $ICE tokens. When they're not playing poker, they can loan these wearables to other players, splitting the $ICE rewards if they win. With more than 16,000 NFT items and a floor price of around 2 ETH, they've built a solid community around this Web3 gambling experience.
We don't want to make it seem like Decentraland is fun only if you spend money. The vast majority of experiences in DCL revolve simply around participation. Games, events, and brand pop-ups are scattered all over DCL. What ties all of these disparate experiences together are POAPs, which stands for Proof-of-Acceptance Protocol. Many, but not all, of the experiences in DCL will gift visitors a POAP after they've attended the event or completed the game. You can think of POAPs as something like a Girl Scout Badge for achieving a new skill, your ticket stub from a concert, or a souvenir keychain from vacation. POAPs are digital mementos for showing that you're active in the Metaverse. Ultimately, POAPs are a reward mechanism and community-building tactic for bringing users into the Metaverse, without asking much of users in return. “Just come and have fun and we'll gift you a blockchain memento for joining us.”
DappCraft, for example, built the SteamPunk Quest in Decentraland. It was a mini-game that asked players to fix their broken clock tower. Users had to scour their plot of land to find keys and solve puzzles in search of the seven gears needed to fix the clock. After completing the quest, users could claim their POAP. This was actually the first quest that we tried in Decentraland, and it was a fun way to spend 20 minutes. There are many games and events in DCL that offer POAPs, and they'll usually disclose on their https://events.decentraland.org page if they're offering up a POAP.
Other more recognizable brands have developed these POAP experiences as well. In anticipation of Super Bowl LVI, Miller Lite designed and launched the Meta Lite Bar in Decentraland. The Meta Lite Bar is a digital dive bar where patrons can pour a pilsner, play bar games, and get some free digital swag. The jukebox, pool table, darts, and bull-riding station are all interactive. It's Miller Lite's very own Metaverse destination, which we're sure they'll use for events in the future.
One of the more interesting aspects of the Meta Lite Bar is that it sits on a property that Miller Lite doesn't own. Rather, a company called TerraZero owns the DCL plot and rented the space to Miller, as well as helped them build out the bar. TerraZero offers up Metaverse land rentals so that agencies or individuals can test the waters before acquiring their own plot of land. Interestingly, TerraZero also initiated the first virtual home mortgage back in February 2022. The terms weren't disclosed; however, we do know that TerraZero holds the DCL property in their wallet until the loan is paid off. Virtual home mortgages could be an interesting means of accelerating Metaverse adoption, given that it opens up the pool of possible builders.
At this stage of the Metaverse, it's beneficial to simply have a presence in places like Decentraland. Whether or not there's a clear plan is beside the point. Simply being there is a strategy, a starting point that can allow them to deploy experiences whenever they see fit. For example, RE/MAX Turkey designed a virtual office in DCL. Sotheby's opened a digital replica of their New Bond Street headquarters in DCL and occasionally uses it to host live NFT auctions. Vice Media Group hired an actual architectural agency, BIG, to design their headquarters in DCL, which they plan to use either as a virtual news desk or innovation lab.
Brands and companies are establishing their presence in DCL in droves. Others are using the virtual world to extend their existing events. The Australian Open launched an entire venue in Decentraland during their tennis event. The digital venue hosted replays of the actual tennis matches, broadcasted 24/7 radio coverage, and featured a couple of tennis minigames. The famed DJ that goes by 3LAU has the permanent 3LAU HAUS that is his own private music venue. He uses the space to host virtual concerts and reward his NFT collectors.
Decentraland is also no stranger to innovation. For example, Barbados is launching the world's first virtual embassy in the Metaverse, making them the first country to recognize digital sovereign land. They've teased the idea of issuing e-visas. What those will be used for, we have no clue. Regardless, this will be a great way for them to share their culture with the world and extend their diplomatic missions beyond their 18 current embassies. Who knows, they might just build out the industry for Metaverse tourism in the process.
Stepping away from the brands and institutional investments in DCL for a moment, we'd be remiss to not mention the independent DCL creators—folks who are entering this Metaverse, showcasing the experiences, and spreading the good word with the world.
The DCLBlogger (Matty) started creating informational Decentraland videos as far back as May 2018. His interest in Decentraland precedes these videos, as shown by his collection of some of the first wearables ever created in Decentraland. Matty's knowledge of DCL is rivaled by very few people. He's like an encyclopedia of everything that has gone down in DCL since its inception.
Another early DCL proponent goes by the name of SWISSVERSE. As far as we've seen, he's the first person to vlog their experiences in DCL using their Decentraland avatar as their front-facing vlogger. In many ways, SWISSVERSE's YouTube channel reminds us a lot of VTubers (short for “virtual YouTubers”). VTubers build their brand around an avatar that they animate using motion graphics software. The phenomenon dates back to the early 2010s in Japan but has since grown to an entire class of 10,000+ creators across YouTube, Twitch, Niconico, and Bilibili. SWISSVERSE is perhaps on a trend that could manifest into DCL influencers native to their platform.
Helping push this idea of DCL influencers into the forefront is the #DCLfilmclub. This community contest asks DCL residents to shoot a 30-second video showcasing their favorite aspects of Decentraland and submit their video on Twitter under the hashtag #DCLfilmclub. The top 10 video submissions (as voted on by their community) receive rewards in the form of $MANA tokens, wearables, and even a plot of LAND to first place—which was @TobikCC in 2022. With hundreds of submissions, contests like this show how dedicated the DCL user base is to share this platform with the world.
These cool showcases of the DCL community will always get overshadowed in the media by the hundred-thousand-dollar land sales. However, we believe the idea of DCL creators needs to be talked about more. It truly is a platform that enables storytelling on a limitless scale. In the same way that Instagram enabled a class of creators who specialize in social content, we believe that there will be a large class of Decentraland vloggers, musicians, photographers, and maybe even athletes.
If you're looking for a reason to believe in Decentraland, then we frankly have to tell you to buy into the long-term vision. It's an economy that will take time to build and manifest. If you compare it to the smooth operation of a Roblox or Grand Theft Auto Online, then you're already starting off on the wrong foot. A mobile interface and VR client are in the works. Voice chat and moderation software will improve. They're working on ways to integrate the number of profile-picture NFTs as a way to personalize your avatar. All of this and more are in the 2022 roadmap. Buy into the creators and investments being made in Decentraland, not just the way the media has portrayed them as a gold rush in digital land ownership.
The Sandbox
Behind Decentraland, The Sandbox is probably the most talked-about blockchain-based Metaverse. Interestingly, The Sandbox existed as an open-world sandbox game before they decided to add the blockchain element. The pre-blockchain version operates much like Roblox, offering tools for users to build their own worlds, assets, and games. However, to avoid covering anything redundant, we're going to skip over most of the pre-blockchain version of The Sandbox.
We will, however, say that there are two notable things they carry over from that era. One, The Sandbox was proficient at activating brand partnerships, and this is an area that has only accelerated as of late. Two, The Sandbox's developer, Pixowl, was acquired by Animoca Brands in 2018 for a little under $5 million USD. You might know Animoca from being a lead investor in Sky Mavis, the company behind Axie Infinity. This acquisition was significant because Animoca excels at blockchain gaming development, as showcased by two of their in-house projects: REVV Racing and F1 Delta.
The Sandbox will operate in many of the same ways as Decentraland, offering a scarce amount of ownable LAND to build on, an in-game utility and governance currency called $SAND, and a marketplace for accessories and assets. One of the areas that The Sandbox differentiates itself is its VoxEdit tool where users can create and animate voxel art. In other words, users can create in-game assets and upload them directly to their native NFT marketplace. Along the same lines, The Sandbox offers Game Maker, which is, as the name suggests, a tool in The Sandbox ecosystem where users can design their own games and deploy them on their LAND.
As of this writing (March 2022), The Sandbox only offers a download of their alpha version of the game for Windows (no Mac or mobile version yet). It's a fairly basic version of the game, but still affords you a sense of what will come.
Because The Sandbox is not yet live to the public, there's not a lot to talk about the platform that isn't speculative in nature. Therefore, it's pretty much a land grab in The Sandbox in preparation for what's to come. Still, there are a ton of notable brands, people, and players who have scooped up a significant amount of the 166,464 LANDs.
Household brands like Gucci, Adidas, Warner Music Group, and PwC Hong Kong have stakes in The Sandbox. The crypto exchanges Gemini, Binance, and FTX all own large properties. Gaming companies such Atari, Pong, Ubisoft, Yield Guild Games, and Chain Games are gearing up for their own gaming corners. After Snoop Dogg was touted for building his own mansion in The Sandbox, someone paid $450,000 USD for a LAND plot next door to be his digital neighbor.
We know that we're probably missing some key players who are aligning their interests in this Metaverse; however, we cannot possibly cover all of the people who own LAND in The Sandbox. If you're interested in exploring more of the LAND owners, just head to www.sandbox.game and click the “map” section. It displays images of who owns what LAND, and it's super fascinating to see just how many of your favorite entities are there.
Aside from LAND, there's been a decent amount of activity in their NFT marketplace as people prepare for the launch of the game. Hundreds of voxel artists are bringing their ideas to life in VoxEdit. Creators like TomGlasses, who is a toy designer, is building a variety of objects inspired by religion and mythology that people will be able to place on their LAND. The story that everyone loves to reference for its shock value is the MetaFlower Super Mega Yacht that sold for 149 ETH (or about $650,000 USD at the time of the sale). Ahead of the curve again, Snoop Dogg created and minted 10,000 unique Snoop-inspired avatars called The Doggies, which people can use as their own characters in the game.
Overall, The Sandbox has a long way to go before it surpasses the present utility and usability of Decentraland. Still, the platform has an aura surrounding it—a cool-factor element that seems to hover around its future.
Cryptovoxels
Another of the most-referenced sandbox Metaverses would be Cryptovoxels. Interestingly, its founder Ben Nolan worked on the Decentraland project for a short stint before deciding to build Cryptovoxels. This Metaverse offers the same features of both The Sandbox and Decentraland, so we won't reiterate those details around creator tools on the platform, a native currency $COLR, and the ability to own land and other assets there.
What stands out most to us regarding Cryptovoxels is that it's the only Metaverse that has found a clear product-market fit. The NFT and cryptoart movement has taken to Cryptovoxels as one of the de facto platforms for hosting NFT galleries. We believe this is because it's such a lightweight Metaverse that it doesn't require a lot of computing power to load, in addition to the fact that parcels are generally less expensive to acquire in Cryptovoxels. Regardless, they promote the use case of digital art galleries quite frequently. And given that NFT owners are more likely to also become Metaverse adopters, it's smart to position themselves in this manner.
Somnium Space
If you take Decentraland and add in a VR access point, then you get Somnium Space. Like the other sandbox Metaverses, Somnium Space is an open world built on the blockchain. However, the fact that it's the first among these sandbox Metaverses to be able to be experienced in virtual reality is what stands out most.
Equally fascinating about Somnium Space is its plans to decentralize everything related to the Metaverse, even the hardware used to access it. Somnium Space has been working on a VR headset for some time now. Once it's released to the public, they plan on making it the first open source, modular headset. This means that headset owners can customize the look and feel of the device, which is particularly fascinating for anyone who has ideas on improving the design of VR headsets. We anticipate 3D printing enthusiasts eventually creating a market for these modular VR components—think straps, aesthetic cover plates, ergonomic handgrips, etc.
Many of the same events and experiences talked about in the other three sandbox Metaverses can also be found in Somnium Space. But one of the experiences unique to their platform, which we really liked, was a funding program that operates similar to Shark Tank. Whereas Decentraland has grant programs you can write proposals for, Somnium Space features a Creators Fund that asks virtual entrepreneurs to pitch their ideas in front of a panel of judges in their virtual studio, just like an episode of Shark Tank.
Honorable Mentions
The sandbox format for Metaverses is arguably the most interesting type of Metaverse out there given the freedom it offers its user base. However, it's also the most ambitious and difficult to pull off. This early on, it's tough to say for certain which one will win in the end, which is why so many Web3 enthusiasts are buying land in multiple sandbox Metaverse “just in case.” For that reason, we feel it's necessary to shout out a few other sandbox Metaverses that might win the race to reach a critical mass of users.
Dvision Network is designing a hybrid of a gaming Metaverse and sandbox Metaverse, creating a lot of play-to-earn inroads to acquiring land in their open world. For those who cannot afford land outright, they've created a mechanism called LAND Purification. Forty percent of the LAND in Dvision is occupied by monsters that players must combat and clear (with their NFT characters). Once the LAND is cleared, it is put on the auction block whereby the final sale price in $DVI (their token) is distributed to the players, respective of their contributions to clearing the land. This is a unique concept for sandbox Metaverses, as it invites everyone no matter their financial standing to participate and earn in the game—eventually getting the opportunity to own property themselves.
NFT Worlds has combined their scarce land map with the ideology of a rarity scale associated with profile-picture NFTs. They offer 10,000 unique land assets with features such as formations (ocean, mountains, forests), natural resources (oil, gems, metals, freshwater), and rare features (towns, mineshafts, wild animals). The result is a sliding scale of rarity associated with each parcel of land, which is a concept we find truly fascinating in the grand scheme of Metaverse real estate.
Matrix World is building a virtual world on two blockchains: Flow and Ethereum. Multichain support is an interesting approach that we've seen other sandbox Metaverses tease. However, Matrix World was the first to mint and sell their land on both chains, half on Flow and half on Ethereum.
Genesis Worlds is taking a slightly different approach to designing the open-world Metaverse. Rather, we should say open worlds, plural. As opposed to creating a fixed map with a scarce amount of land, creators are invited to design an endless number of new worlds.
Substrata offers a unique take on the sandbox Metaverse, namely, that everything in their world doesn't have to exist as an NFT. This 3D Metaverse gives users the power to design and deploy in-game assets, accessories, and objects on their land, but with the optionality to mint them as NFTs on Ethereum. In this sense, it is a bit of a hybrid between the former sandbox games like Roblox and the user-owned sandbox Metaverses we've discussed thus far.
Upland is another one of the early sandbox Metaverses to parlay the idea of owning and developing virtual real estate. Envisioned in 2018, Upland is interesting in that they designed their virtual map around the real world, featuring many of the major worldwide cities we know and love. In this sense, they're placing a sort of virtual mirror up to the real world and seeing how their Metaverse may grow alongside it.
At this point in time, it's tempting to go all-in on one sandbox Metaverse. But we implore you to check out the variety of sandbox Metaverses out there and keep an open mind. While they don't all necessarily offer something unique from their competitors, each of them is unique in their communities of users. So go browse their websites, follow their Twitter, and look for an upcoming event or experience that catches your interest. Enter the Sandbox Metaverse.
Gaming Metaverses
Often referred to as blockchain games, gaming Metaverses evolve the existing world of video games by offering truly ownable in-game assets and thus earning potential for players. Whereas games like Fortnite have pseudo-economies in their games, ultimately that money funnels up to the game's creators (Epic Games, in the case of Fortnite). But when you buy something like a weapon or wearable for your avatar in a gaming Metaverse, that money (minus a few fees, usually) goes to whoever owned and listed that asset on the marketplace.
Gaming Metaverses differ from sandbox Metaverses in that there is a clear goal for users in gaming Metaverses. Specifically, that goal is to progress in the game. Whether that progress is measured by leveling up characters, acquiring new items as NFTs, completing quests, or battling opponents, the goal in a gaming Metaverse is clear. And the more progress you make, the more you earn in the game.
Gaming Metaverses generally have their own currency that is used to incentivize gameplay and transact goods, in addition to governing the direction of the game. Underlying all gaming Metaverses' currencies are token economics (tokenomics), which dictate caps on the number of coins and deflationary token burning measures to ensure that their currency's value can appreciate as the game grows. Because these tokens are also traded on exchanges like Uniswap, PancakeSwap, and Sushiswap, and for some on Coinbase, there are many speculators who never play a blockchain game but still capitalize on their growth.
Axie Infinity is arguably the gaming Metaverse that jump-started this industry, as we discussed briefly in Chapter 4, “The History of the Metaverse.” Axie Infinity proved that the model of play-to-earn economics could become really interesting once the game starts to scale. We won't go too much into how the game operates. But what's fascinating is that this game, which is valued at a few billion dollars now, inspired an entire ecosystem of development around the game. There are Twitch streamers, YouTube channels, and blogs dispersing strategies for being effective in the game. Players are forming guilds to team up and go further. Scholar programs have become a popular way to “rent out” one's own Axie characters to players throughout the world as a means of profit-sharing. The Axie ecosystem has grown far beyond the confines of the gaming platform and in the process inspired an entire wave of play-to-earn games in its wake.
We don't want to spend too much time digging into what makes each gaming Metaverse different, as their primary difference is usually their storytelling. In other words, the actual content of the game is what sets them apart and ultimately leads to some being more prominent than others. This doesn't mean that's the only way they differ. However, because the list of blockchain games goes on forever, we're going to let you explore what makes each of them different on your own time. With that being said, here are some of the notable gaming Metaverses (in alphabetical order) and a brief synopsis of them:
- Aavegotchi is a Tamagotchi-inspired NFT collectible game that allows users to own NFT pets (Aavegotchis). Players can purchase and equip NFT assets to grow their Aavegotchis, which can ultimately explore and interact within the Aavegotchi gaming universe.
- Alien Worlds consists of many explorable “exoPlanets” that users can own a stake in, vote on the development of, travel to using their NFT spacecraft, and mine for resources with NFT tools.
- BigTime is an upcoming multiplayer role-playing game (RPG) where players team up and adventure through time and space together. In-game NFTs enable players to own and trade what they earn or buy in-game.
- BYOVerse is building a gaming Metaverse starting with the NFT assets. Today, players can purchase BYOPills, which allow them to claim Apostles (characters) and then craft other NFT assets such as vehicles and accessories. This incentivizes their holders to essentially populate this Metaverse one asset at a time. Also, the team has partnered with other games such as Galaxy Fight Club, making BYOPills an interoperable gaming NFT with utility across games.
- Cradles is a “prehistoric Metaverse” game that mirrors real-world time and space rules starting in the Triassic Age of dinosaurs. Players collect items to advance time and explore the different eras of life on Earth.
- CryptoTanks is a play-to-earn tank battling game inspired by the 1090s Nintendo game Battle City. The goal is to level up one's NFT CryptoTank and earn $TANK tokens in the process. Players can also rent their tank to other players when they're not active in order to earn profit-share.
- DeHorizon is building an immersive gaming Metaverse around three distinct experiences, team battles, battle royale tournaments, and dragon racing. Their team has extensive game development backgrounds from Riot, Dungeons & Dragons, and Blizzard.
- Ember Sword is a free-to-play MMORPG that allows players to acquire land and collectibles that help them progress in player-versus-player gameplay.
- Enjin aims to build a unified Metaverse gaming platform that developers can use to build and deploy games swiftly. Their premise is that by unifying multiple games under the same token, they can create a gaming ecosystem that helps all games grow and reach a critical mass of players.
- F1 Delta Time is a blockchain game that centers around the collection and trading of unique NFT cars, drivers, and components—ultimately with the goal of winning races and prizes. It's the official blockchain game of F1 racing.
- Illuvium is a collectible NFT RPG game and auto-battler rolled into one. There is an open-world RPG experience in the Overworld, where players mine, harvest, capture, and fight Illuvials. Once players have assembled a team, they can join the auto-battler where players strategically build their teams to beat opponents in battle.
- Legacy is a blockchain-based business simulator game where players can start and grow businesses. It's a game that is supposed to emulate the free market, with the most creative and value, providing players benefits from higher volumes of trade and transactions.
- Mirandus is a fantasy world gaming Metaverse created by Gala Games. The MMORPG allows players to create the content they desire, with five different avatar types that offer different abilities in the game.
- My Neighbor Alice is a multiplayer building game where players buy and own virtual islands while collecting and building items and connecting with new friends. The farm-themed world is inspired by Animal Crossing and offers NFTs as in-game assets. Users can play-to-earn the $ALICE token, which can then be used to purchase items, stake for rewards, and governance.
- OneRare is a gaming Metaverse celebrating food in Web3. Players can farm ingredient NFTs, sell their produce at the market, create NFT dishes in the kitchen, and battle against friends in mini-games. It's meant to be the culinary industry's entry point into Web3, offering food brands, chefs, and restaurants a means to build in the Metaverse.
- Star Atlas is a grand strategy game of space exploration, territorial conquest, political domination, and more. Players compete to explore new planets, outfitting their spacecraft and avatars to conquer lands ahead of rival factions.
- Wilder World is creating an open, mixed-reality Metaverse themed around a “1980s Miami meets cyberpunk.” Wilder World is building a virtual city, called Wiami, where creators can manifest their ideas, players can equip different NFT accessories, and this open source world can grow organically. They've partnered with Zer0 on the tech side to offer a blended-reality experience, whereby NFT assets can be transported to real-life locations to be viewed through the Zer0 Augmented Reality App.
Most of these gaming Metaverses do not offer a Metaverse-like experience where you're actually exploring a 3D world. They are mostly experienced through 2D interfaces, with many of them yet to be fully developed. Still, they all have plans of rolling out 3D worlds of their own or integrating with some of the sandbox Metaverses discussed earlier in this chapter.
As far as immersive Metaverse games go, the clear front-runner here would have to be the entire Oculus VR platform. We know that it doesn't show any signs of enabling blockchain integrations; however, when it comes to Metaverse gaming, it's hard to argue with the beautiful games built here. Games like The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, Superhot VR, Demeo, and Pistol Whip are all really impressive. We would argue that the Oculus VR headset is really a gaming platform, which Meta would probably agree with considering they put the Beat Saber game front and center in advertisements. Of course, before there was Oculus gaming, we had PS VR. PlayStation's take on virtual reality gaming introduced a lot of people to this concept of immersive gaming. The next evolution is adding blockchain to the fold.
Overall, gaming Metaverses are by far the most competitive landscape, but also the one wrought with the most ambitious plans that will likely never materialize. Designing and deploying games is not something that can normally be achieved in months, let alone years. So we argue that you should take each of these gaming Metaverses with a grain of salt before getting too invested in them.
Miscellaneous Metaverses
Not every Metaverse company wants to create an explorable, virtual world akin to the one imagined in Snow Crash or Ready, Player One. There are many companies solving problems that will enhance the overall experience of the Metaverse. They are what we like to call Metaverse-adjacent companies.
These Metaverse-adjacent companies are solving for things like realistic digital presence, commerce portals that connect to the physical world, readymade Metaverse environments that anyone can plug into, and the social experience of the Metaverse.
Digital Presence
While most of the Metaverse experiences are created in a sort of cartoonish or video-game style, there's a camp of people who believe that the Metaverse should look as realistic as possible.
Wolf Digital World, for example, has created a full-body scanner that can scan objects into a digital format in 16k graphics. They call it the metascanner, and they market it as a tool for helping people license their likeness, their creations, and their assets in the Metaverse. Naturally, they've already partnered with a Metaverse company (Metahero) to have a virtual space where these scans live. Overall, it gives new meaning to a personalized avatar—one that is literally you in a digital format. But this also has implications for assets like sculptures, high-end furniture, and even automobiles. Brands who want a digital twin of their creations have an easy on-ramp into the Metaverse with the metascanner.
Similarly, Matterport offers the same service except targeted at physical spaces. To date, they've scanned and generated digital replicas of more than 5 million spaces. Although the majority of their clients have been in real estate, their tech has seen a boom in architecture and engineer planning use cases, retail inventory management, and even assessing risk for insurance policies. Matterport is the perfect example of a Metaverse-adjacent company since its tech isn't designed for the Metaverse, but can surely be applied to this vision.
For those who are looking for an easier option, Apple's Object Capture can also be used to quickly create high-fidelity virtual objects by only using an iPhone.
All of this tech will help populate realistic environments in the Metaverse. In some cases, a realistic digital presence may be preferred, and thus these three technologies could facilitate that.
Phygital Commerce
Naturally, every brand that is eyeing the Metaverse is curious about how they can serve this new market of consumers. But not every brand is either equipped or interested in selling NFTs. That doesn't mean they cannot participate here. However, they may be more inclined to sell existing physical products, rather than new digital products, in the Metaverse.
Commerce in the Metaverse is still coming of age. Furthermore, it is difficult to estimate when shopping for real-world goods in the Metaverse will become mainstream. But solving at least the technical side of this unknown are two notable companies.
Earlier in the “Decentraland” section, we talked about a company called Boson Protocol that is creating a means for Metaverse shoppers to purchase physical goods and have them delivered to their actual front doorstep. Their protocol solves some of the ambiguity around identifying people in the Metaverse, which is easier said than done. The experiences that they create through their Boson Portals (the actual customizable storefronts) are a hybrid of NFT buying and e-commerce shopping.
Boson's competition in this space is a company called Highstreet. Highstreet is planning to create a sort of sandbox Metaverse with physical and digital retail embedded alongside one another. Their Metaverse shopping experience will deliver “phygital” goods, which are essentially goods that users will own both as physical products and digital NFT assets. Similar to the sandbox Metaverses, Highstreet has already had a land sale or Initial Home Offering, as they called it. And those with land in Highstreet can use the Metaplex Merchant Portal to create virtual storefronts for this phygital shopping.
Most of us live a significant portion of our life online, so it makes sense that companies want to use the Metaverse as a new e-commerce experience. How Metaverse shopping ultimately plays out is still to be determined.
Readymade Metaverse Environments
Not everyone who is interested in the Metaverse wants to take the time to design their own space. For this challenge, readymade Metaverse environments offer up a unique way for individuals or brands to plug right in and offer their own Metaverse experience nearly instantly.
Spatial is the leader in providing readymade Metaverse environments. They started as a VR communications company that was designed as a sort of social Metaverse space. But when the NFT boom happened in 2021, they quickly found that the vast majority of their new users were using Spatial as a place to host NFT galleries. Spatial quickly pivoted and began offering Metaverse design services. For example, they helped create the Utah Jazz's virtual locker room in partnership with Krista Kim (known for the Mars House) and Michael Potts (CEO of M2 Studios). Today, they design readymade Metaverse galleries and Metaverse environments, minting a scarce quantity of them as NFTs. For example, coauthor QuHarrison purchased five of their Museo NFTs, which are predesigned NFT galleries that you can populate with your NFTs.
Another company called Space Metaverse recently raised $7 million USD to offer a similar experience. Although they want to be more of a “Shopify for the Metaverse,” offering some of those phygital shopping experiences we just mentioned, they start brands off with premade Metaverse environments to plug into.
Because access to quality 3D designers is so scarce and in demand right now, we see a huge opportunity for individuals and companies to offer readymade Metaverses to corporations, particularly the Fortune 500.
Social VR Worlds
Ultimately, the Metaverse isn't going to work without a significant user base. This entire book (and Meta's future) is moot if the Metaverse is not appealing to people. For this reason, you need on-ramps into these Metaverse experiences. Two VR apps that have done a wonderful job onboarding people into virtual worlds are VRChat and Bigscreen.
VRChat is a low-friction app for people to design virtual spaces and host social gatherings. Since 2014, its user base has created more than 25,000 virtual worlds to inhabit and socialize in. Interestingly, a lot of subcultures such as Anime enthusiasts have been the power users here. However, Meta's vision of Horizon Worlds being the home to social experiences was already proven by VRChat. And there's even one user by the name of Joe Hunting who filmed a documentary about VRChat, called We Met in Virtual Reality, that is shot entirely in VRChat. The film chronicles stories of what makes VRChat (and therefore the Metaverse) so compelling from a social connection standpoint and, fingers crossed, will hopefully be accepted into one of the major film festivals in 2022.
Bigscreen is another one of the low-friction VR worlds that has seen early success as a virtual social hangout. What's cool about Bigscreen is that their product allows users to simultaneously watch movies and play games together, while in the same virtual room. It's like the equivalent of that one childhood friend who had the coolest basement that everyone hung out in. Except now, it's a virtual basement.
The Mass Migration to the Metaverse
The one question that persists in the back of every Metaverse-builder's mind is “How do we get users into the Metaverse?” While we'd like to think that there will be something along the lines of an “iPhone moment” where a Steve-Jobs-type parlays this ideal vision of the Metaverse and everyone feels the need to get involved, this sadly won't be the case.
The mass migration to the Metaverse won't be a mass migration at all. It's going to be a bunch of small, incongruent moments of people making their way to the Metaverse. Axie Infinity and the gaming Metaverses are doing their best to bring the billion-plus gamers over to the Metaverse. Decentraland and the sandbox Metaverses are doing their best to bring the capitalists, the builders, and the opportunists to the Metaverse. And of course, Meta is using their Oculus VR hardware as an entry point to introduce millions to the wonders of VR.
People would like to believe that there will be one experience that turns the Metaverse from an area of interest into a habitual need, in the same way that the news feed turned social media from something you check every once in a while into an addictive habit. But truthfully, the Metaverse is simply too vast an idea to entice people with one experience.
We say all that to say that the mass migration to the Metaverse will happen slowly over time. People need to see that there's a Metaverse experience out there that aligns with an interest they already have. The day that you can watch, or rather experience, every single NBA game in the Metaverse is the day that NBA fans will begin making their way over to the Metaverse and building their basketball fan communities. The day that it is easy for Pinterest board creators to monetize their mood boards in the Metaverse is the day that these hobbyists will venture over to the Metaverse.
We change our digital habits when it is convenient for us—when an interest of ours shows up somewhere else and improves upon the existing way to experience that interest. Furthermore, we change when our friends change.
Fortunately, the growth of any one of the sandbox, gaming, or miscellaneous Metaverses is growth for the entire industry. People need to familiarize themselves with the idea of virtual existence. And no matter where that takes place, once people are familiar with it, they are more likely to explore other Metaverses.
As a professional looking for opportunities at your business, as a creative looking for new ways to build, or simply as an individual looking for the next way to socially connect, it's important that you stay nimble and try the variety of Metaverses out there. Don't lock yourself into one destination, and definitely don't lock yourself into one idea of what the Metaverse will ultimately be. After all, at a time when the Metaverse is still to be defined, it's too early to be operating in definites.