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    What is the metaverse and why is everyone talking about it?

    Synopsis

    Shared online spaces such as these, which have proliferated during the pandemic, could one become part of a wider “metaverse”.

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    Illustration: Rahul Awasthi
    MUMBAI: Where will you display the most expensive non-fungible token (NFT) artwork ever bought?

    Metakovan and Twobadour Panar -- Vignesh Sundaresan and Anand Venkateswaran in the “real” world -- bought the NFT-backed digital artwork "Everydays -- The First 5000 Days" by Beeple for $69 million earlier this year. They’ve chosen to display it in a virtual monument called ‘The Souk’ that they’re building in a virtual, online world, Venkateswaran told ET. Anyone with the link to the artwork’s online address will be able to view it for free in its virtual gallery.

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    “We are in the process of building a massive structure called The Souk, which will basically become the permanent address for the Beeple’s 5,000 days piece,” Venkateswaran said. “We've been working with award-winning architects from New York to build it and will launch it on November 4… it will not only house [the Beeple artwork] but will also become a place for live concerts, events, and discussions with thought leaders," he added.

    Shared online spaces such as these, which have proliferated during the pandemic, could one become part of a wider “metaverse”.

    What is the metaverse?

    Popularised by Snow Crash, a 1992 sci-fi novel by Neal Stephenson, the metaverse refers to a collection of shared online worlds in which physical, augmented, and virtual reality converge. People can hang out with friends, work, visit places, buy goods and services, and attend events. While many virtual worlds exist online, users currently can’t move between them while retaining their identities and assets. The eventual metaverse could solve this problem, turning disparate online worlds into a single, seamless entity. It has even been dubbed the next evolution of the internet.

    Many such virtual worlds are powered by the same blockchain technology that underpins cryptocurrencies and NFTs, and thus allow users to trade these virtual assets. An NFT is a type of crypto asset in which, unlike cryptocurrencies, every token is unique. NFTs can be used to represent an intangible digital item such as an image, video, or in-game token and can thus be traded as in place of the digital assets they represent. Another use case for NFTs is as tickets for virtual events.

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    Osmosis Zone Launch party powered by OmniFlix Network - June 2021


    An idea whose time has come

    The idea of creating an alternative, digital universe isn’t new. It has always existed in games and on websites. But the digital asset craze fueled by NFTs is boosting the digital goods economy and platforms that offer augmented and virtual reality are helping to make virtual experiences more closely mimic reality. With the world shifting online, people want to be able to create and display unique digital identities and experiences, experts we spoke to said.

    One of the most popular virtual worlds, Decentraland, has its native cryptocurrency, Mana, and prime plots of land on it have sold for up to $1 million. According to data the platform shared with ET, it now has 80,000 monthly active users, 10 times more than at this time last year. Incidentally, the crypto-focussed fund of Venkateswaran and Sundaresan, called Metapurse, is the largest single owner of real estate in Decentraland.

    Monish Darda, technology chief of software management startup Icertis, said two factors are behind the current increase in interest around the metaverse: the pandemic-led virtualisation of life and advancements in the technology that enables these platforms. Icertis, which is a unicorn, is closely tracking the space since the metaverse will be built on contracts. “There is now supply and demand, which makes the idea of the metaverse very compelling, commercially speaking, for everybody,” said Darda.

    Other experts said the metaverse has also garnered widespread attention in recent months because of the NFT boom and a recent endorsement from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In the past 30 days, NFTs worth $2.1 billion have been sold worldwide, according to Nonfungible.com. The same website valued Metapurse's NFT portfolio at almost $190 million.

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    (Source: nonfungibles.com)

    And in June, Zuckerberg told Facebook employees that the future of the company would go well beyond the current social apps. He said Facebook would build an interconnected set of experiences as part of the metaverse. “Our overarching goal across all of these initiatives is to help bring the metaverse to life,” he said.

    Architects of the future

    Early builders of the metaverse, including NFT artists, musicians, and crypto-native companies, are investing in digital pieces of land in popular virtual worlds such as Decentraland, Cryptovoxels and Sandbox to showcase their work and build dedicated communities around it.

    “A metaverse gallery is a great way to form a community around my work. It also enables me to curate other artists and showcase my collection,” said NFT artist Amrit Pal Singh, who built Toy Face Cafe, a three-storey art gallery over a 180-square metre plot in Cryptovoxels Metaverse. “I feel metaverse real estate has a lot of opportunities in the long run,” he said.

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    Singh bought this virtual plot for 2.5 ether (Ethereum) tokens, which translates to over Rs 5 lakh based on the token’s value currently. More than 20,000 visitors have navigated the cafe since it opened on June 8 this year.

    Abhishek Sistla, cofounder of OmniFlix Network, bought a plot in Cryptovoxels for one Ethereum token last year. Omniflix is a peer-to-peer network designed for creators and communities to mint, manage and monetise NFTs and social tokens across blockchain networks.

    Sistla wants to build an office on the land, where creators can mingle and where he can hold office hours with potential collaborators.

    He has already held a “virtual party” where about 30-50 people “met” at his estate and interacted with each other in real-time via the metaverse’s native messaging service.

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    OmniFlix network launch party

    “If your land contains or becomes a focal point of engagement or activity, if there are games that happen, if there are events and performances, then that land becomes important,” Sundaresan said, on being asked why some virtual lands were more expensive than others even though there could be endless supply of such spaces.

    NFT artists and architects are also finding it lucrative to build structures in these worlds.

    Abhishek Bhaskar, an architect who designs and builds structures in virtual worlds for individuals and enterprises, said the number of queries coming in for designing metaverses has risen in the last one month.

    “I think this pandemic kind of rattled our souls. People are looking for virtual spaces to escape where you can dissolve yourself and forget the pain,” he said.

    Anyone with 3D-modelling experience can become a metaverse architect, Bhaskar said. Depending on the project, he is paid between $2,000 and $5,000 to design a model for the metaverse.

    The future of reality

    The proponents and creators in the metaverse told ET that there were unending and unrealised use cases to monetise and live in the virtual worlds.

    “In metaverse, everything can be traded, this is a huge opportunity for creators to come with something unique and find a niche for themselves. You can rent your land for events, you can create wearables that people can buy and wear in the metaverse, you can have billboards and build games. It all depends on your imagination,” said NFT artist Singh.

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    Purists believe that we are headed toward a singular metaverse - an interconnected web of all the virtual worlds where an individual’s identity will seamlessly move between worlds.

    “The way I look at it this is the future, and you cannot avoid it just like you couldn't avoid Facebook and Twitter. It is scary but true,” said Darda of Icertis.

    What is scary?

    “The idea that humans can be caught in a virtual world that they never want to come out of,” he added.
    The Economic Times

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