Metaverse Real Estate

"The Metaverse" is just a buzzword. The term has been around since 1992 from the sci-fi novel Snow Crash. Basically, it's supposed to be a virtual world that operates alongside the real world. Kinda like if the whole internet were one big 3D video game.

To me, the concept is separate from blockchain, but the terms are often associated.

The internet is already a sprawling world of different addresses, we just visit those addresses in a 2D web browser instead of through a VR headset. Blockchain is just a new "address space" within this hypothetical metaverse.

You can already lease internet real estate in the form of domain names (lukewillis.com for example). But that agreement comes down to a centralized arrangement with your domain name registrar. Real estate on blockchain just means representing that address as an NFT.

Combine that with a 3D world in VR and your NFT represents a plot of digital land in the game world.

The problem with this is that it looks like you're creating artificial scarcity. Dotcom domain names have real scarcity because there's only one lukewillis.com. Digital land is theoretically infinite... right?

What you're selling with metaverse real estate is discoverability. If your game is popular, then whoever owns the NFT for the land where players join the game gets to put up a billboard (or whatever they want). They could just as easily do this in their own digital world, but they want your NFT because of your game's community.

If you want to build metaverse real estate into your game, be clear about what that means for investors and players.

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-Luke

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P.S. This type of NFT tends to look like a cash grab to players, so make sure your messaging is crisp.