Believe it or not, metaverse land can be scarce after all

Most recently, Yuga Labs, the team behind the world-famous boring non-fungible token (NFT) primates, robbed some. $ 300 million on sale of Otherdeed NFT, a collection of lots in the Metaverse soon. In fact, NFT, the blockchain industry’s leading method of creating a shortage of digital assets, has emerged as the preferred method for dealing with virtual land ownership in most Metaverse projects, including Decentraland and The Sandbox. All of this raised interesting questions in the community. In Metaverse, a vast and near-infinite digital space, could there ever be a shortage of digital lands? Well, let’s dig into it.

First of all, talk to the elephants in the room. The Metaverse is not real. in short, Ready player oneA metaverse of style, a seamless virtual reality-based representation of the internet we know. So while you can wear a VR helmet for a rave in Decentraland, your device is rarely turned on to surf Instagram and news feeds every day.

In other words, what we currently have is an increasing number of relatively siled Metaverse projects. It provides users with a variety of project-specific experiences and features, rather than extensive web browsing. This in itself suggests that shortage is a valid concept to consider as much as their land, even if their values ​​are considered through the same prisms as real-world lands.

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Law of land

In the real world, the value of a parcel of land is the product of some very clear variables. That is, natural resources from oil and mineral deposits to forestry and renewables, access to infrastructure, urban and logistic centers, fertile soil. All of this can work, depending on what you are trying to do in this land. The purpose defines value, but value is still quantifiable.

Value, as part of it, is often closely associated with shortage, and land is no exception. The total surface area of ​​the planet is 510.1 million square kilometers, more than half of which is underwater and works with oil and gas pipelines and submarine cable lines, but little else. So far, we have changed about 15% of the available land area, but after all, the land is finite. Taking into account value and economic feasibility considerations (the investment must be worth it), the pool of land that actually makes sense to acquire becomes even slimmer.

Take the sandbox as an example. What is the value of getting there? Again, value comes from purpose. For example, if you’re a fashion brand, you’ll probably benefit from being in a digital space similar to Gucci. In addition, if you’re considering competing with this brand, try placing your store as close as possible to your store and trim its footprints with the stunning look of your outlets.

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Rarity is revived here. There are numerous NFT plots available next to the Gucci store. In the digital realm, distance itself may seem arbitrary, but it’s not entirely correct. Distance depends on how this particular metaverse handles space, objects, and movement. This is an important and basic component of its design. After all, you probably need to turn your own Metaverse store into a real 3D store that buyers can explore. This requires a 3D spatial grid and at least a basic physics engine. Sure, it’s probably possible to try non-Euclidean geometry and other smart design features to make more space inside than outside, but this increases the workload on the back end and impacts the user experience. Give.

As you can see, technical constraints and business logic determine the basics of digital realms and the activities they can host. The digital world may be endless, but the processing capabilities and memory of its back-end servers are not endless. There is a great deal of digital space that can be hosted and processed without the server stack firing, and there is a great deal of creative room within these impacts while maintaining the business. These frameworks create a coordination system that informs users and investors how to interpret value. In the process, we also create shortage.

The wonderful wide world there

Many of the evaluation and rarity mechanisms derive from the unique features of a particular metaverse defined in the code, but the actual considerations have the same weight, if not more. I have. And the proliferation of the Metaverse rarely changes them or fills the deficiency.

Let’s start with the user base. Sandbox reports 300,000 monthly active users, which is about the same for Decentraland. From a pure mathematics point of view, this is the upper limit of monthly footfalls at the running Metaverse Outlet. So even if they aren’t very impressive, they’ll be hard to beat in most new Metaverse projects. This also hits the value of their land. With the same account, if you have one AAA Metaverse and 10 projects with zero users, the investor will buy the AAA Metaverse and its land. This also creates value-driven meta-shortage. Sure, there’s a lot of land in general, but only a limited amount of feasible investment.

Related: How Blockchain Technology Brings Triple A Games to the Metaverse

Here it is useful to compare with the ads on the page. Advertisers prefer high-traffic websites, and the number of advertising spots on a page is limited by reasonable UX constraints. You can create dozens of other websites at any time, but if they don’t bring the same traffic, the advertising spots there are of little value and few of the top sites.

Beyond the user base, there are also great intangible elements.One of the reasons Brands buy land in the Metaverse because the media knows to write about it. Indeed, large companies generate traction no matter what metaverse they enter into due to their shaking. Still, they want to roll with something that builds some traction on their own, just as they prefer Bloomberg coverage to small newspapers. Brands like partners who play in the same league, punch over their weight, or at least get out of the way as they do. And they are usually in short supply.

Related: Basic and weird: what the Metaverse looks like now

One day we may certainly end up with a single, consistent metaverse, but the rules that bind it still serve as a natural or artificial basis for conceptualizing value. There is likely to be. In today’s scattered Metaverse world, where users can’t bounce seamlessly, competition, and thus shortage, dominates the equation.

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