Reporting by XinZhiyuan
Edit: Small salted fish
New York-based company Public Realm announced that it once again set a record for spending $4.3 million on a digital land in The Sandbox. To date, four of the largest sites in the metaverse have sold more than $100 million worth of land.
Spending millions of dollars to buy a house in a virtual land that doesn't exist in reality?
It may sound ridiculous, but the craze of predictions about the future of virtual reality is prompting investors to turn to digital properties in the metaverse.
Logically, in the virtual world, the land area should be unlimited, and there is no time and space restrictions, so the house should not have the attributes of a scarce commodity.
But after the "speculation group" entered the meta-universe, everything was different.
Digital land is a record
This month, New York-based Recycl realm announced that it had purchased a digital land for a record $4.3 million in Sandbox.
Sandbox is one of several "virtual world" sites where people can socialize, play games, and even attend concerts.
A few days ago, a virtual piece of land in Decentraland sold for $2.43 million, more than double the record high at the time. (Unexpectedly, the record of $2.43 million did not last long)
The purchaser, Metavalse Group (not that Meta), a subsidiary of Tokens.com, completed the deal for 618,000 MANA.
Decentraland, a virtual reality platform running on the ETH blockchain, went live in February 2020 and allows users to swim in this virtual world, buy land, visit buildings, and meet and talk with other players.
MANA, on the other hand, is an NFT that can be used in Decentraland, and users can use it to purchase assets in the metaverse.
In late November, Barbados also announced plans to open the Metaspace Embassy in Decentraland.
Coincidentally, Lin Junjie also announced on Twitter that he had purchased three plots of land in Decentraland, which are estimated to be worth about $123,000, or about 784,000 yuan.
Sites like Decentraland call themselves the prototype of the metaverse, the future of the Internet, and online experiences like chatting with friends feel face-to-face only when you wear virtual reality glasses.
"Metaverse" has been a buzzword in Silicon Valley for months, but as Facebook's parent company changed its name to Meta and shifted its focus to virtual reality, interest in "metaversy" continued to soar.
Cathy Hackl, a technical consultant, says Meta has successfully introduced the term "metaverse" to millions of people, much faster than I thought, and that her job is to advise businesses into the metaverse.
According to data site Dapp, four of the largest sites in the metaverse space, The Sandbox, Decentraland, CryptoVoxels and Somnium Space, have sold more than $100 million worth of land.
For Hackl, it's not surprising that the metacosmum market is booming, as it has spawned an entire ecosystem around virtual properties, from rents to land developers and more.
"We're trying to bring the way we understand physical goods into the virtual world," she said.
Hackl said that while it may take a while for these sites to function as a true metaverse, because it will take a long time to "transport" us to any place with virtual reality glasses, digital land has become an asset like real land.
"They can build on that, and the land can be leased or sold," she said.
Metaverse Fifth Avenue
Tokens.com purchased a prime location in Decentraland's trendy neighborhood, which the platform hopes to develop as home to a virtual store for luxury brands.
Tokens.com CEO Andrew Kiegel admitted: "If I hadn't done this research and didn't realize it was a valuable asset, it would have been too far behind."
Kiguel, a banker who has focused on real estate investment for 20 years, insists that Decentraland's commercial district has exactly the same meaning as a commercial street in the real world: it is located in a crowded area.
"It's an event space where people gather," he explained, noting the recent virtual music festival in Decentraland, which attracted 50,000 visitors.
Luxury brands have also begun to enter the metacosm.
In May, a Gucci virtual handbag was sold on the Roblox platform for a higher price than the real handbag.
Kigel hopes fashion street will become a shopping mecca similar to New York's Fifth Avenue.
As for how to make money with the land, "the question can be as simple as advertising with a billboard, or as complex as running a storefront with actual employees," he said.
"You can walk in with your avatar, pick up a 3D digital shoe, and ask questions."
Rebooting Second Life
Back in 2006, a real estate developer made headlines by selling land on the virtual world website Second Life for $1 million.
While Second Life is still alive today, proponents of its next-generation rival Metaverse point to key differences.
In Decentraland, everything from land to virtual artwork comes in the form of irreplaceable symbols, or NFTs.
Some people have spent tens of thousands of dollars on these digital products, and the news has raised a lot of doubts.
But Kiegel predicts that this form of digital ownership will become common in the coming years, as the blockchain technology behind it guarantees transparency in transactions.
"I can see the history of NFT ownership, who paid what for it, and how it was transferred," he said.
But this investment is not without risk.
While virtual concerts on sites like Roblox and Fortnite attract tens of millions of viewers, available data suggests that traffic to metaversy sites like Decentraland lags far behind established social media sites like Facebook and Instagram.
Ultimately, the value of digital land investment depends on whether people are willing to believe it and are willing to enter these virtual world websites.
Resources:
https://techxplore.com/news/2021-12-metaverse-hype-fuels-booming-digital.html