NFT games are the most compatible direction with Metaverse, and some featured projects have shown the embryonic form of Metaverse.
Written by: Xiao Qifan, at HashKey Capital Research
Metaverse is a virtual world parallel to the real world. The content of this space is completely customized by users, and it has an innovative economic system and financing methods. More importantly, it subverts people’s social forms. The opportunities that Metaverse has produced and developed in recent years lie in the improvement of infrastructure such as VR, the popularity of distributed commerce, the formation of online habits, people’s demand for virtual goods and services, and the promotion of the epidemic. The blockchain is an important underlying technology for Metaverse. In particular, NFT has an important contribution to clarify ownership and increase the sense of reality. NFT games can be regarded as the most compatible direction with Metaverse. Some characteristic projects have already demonstrated Metaverse’s Prototypes, such as The Sandbox, Decentraland and Axie Infinity. We believe that although Metaverse is in a very early stage, it has a lot of room for development. The areas worth investing in include NFT assets on the platform, project governance tokens, index tokens, and game upper-level organizations.
Define Metaverse
Metaverse interacts with the real world
The Chinese language of Metaverse is metaverse. In 1992, Neal Stephenson first proposed this concept in his science fiction novel “Avalanche”. Meta refers to “total” and verse refers to “universe.” Metaverse is a virtual world that is parallel to the real world and interacts with the real world. In this virtual world, there are new characters, currency, assets, social methods and social forms, which are independent and complementary to the real world. Metaverse broadly encompasses a wide range, and elements related to AI, AR, VR, MR, cloud games, etc. can all be counted as Metaverse category. Generally speaking, the keywords that define Metaverse include virtual world, identity, social, immersion, economy, ecology, civilization, etc. The movie “Ready Player One” (Ready Player One) describes a virtual space similar to Metaverse. In the movie, people can enter the virtual world “oasis” as long as they wear a VR device. The “oasis” contains prosperous things similar to the real world. Buildings and cities, there are players, characters and superheroes from different dimensions. In the “oasis”, people can socialize and compete freely, with independent social forms and economies.
Some Web2.0 games show the prototype of Metaverse
Nowadays, some games showing the shape of Metaverse have appeared based on Web2.0. For example, the video game “The Sims” developed by Maxis and released by Electronic Arts in 2000. “The Sims” is an open sandbox game. People in the game do not have clear tasks. Players need to control the virtual reality in the game. Citizen Sims, build connections with other citizens, build houses, participate in activities, and so on. Another example is the game “Second Life”. The world built in Second Life is open. The prices of some items in the game are even anchored to the dollar. The scale and functions of the city are also linked to real life. There are also some real-world IPs or companies for product promotion. Another example is Roblox, a children’s virtual world listed on the New York Stock Exchange on March 10, 2021. Players can freely control characters to create virtual worlds in the game. These games have built templates for the Metaverse track. In addition to games, the prototype of Metaverse can also be seen in other fields, such as digital twin cities and digital twin shopping malls.
Metaverse has entered the public eye in recent years
In recent years, there are three main reasons for the development of Metaverse: the improvement of infrastructure, the possibility of commercialization brought about by the development of social media, and the promotion of the epidemic.
Infrastructure development is gradually improving
VR, MR, AR, AI, simulation technology, virtualization technology, visual rendering technology, blockchain technology, etc. have achieved considerable development in recent years, and can be used as the infrastructure of Metaverse to provide sufficient infrastructure support for its development. Take VR and AI as examples. VR (Virtual Reality) refers to virtual technology. It is a high-tech simulation system. Through multi-sensory simulation, it can help players get an immersive experience. VR is of great significance in the Metaverse. Delayed to have a sense of being on the scene, get a more interesting and diverse experience than in the real world. AI (Artificial Intelligence) Artificial intelligence refers to the use of medicine, robotics, etc. to make machines show human intelligence. It is expected that many human occupations will be replaced by artificial intelligence in the future. The content created in the Metaverse virtual world is often more interesting than in reality. This is also the attraction of Metaverse, and AI technology has made a great contribution to the content creation of Metaverse.
Feasibility of commercialization
The emergence of new types of social media such as games, videos, live broadcasts and other streaming media, the mature development of e-commerce, and the deployment of distributed blockchain technology, distributed commerce, and various remote technologies have all brought possibilities for the commercialization of Metaverse Sexuality, there are fewer and fewer human economic activities that need to be carried out face-to-face. Most of the activities can be carried out on the Internet, and the “online society” is expected to land.
The role of the epidemic
Since the end of 2019, the new crown pneumonia has spread globally. Due to social distance and various social restrictions, people’s social desires that are difficult to satisfy in the real world need to be satisfied in the virtual world, and people’s social online habits have gradually developed. The epidemic has played a role in promoting the landing of Metaverse and has also accelerated the digitalization process of mankind.
Metaverse is derived from the real world and is higher than the real world
Content creators are users, not developers
In Metaverse, unlike the traditional world, people’s goal is not to complete tasks and win games in accordance with the established rules of the developer, but to freely explore and create content in the virtual world by themselves. Most of the activities in Metaverse are Human-centered activities are not necessarily planned around special activities. Players can also rewrite the open source game code according to the actual playability. This is like the video platform Youtube, where people can browse on the platform without knowing what videos they want to watch, or create videos and upload them by themselves, instead of passively accepting the schedule and content provided by the video platform. The content in the future Metaverse will be disintermediated, cross-platform, and completely created by users, which is also in line with the Web3.0 concept.
Create new financing methods
Players’ profit methods in Metaverse are connected with the traditional world, but also innovative, mainly including the auction of land, scarce items, precious real estate and other assets in the virtual world, the development and leasing of land, the rewards for doing tasks in the game, and investment Platform currency profit, etc. The development, sale and leasing of land and real estate are inspired by real-life “real estate speculation” and “land speculation”, but unlike traditional Web2.0 games, making money in games is a Web3.0 meta-universe category. A popular economic model in the project. Therefore, Metaverse has innovated a new financing method, which is inspired by the real world and the original economic model of the metaverse and chain games.
Upgrade human social forms
In Metaverse, people can get a social experience completely different from the real world, and the metaverse has subverted the way humans socialize to a certain extent. In Metaverse, players can freely watch art exhibitions, hold conferences, watch product launches, enjoy fashion shows, and randomly become friends with the AI characters inside. At the same time Metaverse is completely real-time, can give people a completely immersive experience, and will never shut down, and without the constraints of geographic space, Metaverse can accommodate countless avatars, easily hold tens of millions of events. Therefore, the attraction of Metaverse is not limited to the technical transformation, but that it has improved people’s social experience, upgraded social methods, and promoted digital civilization. In the future, more and more people will meet in the metaverse.
NFT empowers Metaverse
Blockchain technology has many advantages such as distribution, decentralization, traceability, and the use of smart contracts to save manpower and costs. Taking games as an example, the ownership of game assets in traditional games belongs to the developer, and players only have the right to use them, while in encrypted games, through smart contracts, users can truly own the game assets. In addition, the game data in traditional games is at risk of being stolen by hackers. For blockchain games, it is difficult for hackers to invade and attack the distributed ledger, so the game data can be safely stored. Finally, game manufacturers of traditional games formulate game rules. The code of blockchain games is open source, and players can freely innovate, making the game more interesting.
Compared with FT, each token is unique in NFT and its commodity attributes are greater than currency attributes. This makes tokens as concrete as physical assets in the physical world, and increases the user’s sense of reality and control. This feature of NFT fits naturally with the Metaverse virtual world. Most of the props, characters, assets, etc. in the virtual world are non-homogeneous and need to be confirmed. At the same time, the new ERC1155 protocol represents the batch casting of multiple NFTs in the Metaverse. It’s also very useful. Therefore, due to the need to ensure the transfer of assets and rights, blockchain technology and NFT play a vital role in Metaverse and are one of the technical foundations of Metaverse development, and NFT games are the first of them.
NFT games are the most suitable direction
market Overview
The speed of development is fast, but the track is not too crowded
Although Metaverse is broadly speaking, it has a wide range, but we believe that NFT games are the most suitable direction. On the whole, Metaverse is a very new track. The number of events is small and the track is not too crowded. It mainly includes but not limited to the following events:
Although the number of Metaverse track projects is small, the development speed is very fast. As of May 31, 2021, Metaverse accounted for more than 10% of the NFT market value. In terms of total sales, the historical total sales of the Metaverse track are approximately US$740 million, of which approximately US$390 million in the first five months of 2021, accounting for more than half of the total historical sales. The total sales in 2020 will be approximately 110 million. Ten million U.S. dollars, sales revenue in the first five months of 2021 will reach 3.4 times that of the full year of 2020. In 2021, the total sales of NFT will be about 6 billion, Metaverse accounted for 6.4%, and the price of the secondary market is generally higher than that of the primary market. The following figure shows the total sales and unit price trends of Metaverse from the beginning of 2020 to the present. Both total sales and unit prices have increased rapidly after 2021.
Metaverse project total sales and price trend, data source: nonfungible.com
Attract well-known IP to settle in
As Metaverse has grown in popularity in recent years, it has attracted many well-known IPs to invest in land or hold events in Metaverse. For example, Devin Finzer, the founder of Opensea, clearly expressed his love for the Metaverse NFT project in an interview. The well-known fashion sports brand Adidas once held a fashion show in Decentraland, and the auction house Sotheby’s also moved its iconic London gallery into Decentraland. In addition, some well-known musicians have recently joined the meta universe, such as Chen Huanren, rock musicians Richie Hawtin and Deadmau5 have joined The Sandbox. The well-known NFT collector Whaleshark is also very keen to invest in meta universe land. He claimed to spend 200 ETH on Cryptovoxels to buy land in 2019, and the value of these land is now about several times the value of the year.
Featured Project
Below we have selected The Sandbox, Decentraland, and Axie Infinity, three projects with large market capitalization and relatively active communities to specifically analyze Metaverse’s innovative gameplay and new business models. The market value of these projects accounted for more than half of the total market value of the Metaverse track. The following figure shows the sales of the three projects from the beginning of 2020 to the present. Almost all of them have experienced a sharp increase in sales after entering 2021. In addition, it is worth mentioning that the market value of these three Metaverse projects ranks in the top ten in the entire NFT sector.
Sales trends of three popular items, data source: nonfungible.com
The three Metaverse projects are among the top ten in the NFT sector, source: Coingecko
The Sandbox
The Sandbox is a subsidiary of the well-known game company Animoca. It is a game project that allows players to use its token SAND to build a virtual world and gain revenue. There is an autonomous organization DAO in the game, and players can use the component Game Maker to create games. , Development of land, you can also use VoxEdit software to create 3D virtual items, and trade in its market to obtain economic benefits. The Sandbox currently has a total sales of more than 20 million US dollars and has more than 50 partners, including Atari, Crypto Kitties and Shaun The Sheep (小羊肖恩) and other well-known IPs. Most of these partners have invested in land in The Sandbox or owned themselves character of. In the virtual world of The Sandbox, there are three main types of tokens: land LAND, token SAND, and asset ASSET. These types of tokens construct the economic system of The Sandbox.
The Sandbox community, source: The Sandbox
LAND
There are 166,464 (408*408) lands in The Sandbox, each of which is an ERC721 token. Owning a piece of land means that the player owns a part of The Sandbox meta-universe. Players can purchase the land-use tool Game Maker to develop and publish on their own, or they can rent to other game developers for rent. There is no need to code knowledge to develop games with Game Maker, and the land can also be used to host their own other props ASSET or hold events. The land is divided into a single piece of LAND and a group of ESTATE consisting of multiple pieces of LAND. The size of the ESTATE is not fixed. The location and size of the LAND will affect its price. For example, the price of the surrounding land of the well-known IP ESTATE is generally higher. At present, The Sandbox has launched multiple rounds of pre-sale and public sale of land. Many rounds of land were sold out within one hour. The fourth round of Euphoria land public sale of 1400 LAND was sold out within 15 seconds. The public sale sales are more than one million US dollars. Players who have not grabbed LAND in the pre-sale and public sale can buy on trading platforms such as The Sandbox’s Market and Opensea. On June 8th, Yuchi co-founder Chun bought a 24*24 LAND at Opensea for $650,000 for the construction of the DOGE fan tribe. As a result, the price of LAND in The Sandbox reached a new high, which shows the popularity of The Sandbox. degree.
The Sandbox land pre-sale and public sale rounds, source: The Sandbox
Chun bought LAND from Opensea, source: Opensea.io
Platform token SAND
The Sandbox’s platform token is SAND, which is an ERC20 token with a total supply of 3 billion. SAND plays an important role in the The Sandbox meta-universe economic system. Its main functions include transaction, governance and pledge.
SAND is the trading medium in The Sandbox. Players can use SAND to buy land, props, avatars, etc., as well as gems and catalysts to increase the scarcity of ASSET. At the same time, The Sandbox stipulates that all transactions through SAND will charge a 5% handling fee. The handling fee is calculated by SAND. 50% of the handling fee will go to the pledge pool for rewards for active players. The other 50% will go to the “Game Producer” Foundation” is used to inspire high-quality creators to create high-quality games.
Players can participate in The Sandbox’s DAO governance by holding SAND, and make voting decisions on key elements of the platform, such as the game’s future development roadmap and version updates. The more SAND held, the greater the voting power. For example, the “Game Producers Foundation” is supervised by the DAO, and token holders can vote on their own or others can exercise their voting rights on their behalf.
Players can pledge SAND to obtain additional income from the land. Staking SAND is also the only way to obtain gems (GEM tokens) and catalysts (CATALYST tokens) that increase the rarity of ASSET.
The income earned by players from doing tasks in the game is also provided in the form of SAND. In addition, SAND can also be used for inviting game designers, curating exhibitions, competitions, and so on.
Asset ASSET
ASSET refers to other types of material assets in The Sandbox, which are created and generated by users (UGC). Each ASSET is an NFT, using ERC721 and ERC1155 standards. Users can use the official software Voxedit provided by The Sandbox to build 3D materials and perform image processing or editing, such as creating virtual avatars, wearing objects, vehicles, props, etc. The clothing, arms, and torso of the virtual avatar can be combined through different ASSETs Or make changes. After the creation is completed, users can directly import the work into The Sandbox’s Market for sale. At present, the NFT manufacturing software VoxEdit has been downloaded more than 80,000 times.
VoxEdit construction material schematic diagram, source: The Sandbox
Decentraland
Decentraland is a distributed VR virtual space platform built on Ethereum, similar to the “Sims” of the blockchain world, and recently announced the integration of Polygon as an expansion solution. Users have their own avatars and can browse, create content, purchase territory and conduct social activities on the platform at will. Decentraland’s platform token is MANA, which has functions such as purchasing assets and services, and governance. Decentraland’s virtual land space is also called LAND, each piece of LAND is located by (x, y) coordinates, and the land token records information such as circulation, owner, and location. Land needs to be purchased with token MANA, and MANA will be destroyed after each purchase. Users can use 3D modeling tools such as SketchUp to create objects or content and import them into the game for use on the land. Both the total sales and market value of Decentraland rank first in the meta-universe category, with sales reaching more than 60 million U.S. dollars, and sales in the past week are close to 1 million U.S. dollars. It is worth mentioning that Decentraland’s land LAND and token MANA have an eye-catching performance in the secondary market. There are about 60,000 LAND circulating in the secondary market. The current highest transaction price of LAND is 759,361 MANA, which is about 700,000. In US dollars, the price of the token MANA has also increased by more than 10 times in 2021.
Three-layer agreement provides Metaverse experience
Decentraland has built a decentralized virtual space through three levels in its technical architecture, from bottom to top, the consensus layer, the content layer, and the interaction layer.
All LAND information, including ownership and circulation records, are all recorded on the consensus layer. Each piece of LAND will have an index obtained by the hash value. Each piece of LAND’s index is unique. When you need to confirm the right or want to retrieve information, You can download information on IPFS according to the index to obtain information about the LAND smart contract.
The content layer stores all the information of the land and adopts a distributed storage method, so there is almost no risk of tampering and data manipulation. The specific file content includes the three-dimensional location of the land, audio, script, texture structure, etc. In the future, a high-quality decentralized storage protocol may be integrated to ensure the integrity and security of the land content.
The important purpose of the interaction layer is to achieve communication and location coordination between users, including voice chat, positioning, and sending messages. In the interactive layer, P2P communication does not require a centralized server, but is realized by the owner of LAND or a third-party server, that is, in order to see other users in their LAND, users must provide an aggregation server, and P2P aggregation servers need to rely on Certain incentive measures are maintained.
Decentraland technical architecture, source: Decentraland white paper
Draw lessons from the diverse land spaces of the real world
The main body of Decentraland is Genesis City. The size of Genesis City is 90,000 LAND (300*300), which has almost all the functions of a modern city. About 36,000 pieces of LAND are infrastructure areas built by the project party and cannot be used for sale. The remaining LAND will be sold to users. Currently, Decentraland has held two land auctions. The first auction was in December 2017. A total of 34,356 LANDs were auctioned, with an average price of approximately US$800. OKEX and Huobi also participated in the land auction. The second auction took place in December 2018. It was a Dutch auction. This auction sold all the remaining LAND in Genesis City, with an average price close to $2,000.
The blocks in Decentraland mainly include Genesis Plaza, a central event plaza, which imitates Vegas City in Las Vegas, Fashion Street with many fashion brands, Festival Land, a party city, Dragon City, a block with Chinese characteristics, and Forest Plaza in a forest green area. , Punk attractions AETHERIAN project, game competition area Gamer Plaza, education area Decentrland University, etc., almost contain all the functions of a city, in addition to the innovative elements of the Internet, such as punk and e-sports, there are also many IP in Decentraland In the promotion and promotion with the help of billboards. The figure below shows some of the featured areas.
Crypto Valley with various blockchain elements, source: Decentraland
Dragon City, a characteristic city full of Chinese elements, source: Decentraland
The most outstanding land development in Decentraland is the virtual gallery. Encrypted artists or IP can create a virtual exhibition area by themselves. Users can enter any gallery at will, and they can jump to purchase while enjoying the works. The artworks in the general exhibition area are directly connected to Opensea, etc. There is also a link to the trading platform, and Gallery will display the introduction of encrypted artworks and the artist’s social platform account. On June 4th, the London gallery of the well-known auction house Sotheby’s also officially settled in Decentraland, including the gallery space and the guard image.
Virtual gallery, source: Decentraland
Click on the work to get the work introduction or link to the purchase platform, source: Decentraland
Doorman at Sotheby’s London Gallery, source: Decentraland
Inside Sotheby’s Gallery, source: Decentraland
Axie Infinity
Axie Infinity is an open game based on Ethereum to collect and raise weird creatures. Aixe elves are also one of the earliest NFT pets that can fight. Axie Infinity’s development team, Sky Mavis, is from Vietnam. The team completed a round of financing in May. NBA Dallas boss Mark Cuban and game company Animoca have both participated in the investment. Other partners include Ubisoft, Binance, Samsung and so on. At present, the total sales of Axie Infinity are close to 87 million U.S. dollars. The number of active users will reach a peak of about 8,000 at the end of 2020. There are about 85,000 Twitter followers and more than 100,000 Discord members. Axie Infinity is active in sales and the community. In terms of degree, it ranks very high in blockchain games and is currently one of the most popular blockchain games.
assets
- Axie Elf
Axie elves are similar to pets in the real world. They can reproduce by pairing and breeding. Each Axie can breed up to seven times. Each reproduction requires a small amount of ETH and an indefinite token SLP (Small Love Potion). SLP is internal to Axie Infinity. A token of the new Axie, all aspects of the performance of the new Axie will inherit two breeding Axie. Axie genie can be sold in the secondary market, the highest price of Axie currently reaches 300 ETH, about 130,000 US dollars.
The Axie Infinity meta-universe land is called Lunacia, with a total of 90,601 plots, each plot is a rare NFT, and the price of the plot varies according to the geographic location. There are nine types of land in the Lunacia continent as follows:
Types of land in the Lunacia continent, source: Axie Infinity white paper
After the player purchases the land, they can first mine the AXS tokens and other resources on the land by themselves, or allow a third party to mine the resources and collect shares. In addition, the player can also build buildings or operate shops to earn revenue. Users can develop by themselves through the software toolkit Lunacia SDK components under development or allow third parties to develop games and generate content on the land. Each game is an NFT. In addition, a monster called Chimera will attack Lunacia from time to time. Defeating Chimera will also get dropped resources and props, which can be used to upgrade the land and Axie performance.
Lunacia continent, source: Axie Infinity
Lunacia SDK components, source: Axie Infinity white paper
- Platform token
AXS is the platform functional token of Axie Infinity. It is an ERC20 token with a total supply of 270 million. It also has three main functions: transaction, governance and pledge. The team’s vision for AXS is to allow players and developers to form an effective incentive mechanism, and ultimately decentralize the governance of Axie Infinity from the initial development team to the players to achieve decentralized DAO governance. Specific measures such as players staking AXS to get rewards every week, players participating in the game and contributing to the community will also receive token rewards. These measures will encourage players to hold more tokens and achieve the purpose of decentralizing power. At the same time, the AXS token pledger will also manage the community treasury, which is mainly used to store part of the game’s income and issue pledge rewards.
AXS token economic system, source: Axie Infinity white paper
Mission and competition
Axie Infinity is the pioneer of “Play to Earn” in blockchain games. The Axie team believes that players who increase the activity and value of the community network by playing games deserve to be rewarded. After having three Axie elves in the game, players can get token rewards by completing tasks in the game or winning games. The tasks are divided into daily tasks and competitive tasks. The reward for completing daily tasks is 50 SLP, and the reward for competitive tasks can reach 200 SLP. SLP can be sold on Uniswap or Binance. In addition to SLP, you can also get Axie DAI tokens, 1,000 Axie DAI is equal to one DAI. Depending on the length of the game and the quality of Axie, the rewards may be different. At present, the team or third-party sponsors have held multiple events, and players have won tens of thousands of dollars in token rewards.
Metaverse brings a new business model
Although the business models of the Meta Universe project are slightly different according to the specific conditions of the project, they can be divided into three categories as a whole: gaining from buying and selling and developing land, making money while playing, and providing virtual items.
Sale, development and lease of land
Buy and sell
Land is the foundation of Metaverse’s existence, and the buying and selling of virtual land and real estate is the most important model for generating economic benefits for such projects as Metaverse. Taking Decentraland as an example, there are about 60,000 LAND in the secondary market, which accounts for half of all virtual assets of the project, and the value accounts for more than 70%. The following figure shows the average selling price of LAND in the primary and secondary markets from the beginning of 2020 to the present. The secondary market price is higher than that of the primary market. Many players purchase LAND through the official Decentraland sale and hold it in the secondary market for a period of time Sell to earn income. For example, a player bought LAND in the primary market at the end of 2020, held it for a quarter, and sold it in the secondary market at the end of March 2021. The price of LAND has almost doubled tenfold. In addition, some projects such as The Sandbox have introduced land mining rewards. The more land you hold, the more rewards you will get. In addition, in terms of real estate, virtual mortgages are also available in Decentraland. Therefore, there is no shortage of land speculation and real estate speculation in Metaverse.
Decentraland LAND primary and secondary market prices, data source: nonfungible.com
lease
In addition to buying and selling, users can also choose to lease the land to players who want to develop the land to collect rent. Leaser retains the land ownership, and lessee owns the land use rights. Generally speaking, the rent varies according to the size of the land, design, block location, and even leaser’s views and requirements for land development. Usually the rent is in the form of monthly settlement, which can be paid with platform tokens, most of which can also be paid with ETH, and some projects use lessee to pay a certain share of the land operation income after the development of the leaser. In addition to long-term leases, there are also short-term leases and one-off leases for certain specific activities. Overall, virtual world leases are still at a very early stage.
Development
The owner of the land can choose to develop it on his own or lease it to a third party to obtain income according to his wishes. Among them, the construction of art exhibition halls, the provision of infrastructure such as advertising spaces, and the development of games are the main directions. Specifically, for example, the game nØshot built on Cryptovoxel, the game tool component Game Maker in The Sansbox, the upcoming Lunacia SDK component of Axie Infinity, and Decentraland also have models built by service providers such as MetaZone. In addition, the developed land can also be used for sale, and the price of developed land is generally much higher than that of blank land.
Play to Earn
“Play to Earn” (Play to Earn) is a popular economic model in meta-universe projects, that is, earning income by completing tasks in the game. Axie Infinity is a typical successful case of “playing while earning”, and it is also one of the first blockchain games that will introduce a coin-earning model. In the Philippines and Indonesia, Aixe Infinity has even become the main source of income for some families, earning $200 a week from playing games, which is a lot of income for some poor Southeast Asian families. Other projects such as The Sandbox and some games on the land of Cryptovoxels have also introduced the Play to Earn mode. The mode of making money in the game is an important means to expand the meta-universe economic network and to consolidate the community. Only when income can be obtained through labor in the virtual world, can the virtual world interact with and complement the real world.
Virtual goods provider
In addition to land, there are many other types of virtual goods in Metaverse, which has gradually derived specialized virtual goods providers. Taking construction as an example, the landlord can choose a dedicated real estate contractor to construct the building. For example, the well-known Metaverse construction contractor Voxel Architect has provided construction contracting services for Decentraland, The Sandbox, Somnim Space, Cryptovoxels and other projects. Take the B.20 Museum, one of the works of Voxel Architect, as an example. The space appears in the four projects of Decentraland, The Sandbox, Somnim Space, and Cryptovoxels, but the size and internal structure are different. The picture below shows the B.20 Museum. The appearance in four items. In addition, Voxel Architect’s portfolio is also very diverse, including art galleries, exhibition halls, Christmas markets, theaters, courtyards, Whaleshark’s virtual clothing brand E1337 clothing store, as well as refrigerators, safes, toilets, etc.
B.20 Museum in four projects, source: Voxel Architect
Some works of Voxel Architect, source: Voxel Architect
Value thinking of Metaverse
On the whole, Metaverse is still in a very early stage. Most of the virtual space is still relatively rough, with only the most basic functions. Among the land parcels sold, only a few areas are active, and most of them are still undeveloped. status. However, we believe that Metaverse has a lot of room for development. From a market perspective, the demand for Internet users, the game market, or virtual goods is growing very rapidly, and Metaverse perfectly meets these types of needs. At the economic level, in this decentralized virtual space, there is an economic model that is similar to the real world and incorporates innovative elements of Web3.0, and will never shut down. In the future, Metaverse may have an economic scale several times the real world. , Economic benefits are the most fundamental reason for Metaverse to attract users and grow the network. At the social level, Metaverse can bring people an immersive and non-delayed social experience, which can transcend physical space. Players have a high sense of participation, and can get more shocking and shocking feelings than the real world, social satisfaction and meta-universe Fun will also attract more players. Therefore, although Metaverse is still in its infancy, it has huge potential for future development.
Future prospects and development bottlenecks
Improved platform interactivity
The current Metaverse project cannot be cross-platform interoperable, and players can only use the project’s assets or socialize in one project. In the future, interoperability between platforms will be improved. For example, the wizard Axie can breed and fight in Decentraland; Aavegotchi can be either a racing pendant in F1 Delta or a talisman in combat games; decentralized games can also be centered Transformation platforms are connected and interactive, and there is no longer a barrier. Even the boundary between the virtual world and the real world will gradually blur, and there will be portals between various worlds.
The emergence of new occupations and types of work
参考电影头号玩家中专门为科技公司IOI 在游戏中做任务以偿还债务的玩家，未来会出现在Metaverse 中的职业游戏玩家和新型工种。其实这一现象现在一些第三世界已经初具苗头，比如上文提到的菲律宾和印尼出现一些玩家在Axie Infinity 中战斗以获取小爱药剂奖励，游戏中的奖励已经高于最低工资水平，不排除这些人成为职业玩家的可能性。并且除了游戏玩家，也可能出现类似Metaverse「建筑工人」这类提供服务的工种，这些新职业和新工种或将改善现实社会内卷现状。
更多资产类型被纳入Metaverse
目前Opensea 等二级市场平台或项目官方集市中的NFT 资产普遍是土地、房产、道具、avatar 和少量的艺术品，未来预计会有更多资产类型。以虚拟服饰（Metawear）为例，比如Whaleshark 发起的虚拟服饰品牌E1337，潮鞋品牌RTFKT 都为虚拟人物提供了更多服装选择，虚拟服饰将更加凸显虚拟身份的个性化。
缺乏规范和内容过滤
由于Metaverse 目前处正在非常早期和粗糙的阶段，而Metaverse 的重要特征又在于用户创造内容，所以大多场所处于自由无监管的状态，个别虚拟空间中有散播不良言论的现象，也存在赌城等灰色地带，不存在内容过滤，未来或将引入内容创造黑名单和白名单来解决这个问题。
平台内资产、项目治理代币、指数代币和上层组织是投资方向
平台内NFT 资产
Metaverse 游戏平台内的资产有两种盈利模式，即游戏内获利和二级市场交易获利。比如在前文提到的Metaverse 项目中玩家可以购买虚拟土地、房产，在土地上可以开发新项目，在游戏内做任务赚钱。玩家亦可以在Opensea 等交易平台上转卖，在二级市场出售获利，在Opensea 中有专门的分类Virtual Worlds，用于交易元宇宙类游戏资产。总体来说，投资游戏内NFT 资产风险比较大，根据游戏热度不同，资产的售价和流动性也不同。
项目治理代币
玩家可以质押项目治理代币获得额外收益，也可以将代币用于对社区财政资源分配、项目发展的投票，代币治理的具体功能可参考前文的AXS，MANA, SAND。玩家也可以在二级市场买卖这类游戏治理代币获得收益。治理代币的价值也和游戏热度有直接关系，但比游戏资产的流动性要好。
Mataverse 指数类代币
和其他指数类代币类似，Metaverse 指数代币涉及多个元宇宙、Web3 类项目，即使玩家对元宇宙都涉及哪些具体项目和玩法不够了解，仍然可以对这一方向进行投资。另外在风险控制方面，指数类项目大概率不会暴涨暴跌，波动比单个项目代币小，具体比如Metaverse Index (MVI)。
上层应用协议及组织
游戏的上层组织比如工会负责收集NFT 并把它们匹配给熟练的玩家，派遣他们到不同的虚拟游戏中完成任务例如种地、战斗、开发房地产，交易商品等，从而产生经济效益，工会产生的利润将分配给工会成员。比如YGG 协议的公会Yield Guild 以及组织了自己的Axie 战队的对冲基金Blackpool Finance。这类协议或上层组织旨在在虚拟世界中创造新的经济体，也是投资的一个方向。
