Dear Bankless Nation,

In recent decades, virtual worlds have become increasingly important to humanity. I believe over the next few decades these VR worlds will become increasingly important to Ethereum.

Ethereum, even in its rising state, has already given life to a teeming, albiet adolescent virtual world ecosystem via NFTs. As these technologies progress, this digital frontier can grow exponentially.

So how to go about carving out your own spot in this frontier?

I offer some starter considerations in today’s Metaversal 👇

-WMP

Eyeing the Metaverse

In the future, the internet won’t be confined to static, flat websites. Instead, we’ll increasingly see virtual spaces dominate and interoperate to create the metaverse, i.e. the aggregate of all connected virtual reality environments.

That said, one of Ethereum’s most interesting verticals right now is its VR scene, and that’s because Ethereum and NFTs, which are used to create and track VR parcels, provide a common economic infrastructure for projects to build upon and for users to readily interact through.

In other words, your ETH, ERC-20 tokens, and NFTs are good all around Ethereum’s young metaverse, and that opens up powerful possibilities. These possibilities have helped propel Ethereum’s top VR projects, namely Cryptovoxels, Decentraland, Somnium Space, and The Sandbox, to their current heights in the NFT ecosystem.

Beginning with Virtual Land

We’ve already seen creators use Ethereum VR parcels toward all kinds of ends, like art galleries, game tournaments, weekly meetups, and more. And since the 21st century is proving to be the century of hyperdigitalization, we’ll likely continue seeing mass migrations from the physical world to digital worlds in the years ahead.

In other words, there’s a non-trivial chance the metaverse is really exciting in the future. So using and participating around promising Ethereum VR projects is one hands-on way to stake up your own personal claim in this future. But where to start?

First off, I’d say these frontiers are best suited for builders who plan to actually tinker with and use their parcels. That way, you’ll always be satisfied you got some use out of them regardless of what happens with the crypto and NFT markets. And it’s not always the case that you have to even buy your own parcel to get started building, e.g. Cryptovoxels allows parcel owners to add multiple contributors.

If you’re interested one easy place to review and buy/sell NFT parcels from across multiple projects is OpenSea, Ethereum’s premier NFT marketplace.

Something you can do is set up a custom search for the 4 aforementioned projects, i.e. Cryptovoxels, Decentraland, Somnium Space, and The Sandbox, and then sort Price by “Low to High.” You’ll first have to scroll through some voxel assets to get to the plots, but this way you can browse everything from a single interface. Alternatively, you can go to these project’s websites and view their respective dedicated marketplaces.

As for floor prices, they currently look like so:

• 2999 SAND (~$900 USD) for a Sandbox parcel

  

• 4,486 MANA (~$3,600 USD) for a Decentraland parcel

  

• 1.49 ETH (~$3,800 USD) for a Cryptovoxels parcel

  

• 1.62 ETH ($4,150 USD) for a Somnium Space parcel

  

Simply connect your wallet to OpenSea or the respective project marketplaces if you want to make any buys or sells!

As they stand these prices box out many buyers, but admittedly there has been a demand shock for Ethereum’s top VR projects as NFTs and the metaverse have exploded in popularity over the last year and a half. I do suspect these markets will fluctuate considerably in the years ahead, especially being as young and novel as they are, and we’ll undoubtedly see more work around friendlier price points and communal builds, too.

Where to Buy?

There’s no right or wrong answers when it comes to picking a plot, it all just depends on what you’re personally looking for.

Want to make a large, sprawling build as a virtual HQ for your Ethereum project? Then you’ll have to pay more for a larger plot, e.g. a Cryptovoxels plot that has an extensive Build Height and Build Width, or a group of adjacent plots.

Want to make your build at the heart of the metaverse’s teeming cultural scene? Try targeting the most active areas where you’ll have awesome neighboring builds, so you can construct where all the action is.

To give you a sense of what some of this action looks like today, consider checking out something like the PortalHub build in Cryptovoxels, which allows visitors to readily zap into some of this VR world’s most impressive and popular builds to date.

Conclusion

Ethereum’s metaverse scene is only just beginning, but the possibilities are wide open and seemingly growing all the while thanks to the advances of Web3 and scaling solutions. What lies ahead are new kinds of communities, creativity, and commerce. As time goes on, there will probably eventually come to be many virtual worlds built on Ethereum and NFTs. Until then, it’s something of a marvel to be able to play and work around this frontier.

Action steps

• 📰 Read “A Call for More Open, Blockchain-Based Virtual Worlds” by Andrew Steinwold
• 📰 Read “A Guide to Somnium’s Best Parcels” by Somnium Times