The Hyperfy Example: Embracing Virtual Abundance

This week, I wrote about the Eliza Daydreams and Wayfinder agent frameworks, which got me thinking about Hyperfy.

I'm interested in infra like Eliza, Wayfinder, etc. by way of games, particularly fully onchain gaming.

But the possibilities of these sorts of systems reach out beyond pure gaming plays in every direction, including into virtual worlds like Hyperfy, a browser-based VR platform designed for any device.

That said, Hyperfy is in the news this week for a few reasons: elizaOS just added support, while the Hyperfy team just open-sourced their engines and unveiled $HYPER along with a new, more accessible platform approach

It's that last point—the more accessible platform approach—that I want to drill into a bit here, because I think it's an example of "the right way" and also a taste of where metaversal experiences are trending.

Why Hyperfy v2 matters

Customizable virtual worlds could be minted as NFTs for ETH in Hyperfy v1.

This functionality has been axed from the v2 system, so now anyone can create Hyperfy virtual worlds for free, whenever and however they please. We've already seen a number of people testing out this newfound freedom.

No-code tools are coming, too, that will make the building even easier here. But my favorite thing about the v2 shift is the transition to the abundance approach when it comes to digital land.

I love this move away from artificial scarcity because it's a rejection of the pitfalls of the past.

Indeed, the 2021 metaverse boom had a rotten problem, which was land speculation death spirals.

This phenomenon’s not unique to NFTs and has been observed for decades across virtual worlds like Second Life and games like EVE Online and Final Fantasy.

These death spirals occur when projects make digital space act too much like physical land, i.e. scarce and very valuable, in turn causing speculative bubbles that eventually burst.

In going free and open, then, Hyperfy has given itself the best shot to thrive and attract an empowered, happy, and rhizomatic community that can do what they want, how they want, when they want, and with whichever assets and NFTs they want to bring with them.

This pushes the question of artificial scarcity out to the level of the users, who can still choose to token-gate their worlds if they want to.

But that's for the users to decide. If artificial scarcity is enforced at the platform level, and counteractive mechanisms like a metaverse land tax and citizen's dividend aren't used, then stagnation or pain awaits.

So it is, yes, very refreshing to see a project like Hyperfy make a decisive break away from the mistakes that we've seen other teams make for years now.

There are no inherent limitations to virtual land, and more free virtual land can always be created. Hyperfy's now on the right side of this paradigm, and I think this dynamic can greatly help to unleash its potential over time.

Then throw into the mix advances like AI agents and Midjourney's upcoming Holodeck—capable of generating 3D spaces on demand in real-time—and the horizon ahead seems endless when it comes to building, filling, and having new thrills in virtual worlds.

These strides and prospects lay the groundwork for, dare I say it, a new wave of interest and experiments around virtual worlds, which would surely bleed into other domains like DAOs, DeFi, etc.

Just some food for thought, right.

If you're keen to try Hyperfy for yourself, a great starting point is attending The WIP, a metaverse meetup that's been running since 2019 and is live on Thursdays in Hyperfy. You'll cross paths with some of the best people in crypto, and it's definitely worth your time alpha-wise.

For now, don't miss the forest for the trees. As Vance Spencer once put it, "The metaverse narrative [remains] the most expansive meta of all, a superset of all other crypto narratives."