Our annual crypto review. Part 3: Metaverse and Blockchain Gaming.
One of the novelties that NFTs brought to the world is blockchain gaming. The special thing about it: Those who like to gamble on the blockchain can now earn money with it. With NFT Games, gamers have the opportunity to actually own game-internal features such as skins, characters, weapons, virtual properties and other things.
The NFTs or blockchain ensures that the respective feature can be assigned to the players. This has long since resulted in an NFT-based in-game economy that makes it possible to sell NFT items. Apart from that, you can be paid for your time or attention through token rewards for gambling. You can find the five most important of these NFT games here.
The emergence and establishment of metaverses is closely linked to the NFT hype. They form parallel realities in the digital realm. And mix business, gamification and crypto in an exciting way. In the form of NFTs, metaverses such as Decentraland or The Sandbox create avatars, sell land, marvel at NFT art and wonder where the journey is going.
That Silicon Valley greats like Mark Zuckerberg see a great future in the Metaverse became evident not least when the Facebook CEO renamed his company “Meta”. With the associated Metaverse Horizon, the Zuckerberg company set a new priority. And for this, the company is digging deep into its pockets. Up to 10,000 positions are to be created for the creation and maintenance of the metaverse. With an investment of 10 billion US dollars, everything we do in real life should become possible. So that stretches Facebook Meta the feelers far beyond the world of social networks. With its Metaversum, the group also wants to provide the digital streets and properties on which we should move in the future.
On the way to the digital economy
Social tokens, the not-too-distant dream of the future, will also make it possible to monetize accounts here. The calculation is simple: those who have a long range are rewarded with tokens. This in turn creates new incentives and added value to invest in service offerings. Participating companies pave the way for a digital economy.
But companies like Nike or Microsoft have long since smelled the roast. At the end of October, the sporting goods manufacturer decided to apply to the patent office for the registration of trademarks for virtual goods. The idea behind it: being able to sell digital objects such as shoes, hats, sports equipment and the like as NFT.
Tech giant Microsoft also announced in November that it would break into the Metaverse. With Mesh for Teams, the Microsoft communication tool Teams is to receive a new component. Attentive readers: inside you might guess: It’s going digital. Instead of traditionally meeting via video conference, Mesh users should also be able to meet in virtual Metaverse rooms. The beta version can be expected as early as the first half of 2022.
The Metaverse is even penetrating geopolitical spheres. In November, for example, it was announced that Barbados was working with several Metaverse companies to establish itself in the digital realm. With its own embassy in Decentraland, the Caribbean state plans to promote “bilateral relations with governments worldwide” from January 2022. It is not yet known what this will look like in concrete terms.