Mark Zuckerberg has certainly put the word “metaverse” in the spotlight since he announced that the company would be employing 10,000 engineers across Europe and America to work on this virtual world.
For this reason, a lot of companies are cropping up to offer various virtual products around the metaverse. This article will define what the metaverse land is in simple terms, where you can buy land, and if you should invest in it.
Definition
The metaverse land is a piece of real estate that you own, even if you can’t touch it. It shares similar relationships just like the traditional real estate we all currently live in.
The real estate in the metaverse could be residential when you plug in a VR gadget and invite your friends over to play a video game virtually, watch movies, party, hold meetings, or just chill.
Metaverse land will also be bought by big companies to sell their products just like they do in the normal world, where you’d find a fashion store around a residential building.
The metaverse land can also be a vacant piece of land that you can develop into anything of your choice or just flip it for profit.
Is there just one metaverse land that everyone else buys from?
Well, the metaverse does not belong to any individual. The Metaverse is not one. If you have the software and coding capability, in fact, you can create your own metaverse.
I think of it as a social network. Anybody can own a social networking site. However, the question is, can you bring and retain users there? That is the billion dollar question.
Some of the pioneer companies that are selling real estate in the metaverse are:
Decentraland
The important keyword here is “LAND.” It is a non-fungible digital asset held in an Ethereum smart contract. The word “LAND” is the name of Decentraland’s finite, traversable, 3D virtual environment. Land is separated into parcels using cartesian coordinates to identify them (x,y).
Members of the community hold these plots in perpetuity, and they are acquired using MANA tokens, which is Decentraland’s cryptocurrency token.
The SandBox
The Sandbox metaverse has a map with 166,464 LANDS on it. LAND owners can, among other things, organize competitions and events, stake SAND to earn and modify assets, monetize assets and experiences, vote in metaverse government, and play games created by you or others.
The Somnium
This is a centralized VR firm that started as a team of 12. They have moved into land sales and sold over $200K worth of land in two crowd funding campaigns.
Aside from land sales, other core businesses of Somnium involve token sales, bringing in streamers, content curation, game development, offering virtual university courses, NFTs, and more.
The Upland
This was started by three co-founders, Mani, Idan, and Dirk, who thought it was “fun” to trade virtual properties for real-life addresses. This led them to develop the Upland metaverse, where people can socialize and even earn money.
Cryptovoxels
Cryptovoxels is an ethereum block chain-based virtual world. The world is divided into two parts: Origin City, which is controlled by the corporation (sounds scary, right? ), and parcels owned by individuals. You can purchase a parcel if you have an Ethereum wallet.
Does Facebook own a metaverse land?
Facebook does not own or sell any metaverse land. The thing is, it is not their main goal. They are too big to be trading properties (not like they can’t anyway).
Facebook’s goal with its Oculus VR device is to create a virtual world for people to interact in, and they are relying heavily on their 3 billion users across all of their platforms to gradually transition to the virtual world.
This virtual world will open up Facebook to a new world of business and commercial opportunities where they can sell games, fitness applications, conferencing applications, or even real estate.
The only educated guess we can make at this point is that Facebook is definitely not going to be selling bits of their real estate to anyone. They want to own the space and bring people in. The more people they can bring in, the more money they can generate.
Who brokers deals for metaverse land?
For now, one company is facilitating the real estate deals that are happening in the metaverse. The Metaverse property, which has a lot of folks experienced in the real blockchain and cryptocurrency worlds, is the one running the show. If you want to buy one, you can start here.
But they don’t have a whole bunch of properties for sale anyway. It’s in their interest to hoard it for now and try to generate buzz.
However, Rebulic Realm is also a big time broker in the metaverse, and they can help you make acquisitions as well as investments in MREIT.
Should you buy in?
The metaverse is beyond one company. It is where the future lies. All the major corporations, like Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Unity, Amazon, and even Disney, are all in on it.
It is only a matter of time before all of us, consciously or unconsciously, become a part of that world.
If you can find a piece of real estate, I’d wager you should. People who invested in bitcoin early on became extremely wealthy, and the metaverse is much larger than bitcoin.
