Why NFTs Are The Keys To Accessing The Metaverse
Key Takeaways
Metaverses are digital 3D universes that give users and businesses endless opportunities for porting real-world assets and services
Metaverses provide an open and fair economy backed by the blockchain
In particular, the play-to-earn gaming economy will engage and empower players of blockchain games via NFTs
NFTs are the bridge to the metaverse, and facilitate identity, community and social experiences in the metaverse
To get started, users can collect in-game NFTs through Binance NFT’s IGO collections to access gaming metaverses
With use cases for NFTs fast expanding, these digital assets are heralding a new era of the digital world - the Metaverse. The arrival of metaverses on the global stage is best showcased by Facebook’s launch of Meta, signalling the shift towards a metaverse era, where NFT-based augmented experiences are set to act as pillars for next-generation social networks.
NFTs and metaverses are already closely interconnected, especially in blockchain gaming and other interoperable games where they take on the role of value carriers of expansive digital social mediums. While a fairly new concept, NFT gaming is popular, as seen in the latest initiative of Binance NFT’s Initial Game Offering (IGO). This new gaming arm has been so well-received amongst gamers and crypto users that it has exceeded $16 million in trading volume within two weeks, with every IGO’s NFT collections completely sold out.
What Is The Metaverse?
A metaverse is a digital environment operating on the blockchain. Here, technologies such as VR and AR act as the visual component providers, while the decentralized medium provides unlimited social interaction and business opportunities. These environments are scalable, interoperable, versatile, and marries innovative technologies and models of interaction among its participants on both the individual and enterprise levels.
Metaverses are digital 3D universes that incorporate numerous processes and elements such as communications, finances, game worlds, personal profiles, NFTs and more. The potential of the metaverse is attributed to the freedom it offers; anyone in the metaverse is able to create, buy, and view NFTs to collect virtual estate, join social communities, create virtual identities, game and more. This array of use cases opens up numerous opportunities for monetization of real-world and digital assets, where both businesses and users can incorporate into the metaverse frameworks.
Future metaverses will unify separate online worlds, with NFTs facilitating cross-chain activities. To learn more about the metaverse, read this.
How Will NFTs Impact The Metaverse?
NFTs are capable of disrupting the traditional social network paradigm of user interaction, socialization, and transaction in the metaverse. Find out how NFTs can disrupt the digital world.
An Open And Fair Economy
Presently, users and businesses can port over real-world assets and services into a virtual decentralized environment, known as the metaverse. One way of inviting more real-world assets to the metaverse is by using innovative gaming models with interoperable blockchain games.
The play-to-earn gaming model is one such approach that not only engages, but also empowers players of blockchain games. By relying on NFTs, players can take part in financial in-game economies in the metaverse and get rewards for the value that they add, essentially earning while they play. Play-to-earn games are also fair in the metaverse, as players get full ownership of their assets instead of being controlled by a single game entity like most traditional games.
If you’re wondering how to take part in these financial in-game economies, Binance NFT’s IGO launches offer a variety of in-game assets from gaming projects where players can collect and import into different gaming environments for use. Such in-game NFTs are in high demand, as reflected in the response of IGO launches, where all NFTs were sold out from the actual drop. Successful examples of such play-to-earn games include Axie Infinite (AXS), My Neighbor Alice (Alice), and many others.
Play-to-earn gaming guilds will also be instrumental in progressing the popularity of play-to-earn gaming. Guilds act as facilitating intermediaries by purchasing in-game NFT resources including land and assets, and then lending them out to players who want to use them in their respective virtual worlds to earn yields. Play-to-earn guilds then take a small portion of the earnings.
This helps promote an open and fair economy, as players who do not have the upfront capital to play can go through guilds to get a head start. Guilds lower the barrier of entry to play-to-earn games for all players, and make it fairer for all to stand a chance to participate in the metaverse economy. In short, guilds serve to kickstart virtual economies in the metaverse by making NFT resources more accessible for everyone.
One such example is Yield Guild Games (YGG), where they build a global community of metaverse participants who contribute to the virtual worlds to collect in-world rewards, producing revenue through the rental or sale of YGG-owned assets for a profit.
In-world assets can also command real-world value, since users can trade their NFT assets, such as in-game assets and digital real estate on NFT marketplaces like Binance NFT. The economic value of the NFTs provided in-game is measured by their use case in respective modules of the metaverse. This gives users the freedom to choose what type of content they want to generate, like popular assets that appeal to mass audiences, unique digital artwork, or specialized NFTs granting specific abilities and appearances in games.
Metaverses provide an open and fair economy backed by the blockchain’s inherent properties of immutability and transparency. In addition, the fundamental law of supply and demand based on the scarcity and on-chain value of an NFT according to its applicability determines prices, eliminating the possibility of pumps and artificial value inflation.
Binance NFT’s gaming drops are an example of the metaverse economy’s facilitated mode of operation.The weekly IGO launches feature core in-game assets from gaming projects that give users the chance to enter the NFT gaming space early. There are also unique Mystery Boxes drops that contain various valuable assets for play-to-earn games.
Users can also discover and trade in-game NFT items on the Binance NFT secondary marketplace. To help NFT beginners get started on the marketplace, Binance NFT curates a daily list of recommendations for NFT collections and creators on the homepage, as well as ranking boards to showcase the top NFT sales, collections and creators.
An Extension of Identity, Community And Social Experiences
NFTs will also play an integral role in identity, community and social experiences in metaverses. Holding certain NFT assets can signal a user’s support of a project or convey perspectives about the virtual and real world. This allows like-minded individuals holding such NFTs to band into communities that share experiences and create content together. One example of such NFTs are the trending NFT avatars.
NFT avatars represent a player’s real or imagined self. Players can use NFT avatars as access tokens to enter and hop between different locations within the metaverse. In this case, NFT avatars serve as an extension of our real-life identities, where we have full ownership and freedom to curate and build our virtual identities in the metaverse.
Owning avatar NFTs grants virtual membership to a myriad of exclusive experiences in the metaverse and physical world, thus enhancing community and social experiences. Already, NFT avatars are helping to shape the experiences and environments of the metaverses through content creation and startup launches.
Vibrant examples of such identity-shaping avatars include the Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks collections, which grant their holders exclusive rights and access to closed communities of affluent users with locked content and even offline private events. Exclusive parties with NFT-associated entrance fees highlight NFTs’ role as value carriers that bridge the digital and the real worlds.
To discover and collect NFT avatars, visit Binance NFT Marketplace where they offer a myriad of affordable NFT avatar selections.
Property Ownership: Virtual Real Estate
With NFTs, users can have full ownership of their virtual lands and spaces in the metaverse. The underlying blockchain enables users to prove ownership of the asset and develop their virtual real estate as they wish.
Some uses for virtual real estate in the metaverse include selling land for profit, renting land for passive income, building various structures like online shops on the existing land, or hosting social events.
An example of the metaverse’s digital real estate scene is Decentraland, which recently hosted a virtual fashion exhibition in collaboration with Adidas, where designs were auctioned as NFTs. Virtual real estate is also attracting interest from musicians as they can perform and sell NFT tickets and merchandise online.
The Future of The Metaverse
While still in the early stages of development, metaverses present numerous potential social and financial opportunities with the use of NFTs and offer new ways for people to play, interact, gather, earn and transact.
By incorporating VR, video games, social media and elements of crypto, the metaverses and NFT blockchain gaming will become an integral part of Web 3.0, an era where real-world businesses expand into the digital space, and users uncover the versatility of such environments.
We believe that NFT ownership is key and will open up a world of opportunities in the emerging metaverses. For users who are interested, you can use the Binance NFT Marketplace to discover, collect and trade unique NFT assets and traverse the metaverse.
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