The (Un)Real Estate

The world is a strange place. This applies equally to the Metaverse as it takes shape and defines its purpose of existence. This article is the third in my series of Web 3.0 articles. The first article The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Metaverse is an introduction to the Metaverse, while the second article NFTs - (Caught) Between CyberPunks And CyberPoops delves into the origin and future potential of NFTs.?

To say that the newly created Metaverse(s) are already getting crowded won't be an overstatement. What started as hosting of events and entertainment is now morphing into a full-out property war. There is this sudden rush to hoard prized properties across different Metaverses.

To give you an idea of what I am talking about, in 2021 alone the total amount spent on buying virtual land parcels was an eye-popping $500 Million USD and it is said to double in 2022. There are couple of Multiverses in particular who lead the pack in terms of the desirability for land purchases, namely Decentraland and Sandbox Metaverse.

Though these are virtual worlds where space is no constraint, they artificially limit the availability to command exorbitant prices. Where Sandbox offers a maximum of 166K plots for sale, Decentraland further limits that to 90601 plots. Another strategy employed by them is to have celebrities build their virtual homes which increases the value of the land surrounding them. The case in point is Snoop Dogg. ?

Let us take a step back to analyze what lies underneath this fad. Some basic questions come to the fore. Why would anyone want to buy land in a virtual world? What are they expecting to do with that? What does it mean to us as humankind? Will it change the way we live?

Essentially there are two sections of buyers - one is business investors and the other is retail investors, in other words, people like you and me. Business entities would see this as an extension of their marketing and sales avenues. It makes sense for them to be present wherever the footfalls are. For example, Samsung hosted a live event in a mini-city in Decentraland to showcase their latest products. Tokens.com spent $2.4 million USD in the fashion district of Decentraland in the hope to develop and sell properties to the fashion industry. There are talks of planned fashion shows where some big brands are already lining up to participate.

While there are clear business cases for commercial entities to buy land in Metaverse, this bug is steadily catching up with retail investors as well. Retail investors can further be divided into two categories. People who are awash with cryptocurrencies from investments and also the sale of NFTs. And others who want to be there primarily due to FOMO. But whatever the reason, the objective seems to be one of making quick cryptocash.

Yes, they expect their virtual properties to appreciate and be scooped up by buyers for big bucks. The more people invest, the more wants to follow suit. For some of us who are old enough to remember, this comes across as another avatar of the Pyramid Scheme. The small fact that the exact same property, at the same location, is available for grabs in a different Metaverse doesn’t seem to dissuade the die-hards.

Now that it is clear who the winners and losers of these property wars will be, let's turn our focus to the inevitable, aka people gradually moving towards spending the best part of their lives in these Metaverses.

Web 2.0 gave us websites to browse, compare and buy anything under the (real)Sun. Web 3.0 takes this to the next level where it provides an immersive experience to pretty much do the same and more. People are already attending music concerts and exploring places right from the comfort of their own homes. So far so good.

Enter buying virtual homes and working to earn money in the Metaverse. Why would anyone buy a virtual home and vaporize their crypto cash to decorate it to their heart's content? Well, it's simple, to live there. How can anyone live there? By being "plugged in" to the Metaverse. This gives rise to a few fundamental questions.?

The basic necessities of human beings are Food, Shelter, and Clothing in that order of importance. Businesses in Metaverse have already taken care of the last one. Thank God that the ever-concerned Metaverse creators are burning the virtual midnight oil to provide us with our virtual homes at affordable prices. That leaves the quintessential thing which is food for sustenance. Let's keep that aside for the moment.

Stretching our imagination a byte further, which should not be a problem now that we are in the realm of the Metaverse, sooner rather than later we are not going to get satisfied with just the visual aspects. We would want to smell, touch and feel things. A mother recently quipped that though she can video chat with her daughter, living in a foreign country, every day it will never be the same as the real touch and feel. As human beings, this is coded in our genes.

Having the ability to smell, touch & feel things will bring the Metaverse ever closer to reality. We are already on the cusp of introducing technology that will let us feel the texture of remote objects as if they were next to us. But if we think about it, touch or smell is nothing but a type of electrical signal processed by the brain, and to achieve that all we have to master is finding the right signals.

This gets us closer to living in the Metaverse except for the last basic necessity, food for sustenance. One might argue that hunger too is a type of brain signal that could be manipulated. Which is true but sending the your-stomach-is-full signal will not be sufficient to maintain the functioning of the body. In the not-too-distant future, there will be entities that will take care of this by providing chemical nutrients administered directly into our bodies, while we live in our virtual homes, work in our virtual offices and live our entire lives in the Metaverse.

But hang on a second, if everyone is connected to Metaverse then who will manage everything?