With metaverse land sales at an all-time high, it has become necessary to learn about the metaverse. JP Morgan predicted in a recent report that the metaverse could grow into a 1 trillion dollar industry in the next few years. But how? What even is a metaverse? Is it a game, an alternate way to host meetings, or what? This article will answer these questions as well as make the necessary distinction between true and false metaverses. Let’s start from the beginning:

What is a metaverse?

Simply put, a metaverse is a digitally visual rendition of reality in which real people have a shared digital experience. Some metaverses are game-focused while others are more generalized, offering gaming, commerce, and community building. Below are a few.

• Sandbox
• Decentraland
• Otherside
• Etc.

Having originated from the gaming world, with games like Minecraft and Fortnite to name a few, it has captured the imagination of the crypto builders. Almost every week is an announcement for a new metaverse. However, given that the concept is relatively new, there is a bit of misunderstanding about what a true metaverse should be. For the truth is that not all metaverses are created equal. Of the many metaverses currently in existence, very few meet the criteria of what a true metaverse should be.

Characteristics of a true metaverse

Open

If a metaverse is not open, it is not a metaverse. But what does it mean to be open? The same way that anyone can create a Bitcoin or Ethereum account and start sending or receiving tokens, a true metaverse allows anyone to participate regardless of who or where they are. Without this openness, then we have a pseudo metaverse.

Decentralized

In addition to openness, a true metaverse is decentralized, such that no one or team owns the metaverse. This means that no one can ban or censor anyone else from the metaverse. Thus, to make a metaverse truly open, it must be decentralized. If it isn’t, then the centralized owners will have the power to deny some people entry into the metaverse. This is why the idea of a metaverse created and moderated by Meta (Facebook) is a joke.

True ownership of experience

In a true metaverse, the users own their experiences (avatars, interactions, upgrades, land, tools, etc.). This means that the user is free to take their experience at any point and sell it on the open market or gift it to a friend. To facilitate this, the builders of the metaverse must have no claim to the items users own. Unfortunately, most metaverses fall foul of this ideal. (Learn more about this concept here).

These are the most important attributes for a metaverse. However, I’ll argue that verifiable digital scarcity is where the holy grail lies.

Verifiable digital scarcity

What makes the interactions in a metaverse meaningful, particularly economic interactions like buying and selling? Verifiable digital scarcity. This means that the quantity of items in the metaverse should not be created arbitrarily. For example, a team building a ‘false’ metaverse can choose to duplicate a high-selling item just because. In an ideal metaverse, the prices of items (lands, buildings, tools, etc.) have meaning because their scarcity can be verified. In such a metaverse, only some lands would be able to create new items. Whoever owns these lands will be able to sell whatever they create into the market. No one else will be able to inflate the supply of these items by just minting new ones. Taking it further, a true metaverse will be organized such that any land is inherently valuable because it can mine materials which can later be traded with other participants.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to achieve this with the present technological stack, which explains why few teams have even considered it. Thankfully, one metaverse in particular has built all characteristics into its design — Skybreach.

Skybreach — birth of a true metaverse

Skybreach is a truly decentralized and continuously-evolving 2D metaverse that is easy to experience on web and mobile devices. In addition to being open, some of its features are:

• Truly on-chain avatars — in Skybreach, your avatar is an NFT which can be upgraded via interactions with the metaverse. Whatever benefits your avatar gets will forever remain with your avatar unless you choose to sell it (if you can — some items/benefits are soulbound). This is different from most traditional metaverses where your avatar NFT (like a Bored Ape in Otherside) is simply used as a means of logging into the metaverse, wherein your actions in the metaverse don’t add anything to your avatar NFT.
• Decentralized world governance — Skybreach is governed by its community, who can change the rules/aspects of the world including but not limited to avatars, stories, new Skylands.
• Story-based — Skybreach is a story-based metaverse, meaning that non-casual players can choose to invest their attention into unraveling the story.

What makes Skybreach truly standout is its implementation of a digital economy facilitated by provable scarcity — every component of the Skybreach metaverse is an NFT, including the land and everything on it. This makes Skybreach akin to the real world because every interaction has meaning. How is this possible and why is it important? To understand, let’s review the dimensions of verifiable digital scarcity.

Movement

In this dimension, verifiable digital scarcity becomes verifiable digital location. This ensures that an avatar or metaverse item can only be in one place at a time. This is a simple concept but has far reaching implications. If a game item can only be in one place at a time, this means that multiple people cannot use the same item at the same time. This gives that item more value. Furthermore, if an avatar must be in the metaverse to be in the metaverse, then that avatar cannot be in your wallet. Presently, most metaverses use NFT avatars as a means for signing in. Once you sign in, you can send your avatar to another account and sign in again while you’re still signed in on the first account. Thus, there’s no real meaning to the number of people currently signed into the metaverse.

How do you implement verifiable digital location? Skybreach is able to achieve this by using RMRK’s nested NFT Lego. If you’re unfamiliar about RMRK’s next generation NFT technology, then read this article.

Nesting is a functionality that allows an NFT to own another NFT. For example, an A-NFT can own a B-NFT, who in turn owns a C-NFT, who in turn own a D-NFT, on and on until we get to the Z-NFT who also owns an AA-NFT. Thus, all land in the metaverse are NFTs. For a user to enter the metaverse, they will need to send their NFT avatar into the land, literally. Once the NFT is in the land, then that NFT will not be in the user’s wallet until they sign out of the metaverse.

Trade

In this dimension, verifiable digital location in combination with verifiable digital scarcity leads to meaningful economic interactions between metaverse participants. The first key to achieving this is ensuring that nothing enters the metaverse except through the lands. Thus, no metaverse team should be able to mint items and just drop it into the market. Rather, all items should be created by mining land. In this way, the lands are the entryway to the digital economy. This gives every landowner a somewhat equal playing field.

Conclusion

There’s a lot more to Skybreach that makes it one of the truest metaverses but I will limit this article to just this one as I think it is the most important. For more information on Skybreach, read this wiki, it will open your mind to what a true metaverse should be.

Learn more about RMRK’s revolutionary NFT technology here.

gbaci is an enthusiast of decentralization who maintains a weekly NFT newsletter that covers the latest happenings in the NFT world.

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