Technology/Science - Metaverse Metaverse
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information and assets online. To be clear, this is not yet a universally agreed upon idea. Second Life, Fortnite, and plenty of other platforms have been doing just fine without NFTs. But one reason NFT/crypto is one of the noisiest places on the internet is because it’s fastpaced, novel, and supported by an absurd amount of money. I don’t mean that in a negative way; but this area is the unmapped, build-it-as-we-go, unsettled frontier of life online. There are some fascinating projects at the front end of this, but whether NFTs do or don’t power some dematerialized system of capitalism misses the point that NFTs are likely more important than just ‘owning stuff’. Now we can tie together everything we’ve learned about the Metaverse and review a recent scene from an online event to explore the way NFTs might play a role. Here is the ‘Metaverse Festival’ (yes, a real thing) that was headlined by performances from global stars like Deadmau5. It happened in the browser-based Decentraland (a spatial, game engine driven, virtual environment). It’s Friday night and you head to the nightlife district of Decentraland (a plot of land which is an NFT). To get in you must be of age. You carry an identity token (which could be an NFT), to verify your eligibility for entrance. You notice someone wearing a hoodie (an NFT) from RTFKT, a virtual apparel company recently
acquired by NIKE. Those are expensive, I’m told. It’s free to enter, because the event is sponsored by Kraken, who wants to be the cryptobank of the Metaverse. By attending you’re issued what’s called a ‘proof of attendance protocol’ token, or POAP (that is an NFT). Later, when you sign up at Kraken, they offer a discount to those who can show, with that token, they attended the event. Metaverse or no Metaverse, as John Palmer describes, NFTs mean the internet becomes a place where everyone has an inventory. Earlier we mentioned the Metaverse is an interconnected collection of experiences, and if that’s the case, you might want to carry your single identity, history, and inventory of assets around with you. If that sounds familiar it’s basically giving users back their own cookies and personal data from big companies. I don’t want to go there; but it’s why a lot of people are scared of Facebook/Meta building a centralized Metaverse instead of one that is open and decentralized. Stitching it Together I’ve gone way down an NFT sideroad here, but it’s worth stitching together the spatial computing/ virtual world developments with what’s been happening in crypto/web3. When I started this research 7ish years ago, crypto people were far away and somewhere else. Today, I now have to explore Web3 stuff, since these areas are merging. If you’re still here — thank you — you might still be wondering: so what? How does any of this
African Metaverse Ubuntuland Launches By Unlock News Desk AFRICA’S FIRST METAVERSE Ubuntuland plans were announced for commercialization of the 3D virtual reality experience, a virtual world that marries creativity, cryptocurrency, and commerce. Africarare will be developing the metaverse joined by MTN and M&C Saatchi Abel. MTN, Africa’s largest multinational mobile telecommunications company joining Africarare
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with an upcoming 12×12 village (144 plots of real estate) secured in Ubuntuland. Additionally, M&C Saatchi Abel have entered the metaverse as the first South African agency to do so. There will only ever be 204,642 plots
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www.africabusinessassociation.org
