Are NFTs driving the hype around the real estate metaverse?
NFTs, The Metaverse, virtual real estate. If you’ve been following tech reports and news or even mainstream media, chances are you’ve heard one of these terms floating about. We are all familiar with the term ‘real-estate,’ and virtual real estate is exactly as you might imagine.
It’s a piece of real estate inside the digital world known as the Metaverse. The Metaverse is a shared virtual space. It consists of combining physical reality, virtual reality, and physically persistent virtual space. This includes all of the augmented and virtual worlds and includes the internet itself as a whole.
That’s a lot to take in. Simplifying the terminology, you essentially own a piece of digital land/real estate inside a virtual world. This will give you the privilege of building on your real estate plot. For a more visual aide, take a look at The Sandbox. You might notice a few recognizable names from companies that have already bought virtual real estate in this space.
How do I own it? It’s just a digital item somewhere on the internet. This is where the crucial part of it all comes in, NFTs. These tokens are the main reason for the hype around the real estate metaverse, and it’s showing no signs of slowing down.
What’s it All About?
NFTs have rocked the digital world. They’ve taken on a central role in this digital ecosystem, and it’s a very important one. It’s been talked about on many major news channels, and some celebrities are jumping on the trend. They aren’t a new concept though, back in 2014, two artists Anil Dash and Kevin McCoy, created a piece titled “Quantum.” This was the first- ever NFT created, a video of dollar symbols in a picture frame.
NFTs are part of the cryptocurrency space, and they rely on a digital ledger known as the blockchain. An NFT is a chunk of data stored on the blockchain, and it can represent all forms of digital items and even physical items more recently. NFTs provide proof of ownership of these digital assets, and they provide undeniable proof that certifies these digital assets are unique and not interchangeable.
What Makes an NFT Special
The acronym NFT stands for non-fungible token. Fiat currency, for example, is fungible. If you were to trade $1 for another $1 you would still have $1. But if you trade an NFT for another, then you have something entirely different. NFTs are trackable on the blockchain. Due to their immutable nature, everything is recorded and can never be altered or deleted. This is where NFTs attractiveness is, and they provide proof of ownership by using a blockchain like Ethereums to record its data.
NFTs are about providing undeniable proof of ownership of digital assets. The immutable data stored on the blockchain provides a very secure way to ensure that. NFTs consist of a cryptographic hash which is a string of unique characters and used to verify a digital asset as unique. They work alongside Smart Contracts, which are programs that run on the Ethereum blockchain and allow for users to interact with them via transactions.
Not Real… Estate?
NFTs, as you can already assume, are the key part of all this; they give you proof of ownership over digital items. Real estate in a virtual world can also be an NFT. In simplified terms, this will act as a deed to the land.
With this in mind, the metaverse is a very real concept that has big potential, and this is thanks to the development of NFTs. Virtual real estate assets that you actually own are becoming very sought after. Referring back to The Sandbox, this is not the only place to purchase. There are other worlds like Decentraland, Upland, and our own ESPA which houses unique assets as well.