Category: Decentralisation

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Top 7 Most Popular Ethereum Metaverses

A swathe of platforms have sprung up in recent times to offer users the opportunity to play, interact and even own spaces within virtual worlds known as metaverses. With new metaverses appearing all the time, it’s useful to know which are garnering the most attention, which is why we’ve compiled a list of the biggest metaverses running on the Ethereum blockchain. We’ve ranked our choices based on all-time volume, using data from OpenSea’s virtual worlds category taken on 24 May 2022. With that out of the way, let’s take a closer look!

7. Arcade (17,931.15ETH)

We begin with a 2D metaverse, Arcade. Its stated purpose is to provide unique homes in the metaverse for existing NFT collections. The experience supports land ownership as well as using third-party NFTs as in-game avatars. The project is a spin-off from the developers of the Apes vs Mutants game, which let owners of the Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club collections compete against each other using their avatars.

6. Worldwide Webb (24,338.63ETH)

Like Arcade Land before it, Worldwide Webb is a 2D experience. The platform describes itself as an interoperable MMORPG (massively-multiplayer online role-playing game) metaverse, claiming to have 80,000 users. The Worldwide Webb platform allows users to buy land as well as build and customise apartments upon that land. Unlike some other metaverses on this list, however, it also includes features of a play-to-earn game, with users earning NFT items and coins by playing minigames.

Thanks to its 2D nature, the experience also supports players using their NFTs as avatars via partnerships with a host of NFT collections – the most recent being The Doge Pound.

Screenshot of webb.game

5. Voxels (24,954.87ETH)

Voxels (formerly known as CryptoVoxels) is a metaverse accessible by browser that offers users the chance to explore a dense, interconnected city. New land parcels are sold on the platform’s primary market each week, with secondary sales on OpenSea. Unlike most other entries on this list, instead of just selling basic plots, Voxel parcels include buildings and are sold with street addresses like “Apartment at 3 Wright Street”.

4. Somnium Space (26,400.59ETH)

Despite the metaverse often being conceptualised as a virtual reality experience in the public imagination (just look at the likes of Ready Player One, for example), Somnium Space is the only VR metaverse on this list. That dearth of VR experiences might be because of the conflict that stems from proprietary ecosystems such as Meta’s offering rubbing up against the desire for decentralization that lies at the heart of metaverse platforms.

Nevertheless, Somnium Space achieves fourth position by enabling users to experience a virtual world much more tangibly than other entries on this list. Players are able to buy virtual land and populate it with objects they build or buy in the form of tokenised in-game items, or equally just explore land owned by others.

3. NFT Worlds (48,302.73ETH)

NFT Worlds is one of the hardest-to-grasp metaverse offerings. Describing itself as a multi-metaverse, the project actually consists of 10,000 virtual worlds, each of which is realised using Microsoft’s smash hit open-world building and survival game Minecraft. NFT Worlds is at pains to state that: “NFT Worlds is in no way associated with, endorsed by, or a partner of Minecraft, Mojang, Microsoft or any related parties”, however.

Each world can have different rules and objectives decided by the owner, from focusing on building worlds to play-to-earn games in a range of different genres. Popular worlds include the Meets Metaverse, which is focused on social networking, and first-person shooter battle arena The Mothership.

2. The Sandbox (151,630.28ETH)

Coming in second place (far ahead of the previous entries on this list in terms of sales volume) is The Sandbox. Known for its distinct voxel style, the Sandbox is potentially the most well known of the current range of metaverses, thanks to partnerships with celebrities such as Snoop Dogg, who has created an experience on The Sandbox known as the Snoopverse. The platform offers its own software for creating, rigging and animating voxel-based NFTs to be used in-world and sold on the Sandbox’s marketplace, which uses the platform’s native SAND token.

1. Decentraland (162,628.98ETH)

While The Sandbox is hot on its heels, Decentraland currently stands as the most popular metaverse by volume. Users of the platform are able to purchase plots of land on the open market, within which any kind of experience can be built. The versatility of the platform has resulted in many different approaches – from PwC buying a plot of land to act as a hub for its Web3 advisory offering to Millennium Hotels and Resorts launching a virtual hotel.

The native currency of the platform is MANA, with which you can also buy and sell land assets. The platform supports wearable NFTs which are dropped in limited-edition collections and are fully tradable by the community. And unlike some other examples, Decentraland lives up to its name by being fully decentralized and operated via a DAO – with members voting on the shape the metaverse will take going forwards.

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NFT Spotlight: Love, Death + Art

Please note that the following review is not an endorsement of purchasing the NFTs discussed, and the author does not themself own any of the collection.

The Netflix-produced animated sci-fi anthology series Love, Death + Robots has recently released its third series. To mark that occasion, the show has partnered with a Web3 studio known as Feature to produce an NFT scavenger hunt. 

According to the site, QR codes have apparently been hidden within promotional videos and real-world billboards, as well as the episodes themselves. Once scanned, these codes redirect users to a website where they can view artworks and mint them as NFTs.  

Minting the NFTs requires users to have a MetaMask or Coinbase wallet. Minting the unlimited NFTs is free except for variable gas rates, and the collection encourages those without an interest in NFTs to simply save them as JPEGs.

The Collection

The collection consists of short clips from season 3 of the show, and as such inherits the production values of Love, Death and Robots, which is known for the diversity of styles between episodes.

Image Credit: Love, Death + Robots

Only three of the nine-strong collection (one for each episode of the latest series) are viewable prior to being collected. In one we see a dancing, jewel-encrusted siren, animated in a near photo-real manner. In another, three very different robots look between a clipboard and the viewer, and the final example, from the episode “The Very Pulse of the Machine”, sees a lone figure standing over a strange alien landscape of neon lights in a pose highly reminiscent of Caspar David Friedrich’s Romantic classic Wanderer above the Sea of Fog. 

It’s a clever way of repurposing content, especially when that content has been created by artists working at the level required to produce one of Netflix’s tentpole shows. The move into NFTs is also one that makes perfect sense for Love, Death and Robots, thanks to both its technological and artistic reputation, sidestepping the weird incongruity of projects like that of TV chef Gino D’Acampo. In other words, more people will be happy to give the NFT collection the benefit of the doubt, instead of denouncing it as a cash grab.

At the time of writing, some 27,000 NFTs have been minted, with a floor price of 0.003ETH (approximately $5 or $6). It’s not a princely sum, but it highlights that there is an appetite for collectables issued in this way and gives people a small amount of motivation to take part in the scavenger hunt. Hiding the codes within promotional material and episodes is a particularly smart choice, encouraging close watching and encouraging the collection to go viral as viewers share the locations they have found codes.

The Background

Of course, this isn’t the first NFT project to base itself around a scavenger or treasure hunt. Last year, The Great NFT Treasure Hunt took a slightly different approach by hiding passwords to wallets containing 32 different NFTs across Southern California, issuing clues to their location via Twitter. And budding metaverse NFTWorlds earlier this year organised a hunt within its virtual worlds with puzzles, riddles and challenges to unlock the twelve words necessary to gain access to a wallet filled with 3ETH and 500,000 of its native WRLD currency.

Image Credit: Love, Death + Robots

Nor is this the first intersection of TV and NFTs. Fox has called its upcoming animated TV show Krapopolis “the first-ever animated series curated entirely on the blockchain“, with plans to launch a dedicated marketplace that will sell digital goods including character NFTs and social experience tokens. And Seth Green’s plan to produce an animated show featuring a Bored Ape he owned was recently thrown into jeopardy after he lost the NFT in a hack and it was subsequently resold.

While the collection isn’t much more than a novelty and makes a point of saying that the show or Netflix derives no revenue, it could represent Netflix dipping its toe into the Web3 sector following recent revelations about its poor financial health. It reported a loss of 200,000 paid subscribers in its latest quarterly earnings report and estimated it would lose another 2 million by the time of its next earnings report in July.

The Verdict

The Love, Death + Art collection highlights an interesting way for more traditional forms of media to get involved with NFTs. Done respectfully, as this has been, NFT collections such as Love, Death + Art can serve as a gateway for individuals outside of NFTs to become involved with the space – instead of alienating them. Other TV shows looking to take a similar approach should be aware, however, that without a throughline that connects NFT technology to the programme in question, viewers will likely turn up their noses.