Welcome to our mega-report on the State of the Metaverse!
Our preceding report series aimed to delve into the metaverse through describing its capabilities, applications, and developments individually in the context of respective, specific implementations such as Decentraland, Somnium, The Sandbox, Cryptovoxels, and Upland. The series provided explanations for different virtual real-estate offerings in each of these metaverse implementations and the process of buying/renting land in each, and additionally offered a description of companies that facilitate virtual real-estate offerings within the metaverse.
This report will focus on the state of the metaverse more broadly, consolidating the specifications and characteristics across each of the aforementioned implementations. In particular, this report will serve to provide an in-depth overview of the metaverse, detail and define some of its key characteristics, discuss some complementary embedded technologies, as well as compare and contrast different metaverse implementations functionally and from an investment standpoint.
What is the current state of the Metaverse?
Holistically, the metaverse space is relatively new, with the majority of projects currently dating back to 2016. The first implementation, as well as the one which seems to have made the most progress since inception, in the blockchain universe is that of Decentraland: a decentralized, Ethereum blockchain network-based, virtual reality (VR) platform that enables users to purchase parcels of three dimensional virtual space in the metaverse. Via Decentraland, users can explore, create, play various games, collect items, and engage in many more activities. Moreover, as alluded to previously, a number of other prominent metaverse projects have also emerged over the last half-decade, including: Somnium, The Sandbox, Cryptovoxels, and Upland.
In general, each of these implementations as well as the metaverse more broadly are in their early adoption phases: many novel features and developments are being launched, a broader segment of early users are joining, and perhaps most importantly, content is in a critical stage of development. This content, encompassing the full scope of features, product/service offerings, forms of user/customer engagement, and more, is among the most decisive factors which will likely determine the metaverses’ wide scale function/utility either in the essential form of a game or an alternate, complementary reality. In sum, the broad theme which currently encapsulates the metaverse is a phase of early adoption alongside a strong push for content-development of all kinds.
There is much more you need to understand to really *get* what’s going on with the metaverse. Inside our latest report, you’ll find a full breakdown of the various forces guiding investments in all the major implementations.
Special Note: This report was written in collaboration with GDA Capital.