In 2003, Second Life caused a stir that caught the attention of many users globally.
At that time, a game that allowed you to have a second life was something totally innovative, but it still did not have the blockchain technology that changed the way you interact.
Now, the metaverses are more evolved, these virtual environments are not only virtual games, but they bring with them non-fungible tokens or NFT which allow having a financial ecosystem after the game and that has been the beginning of markets within the same ecosystem allowing their sustainability.
Covid-19 brought positive things to the crypto world. Being in a pandemic allowed both users and creators to spend more time on sites like metaverses. In this sense, in fact, the rebound of the crypto ecosystem in general since the beginning of the pandemic was more than notorious.
Options for the Metaverse
One of the options in decentralized Metaverses is The Sandbox, which in 2012 emerged as a game based on the Ethereum network causing a tremendously positive impact on the crypto community. Although it is not the only one of its kind, the truth is that it has characteristics that make it unique in its style.
Users can monetize the creations in the virtual plots called LAND, and around this economy created in this ecosystem also allows the exchange of these creations with their own token called SAND.
One of the fundamental characteristics that make The Sandbox a different ecosystem is the great push they have given to decentralization since they take as a fundamental basis the concept of cryptocurrencies, that is, decentralization.
In addition, the game itself uses the SAND token for all functionalities, namely; NFT buying, trading, gaming, creation, and governance. In addition, users spend their SAND in short games to acquire equipment, prizes to customize an avatar, or buy LAND llama plots. The open market of the metaverse allows the fusion of non-fungible tokens, the game, creations and also allows to merge the creations of the artists in the same platform to have everything in one place, commerce, games, creation, and fun.
The Marketplace that The Sandbox has is intuitive and harmonious, allowing users to navigate the page and choose between multiple categories of assets, each with the characteristics and specifications provided by the creators of the content. Additionally, it has a classification of assets according to type, either to build, modify, add or improve the plot in which Sandbox users develop their lives.
In order to publish a creation in the market, the user must use the VoxEdit editor, which allows the creation to be hosted in order to later verify the ownership. Later added as NFT, it is published in the metaverse market. In the market, it is obtained from a drone to direction signs to identify the plots or LANDS, vehicles, weapons, in short, everything necessary to function in the metaverse.
The Sandbox team announced that its Marketplace will be open in phases starting this March 30, to ensure that artists have the opportunity to capture value in the sales of their NFTs.
The beta phase, the first of some scheduled, will include 46 artists carefully selected by the Foundation who will sell their creations during this first phase for $ SAND tokens, the platform's native token.
Other Marketplaces
Axie Infinity is another metaverse inspired by the Pokémon game. It is a metaverse also built on Ethereum, which is dedicated to the creation of letters with unique and unrepeatable models, which allows its valuation to depend in many cases on its rarity. Basically, it is also inspired by the game CryptoKitties.
In the Axie marketplace, it is possible to find a list of Axies, although they are all similar, the variant of each copy will be the added value that the creator gave it within the interface, so the user can visualize the purchase options. It should be noted that within the marketplace the loading time of the assets compared to the presentation of The Sandbox, is much slower.
Additionally, Axie had to implement an alternative network to Ethereum to cope with the ecosystem's gas fees, which was undoubtedly wreaking havoc on the ecosystem. Therefore, in the platform's marketplace, the gas fee exchange is one of the main considerations to have before acquiring an NFT.
For its part, Enjin, another metaverse, is an ecosystem also created on the Ethereum network that focuses exclusively on games. Although it is still expected that the applications that are going to be integrated into this metaverse will be broader than just games, at the moment that has not yet materialized.
What Enjin does currently have is the support of companies like Samsung, Unity, and Godot. Samsung in fact indicated that the S10 will integrate Enjin Coin as a native cell phone application.
In Japan, it was granted the first permit approved by the Japan Association of Virtual Currency Exchanges for use as a gaming token.
This metaverse has a technical team very experienced in games and the support of companies such as Unity. However, it lacks the features that The Sandbox has because as mentioned above, The Sandbox has a more complete, integrated, decentralized, and integrated marketplace with users, which allows for better governance and growth of the ecosystem.
As for the marketplace that Enjin offers, it is a fairly intuitive interface like The Sandbox, but at the same time, it allows to display not only the assets, but also the possibility of visualizing the general activity of the market that the metaverse uses to self-sustain. In the marketplace, 2 types of digital assets are listed, those that belong to the ERC-20 token and those that are based on ERC-1155. The latter will allow better scalability in terms of gas fees that are generated in the transactions that take place in the metaverse market.
In this regard, it is expected that in April the solution to these transaction fees will be launched, all under the slogan "free from the Ethereum ecosystem", although the use of the ERC-20 token in its market, will allow the exchange of more than 700 tokens that coexist in the Ethereum world.