In the midst of the furor over the development of projects for the metaverse, the concept of a virtual world promoted by Meta, the parent company of Facebook, a platform called Next Earth It began with the sale of land to build, in the future, a virtual community with virtual reality services, video games and even marketing.
For now, Next Earth is focused on selling land in its metaverse, which is basically a carbon copy of the real world using satellite maps provided by Mapbox, the same company that provides them to apps like Uber and Foursquare. The process, explains the same platform, is relatively simple and consists of selecting quadrants from a specific area.
Transactions are made using the Matic cryptocurrency and all transactions are based on the Ethereum blockchain. Those interested in becoming “virtual landowners” can use the search engine on the map to find the area they wish to acquire. To test it out, I researched how much the entire block costs where I live.
It should be noted that all purchases on Next Earth are made in the Matic cryptocurrency, which at press time is trading around $1.5 per Matic. So for the purchase of the land where I live, in Mexico, I would have to pay about $110 dollars.
The truth is that, as in the real estate market, some land is worth much more than others. And since part of the “charm” of Next Earth is that land can be sold or traded as NFTs on platforms like Opean Sea, some sites have a much higher current market value than they did initially.
In fact, the same Next Earth has a bazaar in which the owners of virtual land offer their land with flashy advertisements such as “a piece of land in the heart of the old German city of Lübeck”.
The truth is that, despite the rage over NFTs and that Next Earth itself describes that the interest in its platform “is burning”, several of the ads that I consulted hardly have any visits and, in my experience, I did not see any offer for the lands.
Since I’m not particularly an NFT enthusiast, I don’t find much appeal in buying virtual land for a platform that isn’t anticipated to be the metaverse standard and for which there is currently nothing but promises of a platform with virtual reality applications, video games and marketing.
Publisher Recommendations
es.digitaltrends.com