As a Community Association Manager, I serve as a consultant on many subjects. Residents, associates, and friends frequently contact me with an entire plethron of questions.
The questions range from legitimate property management inquires to whatever is trending at a particular time.
Today the chatter is about Metaverse and NFTs. The social buzz around the clubhouse is what are they? As a courtesy, I can offer essential information with a clear disclaimer.
I share just enough of my knowledge to quench their thirst. But I am still leaving them hungry for more information. When I direct them to articles by Stephen Dalton and Tom Handy, my entourage can dive deeper for more advanced knowledge. But today, they are happy with the basics as they tread unfamiliar territory. Welcome to the journey.
This article explains the basics of what you need to know about the Metaverse and NFTs.
Today, you would find numerous terminologies, stories, and news about various happenings in the Metaverse and NFT space. From the sale of digital art by artist Mike Winklemann for almost $70m to the purchase of virtual lands worth millions of dollars for personal and commercial reasons to headlines projecting a new rise of the internet. Understanding this new technological innovation can be overwhelming.
What does the Metaverse mean?
The Metaverse is a virtual space or ecosystem built to depict the realism of the physical world, and allows users to work, play, have fun, or even build homes. Although this sounds like what interactive games like Avakin or Sims offer, the Metaverse supersedes gaming. It is a technological innovation that wants to revolutionize human behavior and interaction. Many experts predict that one day, it could replace physical reality.
What is the Metaverse?
Although used to dramatize technology-centered developments and projects, the Metaverse is much more. It is a digital world that features multiple technological elements that allow for Virtual reality (VR), augmented VR, and physical reality and serves as the bridge between the real world and the virtual world.
In simpler terms, it is the collection of platforms like the Decentraland and the Sandbox where people can interact with one another in the real world. It means billions of users can get to witness the same event at the same time while being plugged into the Metaverse — a replica of a live music concert.
How did the Metaverse come to be?
Although, the announcement of Meta’s Metaverse brought immense attention to virtual and mixed reality. The Metaverse ideology had been in existence and was actively running.
Let us go down memory lane. Metaverse was mentioned first in a science fiction novel in 1992, called the Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. In the story, he talked about a virtual and immersive world where citizens of Los Angeles wear VR goggles and gadgets to perform real-life activities virtually. That description is not far from what the Metaverse represents today.
For instance, Animal Concerts is a metaverse-related project actively involved in creating interactive metaverse concerts. It has partnered with top stars like Future, Gunna, Meek Mill, Alicia Keys, etc.
The Metaverse is said to have arrived before we officially welcomed it. It is a new form of the internet built by a combination of technologies that uses Augmented Reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), mixed reality, the blockchain, and social media to provide users with a heavily stimulated environment that offers the same aesthetics as reality.
What can you do in the Metaverse?
Almost everything you do in real life is duplicatable in Metaverse, from watching your favorite sports, a movie, or communicating with your friends and family — any type of action you think of can be done there.
Asides from having fun, the Metaverse also presents users the opportunity to make money by working on the Metaverse in the comfort of their homes. You can also purchase a piece of virtual land and build whatever you desire — you can charge other Metaverse users to see your building or open it up for free for everyone to gain entry into as the choice is yours.
How can you join the Metaverse?
Gaining entry into the Metaverse requires the help of necessary gadgets, depending on the type of experience you intend to choose. If you want to be a user, the need for high-tech equipment is not necessarily required as opposed to Metaverse creators.
You can access the Metaverse through your smartphone, desktop computer, PC, Augmented reality gadgets like Oculus 2, Meta Quest 2, or other virtual reality glasses. For a better experience and view of the entire Metaverse interface, use a VR glass for a 360° overview.
Then, you can create an account and set up your avatar by customizing it to the style of your choice as the Metaverse presents a customizable dashboard that allows users to pick whatever they want to look like in the VR world. Finally, start exploring. Popular metaverse platforms include Decentraland, DecentWorld, etc.
A Beginners Guide to NFT
What is an NFT?
Do you know there is the possibility that a picture can fetch millions? It may sound bizarre. However, it is the reality of what is happening on the internet. To a layman, NFTs are just pictures/digital images. However, NFTs are unique assets. Better put, NFTs are non-fungible tokens and are assets on a blockchain with uniquely made features, information, and metadata that makes them distinct from millions of other assets.
Over time, NFTs center on pictorial assets. However, they can be anything you what them to be.
NFTs possess the feature of being unique and hence, cannot be traded or exchanged for other assets with the same financial value due to their non-fungible nature. Therefore, it makes them entirely different digital assets even though they are both blockchain-based.
Most times, they represent virtual assets of apes performing human-like activities or other weird things or sometimes pictures of pixelated adorable dogs and cats. Apart from that, it can also be digital forms of natural art that you can touch. NFTs can also be rights or represent exclusivity to some events or products.
How does an NFT work?
A virtual non-fungible picture worth millions of physical fungible currency sounds unreal. However, it is not. Each generated NFT is unique and irreplaceable.
NFTs are mostly built on the Ethereum blockchain, making most NFTs ERC-721 tokens. They have valuable information features and information stored in them, and their market prices are determined by the owner or by the waves of the market price chart based on how valuable it is. It is easy to transfer ownership to the buyer as long as the required token value is sent, usually in Ethereum or Ether.
How do I make money through NFT?
Before you start making money through NFTs, you have to register into an NFT marketplace that allows for the sale and purchase of NFTs. There are several platforms available like OpenSea, Raible, and Axie Marketplace.
Mint your NFT for sale. Minting is a simple process of transforming your digital picture or file into a cryptographic NFT asset on Solana or Ethereum blockchain. It also buys an NFT from a seller, puts it up for sale, sells it, and makes money.
Are you ready to explore the Metaverse further?
“Check out the force of time and human insight, scarcely any years prior, we could not live well in the regular world, and presently we will live in the virtual world very soon.”- Anuj Jasani-
This article is for informational purposes only. It should not be considered Financial, Real Estate, or Legal Advice. The market fluctuates; therefore, not all information will remain the same. Consult a Financial or Real Estate attorney before making significant real estate or financial decisions.
