Decentraland: Gamers Spend Almost a Million in Blockchain’s Virtual Worlds
Published: Mar 12, 2020 - Last Updated: Feb 1, 2022
There’s been a sudden hike in the amount of cash, or cryptocurrency, traded and spent within blockchain-based games and virtual worlds. Decentraland and Cryptovoxels, virtual worlds based on blockchain are seeing growing patronage and increasing sales of their virtual “real estate.”
Bitcoinist notes that, as per data from nonfungible.com, almost $1 million was traded in virtual worlds over the seven days preceding February 13, 2020. This increase in non-fungible token trading was suggested to be responsible for a cryptocurrency market rebound.
The trading of, or investment into, non-fungible tokens predominantly took place in the crypto-based virtual world of Decentraland but also in other platforms like The Sandbox and Cryptovoxels.
Non-fungible tokens, a type of cryptocurrency, are digital assets that represent ownership of a physical or digital item. They are based on a blockchain’s distributed ledger which gives them an immutable digital identity, no two non-fungible tokens are the same, they have a value and can be bought and sold. For gaming, this means that in-game items and assets like skins and weapons and even game currency can have a value outside of the game. Non-fungible tokens hold the potential for gamers to make money from their ownership, especially if a token represents a rare or in-demand item that other gamers or collectors will pay money for.
Decentraland is building its complete virtual world, mimicking the real world and where participants can buy and invest in their own plots of virtual land. During the week noted by Bitcoinist, it saw $600,000 in trading volume. The rest of the near million was made up of trading and purchasing of other non-fungible tokens on other new blockchain platforms.
One of these platforms, The Sandbox, is also a blockchain-based, decentralized virtual voxel game world where participants can purchase “LAND” to build their own games and assets. As too is Cryptovoxels, a virtual world powered by the Ethereum blockchain. Like Decentraland participants will be able to buy land and build stores and digital art galleries. These platforms have editing tools, avatars, and chat facilities.
One of Decentraland’s goals is to enable paid advertisers to display their messages on the “real estate” plots purchased by users, monetizing the platform for its participants. It hopes to build a virtual world while players as their avatars can stroll around much like they would in the real world.
The gaming industry’s use of cryptocurrency to bring real-life like economies to games and virtual worlds could help to propel the use of such digital assets, as well as blockchain technology.
Recently a new Minecraft server launched, called SatoshiQuest where players, at a fee, can treasure hunt for real bitcoin. CryptoFights is set to launch later this year, it’s built on the Bitcoin SV blockchain and will likely incorporate crypto esports betting. Its parent platform Kronoverse will allow any game publisher to add a layer of blockchain-enabled monetization to their developments.
Images courtesy of Decentraland
