With the advent of video games, virtual reality has become an integral part of our lives and plays an increasingly significant role in it. The proliferation of VR and AR technologies led to a new impetus in its development: whole virtual worlds or metaverses began to appear, in which people can fully immerse themselves by controlling their own digital avatars from the first person.
In 2021, the owner of Facebook at that time renamed it, Meta, emphasizing the main focus of the business. The company’s new goal was to create its own metaverse. The company is already working on a Metaverse called Horizon.
This article is about what Metaverses are, what role virtual Lands play in them, as well as how and where you can sell them.
What Are Metaverses, and How Were They Invented?
The metaverse is an environment where real and virtual worlds are merged together. This can take various forms – for example, property owned in the virtual world is also owned in the real world. And some elements from the real world are transferred to the virtual one, where users can interact with them without real-world consequences. This opens up new opportunities for learning, entertainment, experimentation and discovery.
However, only a small part of people know how to consciously control dreams, and even then, only for no more than a couple of hours a day. But virtual reality using VR helmets, for example, is used in psychotherapy to combat the fear of heights. Patients do not risk their lives and health.
The concept of the metaverse was first described in the book “Snow Crash” by author Neil Stevenson in 1992; by the way, HBO plans to release a mini-series based on the book.
Metaverse and Blockchain
Blockchain has become an almost ideal technology, which perfectly fits the concept of Metaverses. Now there are more and more new projects focused on this area, and the most successful of them are Decentraland and The Sandbox blockchain platforms.
Decentralized networks are becoming the most suitable place to store and use digital objects that become part of the metaverse. This was made possible thanks to the unique features of the blockchain:
- True Ownership: Users can store their avatar on the blockchain in the form of an NFT (Non-Fungible Token), for example, as an ERC-721 token on the Ethereum network or a BEP-20 token on the BNB Chain. NFT simplifies the practice of copyright and intellectual property since all records in the blockchain are immutable. That is, they cannot be forged or deleted. To transfer the NFT to another owner, it is enough to exchange it through a smart contract or simply transfer it from your crypto wallet.
- Real tokenomics: each digital copy on the blockchain has real value, and the token can be sold through a DEX exchange or an NFT marketplace.
- Network security and user independence: the blockchain is decentralized, which allows it to be freely used by any users regardless of any factors and conditions. This includes censorship: companies can centrally block access to specific users both to the metaverse itself and to its individual objects or spaces.
- Openness and transparency: each participant of the ecosystem can contribute to its development by finding vulnerabilities, adding improvements to the source code of the project or offering interesting ideas for implementation.
Virtual plots of land are NFTs and act as digital property in Metaverses: you can buy and sell your land, rent it out or sell someone else’s real estate. The lands are unique in that you can create other objects on them — buildings or parks — which can also be sold as NFT while continuing to own the plot itself. As in the real world, built-up land will be valued higher than an empty plot, and you will be able to sell it higher.
In separate Metaverses, you can create your own plots of land and make a profit not only from the sale at auction but also from each subsequent transaction as the author of the NFT.
How to Sell a Plot of Land in the Metaverse
Before you sell a plot, you need to get it somehow. This can be done in at least three ways:
- Create a plot yourself. Developers rarely provide such an opportunity to users. Otherwise, the amount of land will simply become unlimited, and they will cost very cheap, preventing their owners from earning in the future. In some cases, you can negotiate with the Metaverse platform and develop and launch the sale of your own land plots, but it will be much more expensive than just buying land during the sale or even on the marketplace. The value of virtual lands is that their number is very limited, which ensures an increase in prices for plots with a growing demand for the metaverse.
- Buy a plot of land on a token sale or receive it as part of an NFT drop. These methods allow you to get land at the lowest price. The higher the demand and more users the metaverse has, the more expensive the land will be on marketplaces later. However, the competition will also be higher. In addition, you risk losing your invested money if the sale of land does not turn a profit, but this rarely happens, especially with large platforms like Decentraland or The Sandbox, whose sales usually cause a huge stir even during the correction period in the crypto market. Accordingly, you will be able to sell it profitably. Platforms at early stages can even distribute plots to everyone for free or for being active in their project, for example, for creating content, promoting on various platforms, attracting users to Discord, and so on.
- Buy a plot of land on an NFT marketplace. Finally, the easiest and fastest way is to buy land on trading platforms. As a rule, their price is much higher than on the token sale, but there is no such high competition, and you do not need to wait in line to get on the Waitlist and buy land through IDO. In addition, it also happens that the price drops after the sale, and you get the opportunity to purchase plots at a lower price than on the token sale. True, this happens quite rarely and, mostly, only with failed projects.
Choosing a Marketplace
As a rule, each metaverse, such as Decentraland or Sandbox, has its own NFT marketplace where users can buy and sell digital objects. However, only NFTs belonging specifically to this metaverse can be sold on these platforms, and the audience is limited.
You can put up for sale a virtual plot of land on any NFT marketplace like OpenSea on Ethereum and Polygon, Raible or Magic Eden on the Solana blockchain – these are some of the leading platforms in terms of the number of users. This means that you will be able to ensure higher demand for your plots of land and, possibly, sell them for more.
Sale of Land on the Metaverse Marketplace
We show how to sell your plot of land in the metaverse using the Decentraland platform as an example. The list of lands is displayed on the “Lands” page. Please note that on the Decentraland marketplace, you can only sell those plots that belong to this metaverse. NFT marketplaces like OpenSea provide an opportunity to sell plots from any Metaverse.
Not all plots are available for purchase if they are not put up for sale by the owner, so to display only available land, you need to activate the “On Sale” option:
The first thing you need to do before selling a plot of land is to connect your wallet to the platform via the browser extensions MetaMask, Formatic or Coinbase Wallet or the WalletConnect function if you use a mobile crypto wallet.
If you have connected a wallet, go to the “My Assets” tab, which displays all the objects of the Decentraland Metaverse that belong to you.
To display only plots of land, in the “Assets” column located on the left, select “Land”. You can even choose a separate category: Parcels or Estates.
Select a virtual plot of land, open the details and click “Sale”. After that, you can set the price for your site and the expiration date, upon reaching which the position will be automatically removed from the Decentraland marketplace. Click “Submit” to list the land on the marketplace.
Sale of Land on NFT Marketplaces
If you own a piece of a well-known Metaverse, then most likely its collection has its own page on the OpenSea marketplace:
On this page, you can purchase land for sale. To sell a plot of land, connect your crypto wallet to OpenSea and go to the “My collections” section:
This section displays the NFTs that you own. To sell your plot of land, select a collection and then a specific plot, then click “List Item”. You will need to choose a method, set the sale price, and then place the plot on the marketplace. You can sell a plot of land at a fixed price or in an auction format, in which the lot will be received by the one who offers the highest price at the end of the timer. At the same time, you determine the starting price.
Conclusion
As you can see, it is very easy to sell a virtual plot of land! Demand for virtual real estate remains high, which makes these plots very valuable, given their limited number.
You can create your own metaverse and sell plots to interested investors — this can bring much more profit than buying and selling existing real estate. But to do this, you will need the right marketing strategy and a considerable starting budget for creating a Metaverse and promoting it.
