What Are The Biggest Use Cases So Far in Blockchain Virtual Worlds? Games, Clubs, Art, Conferences and More!

Posted On April 1, 2020

In this post, I’ll explore industries and experiences that seem to be growing and showing promise within Blockchain Virtual Worlds.

We’re still relatively new and this space has a lot of growth ahead of it.

Art

No brainer, we’ve seen the Art community dominate Virtual Worlds. Whether it be Cryptovoxels or Decentraland,

 

Galleries will be big!

Gaming/Competitions

Obviously this is going to be HUGE in Digital Worlds

So far we have seen the Blockrunner team build a whole franchise business in selling games, (soon to be tokenized).

People pay 10 MANA to play and can get a share of the daily and monthly pot.

 

There was also a Backgammon competition built by the Decentral Games Team

Decentraland are yet to release features like ‘DAO based Guilds’, Multiplayer support, more advanced SDK features which should take gamification to the next level.

From the Decentraland Road Map: https://trello.com/b/YZnGNh5z/decentraland-roadmap-2020-and-beyond

The Sandbox whole premise is building a Minecraft game on Blockchain where you will be able to create games, buy and sell different smart models like guns, characters, etc and basically build a big world with voxel based buildings and games.

They are on the cusp of selling another 10% of land supply.

Giveaways/Treasure Hunts

This was part of Decentraland Launch.

Although the launch was buggy and the ‘success’ of it is debatable, there was a HUGE desire from people to join, play and hopefully win some crypto/NFTs in the process.

A quote from the Decentraland post-launch write up article,

“Over 12,000 active participants. 66,000 rewards given to 6,385 distinct users 700k+ MANA, 590k ANJ, 82k+ MATIC, 10k+ wearables, 2k+ Cryptokitties, 33 Axies, 25 LAND and two HTC Exodus 1 phones found and bagged.”

We also noticed a lot of activity in the Discord and social media as people ran around trying to find these chests.

There definitely will be a big desire to ‘win’ things in Decentraland and other virtual worlds.

 

Dance Events/Clubs

These have been some of the most fun meetups. Just letting loose and having fun to some great tunes!

I have seen a few clubs pop up lately.

Not to mention Somnium Space rocking it out

 

Conferences

No doubt this will be big.

Especially once there are enough features to enable things like Audio streaming, slides, presentations, voice chat, putting your hands up, maybe a laser pointer or a way to sign entrance books, etc.

We had Coinfest hold some meetups and a conference soon.

Anyone can hold a coinfest meetup so next year I’m sure this will be bigger and better on Decentraland.

There’s also companies like DCG and I’m sure many waiting and watching to start running conferences once the features are there.

 

Education/Immersive Experiences

Two experiences come to mind.

The Ross Ulbricht Tower which I did a write up on a while back.

I learnt a lot visiting the different levels and reading letters from Ross.

There’s also this build by Lemursiv, an initiative aimed at educating people about Madagascar and the endangered species that are being effected by deforestations.

It was awesome!

 

Both these builds gave me a true appreciation of how an immersive build in a virtual world can teach in a way other mediums cannot.

Ecommerce/Auctions

Once the ability to buy and sell NFTs straight from these virtual worlds will be incorporated, no doubt, ecommerce will be a big use case.

All the art you see around the worlds can be simply clicked and purchased.

Or use cases like MakersPlace Auction House which right now is holding a Charity Auciton using Cryptovoxels and Decentraland as in world displays,

I also think the Wearables market, at least in Decentraland will see a surge as people LOVE to represent themselves in different clothe pieces.

If you can buy these in game, while others are wearing it, it’s going to get crazy!

There’s also this cool build on Decentraland where you can see and buy the wearable straight from inside the world! By Vrlandlord

 

Social/Meetups/Special Days

Well..this is a no brainer.

One of the first use cases and probably will be the biggest is simple meetups and gatherings for special events and launchd days.

I expect these meetups to hitting numbers of 100-300 within a year from now.

 

Business/Entrepreneurship

This one will be big as well.

We’ve already seen people make money buying and selling land, wearables, names and anything that can be tokenized really.

In time we will be able to tokenize full experiences.

Imagine building a game you can tokenize and only make 10 available to be deployed amongst different worlds.

Other can buy, rent and basically trade full scale businesses!

 

What Else I Want to See in the Metaverse Collaborative

Work Spaces – I think making along side of your colleagues in a digital way makes sense. Whether it be hold meetings, share work stations and basically disconnect yourself from real world work needs.

If I could share my work screen in real time with others, that would be pretty cool. Kind of like a work office.

And then walk out during ‘break time’ and chat/network with others.

Affiliate Marketing – What? Why? I’ll tell you why. Affiliate Marketing, or sending clients/leads to business was my main source of income for 3-4 years. And it worked amazing.

This should be implemented here eventually. Like my Art Gallery for example, Bring business to artists and larger projects who can incentivise me for business that comes from my marketing channels will help fund me to bring in even more business and grow the economy within the space.

This should be the case for any NFT. As a land owner, I could find ways to display and monetize projects that can give me a cut of their larger activities.

Non-Invasive Advertising – Ok, I don’t want to ‘see’ more ads but I want ads to be smarter. Having a rotating banner in a digital world catches your attention.

But if there was a way an Ad publishing company can create Ad management tools for advertisers and publishers so we can manage and see where our ads are being displayed and whether they are bringing in business, this will give land owners another way of monetizing their experience.

Kind of like Adsense does for websites.

Imagine having 50×50 or 250 x 50 ‘digital’ spots that you can fill, track who watched and monetize.

This will encourage land owners to focus on experience and not monetizing through sales but via ads. Again, in a non-invasive way.

Exploring – The simple act of logging into a digital world and walking around. This gets boring if there’s nothing new but with enough build momentum there should be something new to do everyday.

Non Realistic builds – I’ve seen a lot of builds that try emulate reality. That’s cool but would love to see more fantasy/cyber builds that push the boundaries of not being limited to real world physics.

Removing walls, maybe make experiences upside down, floating islands, or something completely new and whacky that’s never before been seen.

The above shows a lot of promise as we’re at such early stages at building a metaverse. In 2-3 years this space will be absolutely buzzing!

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About The Author

Mateen

Matty is an Investor in Decentraland, Gods Unchained and NFT Art and frequently writes Analysis posts/updates on the NFT market. You can follow him on Twitter: twitter.com/DCLBlogger

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