A sum of almost $2 billion was spent on the virtual land over the past year, according to research from metaverse analysts DappRadar.
Digital real estate and digital plots of land are being purchased by individuals like Snoop Dogg and corporate investors like Samsung Electronics and PwC for a variety of reasons, but many of them believe that its value will rise over time.
The virtual land is being sold via online platforms like Decentraland and Voxels (formerly Cryptovoxels), which many people consider as a primal version of metaverse – a virtual world, where the online users can live, work and play.
Moreover, businesses and investors are building digital shops and event spaces on the virtual land they purchased in the metaverse, which often allows visitors to make purchases via cryptocurrencies.
However, we are yet years away from the metaverse emerging as a sole immersive space online for people to live, play and work. So, is spending large sums for the land grabbing one huge gamble?
‘Exhibiting my own work’
With the giant red Mohican and a permanent cigarette, the avatar of artist Angie Taylor does not quite resemble a typical land mogul. Nonetheless, she is among the growing group of people, who are laying claim to the new virtual worlds.
“I bought my first metaverse parcel in July 2020 and paid about £1,500. I bought it for exhibiting my own work, but also for running metaverse events that would promote my art and also other people's art," she says.
These plots, owned by Angie are about the size of a small family house (if one compares them to the size of her avatar). The tallest of them all stretches up over three floors and even comprises a roof terrace with a white-and-black-striped road crossing, and a pink taxi permanently driving back and forth just for fun.
But one can sense the reality of the scale of this world from the air.
"Hold down the F key and you can fly up to take a look at my neighborhood," Angie explains. Above her gallery, one can see thousands of identical boxes of land stretching to the horizon.
Voxels is one of the many virtual worlds that identify as metaverses. People frequently refer to "the metaverse" as if there were just one, which is confusing. Companies are selling land and experiences in their own versions until one platform begins to dominate or these disparate worlds join together.
According to DappRadar, $1.93 billion worth of cryptocurrency has been spent in order to purchase virtual lands in the past year alone, with $22m of that spent on about 3,000 parcels of land in Voxels.
Among the many luxury fashion brands, Philipp Plein as well owns a virtual plot about the size of four football pitches, which it hopes will eventually contain a metaverse store and gallery.
With fashion industries being most interested in taking the opportunity and risks in regards to the metaverse, Amsterdam-based digital-only fashion house, ‘The Fabricant’ only makes clothing for the avatars, designing collections and bespoke garments for users of Decentraland, Sandbox, and other crypto metaverses.
The company just raised $14m in funding from investors betting on the idea that many of us will soon be living part of our lives in the metaverse. But since crypto metaverses are generally sparsely populated and only really used when events are held, and even then only thousands, and not millions, of people attend. Consequently, it is not certain if and when it will happen.
