Metaverse
A broad, persistent, often interconnected set of virtual environments where users interact, socialize, and transact, sometimes using blockchain-based ownership of virtual items or land.
The metaverse refers broadly to persistent virtual environments where users can interact, socialize, work, or play, often through an avatar, with some visions of the concept emphasizing interoperability between different virtual worlds and platforms. In the crypto context specifically, blockchain-based metaverse projects have used tokens and NFTs to represent ownership of virtual land (see Kaavon's "Virtual Land" glossary definition) and in-world items, aiming to give users verifiable, portable ownership of digital assets that exist within these virtual environments.
The term "metaverse" has been used to describe a very wide range of products, from blockchain-based virtual worlds to entirely centralized gaming and social platforms with no blockchain component at all, which has made it a frequently imprecise and hype-prone term — actual interoperability between different metaverse platforms, a core promise of many crypto-based visions, has in practice been limited, and user adoption of blockchain-based metaverse platforms has generally fallen well short of early projections.
Examples
- A blockchain-based metaverse project might sell virtual land as NFTs, giving buyers verifiable on-chain ownership of a specific parcel within that virtual world.
- Despite early promises of cross-platform interoperability, most metaverse projects have remained largely siloed, with assets from one platform not usable in another.