How Communities Leverage the Metaverse: Opportunities and Benefits

Recently, interest in the concept of the metaverse has skyrocketed among game developers. By 2024, the metaverse is expected to be worth $800 billion. Compared to 2020, its value was only estimated at $47 billion.

The popularity of the metaverse concept took off when Facebook announced its name change to Meta and revealed plans to create its own metaverse.

Some people are sure that these types of virtual spaces will become an integral part of the future. Meanwhile, others are already leveraging metaverses for their own needs. Here’s how they are doing it.

Opportunities and Benefits of Metaverse

The idea of a metaverse is as follows: a person, with the help of special devices, is immersed in virtual reality (VR), where they interact with other immersed people, and can perform almost all of the same actions that they can in real life.

The modern concept of the metaverse has something in common with VR, but they are not the same thing. The metaverse is a virtual reality space that:

• operates on an ongoing basis, never turning off,
• uses many technologies that immerse us in the digital world,
• creates within itself separate laws and an economy, in fact – a single state.

Metaverses are already used by different companies all around the world without special devices. What you need is only a computer and an internet connection. You can read about some inspirational stories here.

The concept of a metaverse is widely leveraged by communities because of the following benefits:

Boundless communication.
The metaverse allows people from all around the world to not just communicate but interact virtually, despite the distance. This allows for keeping in touch with relatives, friends, and colleagues who are far away from you.‍

Enhanced working processes.
The format of communication is changing, and so is the structure of work. With the advent of a single digital space, many companies will no longer need to create separate offices for employees with workplaces and recreation areas. A large part of the work is moving into virtual reality, especially as meetings will move from the video format of Zoom and Microsoft Teams services to the digital presence of avatars in a single space. Here, the visibility of the product, the joint brainstorming, and the possibility of a live discussion of problems are possible. ‍

Immersive experience.
The metaverse allows for hosting online team parties, full-fledged corporate celebrations, or just having informal communication and fun. Thanks to 3D virtual spaces, avatars, and the ability to actually “travel” and “meet” people, users get an immersive interactive experience.

Metaverse community platforms specialize in uniting like-minded people around a specific character, topic, game, etc. Such platforms provide different tools for creativity, communication, and discussions.

Below, we are focusing on some examples of metaverses that communities from all over the world can use to achieve an immersive gaming and interactive experience.

Doge Temple: a Full-fledged Microverse

Party.Space provides users with a microverse called Doge Temple. This is a virtual space in which fans of the Doge meme can socialize.

Available online 24/7 with your regular browser, a microverse acts as a home to the most influential and passionate community members.

The Doge Temple is a 3D virtual world that is built around a character. The idea of such microverses is that each online community builds its own microverse, which connects with a shared network to form a metaverse. A microverse gives way to a custom miniature world around existing communities, trends, and ideas, allowing every participant to experience deeper and more immersive communication with each other.

In the Doge Temple, a user can chat with other participants, enjoy an NFT gallery, explore the 3D virtual space, play games, and much more.

The Sandbox: a Distributed Metaverse

Being a distributed metaverse means that Sandbox users are not confined to the platform. The content you own or create in The Sandbox can be transferred to other open metaverses and vice versa.

The metaverse’s project is similar to Minecraft, which uses “cubic” graphics. Users can freely develop the virtual world, create real estate and objects, navigate, and participate in mini-games.

The project is built on the Ethereum blockchain. Players own pieces of the metaverse, which are non-fungible LAND tokens. Users create virtual world objects represented as NFTs.

The Sandbox metaverse is implemented in the sandbox genre – users move around the virtual world and participate in mini-games. In such projects, players form the universe and fill it with objects. They are the authors of the content, which gives them complete freedom of action.

The Sandbox is a GameFi project. Players have the opportunity to earn as part of the gameplay.

Decentraland: a Virtual Reality Platform

Decentraland is a virtual reality platform or a virtual world powered by the Ethereum blockchain. Users explore the metaverse of the project and fill it with content.

In Decentraland, users create various artifacts and interactive objects. Items and land in this virtual world are NFTs. They are traded on the internal marketplace.

The platform belongs to the GameFi sector and provides users with gaming and financial opportunities. Players explore territories, communicate and participate in interactive scenes, and create virtual objects in the form of NFTs.

Various events can take place in Decentraland, including exhibitions, training, and seminars. This metaverse allows you to advertise products and services, as well as inform others about upcoming activities.

In Conclusion

The metaverse offers an array of opportunities, not only for entertainment but also for work. It is already possible to purchase a piece of land for cryptocurrency in the virtual world, for example, on the Decentraland platform. In fact, a user involved in this type of transaction will receive a non-fungible token (NFT) for a digital piece of land. It is likely that such investments will be able to bring good returns in the future because the volume of the global NTF market is growing. However, the legal basis for their regulation has not yet been established.

The metaverse can also be an excellent base for training future specialists in various fields. In addition to the option of simulating almost any practical situation, it makes it possible for students and teachers to meet for live communication, conduct lectures and seminars, and exchange any kind of ideas and information.

Imagine that students in a history lesson will be able to walk around the square of a medieval city. They will be able to see how people lived and survived hundreds of years ago. And in geography classes, they will go to the mouth of a volcano or to the South Pole to observe its inhabitants. The educational possibilities of the metaverse are endless.

We can assume that the metaverse will revolutionize virtually every industry, from healthcare and payments to goods, entertainment, wages, and even sex work. And in the near future, new industries, markets, resources, skills, and professions will be created to support the metaverse.