On 3rd of August 2021 the team behind Terraworld stirred up excitement by announcing that they are working on an NFT Metaverse on the Terra blockchain. The project whitepaper indicates that the scope of Terraworld will initially be work-related, similar to the likes of Gather (although there are design similarities between the projects, the admin for Terraworld has stated that they are not connected).
It is hard to miss the emergence of metaverse popularity in crypto in recent months. Sandbox, Wilder World and other projects have become all-consuming, with land and associated NFTs being sold for increasingly worrying prices on the Ethereum blockchain. This has been coupled with the sharp increase in wider NFT popularity, where pictures of penguins with McDonalds hats on (or equivalent…) are being sold for more than my house is worth.
This piece looks to investigate what the Terra Metaverse is likely to look like, with considerations on how we as a Terra Community could push this metaverse towards a more amenable direction. The team behind Terraworld are clearly aware that the greed-driven approach to NFTs is unsustainable, especially in relation to a metaverse concept. In their whitepaper it is stated:
Existing blockchain metaverses often emphasize NFTs as a source of sales revenue instead of as innovations for programmable gamification and design, resulting in the creation of mere 3D NFT stores instead of virtual spaces that stay true to the spirit of the metaverse. Compared to metaverse games that are built on the premise of creating something new (i.e. Minecraft, Animal Crossing, Roblox), metaverses that focus on selling NFTs as well as promoting creativity should be reconsidered. In this regard, the Terra World project aims to start by focusing on a niche market and then expand the metaverse from there on.
As future users of the platform, there is a hopeful sense that the creators will begin with an emphasis on utility and function, with a relative ‘blank slate’ approach to the world which they create. The initial emphasis will be on work and employer-employee relations, but with the clear hope to expand that to a direction ‘promoting creativity’. As Terra community members, it is really our prerogative to pre-empt, design and create this ‘creativity’ where possible. The individuals, companies and games which can design successfully on these new spaces will be the winners.
In a recent interview (10th Aug), Do Kwon spoke about the need to decentralise metaverses, pushing ownership of design, vision and construction to ‘private investors’. He said:
“If you use existing metaverse projects you are essentially just playing a game, with a token that is built into it which can issue NFTs or some sort of monetary upside…the world itself is still managed by a centralised development team”.
“[In the real world] …it is the incentive of various different agents in the private sector to go to develop that real estate and to create new content – by opening new restaurants, or galleries, or coffee shops, or build new buildings or amusement parks and things like that. But that just doesn’t exist in metaverses today, where there’s no real incentive or even permission to build your own real estate.”
So we can view Terraworld, or the equivalent metaverses which gain popularity on the Terra blockchain, as spaces to be filled by private ambition and imagination. To that end, here are my three suggestions to steer the ‘Terraverse’ away from consumerist intent and towards something more beneficial:
1. Cultural Capital.
A community of artists, photographers, musicians, writers, stand-up comedians, designers and all other creative types should form a collective in this Metaverse. It could be a single venue or a cultural district, but we as a community should be supporting, promoting and empowering creativity, enabling it to translate from the real world into the new ‘blank’ canvas. This could incorporate secondary financial incentives, such as the Pylon widget or Suberra for individual patronage. There could be art galleries, where NFTs of artistic creations are sold – rather than avatars consumed and sold primarily for profit. There could be music venues, comedy nights, book clubs and whatever else we can do to promote culture in the space. The Terraverse should prioritise and reward creative endeavours in a way not seen on other blockchains
2. Charitable emphasis.
There are several projects on Terra already standing out for their charitable emphasis – Angel Protocol and Sandclock to name a few. From the very foundations, Terraworld (or equivalent) should have charity underpinning all that it does. This could be instigated through membership of the Terra Alliance, or something more ambitious – for example a donation of a set percentage of all transactions in the metaverse. There is substantial opportunity here for activity in a metaverse to have real-world benefit, beyond purely financial rewards. I’d be very interested to start this discussion and to see what other ideas might emerge within the community.
3. NFTs as land ownership
Terra supporter Michael Arrington made news in 2017 when he sold an apartment in Ukraine as an NFT using blockchain technology. While an ambitious concept, I’d love to see endeavours in the metaverse have real-world ramifications. While only POS assets can be used as collateral on Anchor, the prospect of somehow monetising real estate using NFTs could have significant potential if it were able to be utilised alongside current Terra dApps. A metaverse DAO which aims to tackle homelessness in real cities through NFT home ownership, for example, could be a project which would make Terra stand out both to consumers and regional law-makers who are evaluating the potential of blockchain technology.
These three concepts are very much just a personal starting point. I’m writing this article in the hope of beginning a discussion within the Terra community – please do add comments and thoughts below.