Wait, wait, everybody calm down for a second! Just hear me out.
Generally speaking, if you want to place a curse on a website (usually Facebook), you say, “‘X’ is going to be the next MySpace,” where ‘X’ is the website that you want to see doomed to find itself on page 426 of the global Alexa rankings as it spectacularly fails to keep up with the wants of its user base.
But what was so bad about MySpace? This Reddit user gives us a positive spin on the MySpace experience, and what it did so well:
Emphasis on “that page was mine.”
Facebook eventually came along and created a spectacularly popular platform, but profiles were succinct, sterile, and had a common look and feel. It was social media with a German efficiency, but it worked. These days, the lack of privacy and inability to maintain a division between close friends and weird uncles and grandparents has led to the beginning of what appears to be a slow decline in Facebook’s user base, particularly among the younger demographic.
What if there was a social platform that took the best things about MySpace (user expression), removed the worst things about Facebook (creepy uncles and a lack of privacy), added a dash of technology (virtual reality), and then topped it off with trustless digital ownership of both the virtual land and the objects within it (NFTs)? “Impossible,” you say? What if I told you that this platform exists and functions today, and can be yours for only four easy payments of $19.95? Just kidding, it’s free, and it’s called Cryptovoxels (click the link if you want to be transported directly to the space below, within your browser).
What are you looking at in the image above? Well, there’s a lot going on. First of all, you’re in the Gangnam District of Origin City (the only city, for now). The land is owned by individual users (sold at auction on OpenSea) and ownership is proven by the Ethereum blockchain. Additionally, NFT artwork is on display within the various user-owned spaces (outlined in a shiny black and white frame if it’s actually owned by the same user that owns the land), and avatars show-off their NFT wearables as they walk or fly around the city. This is a fully customizable social environment with an almost endless limit to the ways in which users can express themselves and show-off their NFT art and objects.
Hey, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows in the virtual world. Even avatars can get caught up with the wrong crowd (sorry, I got lost in subway station while researching this newsletter).
The Marketplace
Let’s take a look at the land market for Cryptovoxels:
Cryptovoxels, though currently in 10th place for NFT weekly sales according to nonfungible.com, has seen a surge in sales over the last month, with nearly $24k USD in volume. Interestingly, Decentraland (another platform that sells land on the blockchain) land parcels and estates have always sold for a huge premium over Cryptovoxels land, even though Decentraland is still in beta. Is one over-priced or the other under-priced? I guess time will tell (disclosure: the author owns land in both worlds).
Suffice it to say, the future of decentralized land and art ownership looks very, very bright. Sometimes you come across an idea that just screams “yes, this is it,” and I really get that feeling when I walk around Origin City, appreciating the artwork on display. There’s an incredible amount of effort that’s gone into designing a brand new world, all possible because of a single developer (yes, one guy), who had the genius idea of building a platform that leveraged the ability of its users to experience true ownership on the blockchain, thus providing a sense of permanence, if you will, and opening the floodgates for spontaneous creativity. Sometimes you just have to trust that people are going to good do things and let them run with it! It’s amazing what a little bit of MySpace magic can do.