Into the Metaverse with Fantom
Metaverse. We’ve all heard the term. But what does it mean, and what role will Fantom play in it?
Metaverse technologies are evolving quickly. But one thing that’s clear is that digital ownership is a core feature of virtual worlds. In practice, this means having the ability to trade digital assets, control personal data, and even transport and use digital items across virtual spaces. This is where Fantom comes in with the blockchain infrastructure needed to support the efficient and transparent management of rich user-profiles and transactions.
Fantom’s 1-second finality and low fees respond to the needs of even the most demanding massive, multi-user virtual worlds that rely on fast, cheap transactions. The Fantom community and ecosystem are equally important.
To better understand how Fantom fulfills the needs of projects building the next iteration of the internet, let’s first take a closer look at how the Metaverse is evolving.
What is the Metaverse?
The Metaverse is a vast network of persistent virtual spaces which users experience synchronously. In Metaverse worlds, users maintain identities and carry digital assets with them; in this sense, the Metaverse is an extension of our real-world lives.
Media depictions often suggest that the Metaverse is built on systems with high-end, 3D graphics capabilities. Not all Metaverse systems require such sophisticated setups, and arguably, real value in the Metaverse derives not from fancy graphics, but from virtual extensions of the social and financial economies that we use in everyday life.
For instance, on some Metaverse platforms, users can buy parcels of virtual land that they can develop or monetize as they desire. This openness and the unlimited opportunity to develop as one sees fit are key. A Metaverse landowner can set up a storefront, create a gallery for digital art, a space for virtual events like concerts, and more.
Across metaverse spaces, users have complete ownership over assets they purchase or even create, which can include everything imaginable ‒ clothing for avatars, NFT art, or digital objects with specific use-cases.
As the Metaverse evolves, projects building virtual worlds have begun to move towards interoperability, making avatars and digital assets freely transportable and usable across digital space.
Current projects already developing in the Fantom ecosystem offer a glimpse of the vast possibilities ahead.
8BIT METAVERSE
8BIT METAVERSE is a large-scale project building explorable and interactive 3D spaces based on parcels of land and avatars sold as NFTs.
Community spaces in 8BIT METAVERSE include gaming areas and a community launchpad where users can congregate, propose, and take collective ownership of new Metaverse projects.
Over the last weeks, 8BIT METAVERSE has been developing at breakneck speed with numerous partnerships including SpiritSwap, Clover Finance, and even an integration that enables holders of Cardano ADAPunks to use their skins on the 8BIT platform.
Pod Town
Pod Town is another project rising to prominence. The Pod Town Metaverse is in development and will integrate DeFi and NFT platforms in a vast digital space where users can socialize trade assets and more. Pod Town is moving quickly towards cross-chain interoperability.
The project recently embarked on a major move towards a functional metaverse economy with the launch of wallet tools and an autocompounder for tracking and managing DeFi assets and NFTs on multiple chains. Even as it expands and builds its full Metaverse offering, Pod Town has already earned renown for these DeFi tools and the extraordinarily high quality of the project art and design.
Slothtopia
Slothtopia is Fantom’s first 3D Metaverse project with a roadmap for a VR-compatible open world. Slothtopia recently hosted a sale of NFT avatars and soon plans to drop a “condo/gallery” mint allowing avatar holders to obtain customizable spaces where they can hang their NFT assets on the walls of their virtual dwellings, play games, and more. A land sale will follow thereafter.
Slothtopia is building bridges with many other Fantom projects and plans to integrate functionality enabling users to mint NFTs from other Fantom projects and have them rendered in-game. Also in the works is a “skin selector” allowing users to use any metaverse ready avatar made by Fantom/any EVM compatible change on the platform.
Why Blockchain?
Blockchains have instigated a permissionless revolution: a sea-change in which formerly closed economies, from finance to art, have become open to all.
Lowered barriers to entry and open access have brought unprecedented economic opportunities. Think of play-to-earn games, community-developed platforms like Fantom’s Rarity, or the NFT and DeFi protocols thriving in the Fantom ecosystem.
The dApps behind all of these initiatives have created value flows that benefit both developers and users of their dApps.
Recent reports suggest that the Metaverse market size will pass an astonishing $1.5 Trillion by 2029. The space is big enough for both centralized, corporate commercial interests and open blockchain-based projects to coexist. Over the long term, however, we believe that blockchain-based Metaverse projects built on open standards and governed by user communities will dominate.
Why Fantom?
Beyond openness, the Fantom network perfectly suits the complex, multi-user systems the Metaverse requires. Core features that Fantom offers include:
Low Latency
Transaction finality of approximately 1-second makes Fantom the fastest blockchain in the industry. This speed ensures a smooth user experience in Metaverse worlds where payments and changes to user data need to be processed with minimal delay.
Interoperability
FTM is EVM-compatible and offers sophisticated developer tools that facilitate bridging and standards across Ethereum compatible chains.
The ability to transfer digital assets ‒ like NFTs tied to real-world goods, game artifacts, or avatar skins ‒ across Metaverse worlds will hinge on interoperability. Such transportability will be key for creators looking to extend brand recognition and expand the utility of their creation.
Microtransactions
Fantom’s low fees ensure the viability of Metaverse worlds with high transaction volumes. On the blockchain-based virtual worlds, any data update, from a user account change to an asset trade, requires the execution of a smart contract transaction.
Metaverse projects will therefore rely on blockchain platforms like Fantom with fees low enough to support high-volume but potentially low-value transactions.
The Fantom Ecosystem
Just as the Metaverse will represent a composite of technologies that combine to create a whole greater than its parts, so with the tools and applications that enable user interactions.
Metaverse platforms can draw on the wide variety of dApps across the Fantom network to provide ready-made functionality to users. The ecosystem, in short, vitally sustains extensive composability.
Want to join Metaverse builders on Fantom? Come join us as we build the infrastructure of the future: contact@fantom.foundation.
