While laying on your couch with a VR headset on, you could be exploring the depths of a tropical wilderness even while you’re freezing away in your apartment. Anything conceivable within one’s mind could theoretically manifest in the metaverse as open source code makes the creation of any number of universes possible. When it comes to dialogue regarding the metaverse, Facebook’s corporate rebranding to Meta can’t be overlooked as it gives an idea of how prominent the tech giant foresees its role on the future internet.
Since the widespread roll-out of metaverse technologies are still in the early stages however, there is still much room for interpretation on what the actual future will look like. In defining its current state we can deduce that it is a type of virtual reality that can be imagined as a universe in-and-of itself. However, there are plans to integrate the physical world entirely with the virtual one and the metaverse would obviously play a vital role in this.
As it's built upon the same fundamental building blocks as DeFi, the metaverse and its aforementioned partner look poised to play a complementary role towards each other. Within the landscape to date, models like Play-to-Earn have done an exceptional job at integrating the two together. Play-to-Earn platforms like Axie Infinity help to effectively onboard users onto the metaverse through DeFi by requiring the usage of their own native tokens AXS and SLP.
Yet it’s also a ‘two-way street’, because people within these play-to-earn and metaverse platforms are also rewarded with a variety of NFTs that can easily be converted into liquid DeFi cryptocurrencies. The fact that metaverses themselves are NFTs means that virtually every valuable asset within their ecosystems are also NFTs. In the case of Axie Infinity, one example of this is the Pokemon-inspired Axies, which are the main virtual characters within the play-to-earn game.
Another profound explosion within the metaverse space to date, has been the sale and development of virtual land or real estate. Sales among different platforms like Axie Infinity and Splinterlands have been enormous, numbering in the hundreds of millions of dollars. This has had a beneficial effect on DeFi, since it has given the industry a valuable source of revenue that doesn’t require tapping into tokenomics.
The metaverse is meant to be a series of shared virtual worlds where people interact together as their 3D avatars. NFTs in their earliest forms of bored apes and crypto punks have served their purpose of facilitating the onset of these 3D avatars. As the metaverse sets off on its quest to integrate with the physical world, it remains to be seen what role these 3D avatars will play. On a similar note, NFTs based on real world real estate have already begun being developed.
All in all, as the most liquid exchange form of all these metaverse assets, it is likely that DeFi will factor in immensely with its overall development. At the moment, there are already a few innovative DEXs on the market that accept particular types of NFTs as collateral for lending/borrowing and other DeFi services. Again this will continue to be enhanced, and in the near future it’s realistic to expect all kinds of swapping, staking, and farming with metaverse assets to be available.
With Autonio’s dedication to AI/ML learning, we are looking to be highly active in shaping the future of the metaverse and DeFi.
We will keep you updated on how it goes, but for now have fun and happy trading with Autonio!
