Despite the Metaverse’s allure, many aspiring occupants are priced out of the digital land. Discover what DAOs are doing to make the Metaverse life more accessible.
A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) is an organization of individuals who collectively work toward common goals on social networks and blockchains. In the midst of the evolving Metaverse, DAOs are rallying around the potential for utilizing and investing in the Metaverse. In light of Goldman Sachs’ $8 trillion valuations of this sector, more eyes and ears have turned to the possibilities of accessibility, usability, and monetization of these virtual worlds.
The digital landowners in the Metaverse feature some of the most recognizable names, including Adidas, Nike, Snoop Dogg, and JPMorgan. These companies are investing in the digital space and aligning themselves with the Web3 movement to better connect with consumers.
The cost of joining the digital land rush is the most significant barrier. These decentralized autonomous organizations are seeking equitable ways to invest in and use virtual worlds. DAOs could significantly assist new entrants to Web3 in gaining access to digital land by making it more accessible for them to engage with it. It means exploring ways to share, rent, and invest in digital land in the Metaverse.
NFTs Are The Entry Points To Metaverse Land
The two largest metaverse platforms, Decentraland and the Sandbox, combined to make almost $460 million in digital real estate in 2021. These aren’t the only platforms people are using. To yield valuable resources, blockchain games such as Axie Infinity are building out their respective metaverses within their land gameplay.
However, at the current price of digital land across all metaverses, many investors are priced out. The cheapest land plot in Axie Infinity is roughly 2.2 Ether (ETH), which is around $5,550. The most expensive land plot costs 10,000 Ether (ETH), which is roughly $25,254,275. The price range reflects the land’s speculated value based on its location. Much like real estate in real life, location is a critical component in the Metaverse. Users strategically position themselves in order to benefit from location value.
The Axie Infinity land will not only provide passive revenue via its governance token, Axie Infinity Shards (AXS), but will also provide a means for in-game characters to harvest resources. Members of the community have formed AxieLands (AXL), a non-fungible token (NFT) that facilitates access to digital land, knowing how essential it is to gameplay.
In essence, AXL is an access pass of sorts to the digital land owned by the AXL NFT team. Members of the community could purchase an NFT for 0.1 ETH ($252.15) to gain access to any land AxieLand NFT has acquired. In Axie Infinity, the AXL NFT team intends to buy 110 plots ranging from cheaper entry plots to premium plots. It is still in its infancy, working through legal parameters before establishing itself as a DAO, but the AXL NFT model seems most suitable to gaming guilds.
In addition to projects tailored for land-based gameplay, other projects use rentals to provide access to and monetize these digital assets.
Investors Can Lease Digital Land For Passive Income
In the metaverse, digital land has endless possibilities beyond gaming functionality, depending on who purchases and develops it. As such, LandWorks operates on the Ethereum network as a community-driven marketplace. Digital landowners can lease their respective plots to users while users can take advantage of a cost-effective point of entry without a long-term commitment.
Creating capital efficiency in the Metaverse is straightforward with LandWorks’ model. Similar to Airbnb, LandWorks provides users with a community-oriented search platform for searching available land for rent. EnterDAO operates the LandWorks platform, which is governed by the native token ENTR, whereby lenders can farm the token through Synthetix staking rewards. Decentraland landowners are currently the only ones supported on the platform, but that could change in the near future. EntrDAO is all in on the Metaverse as it complements its renting marketplace with Metaportal, a hub for all games and events in the metaverse.
Despite the earliest stages of development of DAO operations, functions, and value distributions, teams of like-minded individuals are working toward the future of the Metaverse and its placement within the wider nascent ecosystem. Through DAOs, investors are now entering new territories as they sort their points of entry into the Metaverse for the next iteration of the web. Although DAOs and Metaverse developments are a long way off, now appears to be the right time to invest and build toward more accessible digital worlds.
