Virtual Land Ownership, a Slice of the Metaverse in a Post-Covid Economy

Fast forward to the year 2028. You enter your local coffee bar, order a drink and find a seat in a quiet corner. You’re just in time for your meeting. You fetch your VR/AR glasses from your pocket and put them on the table in front of you. They don’t look very different from ordinary glasses; they’re lightweight and smart looking. A small VR logo on the left hinge reveals this is a VR device. You notice many coffee sipping guests have one. They’re making hand gestures to control the spatial UI’s these glasses project.

You take a sip of your coffee and put the glasses on. Almost instantly you find yourself in your bright, spacious virtual living room. A menu pops up in front of you. You move your hand to select Somnium Space as your next destination. An instant later the world materializes and you’re in front of your company’s virtual office. You greet some of your colleagues who arrived before you.

‘Overslept again huh?’, you hear from behind you. You make a hand movement to turn around. It is your valued colleague from India. You have never bumped into him in physical space, but you know him really well. You spent many days together visiting the company’s virtual assets and domains, which are spread across the Metaverse. You also went on a day long hike in the Somnium mountains the other day.

‘Come on man, you know I can’t start without my coffee. But let’s dive right into it shall we?’ You enter the office and the big meeting room where many other colleagues have gathered already.

During the meeting, you discuss the company’s virtual land and asset development, store visit and walk-by statistics, cross world marketing campaigning and their attribution to overall physical sales of the company’s products. Things are looking bright. The upward trends from the last years are continuing to accelerate. Five new virtual stores have been created, two of them in Somnium Space. You are happy to learn that the new stores in Somnium will be your responsibility. You scribble a note on your virtual tablet. One of these days you will reach out to the interior designer to make sure the cross world experience of customers is fully aligned, regardless what world or virtual store they enter.

During a meeting break you leave the office and jump to another world via a teleportation hub. There’s this store that had an ad in Somnium the other day; for a great pair of running shoes that look like the shoes you could use. When you enter the store you are greeted by a representative. ‘Can I be of assistance?’

You explain the reason of your visit. After being pointed in the direction you find the shoes and pick them up to have a close look. You enlarge them and slowly turn them around so you can have a good look. You also read the shoes’ specs that popup into view.

You decide you want to have them and press the order button. Payment is instant through your connected wallet. The transaction is stored on the blockchain. You specify delivery details and hop back to your office in Somnium, just in time for the meeting to continue.

After the meeting you return to your virtual living room, turn to AR mode and order another coffee. Suddenly you see a picture of your girlfriend popping into sight. Her facial expression reveals you better not ignore her. You switch back to VR and enter your common virtual space, a gorgeous house overlooking the Grand Canyon. You find her on the balcony and she isn’t looking amused.

‘When I told you it was okay to invite your friends over for your best mate’s stag party as long as you cleaned up our virtual home before I returned, what part of that didn’t you understand?’

Some things never change.

Science fiction?

It surely sounds like it, doesn’t it? Think about it for a moment. What we described here is the Metaverse, which is characterized by a persistent shared virtual space providing experiences that span and cross platforms and the physical world.

In the story it is clearly shared. You meet your colleagues in your company’s shared virtual office, which is persistent. It is always on. It exists even if you are not there. Your girlfriend complaining about the mess after the stag party is another example of that. The house and the mess you left behind are virtual, but it persisted, and she wasn’t happy.

What we described is cross platform and cross world. You seamlessly jumped to this shoe store during a meeting break and made a purchase. Goods that will be delivered to your physical address. Moments later you were back in your meeting.

The physical world and virtual world co-exist in one new layered reality and you seamlessly jump from one to another, in and out. You get your real coffee, meet your (real, for the record) girlfriend in your shared virtual home, you meet your colleagues at an office to discuss trends and sales. You also socialize as you enjoy hiking the Somnium mountains with your colleague from India, who you never met in real life.

The Metaverse is also business. Your company sells physical goods, but advertises in the Metaverse. Thousands of people visit your virtual stores, engage with sales representatives and purchase goods.

Granted, it may sound like science fiction. But the scenarios described in this article are closer than you may think. We’re talking this decade. A post-COVID economy that will have the ability for people to socialize, for businesses to operate across vast distances and engage with customers in ways that mimic physical interactions.

Land in Somnium Space, a slice of the Metaverse

With the Metaverse in mind, purchasing land in Somnium Space is much more than getting yourself a little sandbox to have fun with. While it is also about that – Somnium Space land parcels will enable you to unleash your creativity here and now – you are actually obtaining a virtual, spatial domain; your own immersive corner in the Metaverse.

At the dawn of the Internet, many people and companies didn’t see the need for registering and owning domain names. That seems absurd now. Without an online presence, without a website, no one takes you serious right?

But the Metaverse will be the new black and in the not so distant future the concept of fixed computers and staring at a flat-screen while browsing websites will also be looked back at as absurd. Instead spatial computing will have invaded every aspect of our daily lives. And we’ll be living in a multi-layered, physical, virtual and mixed reality society. And in this new reality, with this technological landslide, owning virtual assets, i.e. in the form of land on which you can build and which you can monetize, will be equally important as owning physical assets.

Somnium Space is at the forefront and will be one of the interconnected worlds. And your land in Somnium will be your slice of the Metaverse. Unique, undisputed.

The future has begun. Exciting times are ahead.