Cryptovoxels: Taking a Second Look

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I’ll admit it. I was harsh. And sarcastic.

When I first took a look at Cryptovoxels, I thought that the idea would never fly:

It’s an interesting project, and I’m sure that it’s been fun to work on. But honestly, compared to what most of the other metaverse platforms are offering, Cryptovoxels doesn’t stand a chance.

But, this week, after aggressively cross-promoting my new Discord on various other Discord servers of which I was a member, the developer, Ben Nolan, contacted me and invited me to come back and join the chat in the Cryptovoxels Discord. I was expecting to be crucified for what I had written earlier, but everybody was very friendly, and we had a great, wide-ranging discussion.

You can now visit Cryptovoxels within your WebVR-compatible web browser. Cryptovoxels also supports the Oculus Go, Gear VR, Oculus Rift or HTC Vive headsets.

One thing I noticed right way is that Cryptovoxels is no longer a monochrome-only world: you can now have colour!

It would appear that Cryptovoxels already has a small but very committed community of builders, people who are enjoying the creative aspects of the platform and who are working with Ben to expand it further. There are already six distinct neighbourhoods, as well as a map which allows you to teleport from location to another.

Cryptovoxels is also working on experimental portals to other social VR/virtual worlds! I visited an in-world portal that teleported me into JanusVR, for example.

Some of Cryptovoxel’s users are frustrated Decentraland investors and developers who are still waiting to receive invitations to join their closed alpha (I signed up too, and I’m still waiting.) One thing that Cryptovoxels definitely has going for it, is that it is among the very few blockchain-based virtual worlds where you can actually build something right now, publish it, and receive visitors! When this will happen in Decentraland is open to speculation.

Set-up instructions are pretty easy: it’s essentially prim-building, just like the old days in Second Life!

Building parcels is done completely in the browser, you don’t have to use your coding skills, just click to play blocks and build your parcel.

1. Purchase a parcel from opensea
2. Make sure you have metamask unlocked and then click sign in above
3. Go to your parcel from the parcel list and click the refresh ↻ button
4. Make sure the owner is your wallet address
5. Click visit
6. Press tab to bring up the menu, go to the blocks tab, and select a block
7. You should now be able to click and shift click to start building

You can follow Cryptovoxels on Twitter, Discord, and Reddit, or just visit their website.

So I now take back my earlier harsh, sarcastic assessment of Cryptovoxels. It’s taken off quite nicely, and it appears to be thriving! Just goes to show you how wrong I can sometimes be. Please accept my apologies, Ben.

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