Tag: Non-Fungible Tokens

UPDATED! How the Crypto Crash Is Affecting Blockchain-Based Metaverse Platforms: Will a Crypto Winter Kill Off Some Projects?

I have been waiting a while to write this editorial, but I think the right time has come.

(Somebody posted this to the r/buttcoin Reddit, and I had to laugh!)

I have been avidly following every twist and turn of the current crypto crash, following various Reddit communities and scouring Google and Apple News for the reports of the latest crypto companies to fail, taking their investors’ money with them. The chain of dominos continues to fall, and nobody can predict where or when this “crypto winter” will end.

In talking about all this, there’s lot of jargon being thrown around which can sometimes be difficult to understand: smart contracts, DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, etc. The following 7-minute YouTube video explains all these and other terms, and I can recommend it highly (and it can serve as a refresher for the rest of you):

From the moment I first began writing about the blockchain-based virtual worlds and social VR platforms (starting with Decentraland, years before they actually opened their doors to the general public), I have been fascinated by the new crop of metaverse projects boasting some blockchain component. These projects seem to split into two kinds:

1. Projects with Non-Fungible Token (NFT)-based virtual real estate (e.g. Decentraland, Cryptovoxels, Somnium Space, The Sandbox). All such projects tend to have their own cryptocurrency (or use Ether, ETH), and offer a marketplace where you can buy and sell other blockchain-based goods, such as avatar wearables.

2. Projects without NFT land, but with an associated cryptocurrency (e.g. Sensorium Galaxy and NeosVR).

While examples of the second category are few in number, there has been an explosion of projects announced in the first category over the past couple of years. Many of these projects had hoped to duplicate the success of Decentraland, which had the great good fortune to do an Initial Coin Offering at the absolute perfect time, in 2017 raising US$24 million dollars before ever building a platform.

Decentraland’s successful subsequent virtual land auctions (with their frenzied bidding wars for NFT-based virtual pieces of land called, naturally enough, LAND) also attracted a lot of attention and favourable press. This no doubt encouraged other companies to set up similar schemes in an effort to duplicate that success. Among those that have actually delivered a viable product to date are Cryptovoxels, Somnium Space, and the still-in-alpha/beta-testing-but-soon-to-launch platform The Sandbox. Each of these projects inspired similar bidding frenzies for artificially-scarce NFT-based parcels of virtual real estate, in some cases setting records.

The following charts show just how much the value of the cryptocurrencies associated with just these six projects has tumbled over the past three months (all charts are via the CoinMarketCap website):

Decentraland MANA to USD chart (past three months)
Somnium Space CUBE to USD chrt (past 3 months)
ETH (used in Cryptovoxels/Voxels) to USD chart (past three months)
The Sandbox’s SAND to USD chart (past three months)
Sensorium Galaxy’s SENSO to USD chart (past three months)

And here’s one that really hurts: the surge and plunge in value of Neos Credits (NCR) over the past year. At the moment, project development has come to a near-standstill as the CEO fights against the CTO and the rest of the dev team about the role crypto will play in the NeosVR platform (and the matter will likely land up in court for the lawyers to battle over).

It’s still not clear if NeosVR can recover from this fiasco, which breaks my heart because it has such great technology! I do consider this to be the textbook example of how crypto speculation and greed can cause problems with an otherwise stellar platform; without being hooked to NCR, a cryptocurrency which has as yet has no practical use on the platform, NeosVR would still be doing very well! Instead, it is bleeding investors.

In addition, you can see the clear downward trend in both sales volume and average sale price for the following NFT-based properties over time (all taken from the NFT Stats website). Some seem to be doing a bit better than others, but all are down:

Decentraland LAND sales volume and average sale price (past three months)
Somnium Space Land NFTs sales volumes and average sales price (past three months)
Voxels—foremerly called Cryptovoxels—sales volumes and average dale prices (past three months)
The Sandbox’s LAND sales volumes and average sale prices (past three months)

The overall situation is grim, particularly for those who bought cryptocurrencies and NFTs at the height of the market, perhaps expecting to flip them for a quick profit. But, for the countless blockchain-based metaverse projects who hopped on the bandwagon after Decentraland and the other market early movers, the situation is even worse. In many cases, the newer companies expected to raise funds by minting and selling NFTs to investors, often well before anything concrete was built! Examples of such projects include two I have written about earlier this year, Wilder World and VictoriaVR, but there are literally dozens and dozens more such projects, more than I could ever hope to cover in my blog. The prognosis for these newer projects is not looking especially promising, as potential investors head for the hills.

And, sadly, the bullish crypto market also brought out all the scammers who wanted to take advantage of the hothouse atmosphere of crypto investment, accepting money up front for what was essentially vapourware, and then pulling the rug out from under those who had not done their proper due diligence. Greed and FOMO (fear of missing out) drove a lot of ignorant cryptobros to pour money into a lot of projects which, to date, have had little to show for them but a slick website and an active Discord (or Telegram) server where everybody was pumping everybody else up to buy and HODL (hold on for dear life to) their associated crypto and NFT assets.

Some non-financially-savvy people, believing that they were truly on to a sure thing, gambled money they could not afford to lose—their life savings, their retirement funds, even their childrens’ college funds—and have lost everything, or next to everything, in the current bear market, holding near-worthless assets they cannot find anyone to sell to. I keep reading heartbreaking stories in the various subReddits of investors who have lost everything. Many have spoken of suicide, and many Reddit communities have posted resources to support those who are struggling with their mental health as a result of their poor financial decisions.

In the current environment, I believe that any blockchain-based metaverse (or a metaverse platform with an associated cryptocurrency), is going to be in for a very rough ride over the next few months, as governments around the world raise interest rates, and the easy, low-interest credit dries up, and a global recession looms. People are going to retreat to safer investments, fleeing the demonstrably high volatility of crypto and blockchain assets like NFTs. We can expect to see a mass stampede to the exits in some projects, and frankly, not all the blockchain-based metaverse platforms out there will survive.

UPDATE July 14th, 2022: In yet another sign of growing trouble in the NFT space, which has seen sales nosedive in recent months, the major NFT marketplace OpenSea has announced today that it is laying off 20% of its staff.

Blockchain-Based Metaverse Platforms: A New List

HOUSEKEEPING NOTE: The RyanSchultz.com blog will be on an indefinite hiatus, as I am working on a brand new project: writing up a proposal for a VR lab for my university library system! More details here. I’ll be back as soon as I can, folks!

Photo by Shubham Dhage on Unsplash

As a first step in reorganizing and recategorizing my perennially popular list of social VR, virtual worlds, and metaverse platforms, I have separated out a sub-list of those platforms which incorporate blockchain in some way: cryptocurrencies and/or Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs).

You can check it out here (I put it at the tail end of my original listing).

I did this in response to reader comments and feedback, and I hope you will forgive me if I have forgetten to move a particular metaverse from one list to the other! As I said before, I do plan to continue to write about blockchain-based metaverse projects on the RyanSchultz.com blog, so expect this list to expand significantly this year!

Also, a small housekeeping note: from now on, I also will no longer be writing about any of the “buy a virtual piece of Earth” blockchain projects (e.g. SuperWorld)—here’s what I think about all of those projects. I don’t find these sorts of projects interesting in the slightest, and I believe that all such projects are, at best, ill-advised investments, and at worst, outright scams to part people from their hard-earned cryptocurrency.

Hanai World: A Brief Introduction

A little over a year ago, on March 2nd, 2021, Microsoft held its annual Ignite event on the social VR platform of AltspaceVR (which, of course, is owned by Microsoft).

I wrote at the time:

The Ignite event finale was a showstopper, promoting a still-in-development joint venture with Canada’s Cirque du Soleil called Hanai World, which featured not one, but FOUR people captured in volumetric video gathered around a magical campfire, 360-degree video of dancers and jugglers and other Cirque du Soleil performers, and AltspaceVR spectators (like me!) who were able to wander around and experience the space in 3D:

Well, a year later, and I have some more news to share about Hanai World! They now have a website set up and. much like this video, it is a rather trippy experience, talking about various kinds of eggs:

My heart sank when I scrolled down to page to realize that these eggs are apparently NFTs for sale:

The Genesis NFT of Hanai World provides native and ongoing utility and will grant the NFT holders unique accesses:

1. Be one of the first Hanai World nomads
2. Participate in future phytigal events and creations
3. Participate in NFT educaiton, and AR/VR and phygital experiences
4. Access to unique privileges and experiences

First, whoever coined the term phytigal needs to have some sense slapped into them (this “word” ranks right up there with abominations like metafluencers and metawave). It’s unnecessary, it’s ridiculous, and it’s irritating. STOP IT.

There’s not a whole hell of a lot on the website yet, and the NFTs (whatever they are supposed to be) are not yet for sale. Guy Laliberté, the founder of acclaimed Quebec entertainment company Cirque du Soleil, is prominently quoted as saying:

When I founded Cirque du Soleil, I was creating theatrical experiences based on a traditional stage – the circus. In creating Hanai World, we are offering theatrical experiences based on a contemporary platform – the metaverse. Both these chapters of my life find common roots through my commitment to the values of love, trust and respect. These essential life principles characterize my desire to be a good ancestor as well as my purpose with Hanai World, a phygital adventure, to empower the young creative minds of this world and help them lead the journey of art with heart.

So it would appear to be that Hanai World is going to be some sort of virtual/physical hybrid theatrical venue with some sort of NFT component? Honestly, I cannot make heads nor tails out of the word salad here. How eggs and being a good ancestor come into it, I really have no idea.

And there is that goddamned word phytigal again….kill it with fire! 🔥

This press release from the time of the Microsoft Ignite event last year describes Hanai World as “a new social mixed reality platform built on Microsoft Mesh that aims to connect physical and digital worlds”. The release goes on to say:

Leveraging the power of human connections, Hanai World—the platform which will make the most of Microsoft’s powerful new mixed reality collaboration platform Microsoft Mesh—will create and host a wide range of physical and digital experiences in real venues, in the flesh, and virtually, through mixed reality headsets, thus allowing people from all over the world to participate simultaneously in a collective experience, wherever they are. The first events previews should be available end of 2021.

Well, so much for that deadline… 😉

Oh, and apparently, they’re hiring:

We the curious dreamers, passionate seekers, and outsiders are imagining Hanai World as a poetic metaverse where the playground has yet to be defined.

👥 Want to be part of this journey with us? View our job offers in bio.

🤝 Collaboration opportunities:
– Treasure Hunter/researcher
– Senior art director
– Illustrator/storyboard artist
– Concept artist
– 3D environment artist
– Copywriter/Translator
– Video Game Creative Director

I assume they’ll tell you more about this project if you apply for a job there? The lack of any sort of concrete information about this project is kind of bewildering to me. The fact that they are hiring a whole bunch of people signals to me that they haven’t yet worked out a lot of the details of this whatever-it-is yet, either. And either they already have assembled a team of computer programmers to build Hanai World, or they are nowhere near ready to hire programmers (hence the focus on artists, researchers, copywriters, and other creative/design types in this hiring ad).

Another point: it’s clear that at least some portion of the massive profits from the Cirque de Soleil franchise are going into this little venture! Hanai World appears to be a Canadian-based. bilingual (English/French) company, based on the ad. So if you’re interested, consider applying for a job! The worst that could happen is that they say no.

To learn more about Hanai World, you can visit their website, join their Discord sever, or follow them on social media: Facebook and Instagram (there’s also a Twitter account you can follow, which for some reason they left off their website).

UPDATED! Blockchain, Crypto, and NFT Metaverse Platforms: How to Spot a Scam

Image by Tumisu on Pixabay

Not too long ago, I wrote up a blogpost about an NFT-based metaverse project called Wilder World. As part of my research, I joined the Wilder World Discord server. This morning, I got a direct message from someone with the account name Wilder World, with a come-on to invest in a “limited-time presale” of Wilder World virtual land.

As I suspected, this was a scam. I know this because I know that legitimate NFT metaverse projects do not direct message users via Discord. (I have seen similar messages before, borrowing the names of projects such as Cryptoland, Decentraland, and Somnium Space, to the point where I recently issued a warning via Twitter:

I also got a DM via Discord from them this morning. In the past month, I have received phishing offers from scammers impersonating Cryptovoxels, Decentraland and Somnium Space. Caveat emptor! These are all scams. #MetaverseNFT

Getting back to the scammer from Wilder World, I read the message carefully, and noticed a couple of signs that something wasn’t quite right.

First, in a direct message, Discord will inform you if you and the other person have any Discord servers in common. The fact that Wilder World and I had “no servers in common” is a big red flag. You seriously mean to tell me that the REAL Wilder World would contact me from a Discord account that doesn’t even belong to the official Wilder World Discord server?

Second, I checked the URL against the list of official links in the #official-links channel on the official Wilder World Discord server, and did NOT find this new, suspicious URL on it! (I blurred out part of the URL address in the previous image.) If the Discord server does not have such a list (and all legitimate projects should), then look for it on the official website. Never click on a new, unfamiliar URL you have not thoroughly investigated first!

It is all too easy to target people who have joined an official Discord server for NFT metaverse projects, since you can easily see who else is with you on the server (just check the far right-hand column). It’s also very easy to create a false account by stealing an official logo and calling yourself the project’s name (e.g. “Wilder World”). There is nothing stopping you from creating as many Discord accounts called Wilder World as you wish, since each one has a separate, randomly-generated four-digit suffix at the end of the username (see image, right).

And, unfortunately, some people always fall for this particular scam which appropriated the logo and name of Wilder World, using a well-written come-on and a fake website to take that person’s hard-earned cryptocurrency:

A: That was a scam, I think
Victim: are serious?! ffs

B: There is no land stuff [right now] The focus is on Pets.

Victim: I just filled it out!

A: So any land sale is a scam [right now]

Victim: omg did I just get scammed

C: There was a scammer yesterday DM’ing people

Victim: wtf it was a message from Wilder World
D: From a scam CLONE
E: oh noooooooo Wilder World never DMs u!!
F: Was a scammer with a WW logo on their profile
G: [refers Victim to the -scammers channel]

H: Land is not for sale yet, only raffle for mint list is available on [Wilder World] website, click the link in announcements

And I went over to take a look at the -scammers channel on the official Wilder World Discord server, to see this, plus numerous other scams being reported on. The Victim did report this scam on that channel (see image right), but unfortunately, any money he thought he was spending on NFT-based virtual land in Wilder World is unrecoverable.The scammer, once he or she fleeces a number of people, then deletes the Discord account and the website, and vanishes into the night—likely to repeat the same scam on a different target in future.

So, once again, I am going to list the things that you can do to avoid getting scammed via a direct message on Discord for the various and sundry NFT metaverse projects:

  1. Legitimate projects will not direct message you on Discord. Instead, they will use an #announcements channel on their official Discord server, or perhaps post a blogpost on their official website.
  2. Always check any DM you receive via Discord to see what servers you and the other person have in common. If you and the other person have “No servers in common” (particularly, the official Discord for the legitimate project), that is a red flag! I belong to almost a hundred Discord servers related to social VR, virtual worlds, and the metaverse, and I now routinely block any DM from someone where I have “No servers in common”. The reasoning is this: anybody whom I am interested in talking to should belong to at least one of the same Discord servers as I do!
  3. Check the various channels of the legitimate NFT metaverse project Discord server carefully. Look for an official announcements channel. Look for an official links/URLs channel, either on the Discord or on the project’s official website. Look for a channel to report potential scams and scammers.
  4. Always stop and ask yourself if something is too good to be true. Be highly suspicious of any “good-will gesture” such as the following example, taken directly from today’s Wilder World scammer: “As many of you may have expected, there has been talks of a land sale coming up and we are excited to officially announce…As a way of giving back to those who supported Wilder World early, we will be hosting a limited-time presale to raise liquidity and allow our users to buy the land early before…”.
  5. EDUCATE YOURSELF ON BLOCKCHAIN, CRYPTOCURRENCIES, AND NON-FUNGIBLE TOKENS! If you aren’t willing to take the time to learn how all this works, you are better off staying out of this arena until you do.

I leave you with a few articles on the subject of blockchain/crypto/NFT scams (I’m sure you can find many more on your own):

REMEMBER: Do EVERY. SINGLE. SCRAP. of your homework before investing in any blockchain. cryptocurrency, or NFT project! Be especially cautious when you receive a direct message on Discord!!! Caveat emptor!

UPDATE 4:17 p.m.: Someone on the official Wilder World Discord server shared the following handy tip:

You should turn off server DMs from any NFT Discord you’re in – just click on the server name, select Privacy settings from the drop down menu, and switch them off. NFT Discords will never DM you directly.