A question that has perplexed scientists for nearly half a century may have finally been answered.

No, we haven’t discovered aliens, but may have found another world within ours. The only catch: It is virtual and goes by the name of “metaverse”.

A term first coined in 1992 in a sci-fiction novel by Neal Stephenson, the metaverse is a combination of two words — meta meaning beyond and stem meaning universe. The term is basically an idea of a virtual reality where users can buy land, building, create their own avatars and build their virtual universe. Within the metaverse, people can roam around, meet their friends, visit buildings, attend events and even buy goods and services using cryptocurrency. People within the metaverse would be connected all the time without having to worry about physical distances or borders.

The concept gained more popularity during the Covid-19 pandemic, as lockdowns pushed more and more people to share online spaces for longer hours. The successful development of the metaverse is expected to be driven by augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) gadgets, which act at the experiential layer.

At this point, we would also like to bring back the concept of non-fungible tokens or NFTs from one of our previous articles: NFTs are digital assets that exist on a public blockchain that serves as a record of ownership. While anyone can view the item, only the buyer of an NFT has the “official” status of being its owner.

Our research shows that the metaverse is best experienced with commerce as one of its core values. There are ways to make NFTs more useful by adding functionalities that can be utilised in a variety of applications across numerous metaverses at once (how cool is that!). A previously issued NFT, for example, can be transformed into an asset in a game release or used to get access to future NFTs and experiences, therefore enhancing the NFT’s usability and worth.

Source: https://techilive.in/the-new-world-of-metaverse-and-ownership-via-nfts/