Is Terra Virtua making “Clean NFTS”?
Terra Virtua is the first fully immersive, blockchain-driven VR entertainment platform. Its focus is to build a metaverse company using NFTs as building blocks together with integrated AR and VR entertainment for an immersive experience. The project is built around a strong global community and online social connections. “We felt the blockchain was the greatest instrument in allowing us to achieve this whole Metaverse vision” CEO and Cofounder, Gary Bracey told the Financial Fox.
NFTs started to become popular in 2017 but most of them were 2D, such as the CryptoKitties and CryptoPunks. Terra Virtua was the very first company that started dipped their feet into the NFT world back in 2017 when it wasn’t as popular as today. Making them the most experienced in this field. They wanted to take NFTs into mainstream audiences, they believed to achieve this bringing high fidelity into the metaverses. The market at the time had very voxel and pixelated NFTs but with high quality NFTs in Terra Virtua, users can have a more fulfilling experience “to get video game quality in your Metaverse,” said Bracey.
Gary Bracey addressed the common question that comes up when NFTs are being discussed, which is, why buy something digital when you can buy something physical for the same or less money. He said that with Terra Virtua, value and utility can be found in their Metaverse by having their 3D environments where the high quality NFT models can be interacted with and displayed in your Metaverse. As well as using the assets you obtain in diverse ways. It is all about utility in the end for people to want to engage. For example, the newest partnership with Nitro League, a car game has allowed Terra Virtua to have NFT cars that can be used to race, display, and show amongst friends as a way for social networking. However, using big names for marketing can only get people to engage to an extent in the short run; in order for engagement to stay and grow, utility and value must be found in these NFTs in the long run.
With the partnerships of big picture brands like Paramount Pictures and Legendary Entertainment, Terra Virtua was able to have licenses of well-known films like The Godfather, Godzilla, and Pacific Rim to create environments and NFTs based around these movies. Fans of these movies can come together in this Metaverse.
Gary Bracey told Financial Fox that “soft launching and partnerships were the key to long term success.” Emphasis on collaboration with brands for growth and finding out what users like and do not like through the soft launch allowed Terra Virtua to better develop their products. This led them to address the famous sustainability issue that comes with NFTs and Cryptocurrency.
Cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum use a global network system of computers to be able to compile and verify transactions that are being made. This process is done through “mining.” Computers try to solve complex puzzles to allow networks to function and to protect from hacking. This process takes up a lot of energy resulting in alarmingly high carbon emissions. Most NFTs are purchased through Ethereum but with more information coming out every day, this is changing in metaverses.
Because of this, Terra Virtua decided to incorporate Cardano cryptocurrency into their Metaverse. Cardano uses a Proof of Stake (PoS) approach rather than the Proof of Work (PoW) methodology which Ethereum is using. PoW methodology takes up high energy consumption because of the difficulty and time mining takes making it less sustainable but PoS is more energy efficient due to its more precise allocation of resources, however it is less secure.
Cardano is focused on being sustainable to protect the environment and interoperability for user friendly ease. It has cheaper transaction fees on its blockchain which allows for easier contracts to be made on its network. Because of this, Cardano’s market cap is currently $14.7 billion, making it the 8th largest cryptocurrency in the current market. 100,000 Cardano wallets have increased in the past month and 900 new projects working on Cardano. CEO of Cassiopeia and the Financial Fox, Stefania Barbaglio said that “Cardano is built for the future, they prioritize their work with governments and leading companies in the private sector who share their visions, They are not here for a quick buck!”
Terra Virtua also was the first company to allow users to purchase NFTs through credit card transactions rather than the need for owning Cryptocurrency. This helped Terra Virtua massively as it allowed those who want to get involved but do not understand or do not want to go through the process of purchasing Cryptocurrency, especially with the volatility that comes with them.
This has allowed “Clean NFTs” to come into the community. As you do not need to won cryptocurrency to be able to take part in the NFT community. Also, with many cryptocurrencies looking into switching from PoW to PoS. But does this mean cryptocurrency is sustainable? This is a step in the right direction but there is so much more to address such as the tangible aspect. Using PoS has a significant issue that the use of PoS over PoW gives power and influence over the coin to a smaller number of people. This is because to be able to have an influence, you must own a lot of that coin. Which in a way causes the market to be less decentralized. The hardware to mine is an issue with excess computers made and even a chip shortage because of it. As well as the increasing amount of consumerism that is causing people to unnecessarily spend on items they do not need. So even with a more sustainable way to purchase, trade and create NFTs, consumerism in today’s economic society is making it difficult to be sustainable.
Due to the environmental impact of cryptocurrency and the ethical issues that come from hacking and security, regulations have been put in place with “Decentralized Autonomous Organizations” (DAO) which was created to automate decisions and facilitate cryptocurrency transactions. The regulation and moderation are coming into the decentralized space, eliminating the concept that grew the interest of cryptocurrency in the first place.
The question that must be answered is how can we make the community responsible for creating rules and regulations to get people to respect decentralized platforms. The metaverses might have to find ways to incentivize people to do good and resort to punishment to those who do not follow the rules. There is a lot of things that are yet to be resolved in the metaverse world.
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