When The Metaverse goes Cross-Chain

1. A Glance into the Alien world on Binance Smart chain
2. What If…..Alien World goes cross-chain
3. NFT in Game and multi usability of it - The Loot project and Boolien
4. Facebook - A multi billion metaverse in making

This week’s news that Alien Worlds has launched on Binance Smart Chain is a very interesting development for a number of reasons.

But first, let us first look at Alien Worlds – it claims to be one of the most used blockchain applications in the world. It has more than 3.6million registered game players^ since its launch in December 2020 and around 11 million plays per day, Alien Worlds has established itself as the largest blockchain-based NFT game, offering players the opportunity to own land, use tools, deploy minions and weapons in battle, and customize their Avatars. Alien Worlds operates on three blockchains – Ethereum, WAX, and more recently on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC). 

This week it announced the launch of Alien Worlds Missions which presents a whole new game experience for players. Explorers can use the in-game token, Trilium (TLM), to send a spaceship on each mission and compete for a share of the Trilium token reward pot. In addition, each traveler receives an NFT from the mission (up to 5 per player per mission currently), which enables functionality both within the game and in community-created games based on NFT game card statistics or mission statistics. Because all activity is stored on the blockchain, all missions are open for the whole community’s view. This high degree of transparency encourages a strategic approach to the game and significantly boosts competitiveness. At the time of launch, there are eight different Alien Worlds Missions NFT game cards available as part of the charter set.

This means explorers now have the ability to send virtual spaceships on missions throughout the Metaverse and earn NFTs for use within the game, as well as acquiring NFTs created by various player communities who host frequent events and activities.

So what does it mean that Alien Worlds can run on Ethereum, WAX and Binance Smart Chain? 

Metaverses, Communities, and decentralization. These are some of the most often talked about terms in the NFT industry. But, the biggest concern is - are we practically implementing these in a way that brings the best to all the communities, or are we simply creating lines between communities? Therefore, we shall work collectively with a unified objective of creating a universe that amplifies freedom of expression. 

IPs can be united by their stories, not by the blockchain they are launched on. This helps unlock the potential of IP by letting it reach a wider audience, thereby increasing its value. 

Cross-chain compatibility opens a window for audiences to create and nourish a culture of tribe and clans to create factions branching out the story narrative.

Imagine we have a cross-platform storytelling IP, which is similar to what Boolien is working on. It is based on a concept where a story is a string with different knots that connects with different timelines, each knot around it acting as a different branch or an entry point for the users or viewers. This enables the audience to be a ‘user’ when playing games, a ‘viewer’ when seeing a TV series, a ‘listener’ when hearing a narrative podcast, and even an ‘owner’ when holding an NFT or merchandise. When this is integrated with a cross-chain approach, the audience that can be reached is beyond imagination.

Gaming used to be first of all ‘brand’ isolated, then ‘platform’ isolated. The advent of blockchain changed the rules and made sure all in-game assets belonged to the purchaser. But these siloed games meant that while you definitely owned your digital assets you couldn’t use them outside the game.

When we talk about digital assets, one of the exciting things that we shouldn't miss talking about is Loot Project, a one of a kind project, for people who are judging NFT by the visuals of it (I guess it would be the majority of NFT holding population) they would believe that the prices are bizarre and surreal, but what Loot Project has underlying it is something truly remarkable and more amazing. For instance, take the internet. For most of us, the Internet equals google. But in reality, Google maybe just 30% of the Internet. Wait, you may not get the right answer as you would be googling this too!

What projects like Loot and Boolien are bringing is a rare breed of digital assets which have value, shared ownership, and most excitingly have the potential of being traded in games within the same Genre. What I mean here is; imagine if we hold a digital asset, say a Magical Sword, from a game say Hobbit, it has the potential to be used and traded in another game in the same genre as Lord of the Rings.

Cross-chain technology isn't limited to genre-specific digital assets. It is just a matter of time till you are able to trade NFTs to pay your college fees in the metaverse.

The modern metaverse is where people are spending their time – voluntarily gaming, listening to music, and just hanging out. Last weekend was dominated by The Metaverse festival in Decentraland where more than 3000 music fans hung out to listen to world-class acts. The Soundr organisation who brought nine acts, including Nina Nesbit and Benji Patterson, to the main stage are determined to inject the metaverse with unique acts and musical experiences that will pave the way for artists who want to get involved in this new virtual world. With endless space to create and ways to showcase new music to the world, the epic stages of Decentraland are certainly a way to offer fans of music a true taste of what the metaverse has to offer. 

Then, Boolien announced their 'ten years in the thinking and two years in the making' project.

Being a pool of creators themselves, Boolien team has been working on diverse projects in the entertainment industry ranging from Indie teams to fortune 500 companies. Their 360-degree experience helped them realise that the industry lacks freedom of expression and a secured yet distributed ownership. And that is when they decided that they want to build something that empowers the industry better, addressing the issues mentioned. 

Boolien initiated their IP- Houseparty around 17 months ago. 

“We were able to explore more about the NFTs through the spark Crypto kitties ignited in the industry. However, its celebrity aspect never fascinated us. In our opinion, it is a mere catalyst that fades away over time. However, usability is what can make or break your product. And usability paired with good UX design is what has started any big disruption. With the increasing use of NFTs, the only piece that was needed was creative minds to take full advantage of it thoughtfully. Well, thanks to the explosive growth of NFT and Blockchain, artists and designers are now joining hands with people from every other industry such as banking and finance, helping them creatively and strategically deploy blockchain and NFT to solve real problems.”, says Team Boolien. 

And for those poor misguided folks that think Facebook invented the metaverse when they announced this week they are going to invest $10billion into their version. If they build it, will they come? Certainly, the early metaverse fans are more likely to stay away. What do you think?

A metaverse, without the involvement and interaction of the actual users in the virtual world cannot function in vacuum. Maybe, money can bring them to their platform. But would they like to stay there and use it? I guess NO. It is a proven fact that humans need more than just money to stay motivated. Behavioral scientists, back me up here!

Now that I have mentioned Behavioural science, I cannot stop myself from mentioning Matt Stephenson. He is a PhD candidate at Columbia University and he researches and studies behavioral economics and non-fungible tokens. He has also worked with Dapper Labs, the company that developed the blockchain technology for NBA TopShot. Even he says that Cryptoeconomics is poised to reshape how we fund ideas and curiosity at the earliest stages, but only if we creatively explore that potential. Behavioral scientists would play a major role in shaping the metaverse and DAO’s.

And therefore, to shape metaverse into a reality, we need to have actual and practical use cases for the users in general; yes you heard that right, in general, not just celebrities.

Thankfully there are a few projects working towards it. One such project is Boolien.