MetaHistory: Memoirs of a UMN Genesis Citizen

For those who don’t know me, my name IRL is Laurel. As I am reaching the end of my life, I am writing those few words to proclaim my love for this place where my dreams met reality, this place where, for the first time, I truly felt home. There was a time where people used to call that place the Metaverse; now, they just called it by the name of the nation they go to visit and the Decentralised World (DW) where it is hosted. I am a citizen of the United Metaverse Nation (UMN), the biggest nation of them all. UMN is so big that people affectionately call it The Nation, as if it was the only one that mattered.

To be fair, from its humble beginnings on The Sandbox, UMN has created colonies on all the Decentralised World (DW) in Existence, which are all connected to each other thanks to UMBridges. The way I look and feel changes each time I cross a portal from one DW to another, but thanks to my passport, my identity remains the same. As a citizen of UMN, you may know me as Yanny, a proud Arda citizen that used to only be able to enjoy the privileges offered in District 3 to 10. However, I managed to give myself and all my family access to the privileges in all the Districts, including District 1, through my good deeds and hard work.

The Nation is, after all, the most shining example of a Meritocracy, which is probably why it got mentioned in the news, in a country called France, before it was even born. France was an independent country before most of the countries in the region decided to band together and become The United Nations of Europe. What is more important, from a historical perspective, is that it is the birthplace of both United Metaverse Nation and The Sandbox. France is also the country known for the Revolution that inspired so many nations around the world to take actions against their rulers and to aspire for more equality, brotherhood, and freedom. It therefore made sense for UMN to start from there.

Humble Beginnings

If you ask my great-grandchildren to talk about me, they would probably share how much I like to remind them, and everyone else, that I was one of the Genesis Chapter 1 citizens of The Nation, and that this is why it was so easy for all my family to become citizens as well. As a pioneer, and as a member of the Presidential Council, I got to help shape UMN, and I like to think that I had a big role to play in the success of The Nation. Despite my age of 141 years old, the first couple of votes on Discord are still fresh in my memory. At the time, Discord wasn’t the Decentralised World it is today. It was just one of the most popular community management app, and the features it offered back then managed to meet The Nation’s need. Thus, everyone was happy to use it as the first democratic tool of UMN.

The first vote we had was to decide on what was our priority between - buying land and building on it - or - implementing the Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO), which is at the core of what made UMN and its 11 billion citizens, the biggest and wealthiest nation on Earth after 111 years of existence. There are a lot of celebrations going on this year because the Genesis citizens shared 11111 passports between themselves, which is basically the number of years of existence and the number of citizens in billions concatenated, but I digress.

The majority of the Genesis Chapter 1 citizens decided that priority should be given to buying land in order to showcase how amazing our community and project were going to be. Consequently, the second vote quickly followed as we were to decide which Decentralised World (DW) we would call our birth home. The options were to invest all our Chapter 1 land budget to - buy a parcel on a DW called Decentraland - , - invest it all in The Sandbox - , or -split our investment between the two Decentralised Worlds - . There can be wisdom in crowdsourced decisions, and this has never been more true than in UMN. The majority of citizens decided to go for the third option, and UMN founding team started to build.

As it can be found in every history lore, The Sandbox CEO, Alexander Cohen, was pivotal in the acquisition of a plot of land with a size and location we would not have been able to afford without his help in those early days. I still remember to this day how it felt when the founding team announced the news to all the citizens. Our first building was a virtual replica of the Louvres museum that can still be found in Paris nowadays. It looked stunning. Every one of UMN DW colonies we set up after that had a replica of the museum at its heart. On the morning of our first event, I was buzzing with excitement, and a million questions were going through my head. How many of our citizens were going to turn up? Would the Louvre look even better than I imagined? How would non-citizens respond to our call, get their passport and sell out both Genesis Chapters 2 and 3. History, speaking for itself, the success of the event and the ground-breaking innovations led to both Chapters selling out earlier than expected. It was a well-deserved success.

I don’t know if I had such an amazing day because it enabled me to get enough passports for my whole family without spending any more money than I already had to join the Presidential Council, or maybe it was the fun of going through the Louvres looking for cues to be the first one to find the passports scattered around the place. The only thing that was for sure is that I had an amazing time with my fellow citizens and all the people that joined us on that day. We were not augmented humans back then, so joining the community was not as easy as falling asleep, but even having to use a computer didn't manage to ruin the experience. It was simply beautiful.

Declaration of Independence

On that day, every member of my family joined the UMN community as citizens in the metaverse. We didn’t have the best passports in terms of rarity, but we were still proud. Getting the passport through winnings meant that we couldn’t be picky, but it didn’t matter because we were in — me as an Arda, my wife as a Coruscant, and my 2 children as Terra Primes.

Due to our various passports, the only district where we could enjoy all the venues together was District 10 initially. However, the stats of our races were good when it came to physical prowess, and the other properties were rare enough to make us even better. As a consequence, we could earn enough Destiny tokens by participating in fighting and racing matches. In addition, we were all trying our best to contribute positively to The Nation, which gained us even more Destiny tokens. Within a few years, we were, therefore, able to change our destinies and access every District of UMN, regardless of the Decentralised World we were visiting. We kept on going, and alongside the gains from breeding new passports, we managed to save enough crypto cash to open an artefact synthesizing shop in The Sandbox. Indeed, as it was where it all started for me, I had a particular attachment to that Decentralised World. Thanks to specific properties in our respective passports, our ability to use the material to create objects was really good. As we grew our family business and started having shops in other Decentralised World, we made the most of our passports ability to breed in pairs, and we either sold them or kept them for people who were not citizens of UMN but applied for jobs in our shops.

Rise of a nation

I didn’t know at the time that my joining United Metaverse Nation would have an impact so deep and transgenerational on all my family. First of all, we were only hiring citizens with passports with the right properties or non-citizens to whom we would rent passports that we bred. Therefore, every single one of our employees was exceptional at crafting any sort of artefacts, and we became well known in all corners of the Metaverse. Secondly, and thanks to the implementation of the DAO, the decision process and the engagement of all the citizens was so smooth and efficient that UMN grew at a frightening place. With the advent of augmented humans, we were able to live in the real world during the day and live in the metaverse at night. This, with the introduction of the artificial intelligence powering iNFTs, was when the true rise of UMN started.

As people started to visit the metaverse during their REM Stage R, i.e., dreaming state, the population of the metaverse exploded, and with it, its economy and its political influence over the real world. As iNFTs could independently managed our shops and venues even when there was no citizens available to do so, that growth in population mostly benefited United Metaverse Nation as the most mature and diverse nation available. The usual virtues circle meant that no other group was able to compete with what we had created from the ground up. Our nation was by far the fairer and most accomplished. As a consequence of those successive events, my business flourished, and we became one of the most powerful conglomerates in UMN.

Now that I have reached the age where nothing can help my body stay strong and healthy, I have decided to end my life in the real world. Like so many others, everything that makes me who I am has now been upload to the secure quantic vault of UMN. I am therefore free to live the rest of my life in United Metaverse Nation with my family whenever they are in the metaverse. I wish for that memoir to become a memento of a life fulfilled between two worlds, but also as a way to finally accept that I will no longer have a physical body in the real world. I am now at peace with my fate, and I hope to see you all in the United Metaverse Nation.

This article is part of The Gaming Metaverse Writing Contest hosted by HackerNoon in partnership with The Sandbox.

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