Whenever a new project is launched, several question marks are raised over its sustainability, feasibility, and viability. Chinks in the armor are often black-marked and end up messing up with the goodwill and credibility of the project. Only with time, when the mustard is cut and people are proven wrong, the ‘reliable’ tag is generated.
Take, for instance, Ethereum Name Service itself. The project was proposed back in the day in 2016 and was launched right after in 2017. Post the launch hype evaporated, hardly anyone from the mainstream community knew about the whereabouts of the project. Only in 2021 when ENS decided to launch and airdrop its own native token did the project manage to re-garner traction. Since then, there has hardly been any looking back and ENS has only been marching forward.
In fact, the NFT tale has also been something similar. The take-off, to a fair extent, was plain sailing. Adoption and use numbers kept swelling up on a consistent basis until things became as flat as a pancake in 2020. That was essentially when people started drawing parallels with the infamous stock market crash of 2000 and started claiming that the NFT market wouldn’t be able to get back up on its feet. Fast forward to today, people are literally pouring in millions to acquire off-beat punks, apes, and whatnot.
Now, as far as the metaverse is concerned, Neil Stevenson used it for the first time years ago in 1982 in the novel Snow Crash. His idea of the metaverse revolved around a virtual place where characters could go to escape reality. When pondered upon, today’s conception of the metaverse is no different. In fact, four decades down the line and the space is apparently still pre-mature and companies are literally fist fighting to get the early bird ticket.
Exhibits
To add further weightage to the aforesaid claims, consider this – Versus Entertainment recently announced that it’s partnering with Decentraland and Lumiere to come up with NFT and metaverse inclined angles for Infinite Machine—an upcoming film on Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.
With a budget of around $16 million, Infinite Machine is set to undergo its third round of NFT issues in the months to come. The same would place this project first in the queue of NFT-financed films. As such, there are 10,499 distinct NFTs in the collection from 36 artists, including works from Lucas Riberiro, Marella Gonzalez, and Eduardo Calegari. In fact, the proceeds from the NFT sales would be allocated between the artists (22.5%), Infinite Machine DAO (10%), and the overall movie budget (67.5%).
This is a case that can transform how the,” In fact, per Lumiere’s CEO Patrice Poujol, this is a classic transformation case of how the industry develops and promotes its content to the audience base. Commenting on similar lines, Decentraland’s Alejandro De Grazia said,
“The link between movies, their communities, and the metaverse is already happening.”
Also, it is interesting to note that Nike’s Web3 arm, RTFKT, recently purchased the ENS domain name “dotswoosh.eth” for approximately $35k, bringing up its total tally to 10.
Now even though Nike’s exact reason for its latest purchase remains unclear, people have started speculating that the American footwear and apparel MNC might have plans to use the domain for issuing ENS subdomains in the future. Per reports, Nike could possibly allow HODLers of specific NFTs or other assets the ability to register an ENS subdomain under dotswoosh.eth.
If the bubble were set to burst, it would have already existed long ago. The afore-highlighted bits clearly reflect the rising mainstream adoption of the now amalgamated, borderless spaces.
When re-wound a little, the three worlds once roamed with the irrelevant and unsustainable tags around their necks out on the streets. Nonetheless now, they’ve been able to detach the same and make people unpoint their fingers. In fact, they’ve managed to kick in a sense of FOMO among people/companies who haven’t yet jumped onto the bandwagon.
However, being too optimistic is also not fair. Even though things seem to be perfectly on track at this stage, there is no cent percent assurance about the future of NFTs, ENS, and the metaverse because it doesn’t take time for trends to perish. At the end of the day, change is the only constant, right?