A hot topic for news outlets seems to be about virtual land property and how the price for virtual land has increased to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. The idea of Virtual Land seems very dumb to me.

What is Virtual Land

Virtual land is property that can be bought in the “metaverse”, usually for crypto. This land is usually on one of the many crypto social platforms and there are a limited amount of space. The biggest platform for virtual property seems to be Sandbox. Some big names have purchased property on Sandbox, such as, Snoop Dogg and Deadmau5. The property around their land has skyrocketed.

Why I don’t like Virtual Land

There is no need for scarcity in the metaverse. There is no need to buy property in a virtual environment. And there is no need for the building limitations that come with these platforms. I build on VRChat and a platform like VRChat allows you to make whatever you want and make it available to everyone. When a free and open platform like VRChat exists, I can’t understand the appeal of these scarcity platforms.

The main driving force for being on a social platform is to communicate with other people. You may go to Altspace to attend an event or you may join VRChat to meet new people. So why would you go somewhere like Sandbox or Decentraland. You go there because you believe your plot of land will be worth more one day to someone else. Advocates may say its for all the same reason as any other social platform, but its really not. Using crypto as the foundation of your platform to sell a limited amount of property feels like a failing method for a social platform. I guess if someone famous buys one, you’ve succeeded at convincing people its actually worth anything.

Final Thoughts

These types of platforms are in the news very often and its because of how much these “properties” are selling for. They are always referred to as the “metaverse”, but this isn’t a real metaverse. If you want a metaverse experience, go run through some Mozilla Hubs, launch VRChat, or visit an event in Altspace.