For too long, money has been gated behind drudgery for those
who do not already have sufficient amounts. Those financially free enough to
roam the wildlands of the working world walk with only their wealthy peers. The
rest are weighed down with the grey, suffocating words like “obligation” and in
many cases, “survival”. The global pandemic has exacerbated that divide, with
communities in all countries wondering how they will be able to keep a roof
over their heads and food on the table.

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; It’s
easy to get lost in the darkness of the past 18 months, but there has been an
unexpected glimmer of hope, and it unexpectedly came in the form of gaming. I
wrote recently about how Play to Earn games had more or less saved a community
in an underprivileged area of the Philippines. Through the Play to Earn
mechanics of one blockchain game, the population of this small town, struggling
with the lockdown’s impact on their livelihoods, were able to bring in the same
amount of money they were from working full time. They were able to pay their
bills, stay fed, clothed, and housed, all by playing a computer game.

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This
heart-warming tale may be encouraging and even gratifying for believers in
blockchain technology and its role in the gaming industry, but there are two
worthwhile pieces of information to add. Firstly, this is not a story in
isolation. In fact, it’s in rather good company, as entire continents like
Africa and South America are quick to adopt this revenue stream. Secondly, as
novel and invigorating as Play to Earn is, it’s not the flash in the pan some
critics have predicted. On the contrary, Play to Earn is just the beginning.

Mother Metaverse is legs akimbo and the glimpse at the capabilities
of Play to Earn is just her crowning; there’s a full baby behind that luscious
head of hair. Ok, that’s enough of that metaphor. The truth is, Play to Earn
isn’t a gimmick or a ripple outward from the splash crypto has made to the
financial world. It is akin to the precursor to a fully fleshed out economy
that is inevitable for, and indispensable to, the metaverse. There are
currently entire online communities and Discords, gathered around the notion of
Play to Earn games, each looking to find the next big hit. That too will
change.

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The
gaming industry — as blockchain is integrated widely — will see Play to Earn
mechanics relegated to a foundational standard for modern titles. As the
transition is made, many projects that have long been in development or have
been ill-advised in direction and swerved around blockchain, will either have
to scrabble to tack it on as an afterthought, or lose out. Players will
gravitate towards games where their time is rewarded, and that isn’t limited to
literal tokens.

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The
popularity of Play to Earn has seen many games look to reward players with a
token that can be swapped or sold for a well-known crypto or even a fiat currency
in some cases. That isn’t the only way in which games can be Play to Earn, and
in actuality, we will likely see in-game tokens take something of a backseat to
NFTs. With a game’s items — from weapons and skins to characters and expansions
— moving to NFTs and thus being able to be owned, the economy will gravitate
towards it. Whereas we are currently stuck with a shady, grey market for
trading skins and unownable in-game items, the blockchain both legitimizes and
enriches this economy. Revenue streams will be formed for developers and gamers
alike.

The revenue stream this will create for developers is
markedly more important than it might first seem. This juicy vein can be tapped
into in more ways than one. While making key items in their respective games
NFTs, that is thinking too small. With a little relinquishing of control and
some added oversight, the NFTs needn’t even be developer-made. Or rather, they
needn’t be made by the developers who created the game. Part of what excites
many of us proponents of blockchain technology is the opportunity it affords
creators of all colors and creeds. The metaverse will take that seed that Play
to Earn has planted and transform it into a rich and vibrant forest.

The creator economy is central to MyMetaverse and will
enable anyone with an internet connection to have access to not only a newly
available revenue stream, but one that is enjoyable to paddle in. It isn’t
overstating the value of the creator economy to say it is revolutionary. For
some it may mean supplemental income from something they enjoy. For others it
will mean a better life across the board; earning a good income doing what they
love. This sort of global equality of opportunity (or at least the closest we
have been to it by a longshot) will have substantial trickledown effects to
entire countries once the creator economy is prevalent. 

When we imagine a futuristic picture of what the world will
one day be, it isn’t hovercars and space travel, it’s global equalization of
opportunity. So much of the world’s population is hamstringed by national
economies and myriad tethers as a result of nothing but being born in a certain
place. Not only does this represent unthinkable quantities of untapped potential,
but more importantly — far more importantly — the creator economy can improve
the lives of billions of people.

In all honestly, a decade ago, I couldn’t have possibly
given any worthwhile answer to the question of how the world could be improved.
That is, an actionable plan rather than platitudes. Now, seemingly out of the
clear blue sky, an opportunity has been built that could leave such a sizable
and positive mark on history that it will be taught in schools for generations.
It isn’t hyperbole, hot air, or hysteria; we have seen the earliest steps
towards the metaverse and its creator economy, and it’s profound. The future is
filled with terrifying realities, but the metaverse is a truly redeeming bright
spot.

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Play to Earn is Only the Beginning: The Rise of the Creator Economy

The metaverse has been rumbling underground. Mark Zuckerberg’s
Meta announcement pricked the surface and released the pressure with an
almighty eruption of interest. One year before the Facebook overlord’s dystopian
and gauche unveiling of Meta, Google Trends didn’t have enough data to give
information on the search term, “metaverse”. A mere twelve months later, the
term is trending globally. This has created an unexpected paradox; a smirking
reminder of “be careful what you wish for.”

Many of us have been fervently supportive of the metaverse’s
development for several years, which you might guess as you’re reading this on
MyMetaverse. However, there reached a point of frustration for the pioneers; an
impatience at the speed with which blockchain was being adopted and the
metaverse could spread. The gateway was obvious: mainstream adoption. We needed
mainstream corporations to see the limitless potential we did. And then they
did.

Zuckerberg’s Inelegant Play for the Metaverse

Elegance is not the forte of whales, particularly not whales
of industry as well as wealth. That combination leads to them grazing along,
scooping up rivals, technology, and innovators like plankton. Wherever the
winds of social trends pointed, the whales float over and inhale the best examples.
This has been the strategy in the upper echelons of industry for some time and
Facebook has exemplified this. 

At first, Facebook — sorry, Meta — bought websites pertaining
to connecting friends or sharing images. Then, as the winds took the Web 2.0’s
citizens to social media with the emphasis on “media”, Facebook-sorry-Meta
spent three commas on acquiring the leader of the pack, Instagram. From here,
they through three commas in a few other directions, with WhatsApp and Oculus
VR, which gives us an indication of direction. Metaface wanted influence in all
areas, including future areas yet to exist. VR has been slow on the uptake, but
its arrival as a primary medium of visual consumption still seems inevitable,
with the metaverse only strengthening its claim for that particular throne.

As the metaverse crept into the tech world’s collective
lexicon, flanked by terms such as Web 3.0, a race began. It wasn’t the
startling crack of a starter pistol, however, it was just the quiet realization
that other people were running somewhere and anybody with any power might have
to keep up. This is the point at which a whale would swoop down and scoop up
any leader in the space. However, most metaverses are too foetal to provide
enough nourishment and the climate is oppressively frosty towards centralized
whales. Those looking to build the metaverse want to move away from the
mistakes of previous web iterations. 

Without the opportunity to acquire what they needed, what is
a whale to do? Since becoming a goliath, their pattern was primarily to buy not
build. Now, they find themselves in a situation where they need to buy more
than ever before to stay relevant and they are unable to. So, Faceverse opts
for the brute force approach: rebrand to Meta and invest $10 billion.

The knee-jerk reaction of us Metaversians is to hiss and
scuttle back to the shadows to lament with each other. It’s no secret that <a href="https://mymetaverse.io/news/the-metaverse-versus-big-tech-avoiding-the-online-monopoly-completing-its-control">we
at MyMetaverse are diametrically opposed to Big Tech owning the metaverse</a>
given that the majority of them have proven themselves unworthy of our trust, and
unfortunately, Mark Metaberg is one of them. So, the clumsy war cry of “Meta”
did turn my stomach a little, but the more time I spend thinking about it, the
more conflicted I become.

Many of us — perhaps even most of us — yearned for
mainstream adoption. Any blockchain I have any vested interest in I find myself
religiously checking rumors, hoping for a big name in the outside world to join
forces with the decentralized one. But, I didn’t ever take the time to follow
the desire for mainstream adoption to its logical conclusion. Meta Metaberg’s
Metabook rebranding to Meta is what that logical conclusion is. This is what
mainstream adoption looks like in its most distilled form. 

While I stand resolutely on my hill of Big Tech not owning
the metaverse, their play for it was inevitable, and the metaverse moving into the
blindingly bright spotlight isn’t without its upsides, whether it is how we
wanted it to happen or not. Firstly, it’s the word on everybody’s lips. People
who have no interest in tech, crypto, or the metaverse, have asked me about all
three, knowing I’m involved with all three. “The metaverse is coming” was
previously met with indifference at best, and harsh scepticism at worst. Now it’s
met with questions over what this metaverse thing might look like. In that
regard, the Meta announcement has moved the boat in the right direction.

As the future nears and our dreams of a metaverse begin to
take shape, the view has become blurrier in many ways. Before this surge of
relevancy, we knew what the metaverse could look like, but now we wonder what
it will look like. Interconnectivity has proven itself key, which is comforting
as we do not want more tribal warfare, with every developer, large and small,
trying to lure you into their own ecosystem. This may well lead to a sort of
meta-metaverse, or a metaverse with lots of metagalaxies in it. Whatever the
case, voting will still be done with electronic feet, and where we flock to
must stand up to the scrutiny of ethics, trustworthiness, and vision. 

The <a href="https://www.mymeta.studio/news/creators-of-the-metaverse-the-my-meta-manifesto">MyMeta
manifesto</a> is our way of laying out our intentions and core values, and while
Facebook’s history flies in the face of our philosophy, its bullish move
towards the metaverse will expedite its rise. The mainstream adoption
many doubted would ever materialize is here and has come in a far larger form
than any of us imagined at this early stage. Let’s take that win, but we mustn’t
deviate from the fundamentals of what makes decentralization so impactful. That
blend of freedom and of simultaneous privacy and transparency is
non-negotiable.

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Facebook Has Brute Forced the Metaverse, This is What Mainstream Adoption Looks Like

Rumors have circulated for a while that the titanic game
platform, Steam, has had a change of heart on games utilizing blockchain in any
way, NFTs or otherwise. There has been a small but growing pool of more
graphically intensive blockchain games within Steam’s library and many upcoming
projects have hung their hat on their acceptance by Steam. Now, Steam has rowed
back, stopping projects in development from being accepted, and even informed
current blockchain games already playable on Steam, that they will be removed.

Steam Holds Age of Rust Back From the Age of Enlightenment

The full Age of Rust Twitter announcement can be read <a href="https://twitter.com/SpacePirate_io/status/1448713803680473089/photo/1">here</a>.

Chris LoVerme, CEO of Age of Rust, has confirmed that Steam
has made contact to inform them that all blockchain games will be removed from
the platform. Stipulation 13 of the above Rules and Guidelines adds new
criteria for games unwelcome on Steam: “Applications built on blockchain
technology that issue or allow exchange of cryptocurrencies or NFTs.” It does
suggest that blockchain technology isn’t banned in and of itself, but as NFTs
are the cornerstone of blockchain gaming, it may as well have just prohibited blockchain
entirely.

LoVerme is understandably bewildered by Steam’s decision
during such a fruitful NFT climate, calling it a “draconian stance on what has
shown to be a huge potential for growth for indie games and a future platform
for AAA games, when they get there.”

It’s a disappointing move that could well prove costly for
Steam in years to come, with developers suffering at Steam’s hands unlikely to
forget. LoVerme believes Valve is building a “walled garden” around its own
interests.

The Age of Rust team were told that Steam does not allow
items on its platform that have real-world value. This is said while also maintaining
their own “Community Market” where you can buy and sell items for myriad games
for fiat currency. It’s difficult to see this justification as anything other
than Steam not wanting to relinquish control of the trading. LoVerme also
believes that this platform-wide ban is to “protect the marketplace they’ve
invested in centrally” and ensuring that players cannot trade without Steam
getting “some kind of fee from sales directly”.

LoVerme also highlights something many of us have wondered:
Is Steam going to launch its own blockchain project? With gaming’s inevitable
pivot to blockchain, it’s difficult to imagine Steam choosing to lose its grip
on so much of the industry. Instead, this may be a foundational move to protect
future interests. LoVerme suggests they may be “trying to get an early control
by banning games now to have an onboarding later.”

It doesn’t seem unlikely to me that Steam will launch its
own NFT marketplace in the coming years as the successor to its Community
Market, and have it act as a hub for trading gaming NFTs; a hub they both
control and enjoy kickbacks from. Why own the cow when you can own the farm?

The knee-jerk reaction of many to this ban is that this is horrendous
for blockchain gaming and I can understand that response, but it’s not
necessarily all doom and gloom. In fact, this sudden darkness only serves to
accentuate the light.

The Great Dichotomy: The Steam for Blockchain Games

This news needn’t be a setback for blockchain gaming at
all. Steam has had something close to a monopoly on gaming platforms,
particularly for indie games. Blockchain gaming and the metaverse is presently
almost entirely an indie venture, which makes their decision all the more
baffling. 

Nevertheless, there will need to be some equivalent for
blockchain games and there is an obvious candidate: the metaverse. The metaverse
will be explored by traversing varying digital worlds by different developers
and so the metaverse — MyMetaverse — becomes the place to explore and the
modern equivalent of a game library.

The blockchain gaming community has largely reacted in a way
that’s easy to understand: “why doesn’t Steam want us?” But, the question we
ought to ask is, “do we want Steam?” Do we want the home of the metaverse, the
future of gaming, to be intrinsically linked and controlled by a centralized
behemoth with seemingly archaic philosophies? We mustn’t forget this betrayal
of indie developers as the inclusion of blockchain and NFTs transitions to the
norm in gaming.

This is a time of innovation and change, where a future many
of us did not imagine possible can be realized, and realized soon. We are
protective of our shimmering new future from the greedy hands, dripping with
our data, but then look to other large organizations for approval and
legitimization. Blockchain gaming is already a towering beast growing in both size
and strength with every passing second and the metaverse is forming around it.

We ought to be dismissive of those who want to control the
metaverse after proving themselves wholly unsuitable of our trust. We ought to
cut ties with those who themselves are tethered to antiquated systems and
thinking. Those who strive to hold back the metaverse must not be given the
chance to have a hand in its construction. Instead, they should be left to regret
their reticence to assist in building the future of gaming and rue their
reluctance to adopt its pioneers.

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Steam Will Come Crawling Back to the NFT Community, We Shouldn't Let them

Polkadot founders Gavin Wood and Robert Habermeier have announced that the first parachain slot auctions could go live on the November 11th, 2021.

Now, the best decision Polkadot and its community could possibly make, is to give Efinity a parachain slot as soon as humanly possible.

I don’t know if Efinity will be part of the first batch of auctions. I’m just saying that if it is, it deserves all of your votes.

In fact, I’m willing to bet that no other parachain will bring as much volume and value to the Polkadot network.

When Efinity launches, all kinds of tokens will gravitate from other blockchains, onto Efinity, and onto the Polkadot network.

Efinity has been ingeniously designed to have its own gravitational pull that draws cryptocurrencies and NFTs into its orbit by offering first-in-class features that no other developer could even conceive, let alone achieve.

Mark my words, no matter what chain you currently use, once Efinity goes live, you're going to consider moving all of your cryptocurrencies and NFTs onto it – and so is everyone else who sees what it can do.

Thanks to its innovative paratoken standard, Efinity is the first blockchain that will support all cryptocurrencies and NFTs out of the box, no new smart contracts need to be deployed when adding new tokens to Efinity.

That means you will be able to port ANY token from ANY chain DIRECTLY onto Efinity at the click of a button.&nbsp;

You won’t need to convince any project to adopt Efinity, you can do it for them!

Efinity's layer 1 blockchain is in testing and able to mint 120 million NFTs per block with 6 second block times. That’s 20 million mints per second.

Ethereum only runs at 70 transactions per second with 30 second block times.

There is no blockchain in the world with comparable NFT scalability on its roadmap or horizon, while Efinity is already achieving these benchmarks.

Buyers will literally be paid to bid on your NFTs, those bids will give you a real-time valuation of your entire portfolio.

You can accept the bids at any time and sell your NFTs in an instant.

This will provide unprecedented liquidity for new markets that adopting NFTs to back their products with, including:

Many world-class blockchain games and apps have already committed to adopting Efinity, including:

At MyMetaverse, we have a deep understanding of how Efinity works and what we can do with it. So, we’re already planning for it.

 Here's the kind of user-experience we think we can achieve by integrating Efinity into our platform:&nbsp;

Live Portfolio Valuation - Efinity Marketplace Integration

On-Chain Bidding and Bid History - Efinity Marketplace Integration

Multi-Currency Checkout - Efinity Swap Integration

We think we’ll be able to achieve all of this with a simple API that gives us access to Efinity’s on-chain marketplace and the Efinity Swap currency converter, along with <a href="https://enjin.io/solutions/developers">Enjin’s existing API</a>.

Meanwhile, our success will also bring awareness to Efinity Token ($EFI), Enjin Coin ($ENJ), and Polkadot ($DOT).&nbsp;

As a result, more adopters will flock to the ecosystem, bringing their users with them, and that's how you create a snowball effect.

How MyMetaverse Will Support Efinity and Polkadot

We are building a sprawling metaverse that brings Axie-style play-to-earn mechanics to a 3D MMORPG game.

In this story, society has crumbled around you and you must escape to the metaverse to survive.

This digital theme park has everything you need to keep happy, build friendships, and learn how to function in the “real” world – when you’re ready to return.&nbsp;

Every NFT that is integrated into MyMeta is backed by Enjin Coin, and we endeavor to keep adding new utility to all of our NFTs to ensure they will never get melted, which means the $ENJ used for minting our NFTs should be removed from the market forever.

All NFTs that you have purchased from MyMetaverse thus far -- and all of the NFTs we sell in the future -- will be usable in this new Metaverse MMORPG.

We also believe we’re going to be able to integrate the Efinity marketplace and Efinity Swap directly into the game client. This means players will be able to trade on-chain, purchasing NFTs from eachother without ever leaving our virtual world.&nbsp;

Buyers will be able to pay in any cryptocurrency, Enjin Swap will automatically convert the payments into $EFI, which will automatically land in the sellers’ non-custodial wallets.

We will also create an $EFI, $ENJ, and $DOT education center in our game that will help people understand the power of these tokens, through interactive gameplay.

MyMeta is currently being built by a team of nine developers and designers.

Our Minecraft server is already live and in open beta.

We have integrated NFT weapons, armor, shields, companions, mounts, real estate, and identities into the game.

All of these NFTs are backed by Enjin Coin and we can’t wait for them to flow freely onto the Efinity network.

We believe Minecraft could be a great way to educate people about NFTs, $EFI, $ENJ, and $DOT.

However, there are still bugs to iron out and we’re working on building a sustainable gameplay loop, which is why we haven’t started advertising yet.

Also, the server infrastructure for Minecraft is very inefficient – it takes 10x the RAM to host each player on Minecraft, in comparison to our custom-built Metaverse MMORPG, MyMeta.

These are challenges that we are constantly working on because we know this server could be amazing if we put enough time and effort into it.

Once we are confident in the experiences we’re providing, then we will start marketing.

Meta Minecraft is currently being built by a team of 5 developers and designers.

Our GTAV RP (roleplay) server is already playable, but we haven’t opened it up to the public.

The game mechanics, player systems, and job mechanics work great. There is technically enough gameplay ready for a pretty decent RP experience.

We even have our MetaCitizen identity NFTs integrated into the in-game mobile phone.&nbsp;

It’s so satisfying to watch your sociopathy levels skyrocket unavoidably, despite trying to do the right thing in the chaotic city of San Andreas.

However, the server infrastructure for Grand Theft Auto V is even more inefficient than Minecraft and we are worried that if we open it up to the public, it won't remain stable.

We’re not in a position that we can pull developers off one of our other projects to work on this, so we don’t plan on opening the server up until we have dedicated developers working on GTA full time.

Once we can fully support it, we strongly believe that GTA RP content will be an excellent way to educate people about the Efinity and Polkadot ecosystems.

Meta GTA is not being actively developed at this time.

Everything we do, all of the games we create are built on top of MyMetaverse’s NFT tech stack.&nbsp;

Our dream is to build the world's first Metaverse Explorer, that can be integrated into thousands of games – and become the ultimate tool for directly facilitating Efinity and Polkadot adoption.

Every time a user withdraws an NFT from their MyMetaverse account they will be able to send their NFTs to the Efinity blockchain – automatically moving them from whatever blockchain they currently reside on.

MyMetaverse’s website, API, and back-end infrastructure are being worked on by 6 designers and developers.

Efinity is an open ecosystem where we can submit proposals and EFI holders can vote on whether or not to fund them.

The EFI treasury and governance model will encourage talented third-party ecosystem developers to expand and innovate on Efinity’s already incredible features.

We already have a list of features we would like to see added to Efinity, including:

Efinity has the right kind of governance model to enable a wild surge of innovation and evolution. Once we finish building out our platform, games, and services we are keen to move our focus towards deep web3 development.&nbsp;

It’s our belief that the Efinity parachain and the Polkadot Network are the most important new development in the NFT space right now, and we plan to go above and beyond to support their growth and adoption.

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Efinity Deserves to Win the First Polkadot Parachain Slot on Auction, Here’s Why

We are sitting, legs dangling, on the precipice of the
metaverse. What was once the daydream of tech-heads and gamers, and concepts in
science fiction, is now emerging through the mist. It’s blurry, and while we
can make out the rough shape of things to come, the details are obscured, but
it’s there and it’s coming. The excitement of anyone who has willed this future
is fizzing because blockchain has brought forward the timeline by decades. But it
isn’t all ray traced sunshine and rainbows. We at MyMetaverse want to create
what we as gamers want, but we won’t be the only cowboy at this saloon;
there’ll be other cowboys, there’ll be outlaws, and most worryingly, there’ll
be familiar sheriffs who like to self-govern. Big tech already controls you
more than you may realize, and if they own the metaverse, you won’t just be a
citizen in their digital world, they will have complete control over your
digital life.

One of the most discussed areas of modern society,
particularly in the tumultuous era of COVID, is how much of our daily lives has
moved from the physical to the digital. While most of the globe has been in
lockdown, everything from work and socializing, to learning and playing, has
been online. There is incessant chatter on whether working from home permanently
is the future of a healthier work and home-life balance, but one area of this
conversation has drifted into the weeds, and it is important — particularly
with regards to this conversation. 

Few people are discussing just how remarkable it is that working
from home permanently is viable from a technological standpoint. And it is not
just work. That is, the systems in place are sufficient that we can work, play,
shop, catch up with friends, and build lives using only the digital. The
metaverse completes this circle of digital existence, fleshing it out from
utility through to a Ready Player One-style digital personas. But of this
circle of digital living, all but the metaverse we are building is owned by big
tech, and that raises three related problems: big tech will want the metaverse
to complete their monopoly, the metaverse will likely be reliant on a lot of
the infrastructure big tech has built, and we — the gamers, the users — are at
risk in ways we may not even fully understand.

This sounds conspiratorial, I realize, but the metaverse is
not just the next step in gaming. With the advent of NFTs and blockchain, much
of what was restricted to the physical world no longer will be, and these
structures need somewhere to live. The common example is digital art galleries,
but where will they exist? They, and the myriad other applications, need an
ecosystem to thrive and the metaverse — MyMetaverse — provides it. So, why is
big tech — the admittedly logical creator of such a world — a concern? We have
seen it over the past twenty years: data.

The internet was once something akin the wild west, with
major companies vying for a sizeable piece. But as it evolved, as its purpose
grew, and as it became central to modern life, the free internet was exchanged
for an internet given to us by a handful of companies. We were given
unfathomable quality of life improvements, for which we are all grateful, but
it was at a cost far higher than a monthly subscription. We paid in data and
with the vast oceans of harvested tracking information on every person with an
internet connection, the overlords built wealth, power, and control. 

Speak to anyone with experience in digital media and you
will learn that we are controlled in varying degrees in ways many of us never
truly consider. Algorithms decide what makes it into our echo chamber and what
doesn’t, based on what we like and what we don’t. What we eat, what we watch,
what we learn about, where we go — it is fed to us based on our data. Even if
your smartphone is just sitting idly in your pocket, your proximity is being
tracked and tailored ads are en route. If you are inclined to investigate real
conspiracy, look at recent examples of informational warfare. Russia is alleged
to have used information and social media to promote and build anti-vax
movements in the U.S during COVID for their own ends. But, to debate whether
this is true or not is to miss the point; the metaverse is an online world, the
control of which is paramount if it isn’t to be monetized and a new wave of data
gathered and sold the highest bidder.

Legislation to regulate the use of data and protect privacy
has gone a way to helping with this problem. The General Data Protection
Regulation (GDPR) in EU law aims to do just this and it has been effective to a
point. Entire companies, whose success was built on the backs of the misuse and
misappropriation of data, have crumbled to dust, unable to survive without
shady insight into the personal details of their target customers. The push to
reinstate a semblance of privacy with what we do online has led to a buzz
phrase in marketing circles this year: “the death of the third-party cookie.” A
third-party cookie is something one website uses to track every other webpage
you visit. The ban of these is coming, but the pushback against this tracking
for profit is marshaled by Google, the self-governing sheriff. If your visions
are of the metaverse being the digital land of the free — as they are for us at
MyMetaverse — then big tech is a threat, whether they build it or not.

There are antitrust laws in place in most first world
countries and international organizations, that aim to stop a monopoly of
industries by the largest players in the game. Antitrust is meant to underwrite
a guarantee of fair competition, but capitalism is incongruent with such
statutes. It may prohibit blatant dictatorships, but likely colluding monoliths
hoovering up smaller competitors and swelling in influence is inevitable.
Facebook own the four most downloaded apps of the last decade. If one of these
giants doesn’t build the metaverse — and it’ll probably be cheaper and easier
for them if they don’t — they’ll buy it. Between Google, Amazon, and Facebook,
most of the Western internet is either owned, controlled, or at the mercy of
their algorithms. It is like business endocytosis, as these cells float around
absorbing useful molecules.

For the metaverse to be truly a place of the people,
somewhere of personal control, of digital freedom, it must exist without the
behemoths that control the digital world outside of it. The metaverse is a
singular and future-altering invention that is as important as it is
inevitable. The nature of blockchain, with its documented transactions on
ledgers, means while anonymity can be protected insofar as the person’s name,
address, and tastes may not be discoverable from their wallet address. A
person’s online persona, however, can and probably will be intrinsically linked
to their wallet address. That is — and this is significant — accountability is
introduced to online practices without forgoing the person’s right to privacy
in real life, a serious problem unsolved before now. 

We have a chance to have it all, rather than this monumental
development in digital life becoming a mere extension of the data farmers with
their resulting, insurmountable wealth and power. The metaverse is yours and
mine, and unlike social media, its boons and benefits must not come at the
price of seemingly insignificant concessions about us. Crypto’s heart is
decentralization.

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We Can't Let Big Tech Monopolize the Metaverse

A couple of weeks ago my team and I were shocked to receive a message that our friend and teammate Daniel Fitzpatrick (KeylaSentry) had passed away.

He was in charge of Quality Assurance for our Minecraft Server and we were planning to grow together with dreams of building a company-wide QA department that he would lead.

Now we've lost a valued friend, one that we wish we could have had the privilege to meet in person.&nbsp;

Losing Keyla made us realize how lonely it can be working from home and that we need to try harder to get to know each other.&nbsp;

More voice calls, less text chat. More collaboration, less autonomy.

The moment we heard the news, it cut so deep that it’s impossible to unlearn the lesson it delivered. Virtual worlds can easily turn into islands of isolation, and we need to do everything in our power to stop that from happening.

Our project has lost a talented problem solver, a creative thinker, and a great game designer. In so many ways, our days are harder without Keyla – but what hurts us most of all is that we’ve lost a dear friend.

Keyla is survived by a daughter and son who are now forced to brave the world without their father.

His best friend has set up a charitable foundation where friends and family can donate, to show support for his children.

We have donated $3000 to try to help, we wish we could give more but that's more than our project earned over the last couple of months.

We would like to call on the MyMetaverse and greater Enjin community for support too.

We will never forget KeylaSentry. We've erected a statue to immortalize him on Swolesome’s NFT plot in Meta City. He will stand there watching over us, encouraging us to create a better metaverse... one that his kids deserve.

We are eternally grateful to his family for sharing his limited time with us and we will try to make him proud, knowing that he changed who we are and how we think, and those changes will proliferate into everything we build.

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We’ve lost KeylaSentry but we can still help his family

I joined this space more than&nbsp;<a href="https://esscay.medium.com/adoption-the-final-form-of-cryptocurrency-47fe5f6581a7">four years ago</a>, long before the whole world became obsessed with NFTs.

Back then, I thought NFTs were going to transform the $120 billion-dollar games market. Now, gaming companies sell <a href="https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/global-games-market-to-generate-175-8-billion-in-2021-despite-a-slight-decline-the-market-is-on-track-to-surpass-200-billion-in-2023/#:~:text=Global%20Games%20Market%20to%20Generate%20%24175.8%20Billion%20in,on%20Track%20to%20Surpass%20%24200%20Billion%20in%202023">$175 billion</a> of virtual products per year, NFT creators have sold <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/nft-sales-surge-107-bln-q3-crypto-asset-frenzy-hits-new-highs-2021-10-04/">$10.7 billion worth of tokens</a> in the last few months, and every forward-thinking game company in the world is asking themselves whether they should have an NFT strategy.

It's become clear that NFTs are going to proliferate pervasively and bring enhancements to every single industry.

Nearly every industry will benefit from strategically adopting NFTs, but I’ll just focus on three of them as an example.

NFT Real estate is going to bring efficiency and liquidity to the <a href="https://www.smartowner.com/blog/savills-report-how-much-is-the-world-worth/" style="text-decoration:none;">$228 trillion housing market</a>. This is a market that would become much more accessible and valuable without the swamp of third parties slowing down trade and taking a significant cut of every sale. Tokenizing physical real estate and facilitating trades on the blockchain will create a fairer, more efficient, and more accurate market.

NFT-backed physical products are going to bring verifiable authenticity and ownership to a retail market that is expected to move <a href="https://www.emarketer.com/content/global-ecommerce-2019" style="text-decoration:none;">$27 trillion of products in 2022</a>. Authenticity NFTs will accompany many high-value products as they move through every step of the supply chain and manufacturing process. Parts providers and assembly-line supervisors will sign the NFT of every product they touch, to validate the authenticity of the parts and the successful outcome of the production steps they are overseeing. At the end of the production line, the NFT will hold a signature from every accountable party and any issue with the product can be traced back to the company or person responsible.

These retail NFTs will be distributed to customers at the point of sale, instantly boosting the value of the products purchased and providing each customer with verifiable proof of authenticity, quality, and ownership over the product purchased. As customers begin to expect a valid NFT with each purchase, counterfeit markets will likely cease to exist.

The<a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/06/08/2243615/28124/en/Global-Hospitality-Market-Report-2021-Market-is-Expected-to-Reach-5297-78-Billion-in-2025-Forecast-to-2030.html#:~:text=Major%20companies%20in%20the%20hospitality%20market%20include%20McDonald%27s%3B,a%20compound%20annual%20growth%20rate%20%28CAGR%29%20of%2018.5%25." style="text-decoration:none;"> $4.1 trillion dollar hospitality industry</a> will use NFT-based memberships and loyalty programs to save massive amounts of money on advertising while boosting customer retention like never before. New customers will be given a free NFT with their first purchase, the NFT will grow in utility and value with every purchase that follows, and those NFTs will be usable in apps, games, and metaverses across the internet.

This is the future that MyMetaverse sees — and everything we do is driven by our mission to make this future a reality.

Ethereum’s 70 transactions per second isn’t enough, we need Efinity’s 20 million mints per second

It’s safe to say that NFTs will come to represent trillions of dollars worth of products and assets.

Ethereum 2.0 and many other layer 1 and layer 2 solutions will overflow with volume and become too expensive to use. The vast majority of transactions will be processed by networks that remain affordable, reliable, and secure, despite high volume.

Efinity's layer 1 blockchain is in testing and its developers have <a href="https://enj.in/optimizing-nft-tx">announced</a> that they have been able to use it to mint 120 million NFTs per block with 6 second block times. That’s 20 million mints per second.

Efinity is performing far beyond anyone's wildest dreams, there is no blockchain in the world with comparable NFT scalability on its roadmap or horizon. Meanwhile, Efinity is already reaching these benchmarks.

Furthermore, Polkadot’s relay chain ensures complete decentralization. Anyone can create a node to participate in the network — and no one can wall off the garden.

Efinity is Scalable AND secure? How is that even possible?

Efinity and Polkadot are secured by over 1000 collators and validators. These nodes can be built and nominated by the public through proof of stake. This provides open decentralization and impenetrable security.

Explaining the magic behind the scalability of Efinity is a bit more nuanced.&nbsp;

On Ethereum, your NFTs are powered by smart contracts. Ethereum needs the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to run all of the smart contracts, which means Ethereum’s core blockchain isn’t processing your NFTs, it’s running the EVM that handles your NFTs. When Ethereum mints an NFT for you, there is a monolithic virtual machine codebase it needs to operate first.

Well, on Efinity, NFTs don't need smart contracts and a virtual machine— they move on the base layer of the blockchain. It’s kind of like flying a jet, instead of parking your jet on an aircraft carrier. Ethereum will always rely on its EVM to mint and move your NFTs, there is no future where your NFT Jet isn’t being ferried around by its EVM aircraft carrier. Efinity will always be more efficient and scalable.

Furthermore, EVM is also supporting far more complex and expensive smart contracts than your NFTs, like DeFi and governance smart contracts. When yield farmers bid $1000 in gas fees to get their transaction moving faster on Ethereum, your transactions move slower unless you match their bids.

On Efinity, NFTs are given huge priority, this means you don't need to outbid yield farmers to get your transactions moving.

On top of all that, NFTs have been hyper-optimized and chunked down into far smaller data packets on Efinity, which is like turning your Jet into a bullet. Not to mention the fact that Efinity's blockchain itself runs on a newer, more efficient codebase and has 6 second block times, 5-times faster than Ethereum’s.

If this explanation is too confusing, don’t worry. Here’s the only thing you need to understand:

MyMetaverse will integrate every game and app with Efinity and Polkadot

It’s clear that the NFT market will not reach its full potential without Efinity and that’s why MyMetaverse will do everything it can to support it.

As of today, I’m happy to announce that we will be integrating our website, API, backend microservices, Minecraft network (Meta Minecraft), GTA 5 server (Meta GTA), metaverse MMO (MyMeta), and all other games and apps we build with Efinity and Polkadot.

Furthermore, MyMetaverse is a gaming network. It’s our goal to become the real-life version of Ready Player One’s Oasis by partnering up with thousands of mainstream game studios and app developers to give them an easy way to adopt Efinity.

Players want interoperable digital products. They want to purchase virtual items that can be used in multiple games. We have specifically designed our technology stack to make these persistent cross-game experiences easy for game developers to create.

When you earn NFTs by playing our games they will land in your MyMetaverse account and you will be able to choose which blockchain you’d like to move them to. From there, you can withdraw them straight to your wallet with the click of a button.

No matter which blockchain you move your NFTs to, any game studio will be able to query our API and validate whether or not you still own them. If you own them, you can use them. If multiple games support them, you can use them across a multiverse of metaverses.

Efinity also provides a few other features that will allow us to provide a user experience beyond what traditional, centralized markets have ever seen.

Efinity’s marketplace has an incentivized bidding system that rewards buyers for placing bids on your NFTs. If this initiative is successful, all of your NFTs will have a real-time valuation based on the bids that have been placed on them.

Imagine being able to open up your NFT wallet to see the current value of all of the products and assets you own. Your NFT portfolio's value will rise and fall in real-time, just like your cryptocurrency portfolio does.

Why would you purchase any product or asset that’s not backed by an NFT, when you could experience this instead?

In time, this will represent most of the virtual and physical products and assets you own.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Imagine the kind of trouble you would have to go through to sell everything you own to buy a house. Well, Efinity is designed to ensure that everything you own is already priced accurately and can be sold at a moment’s notice.

All you have to do is accept all of the bids on your NFTs and the funds will land in your wallet within 6 seconds.

I ask again, why would you purchase any product or asset that’s not backed by an NFT, when you could experience this instead?

You will be able to move any NFT from any blockchain onto Efinity and instantly enjoy all of these aforementioned benefits.

NFT volume is going to flow organically onto Efinity as the fastest, most affordable, and feature-rich layer 1 NFT network — and MyMetaverse will be there to build great games and apps for all NFT creators and collectors to enjoy.

The last piece of Efinity's feature-set that makes us confident enough to go all-in, is its forkless upgradability managed by decentralized governance. When new features need to be added to Efinity, they will be put to a vote and every EFI holder will be able to weigh in on the decision.

This will ensure upgrades and new features will be decided upon fast and there will never be a risk of hard forks and clone chains popping up to dilute the community.&nbsp;