TM Rating: 71% I
April 4th, 2022
Webaverse is creating an open virtual world where users can build and monetize real-time immersive gaming. Uniquely, all users’ content is created as operable tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. Creators can drag and drop assets (images, 3D models, avatars, scripts) into the game in real-time to showcase and monetize their creations. Users can buy parcels of land on which to persist content. The parcels are embedded in an expanding overworld hub curated by the Webaverse team. Technologically, Webaverse operates an Ethereum sidechain to enable fast, feeless transactions and monetization within the game world. The game feel is inspired by Fortnite, is accessible in the browser, and adds VR support. The project also introduces the SILK token, used to transact on its dedicated sidechain, LAND non-fungible token, and ASSET non-fungible content tokens.
Webaverse builds on years of projects and experiments, bringing virtual worlds together with composable standards. In 2019, the Webaverse team held the first Metaverse Makers Meetup (M3) in Mozilla Hubs, bringing creators from every discipline worldwide to share their creations and find how the projects can interoperate. Over the years, other projects have built the infrastructure necessary to create Webaverse. The game engine powering Webaverse is custom-designed to load, render, simulate, and transact ASSET tokens in a networked virtual world. The engine runs in the browser, with support on most computing devices, including desktop, mobile, and VR headsets like Oculus Quest.
To allow fast, feeless transactions, the team developed an Ethereum sidechain based on the popular Go Ethereum client (geth), accessible as a public Ethereum endpoint at https://ethereum.webaverse.com. Using its own sidechain over something like Matic or Flow allows reducing the costs and friction for the user, but is also more centralized than those already widely adopted networks, which is the reason the team may decide to migrate the side chain to a more distributed solution in the future. In addition to that, Amazon S3 is currently being used as the storage backend, introducing an additional single point of failure as it is a heavily centralized service. The team is however looking to use more distributed systems, such as IPFS and Filecoin, in the future.
If you want to find out more about the current and upcoming metaverse projects, check out our Gaming and Metaverse blog section.
