5 best metaverse crypto projects to watch for 2022 5 best metaverse crypto projects to watch for 2022
The term ‘metaverse’ has become increasingly prevalent within the context of the cryptocurrency market, mainly since Facebook’s rebrand to ‘Meta’ in late 2021.
6 min read
Updated: January 13, 2023 at 12:54 am
Cover art/illustration via CryptoSlate
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Through the implementation of metaverses, crypto projects can revolutionize how people interact with one another. Not only that, these virtual worlds open up pathways for digital asset ownership and in-game monetization, which has the potential to transform many industries.
To help deepen your understanding of this flourishing area, this article will discuss the best metaverse crypto projects for 2022, highlighting their features and value potential for the months and years ahead.
The 5 Best Metaverse Crypto Projects for 2022
Presented below are five of the most exciting metaverse crypto projects with the greatest potential in 2022. We’ll explore each of these projects individually in the following section, touching on why they are deemed to have such high-value propositions.
- Silks – Best Metaverse Crypto Project for 2022
- Decentraland – 3D Metaverse World with Monetization Possibilities
- Enjin – User-Friendly Metaverse Platform for Creating NFTs
- The Sandbox – Exciting Metaverse Project with Incredible Customization
- Bloktopia – Skyscraper-Based Metaverse Project with VR Capability
A Closer Look at the Most Exciting Metaverse Projects
The projects listed above have incredible transformative potential – especially within the growing area of play-to-earn (P2E) gaming. Let’s dig a little deeper into each of these projects, covering the intricacies that make them so exciting.
1. Silks – Best Metaverse Crypto Project for 2022
Silks is an upcoming metaverse project that looks to build on previous P2E games’ success – and take things one step further. Put simply, Silks is a blockchain-enabled P2E game that will offer a feature-packed metaverse based on the thoroughbred horse racing industry.
Within this metaverse, players can purchase Silks avatars and own Silks horses, which are derivative digital representations of real-world thoroughbred horses and are structured as NFTs. This enables Silks to offer a self-sustaining marketplace in which players can trade Silks horses and benefit from value increases.
The exciting thing to note about these Silks horses is that the link to real-world horses is achieved through the use of extensive datasets containing information on the thoroughbred horse’s bloodlines, development history, and racing results.
Although these datasets will be centralized at first, they will become entirely decentralized over time as Silks expands and their user base grows. The data used to create this link between Silks horses and the real world is verified via a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, which rewards miners in $SLK – Silks’ governance token.
The 1-to-1 link between Silks horses and their real-world counterpart forms the basis of the metaverse’s P2E elements. As noted in the Silks whitepaper, Silks horse owners will earn rewards when their real-world counterpart wins a race, while owners can also earn rewards through an innovative staking mechanism. These rewards will be denominated in $STT – Silks’ non-inflationary transactional token.
Silks players can also earn ‘breeding rewards’ when their Silks horse’s real-world counterpart is retired and becomes a broodmare or a stallion. Since a new crop of Silks horses will be minted each year to coincide with yearling (one-year-old thoroughbred horses) auctions, any offspring from the retired horse which are sold on the market will see the owner of the parent Silks horse receive rewards in the form of $STT.
Finally, due to the vast swathes of real-world data employed by the Silks metaverse, this also provides scope for Silks players to monetize their expertise through ‘pinhooking’. This refers to the buying and selling of Silks horses before they have run their first race in the real world. Silks players with in-depth knowledge of the thoroughbred racing industry can profit from the volatility of an unraced horse’s value – providing another exciting avenue to generate income.
2. Decentraland – 3D Metaverse World with Monetization Possibilities
Another new metaverse crypto project to be aware of is Decentraland. Decentraland is a 3D virtual world hosted on the Ethereum blockchain. Although it was initially launched in 2020, Decentraland has sprung to prominence over the last year due to the rise in popularity of the metaverse. Within this virtual world, players can create avatars and purchase plots of land, which they can use to produce rich in-world content.
Since Decentraland’s in-game items are structured as NFTs, this enables a vibrant ecosystem to form where players can monetize their activities. The Decentraland Marketplace allows players to trade various items, all of which are denoted in $MANA – Decentraland’s native token. Finally, ownership of virtual land can also provide pathways for monetization, as players can use the land for advertising and other reward-producing activities.
3. Enjin – User-Friendly Metaverse Platform for Creating NFTs
Enjin is a unique metaverse project, as unlike the others on this list, it does not comprise a virtual world filled with gameplay features. Instead, Enjin offers a platform where creators can make NFTs easily, which they can then use in blockchain-based metaverse games. The Enjin software development kit (SDK) ensures that Ethereum-based NFTs can be minted by creators of all experience levels, leading to over 1.1 billion digital assets being created using Enjin’s system.
One of the most appealing factors of using Enjin to create NFTs is that it ensures a degree of liquidity at all times. This means that creators who produce NFTs with Enjin, such as digital art, in-game items, or virtual real estate, can always ‘melt’ their NFT in return for $ENJ – Enjin’s native token. The melting value will differ from asset to asset, although it ensures that no Enjin NFT will ever be illiquid.
4. The Sandbox – Exciting Metaverse Project with Incredible Customization
Much like Decentraland, The Sandbox is an Ethereum-based virtual world where players can explore, purchase virtual land, and interact with other gamers. In-game items, such as clothes and land, are structured as NFTs and can be traded on ‘The Sandbox Shop’ – the platform’s NFT marketplace. This marketplace is powered by $SAND, The Sandbox’s transactional token.
However, The Sandbox differentiates itself from similar games by offering unparalleled levels of customizability. One of the main ways The Sandbox does this is through the ‘VoxEdit’ service, a 3D voxel modeling and NFT creation software. Ultimately, this enables The Sandbox players to create pretty much anything they wish – with creations then able to be monetized by selling to others players via The Sandbox’s marketplace.
5. Bloktopia – Skyscraper-Based Metaverse Project with VR Capability
Bloktopia is an innovative metaverse project scheduled to launch in 2022 that is built on the Polygon network. The Bloktopia metaverse revolves around a skyscraper made up of 21 levels as a homage to the total supply of 21 million Bitcoins. Bloktopia’s players, called ‘Bloktopians’, will be able to purchase real estate within this virtual skyscraper and generate income via value appreciation, leasing, or even digital advertising.
One of Bloktopia’s key differentiators is that the metaverse will be VR-based – meaning it’s likely that users will require a VR headset. This provides a lifelike experience that computer-based games can’t match and will create exciting pathways for content creation. Although the project’s specifics are scarce given that it is still in development, the Bloktopia team has announced that avatars and other in-game will be structured as NFTs and denominated in $BLOK – the Bloktopia’s transactional token.
5 Best Metaverse Crypto Projects – Conclusion
To summarize, this article has discussed the best metaverse crypto projects in 2022, exploring their features and highlighting why they have such high potential.
The new metaverse project from Silks looks likely to make waves this year, given its exciting P2E elements and innovative link to the real world of thoroughbred horse racing.
In addition, Silks’ decentralized nature will appeal to a large target audience and provide scope for community members to generate consistent income through mining – bolstering Silks’ value proposition.
