As if flailing to keep up with NFT news hasn’t caused you enough headaches yet this year, here’s a doozy for you: An NFT collector spent almost $450,000 for a plot of virtual land — yes, virtual — in the Snoopverse, an interactive world being developed by none other than Snoop Dogg.
You can find the Snoopverse in The Sandbox, an Ethereum-based platform for creating and monetizing online hangout spaces and gaming experiences. By being Snoop’s virtual neighbor, you’re promised access to exclusive, members-only parties at a digital replica of his California mansion.
Snoopverse residents (Snoopites? Snoopers?) can deck their avatars out in designer duds, drive souped-up sports cars, and build on their own Snoopverse plots, which allows them to profit off other residents who visit. Kind of like The Sims, but much more expensive.
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Snoop isn’t the only big name partnered with The Sandbox. Electronic producer Deadmau5 and intellectual properties like the popular TV show The Walking Dead, The Smurfs, and Care Bears already own land on the platform, which recently closed a $93 million Series B funding round led by SoftBank.
This mode of real estate (or should we say fake estate) seems to be quite profitable. DappRadar recently reported that toward the end of November, the four leading virtual land platforms — The Sandbox, Decentraland, CryptoVoxels, and Somnium Space — sold $100 million worth of virtual land in the form of NFTs in one week. Of that group, The Sandbox made the biggest bucks, generating $86.5 million.
“Brands are scrambling to catch up,” Corey Herscu, a marketing and communications expert who advises NFT artists and companies, told Rolling Stone. “The next logical step is for them to start buying land and advertising in the metaverse.” Since plots are limited in metaverse lands, they retain value, and Herscu insists that early investors will reap the rewards when big companies decide to hop on the bandwagon.
While we still have many outstanding questions about the metaverse and the Snoopverse, our most pertinent is: Does Snoop Dogg have a virtual marijuana farm?
