Across 2022, ‘metaverse’ could have easily been the word of the year if not for the wild craze for ‘NFTs’, or non-fungible tokens. The portmanteau from ‘meta’ and ‘universe’ has been used to describe anything digital that promises users a new universe based on 3D technology. You can transverse across the metaverse, create new lives in parallel universes allowing you to shop, play, party, work, own land, and do anything right from the comfort of your home.
Despite the concept of the metaverse being around since 1992, portrayed in the sci-fi movie Snow Crash, in October 2021, the word gained mass attention. In October 2021, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of the social media giant, Facebook, announced the company was changing its name to ‘Meta’, as they plan to build a metaverse. Since then, the metaverse dream has spread far and wide, with the crypto and blockchain space leading the race to build a decentralized metaverse through NFTs.
The value of NFTs witnessed explosive growth in the past year as use cases for the assets rapidly expanded across global industries. NFTs and metaverses are closely related and interconnected via blockchain gaming, where they represent the expensive items and assets within the game. With the shift towards metaverses becoming a reality by the day, NFTs could provide a gateway for the average user to curate augmented experiences in these games and act as pillars for next-generation social networks. In doing so, NFTs will revolutionize the traditional social network paradigm of user interaction, socialization, and transaction in the metaverse.
Today, most NFTs are built on Ethereum blockchain due to the ease of access to a secondary market in OpenSea and the huge blockchain community behind it. However, the high gas costs and transaction fees on Ethereum are setting up barriers for users to buy, own, or mint NFTs – leaving many investors sidelined in their quest to experience the metaverse. Newer blockchains such as Avalanche are coming up with cheaper and faster solutions that allow users to trade their NFTs seamlessly and at a fraction of the fees charged on Ethereum.
Could this unlock the potential NFTs have of bringing humans to the metaverse?
Pangolin Partners With the Largest Avalanche-based NFT Platform
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At the core of the NFT, the craze is the availability of ready marketplaces for in-game assets to be exchanged for cryptocurrencies. Top exchanges across the globe, such as Binance, have supported the growth of the blockchain gaming ecosystem and NFT platforms, including Decentraland (MANA), Sandbox (SAND), Axie Infinity (AXS), and Enjin coin (ENJ). Recently, decentralized exchanges (DEXs) have also entered the play, Pangolin, an Avalanche-based DEX offering cheap and instant transactions.
In December, Pangolin announced a partnership with the largest NFT marketplace on Avalanche to launch its first NFT collection – available exclusively to $PNG token holders. The NFTs usher holders into the metaverse, allowing them to trade or sell the NFT at their will. While still at its infancy in NFT trades, Pangolin DEX offers better qualities than its bigger counterparts, including cheaper & faster transactions, a community-driven project, high APR staking rewards, and a community-focused token schedule.
Built on Avalanche, Pangolin offers users a fully compatible and interoperable platform with Ethereum assets, allowing NFT holders to seamlessly transverse the two blockchains. The platform also completes transactions with instant finality, high throughput and charges minimal fees than the Ethereum blockchain.
Secondly, Pangolin DEX also provides a toolkit for developers and users to experiment and innovate with new assets and applications, including NFTs. The native $PNG token ensures and enforces capital efficiency solely for the benefit of the users.
The token followed a fair launch model and allowed users to vote on governance proposals and activities on the exchange. Pangolin is a community-driven, open, fair, and democratic platform with none of the $PNG tokens reserved for the team. All tokens were distributed directly to the community. Similarly, the recently released ‘Pangos NFTs’ will be distributed randomly to those who have staked $PNG.
Honorary #PangolinDEX #NFT for @AvaxPenguinFam has been received.
See you in the metaverse soon #AVAX! pic.twitter.com/Dx1YxAPRqP
— Pangolin (@pangolindex) January 9, 2022
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Thirdly, the community is in charge of the platform. As the world embraces the metaverse, decentralization will be a key factor of consideration. Unlike Facebook’s metaverse, blockchains aim to give users full control of the platform. $PNG holders have an opportunity to vote on governance decisions and upgrades to the platform, participating in the development in full.
Final Words
While blockchain gaming and metaverses are still in the early stages of development, they present a huge potential in how humans will live in the future. NFTs could provide a key gateway to the metaverse, and having a transparent, fair, and cheap DEX marketplace could boost blockchain gaming adoption and offer new ways for humans to play, earn, communicate, interact and transact.
