To welcome back The Money Movement, Circle Co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire sat down with Star Atlas CEO Michael Wagner to discuss the wide range of opportunities presented by the rapid emergence of the Metaverse, where verifiable ownership and other unique properties of NFTs are laying the foundation of entirely new economic systems.
Star Atlas is a pioneer of NFT-centric blockchain gaming, combining elements of space exploration, grand strategy, political intrigue, and more as players journey throughout a unique universe they own a stake in and help create.
While Star Atlas started out as a AAA video game concept, Wagner explains, the explosion of NFTs and the possibilities they unlock served as an entry point into a new way of thinking. The Star Atlas Metaverse will grow to represent a living, breathing public utility, with the creative resources available for users to build their own economic and social narratives, with existing in-game lore, storylines, and characters serving only as a foundation for players to build upon.
These developments will start small, and are likely to resemble the auction houses and gold farms of current open-world gaming experiences. But the added incentive of true verifiable ownership of in-game assets, along with the improving immersion and game design enjoyed across the gaming ecosystem, has the potential to make Metaverse economies viable in a way never before possible.
Digital Organization, Real Value
While much of what Star Atlas will ultimately deliver is still under development, user-generated organizations have already begun to emerge, sorting out how to efficiently utilize Star Atlas assets like ships and equipment to generate value, for the profit of the proprietors and as a means of growing the asset base itself. It may not be long, Allaire noted, before hundreds or thousands of users around the world are employed within the Metaverse by these digital organizations, supporting themselves and generating wealth entirely through online labor.
Not unlike the growth of different blockchain protocol ecosystems, different economies within the metaverse are likely to begin to overlap, fostering asset bridges and secondary market economies that knit together a multitude of times, places, and creative digital worlds, with blockchains serving as the base-layer OS infrastructure making it all possible.
In a modern society where digitization is rapidly democratizing access to creative resources and generated content, the value of entertainment is hard to overestimate. The competition for the best properties, assets, and experiences within the Metaverse will be as remarkable as the rewards they bring, and Star Atlas is well on its way to realizing one of the earliest iterations of that vision.
Check out Episode 37 of The Money Movement to get the full story, packed with insights from thought leaders in the blockchain industry.
