NFT publishers, gamers, chip manufacturers... are all finding jobs with attractive income from the boom of the metaverse.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg (right) in a video describing the metaverse in October 2021. Photo: Reuters |
According to CNBC, most experts predict that many big brands will participate in the Web 3.0 project, metaverse in 2022. "This will be the year when big brands see NFT as a key development goal." Lin Dai, CEO of music platform NFT OneOf, said.
In 2021, NFT is popular mainly in the music and arts sectors, but this year, this type of digital asset will expand to other industries. High-end fashion brand Balenciaga has teamed up with Fortnite to launch "skins" bearing the brand's signature. Ralph Lauren, Louis Vuitton and Gucci also partnered with Roblox to test product launches on the metaverse platform.
Brian Trunzo, head of metaverse at Polygon Studios, which develops gaming, NFT and Web 3.0 projects on the Polygon and Ethereum networks, thinks that even smaller fashion brands are slowly entering the market. this. "Players are fully present and now the game officially begins," he said.
According to Avery Akkineni, president of consulting firm VaynerNFT, the current goal of brands is to participate in the game, not to win, at least for now. Up until now, the blockchain-related projects of brands have largely been about building community and maintaining recognition. Nike and Adidas' NFT products are mainly for fame rather than revenue, but also contribute to the metaverse's greater popularity.
As businesses find their place in the virtual universe, the jobs involved are on the rise. Avery Akkineni has noticed that more and more jobs such as programmer for Solidity and manager for Discord are appearing. Solidity is a programming language used to write smart contracts in the Ethereum ecosystem, and Discord is a social network that is popular with gamers and the crypto community.
Besides, a new job also gradually appeared - playing games to earn money. This model is popular in the Philippines with the game Axie Infinity. Currently, the daily user base of this game is 1.8 million, many people earn $1,000 - $2,000 per month from playing Axie Infinity.
In the entertainment industry, games are the most attractive field with nearly 3 billion customers. Sky Mavis, the developer of Axie Infinity, is one of the leaders in combining NFT with games. Major developers, like GameStop, are also planning to enter the NFT market in the not-too-distant future.
In addition, some brands are also exploiting profits from games. Many players are willing to spend money to take care of their virtual representation in the game. The Dionysus bag sold on Roblox costs more than its real-life counterpart.
To be able to implement the above projects, infrastructure technology also needs to be more solid. By the end of 2021, Intel estimates that to deploy Web3 and the metaverse, current computer capacity must be increased 1,000 times. The increased number of online users on a server also resulted in hardware improvements. As a result, semiconductor companies like Intel and Nvidia will be key players as the metaverse evolves.
However, analysts warn, while NFT is entering a hot development phase, "crypto winter" could strike at any time. Akinneni said market demand is likely to slow down with fewer new projects by the end of 2022. Besides, the biggest barrier to the digital world this year is scalability, in the form of power. computation and interoperability between discrete and secure metaverses.