Somnium Space incorporates Blockchain into its Virtual Reality world.
We at Somnium Space are super excited and busy building a bold vision of turning virtual into reality as we create an open, social Virtual Reality world. Ever since the beginning, our true vision is to create a world which will fulfill even the wildest dreams of everyone who decides to join (as well as our childhood dreams) and fully immerse its citizens into parallel reality. But there are several important parts of puzzle which have to be gradually implemented in order to create a true alternative reality world:
1. Stunningly looking, constantly changing persistent Virtual Reality environment (world) which can be explored by thousands of people at the same time.
2. Ability to create, build and express yourself and, share and explore creations of others.
3. Fully own and monetize your creations. Be a true and the only owner of your creations. Make money by selling your items in the open and independent marketplaces. Be a part of fully working economy.
All those steps mentioned above are crucial for a world which will exist for hundreds of years from now. At Somnium Space we have already implemented Step 1 where people are currently enjoying themselves inside our persistent and beautiful VR World. Our amazing team has already developed a fully functioning world full of events, gatherings and fun places to explore. People are enjoying live concerts, educational talks and sports competitions or simply sitting in the park and watching birds flying by… Moreover, for the past 8 months we have been tirelessly working on a brand new, much better and visually stunning version of Somnium Space which we internally call “Somnium 2.0”. This will bring amazing performance and visual update to whole world and will allow people to immerse themselves even deeper into VR environment.
People are already enjoying live concerts, educational talks, sports competitions or simply sitting in the park and watching birds flying by in full Virtual Reality.
As for the second step, we are finalizing and preparing for a rollout an amazing set of tools such as state of the art Somnium SDKs, in game parcel Builder and Avatar creators. All those tools will allow Somnium citizens to start generating content and shaping the world together. Somnium VR world is becoming a living organism with its own neighborhoods, social norms, guilds, companies, events, and much more. It will be something special and truly unique because it will be jointly created by all of you.
But there is one more crucial part of equation for a full alternative reality world to exist — its Economy. Ability to make money inside Virtual Reality environment brings true decentralization of power alongside liberalization of ideas and expressions. We have been planning Somnium Economy fundamentals from the very first day of our company (even initial idea) existence. We knew how important it is to make right decisions in order to guarantee that our world will exist for many years ahead. We did not want to rush any decision regarding this matter. We have been discussing this all the time. With our advisors and our community, with stubborn skeptics and amazing optimists or even inside a Virtual Reality Blockchain Alliance which we co-founded with High Fidelity and JanusVR.
All those discussions and analysis always led to the following conclusion: there are fundamentally two different ways how to make economy work — centralized vs. decentralized.
Centralized model is a classical and a standard way to let people participate in a centrally owned economy cycle inside gaming environment. Take for example any game where you buy items and experiences by exchanging your currency (e.g. USD) for in-game items. Once you purchase anything, all that data and items are stored centrally inside game company servers you purchased it from. In case anything happens to that company, or you get banned (for whatever reason), there is no way for a player to recoup value from hundreds of items you have collected and earned / bought while playing thousands of hours inside that game. You lose all of it. This is a risk which is very important to understand, and which breaks true ownership concept in the very long run. You are never a true owner of the land / item / in-game money. You have just a permission to use it.
Upon very recent years, there was no other way to solve this problem and make in-game Economy truly decentralized. Nor it was possible to shift ownership of in-game items to its players. But today, it has become possible thanks to the rise of Blockchain technology.
Imagine owning a land parcel inside Somnium Space. Many hundreds of players have already bought and reserved land inside Somnium Space via our early crowdfunding campaign. But that limited pre-sale of land was not done via blockchain tokens, therefore all information about user accounts and their parcels is currently located and stored inside our secure database on Somnium servers. Without Somnium permission, players are not allowed to trade those parcels. In fact, unless we allow it, they are not able to do anything. That is where blockchain comes into play. By tokenizing Somnium Land Parcels, we are forever decoupling Somnium Space as a company from owning that database of parcels (and all in-game items in the future) by giving this power back to you — our users / citizens. This might seem as a small step, but it is truly revolutionary and fundamentally needed for a long-term prosperity of our Virtual Reality world.
By tokenizing Somnium Land Parcels, we are forever decoupling Somnium Space as a company from owning that database of parcels (and all in-game items in the future) by giving this power back to you — our users / citizens.
At Somnium Space, we are fundamentally against pure gimmicks. That is why we have taken our time to thoroughly design and incorporate blockchain into our VR world from the ground up. We did not do any ICO’s, IPO’s or any other public offering based on shiny promises and so called “white papers”. Instead, we have invested our own money and hard work to firstly build a real and existing VR world, then we raised a very healthy seed round from VC’s to ensure stability of operations for our company and as a final step we are bringing this technology to you — Somnium players / citizens by having our Initial Land Offering. But that’s not it. We have also partnered with companies which are recognizable leaders in the blockchain industry to make sure, that our process of ILO (Initial Land Offering auction) is well designed, programmed and executed. It is time to give you the power to truly own part of Somnium land and start creating, monetizing and enjoying true VR metaverse without a fear of losing it all one day. You can finally plan for a very long-term future inside Somnium Space and build this incredible world of your dreams together with all of us.
We have also partnered with companies which are recognizable leaders in the blockchain industry to make sure, that our process of ILO (Initial Land Offering auction) is well designed, programmed and executed.
So what is ILO? Initial Land Offering auction is a process which will take place within couple of months (precise dates will be revealed very soon, so stay tuned). During this public auction Somnium Space will auction off all available (tokenized on blockchain) parcels on the Somnium Space map. In total, there are 5000 parcels on Somnium Map, 500 of those are already taken by our early supporters and backers, but rest 4500 are available for anyone to own.
We will be revealing all information, making announcements and issuing official press releases about partners, tech and dates in upcoming weeks. We will be posting more Medium posts to cover all specifics and technological aspects of our decision. Our community already knows — we are very transparent in all our steps, and we are planning to stay true to this promise in the future!
Stay tuned for more information via our social channels (Discord, Twitter, Telegram or Instagram). Visit our Open Mic events every Saturday at 22:00 CEST in Somnium Space amphitheater to learn more about latest development news and ability to ask me anything personally while you are there.
