by Ian Fan 
On 28 October 2021, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg rebranded Facebook to Meta. Decentraland, whose ticker symbol is MANA and other projects like SAND have gone parabolic on the back of this metaverse news. Today, the metaverse is all the rage and likely you’ve heard a lot about this news already.
As tech giants like Facebook, Microsoft, Nvidia, and others continue to announce their plans to enter this metaverse space; I’m super hyped about everything that’s happening in the metaverse right now!
Do you know which are the best blockchain powered metaverses? Do you have a sense of the top projects really pushing the progress in this space?
Here, I want to share with you the top five projects that best exemplify this super, exciting space!
1. MetaCity
MetaCity is by Enjin. It’s a metaverse-inspired version of Minecraft and it’s the world’s first free-to-earn NFT real estate. There are available NFT plots where owners can develop different kinds of businesses.
However, there’s a lot more to it than just the NFT real estate. MetaCity offers players a cross-gameplay kind of mechanic. Players, across different games can exchange items. In this case, we’ve MetaCity and Minecraft.
Another interesting aspect of MetaCity is its creator economy. Basically, you create value and earn a living by doing what you love. For example, inside MetaCity, anyone will be able to create characters as NFTs and create NFT art exhibitions.
2. The Sandbox
Sandbox is a virtual world where players can build, own, and monetize their gaming experiences on the Ethereum blockchain. Creators in Sandbox have actual ownership in the form of NFTs and are rewarded for their participation in the ecosystem.
This game is to be loved for a lot of reasons. Firstly, Sandbox has its own platform to create games inside the metaverse. This provides a better experience for users who generate their own content through blockchain and smart contracts. Secondly, Sandbox has its own tool called VoxEdit where anyone can start creating assets fairly easily. For example, to create 3D assets, users can upload, publish, and then sell their NFT creations which are made with VoxEdit.
Here’s a handy tutorial on how to use VoxEdit: How to get your assets into Minecraft by The Sandbox.
The native token of The Sandbox is SAND and it serves as the basis for all transactions in The Sandbox. This allows users to access the platform, play games, stake, and earn rewards among other things. The SAND token is listed in more than 20 exchanges and the most famous exchanges are Crypto.com, Poloniex, Bittrex, and Kraken.
3. Ultra
Ultra is the first-of-a-kind fee-less, that means a zero-fee blockchain ecosystem powering an entertainment platform that provides various games, industries, and blockchain-enabled services under a single roof.
Ultra purportedly will provide access to countless centralized and decentralized services such as discovering, buying, playing, and selling your games and in-game items. This also includes watching live stream feeds, interacting with your favourite influencers, participating in contests, competing in tournaments, and more.
Ultra’s native token is UOS and it is an ERC20 token. You can get UOS in Uniswap, Bitfinex, Bitrue, KuCoin and Bancor Network. You can also start staking UOS and get rewarded with extremely rare NFTs. Transactions on Ultra are free and virtually instant.
