Somnium Space describes itself as “an open, social & persistent VR world built on blockchain.” Let’s unpack that a bit. First off, a VR world is a digital space that gives you the ability to immerse yourself completely into a new dimension. Somnium Space’s take on the format includes spatial sound, dynamically changing weather, real time shadows, and a real sense of presence.

But what makes VR world open? An open world allows users to move about a digital landscape freely without running into invisible walls, being forced to teleport to a neighboring region, or waiting on a loading screen as you move you from one region to another. It’s critical to maintaining the experience of being in a real place. It might be a digital place, but if it behaves like the real world and doesn’t break immersion, it feels real.

What makes a VR world social? In Somnium’s case, it means that features enabling interactions with other inhabitants are prioritized; you won’t be walking around a ghost town or a village of mutes. And because Somnium Space is a world built by its users, it’s constantly changing.

What makes a VR world persistent? Here, it means that there’s a single, shared state of the Somnium Space world that all users experience across sessions. The Somnium world keeps on turning and changing even while you’re away.

Somnium Space is a digital reality where you can move around freely, interact with others, and (except where other denizens have been at work enriching the environment) count on seeing roughly the same world each time you visit. In other words, Somnium Space offers a digital facsimile of real life!

But a digital world, even one that looks real and feels immersive, can feel pretty low stakes if nothing hurts and can seem somewhat bland without the resource constraints that we take for granted in the physical world. To bring the Somnium Space universe one significant step closer to real life, Somnium Space is building its in world economy on Ethereum. Resources and objects, including land itself, will be verifiably scarce NFTs. Call it a tragedy of the human experience if you will, but it’s much easier for us to make sense of our place in a world of scarcity and a real ownership rather than one of perfect abundance. Like the way it’s not as much to play a game where you can walk through walls, it’s not as much fun to inhabit a world where everything is free.

OpenSea is proud to provide the infrastructure that powers Somnium’s secure, user-friendly, and persistent economy. OpenSea is the first and largest peer-to-peer marketplace for blockchain-based assets, which include collectibles, gaming items, and other assets backed by blockchain. Since our beta launch in December 2017, OpenSea has processed over 25,000 ETH worth of digital assets through our marketplace. We can’t wait to start seeing Somnium Space items in the mix.

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Stay tuned for more announcements leading up to Somnium Space’s Initial Land Offering in early October and join their Discord or follow them on Twitter for the latest updates!