Original Article By Shaurya Malwa At Coindesk.com

Gaming application Pavia launched on the Cardano network last week, becoming the first-ever metaverse project on the blockchain.

Some 100,000 “land parcels” were issued on Pavia, each being minted as a unique non-fungible token (NFT) with individual “coordinates.” Over 60% of these parcels were pre-sold in October and November 2021, with the remaining set to go on sale in the first quarter of 2022.

NFTs are blockchain-based representations of tangible or intangible objects. Metaverses generally describe a virtual world in which people can interact as they do in the real world, but digitally.

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Pavia’s native token functions as an in-game currency, 25% of which was airdropped to NFT landholders following a blockchain snapshot in December 2021. Data from MuesliSwap, a Cardano-based exchange, show pavia tokens sell for just over 20 cents at the time of writing and have a market capitalization of over $107 million.

Data shows there are now over 8,300 plot owners on Pavia. However, users cannot deploy assets over their plots as of Monday. “Please remember at this stage in development you cannot visit or deploy any content onto your land parcel,” documents from Pavia caution.

The project comes at a time when virtual land plots are being sold for millions of dollars on virtual ecosystems, built on blockchains like Ethereum. The plots on pavia were listed for as high as 30,000 cardano (≈$45,600 at the time of writing) on the Cardano NFT marketplace CNFT.

Companies have recently rushed to create their presence on the metaverse. These include the likes of crypto exchange Binance.US, which is building out an office on Portals, a Solana-based metaverse project and global electronics maker Samsung, which launched a metaverse version of its flagship New York City store on Decentraland earlier this month.