Vladimir Okhotnikov: Marketplaces in Metaverses as a new format of online trading
Vladimir Okhotnikov is a publicist advocating the interests of the crypto community, a critic of administrative business regulation, a strong supporter of libertarianism, IT expert, originator of big blockchain projects.
Vladimir Okhotnikov: Marketplaces as World Leaders in Online Trading
Currently, Internet marketplaces have become a familiar part of our social infrastructure. We increasingly do not go to the store, but browse a website, put some goods into a virtual basket, pay with a card, and wait for the courier. If we live in a big city, our order can be delivered within an hour or even faster.
We don’t need to spend any more time on the road and communicate with someone. Everything you need is on your computer or smartphone screen. This, of course, is convenient, hot, and has certain consequences. First of all, some social skills disappear, we begin to communicate and move less.
Our way of life is inevitably changing. It can be accepted, it can be resisted, but it is impossible to stop progress. At one time, marketplaces have become another stepping stone on which mankind went into the virtual world.
"Technology development is particularly visible when it directly affects our way of life. A smartphone connected to the Internet has become almost a part of your body. Trading went online, and the shops were replaced by huge marketplaces. There you can find anything - a few clicks to make a purchase and organize delivery. We do not even have the idea to go anywhere, if suddenly there is a need to buy, we immediately grab a smartphone. Changing social skills is not good, not bad, it’s reality..."
Vladimir Okhotnikov
We can say that marketplaces in the traditional format appeared in 1995. It was then opened by the legendary eBay.
It was the event that blew up the Internet community. It turned out that digital space is available for mass commerce of any scale. You can buy and sell anything from second-hand clothing to ocean yachts.
In the same year, another internet giant began its journey. Amazon’s website was opened. It is interesting to us as an example of the evolution of the company - from a retailer, selling books, to a full-fledged marketplace. It was exactly evolution - gradual movement with an active search for the ideal format. First, there was the online retail, then the site let third-party sellers, including authors of books, expand the range, and finally move to a full-fledged marketplace.
This was the beginning of a new era of Internet business.
Marketplaces: why is it advantageous?
According to Forbes, in the world, more than 20% of all retail purchases are made online in marketplaces, and their turnover amounted to about $6.3 trillion.
From the consumer’s point of view, the usual online store is not much different from the marketplace. And there, and there are sold goods, the interface is similar, the buyer’s buying and paying procedures are almost the same. The difference is in the organization of the business and in the technical infrastructure. Online store implies a direct relationship between seller and buyer. It would seem that "first-hand" buying \is the best option and it should be the most profitable. However, marketplaces managed to destroy this stereotype.
Marketplaces added to the scheme seller-buyer another participant which is an intermediary.
«Marketplaces win economic competition. The situation is a win-win. Here it is advantageous for everyone: buyers, sellers, and, especially, the operator of the marketplace. This is a good example of absolutely fair competition. A new winning format was born...»
Vladimir Okhotnikov
By analogy with the classic market, there is an owner of the territory with trade infrastructure, which provides it to vendors for rent. Why do vendors go to the market and not trade, for example, at their homes? Because buyers are guaranteed to come to the market. This is the useful function of an intermediary: it provides constant traffic of buyers. The market is engaged in marketing on the outer circle, attracting people to its territory, and the vendor is engaged in attracting buyers directly to its outlet.
All this is quite obvious, nothing fundamentally new Internet marketplaces not invented, they simply digitized the scheme worked out over the millennia and added modern logistics and payment technologies.
The resulting structure is beneficial to all. The buyer has a wide range of goods and optimal prices due to internal competition, the seller receives the traffic of buyers, and the commission of the intermediary compensates by reducing the cost of advertising and marketing. Everyone is happy!
However, it happens that vendors complain about the monopoly of marketplaces, with their excessive demands. Most vendors have a parallel site and can visually compare results.
At some point, it seemed that the marketplaces had reached perfection. However, technology evolved, digital space expanded, and finally transformed into the Metaverse.
The World Opens Metaverses
The Metaverse is a digital three-dimensional virtual space, maximally imitating reality. They are considered one of the main directions of the IT industry for the next decade.
Most IT giants have announced their own Metaverses, with billions of dollars invested in their development every year. Until now the end product hasn’t entered the market – the task is technologically and ideologically extremely difficult, but there is no doubt that in the foreseeable future, there will be a product that can rightly be called the Universe.
«We’re moving further into digital space. The Metaverse is the pinnacle of the digital world, a sophisticated fusion of virtual space and reality, a new stage in the evolution of the Internet. Now there is an interesting situation: everyone knows what the metaverses are in the real future, but how they will look, how they will be managed, and what interface will be used, is not clear. And the first one to present a working version has a great chance to become a determining game …»
Vladimir Okhotnikov
When we talk about reality simulating, we do not mean transferring our real world into the digital space, but modeling realistic processes so that the user gets a sense of reality. The time will go as it should, continuously, regardless of the user’s presence, and the user will have the same needs as in reality. He has to live somewhere, travel by transport, eat, and interact with other users. He needs products, clothes, household items - everything we use every day in real life.
And all this you can buy on the markets of the new generation.
NFT as the basis of trade in the Metaverses
When it became clear that the virtual space of the Metaverses needed to organize the trade process, a technical problem was discovered. Imagine: you are selling a digital commodity that exists as a digital code only. How to make this purchase, so organize the transfer of goods?
Blockchain technology and its NFT-based (non-fungible tokens) technology comes in handy. This is a unique token that exists in a single instance that can be attached to a file and thus make the file the same way.
A token is tied to any digital object, and the object is sold by token transfer.
The first NFT was created in May 2014. Initially, NFT was positioned as a digital art organization tool. NFT sold and bought digital art objects. It can be a picture, a video, a text, everything that can be represented in the form of a digital code. The first NFT was created in May 2014. Initially, NFT was positioned as a digital art organization tool. NFT sold and bought digital art objects. It can be a picture, a video, a text - everything that can be represented in the form of a digital code.
The market grew rapidly. The works of the "digital" artist on the wave of the hype were sold for the price of masterpieces of classical painting. The brilliant future of NFT seemed destined.
However, several factors played against NFT. First of all, token users are extremely limited. The sale of rarities and art objects is not a mass business, and this has affected the course dynamics.
In 2022, the market collapsed. Analysts were already talking about the end of the NFT, however, tokens suddenly received support from the Metaverses.
«An interesting story happened with NFT. They happened to be perceived as an attribute of the digital art market. So when the excitement was over and the digital creations were drastically cheaper, they talked about the death of the NFT. However, their functionality is much broader than the organization of sales of painting. If we are talking about digital sales, then we need to go to the Metaverse...»
Vladimir Okhotnikov
Tokens have proved to be an almost ideal tool for organizing the trading process, you pay and receive a packaged token, which, among other things, will serve as a sign of the transfer of ownership.
It turned out to be simple and practical, and now you can expect to open new virtual marketplaces.
Marrketplace in the Metaverse
The development of a virtual marketplace is not a fundamental problem, the problems begin when we face the need to connect the Metaverse and the real world. This, among other things, distinguishes the Metaverse from the three-dimensional game. The Metaverse is not just a three-dimensional fantasy space, but a complement to our real world.
That is why the future is a fundamentally new class of marketplaces, covering the whole Multiverse (that is, reality and the Metaverse). What does that mean in practice?
Imagine: buying a T-shirt for your avatar at Metaverse on a marketplace, you can wear it, or you can exchange it for a real analog, and wear it already in our physical world. The situation will not necessarily be exactly that, it is an example of the possible interweaving of real and digital spaces.
«There are technologies operating marketplaces of real goods. With digital - a little more complicated, here you can give examples of sites selling NFT, but it is still not quite correct. But the combination of reality and virtual world in the format of a hypermarket nobody offers, the reason is clear - there was no query. But here the Metaverses appear. and the request is born...»
Vladimir Okhotnikov
Marketplaces have evolved, changing from a regular bulletin board to a highly structured platform. Goods will circulate from reality to Metaverse and back, as will financial flows. In this structure, the marketplace, in addition to purely commercial, will act as a basic infrastructure element - a module linking "digital" and real space.
We are now in the race for the Metaverses - who will be the first to release a full version and open the way for humanity to a new world? Accordingly, the race for Marketplace will begin immediately - who will take the place of Amazon in the digital space? Soon we will see which marketplaces will open and how they will work.
We look forward to it being a beautiful race!
