The Societal and Economic Dynamics of the Metaverse, Smart Contracts, and Non-Fungible Tokens

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10125/107526

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    Heavy-tailed DecentraPunks - Exploring the Structure of NFT Sales Networks
    (2024-01-03) Tahmasbi, Nargess; Fuchsberger, Alexander
    Non-fungible Tokens (NFT) have received increased attention since 2021. The availability of the vast amount of public sales transaction data has created an unprecedented opportunity that calls for research to uncover the underlying mechanism in which NFT networks evolve. Our main goal is to understand the new space of NFT-based crypto art exchange and the structure of the trading network. We use data from the Crypto Punks collection and perform a data-driven quantitative study based on real-time trading and sales data to carry out a two-folded methodological approach that is first applied to this domain. We borrow the citation analysis and social network analysis from bibliometrics and the social network domain and apply them to the NFT space to explore the trading network structure. We found that despite being based on unique and non-interchangeable tokens, the NFT-based CryptoPunks transactions network follows the scale-free network structure, the similar pattern that is observed in Web 2.0 social networks and cryptocurrency transaction networks, where a few actors have dominant centrality. Our study demonstrates the applicability of the two approaches from bibliometrics and social network analysis to the context of unique digital assets trading.
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    Metaverse, ubi es? A transaction cost-based analysis of the state of the art of smart contracts in the Metaverse
    (2024-01-03) Müller, Wieland; Richter, Shahper; Leyer, Michael; Richter, Alexander
    Fueled by recent technological developments and reinvigorated through the hype around the Metaverse concept, virtual worlds are becoming increasingly popular as platforms for social interaction, entertainment, and commerce. This study applies transaction cost theory to explore smart contracts' potential in virtual worlds, specifically Decentraland, Sandbox, and Roblox. By assessing process costs, we gauge the feasibility and usability of these decentralized worlds in line with the Metaverse vision. Our findings indicate that the concept and implementation of smart contracts are still nascent and require enhancements from technical, organizational, and user standpoints. Our study contributes to a better understanding of smart contracts' current value in virtual worlds and points to future research directions for optimizing their use.
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    Introduction to the Minitrack on The Societal and Economic Dynamics of the Metaverse, Smart Contracts, and Non-Fungible Tokens
    (2024-01-03) Sundaram, David; Peko, Gabrielle; Craig, Kevin; Sadovykh , Valeria