Polygon, the Ethereum scaling solution helping to onboard users to Web3, yesterday announced a partnership with NFTically to launch COMEARTH, which it claims is the world’s first ecommerce metaverse. COMEARTH aims to become what the company hopes will be the “Amazon.com of Web3” by empowering businesses to build immersive storefronts in the metaverse.
For many shoppers and consumers, Web3 and the metaverse are vaguely futuristic concepts that are now just catching their attention. While there’s so much buzz on transitioning to Web3, which David Kim of WAX studios describes as “a new digital frontier powered by blockchain and accessible via decentralized applications (dapps),” we are barely scratching the surface. Although Kim noted that Web3 offers verifiable digital ownership and access to new financial instruments, that’s not all there is to Web3.
Web3’s use cases also stretch into ecommerce, retail and digital marketing. Enterprise leaders understand the need for a personalized experience. It can be the difference between a customer who goes all the way to make a purchase and the one that drops out during the journey. Personalized experience in Web2 can be a struggle, with Gartner noting in a report that 63% of digital marketing leaders struggle to offer personalized experiences. This is a problem that Web3 helps to solve, and several companies are racing to own the newly minted space.
Marketing leaders can leverage Web3 to better understand consumer demand and preferences, as it provides relevant customer data, helping digital marketers to improve their targeting and offer more personalized services. This is NFTically’s way of getting into the enterprise space.
Founded by Toshendra Sharma, who is also CEO, NFTically is a white label no-code NFT venture that allows content creators to launch their own NFT store or marketplace under their domain name. Additionally, users can buy and sell their non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the platform.
NFTically has the vision to become a full-stack Web3 software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider with what the company claims are top-of-the-line services to provide users with end-to-end compliance and help them in setting up their own white-label NFT store.
Since its inception, NFTically has established several partnerships with market leaders like Zee Studios, AltiusDAO and BollyCoin to help brands harness the power of NFTs.
Setting the tone for commerce in the metaverse
Bloomberg Intelligence reports the metaverse market is on track to approach $800 billion in 2024. That represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 13%, compared to a market of less than $500 billion in 2020. COMEARTH is NFTically’s attempt at bringing commerce into the metaverse.
The approach to building is simple: COMEARTH allows landowners to set up their metaverse ventures in just a few minutes, armed with a comprehensive set of DIY tools. These include fiat on ramps and APIs connecting with major Web2 commerce platforms to help businesses sell effortlessly via Salesforce, Shopify, OpenKart, Magenta, WooCommerce and others.
Sharma said COMEARTH will provide an opportunity to open a storefront in the metaverse to all types of direct-to-customer (D2C) businesses. Organizations and individuals planning to open their stores in the metaverse would be able to use this platform. All they need to do is buy land in the metaverse and build anything they want on top of it.
Like other NFTically initiatives, COMEARTH is the brainwork of collaboration. Backed by investors like Polygon cofounders Sandeep Nailwal and Jaynti Kanani and Coinbase’s chief product officer, Surojit Chatterjee, COMEARTH is a virtual planet across eight continents where businesses can purchase virtual land in the form of NFTs in the metaverse, governed by smart contracts deployed on the Polygon blockchain.
Brian Trunzo, metaverse lead at Polygon Studios, said in the company’s press release that “Polygon Studios is pleased to welcome COMEARTH as a valued partner into the ecosystem. Their easy-to-use and powerful suite of tooling brings brands and rights holders closer to their audiences — a key aspect of facilitating broader Web3 adoption.”
Vying for space in the new world
Sprout predicts over 67% of marketing executives plan to invest at least a quarter of their budget into metaverse tactics over the next 12 months. COMEARTH, although newly launched, already has several businesses and groups vying to get into the space.
The Blockchain Council is the first to announce plans to build in COMEARTH. The group will launch what it calls a “Metaversity” to deliver Web3 education via live and recorded open training sessions, events and seminars hosted in the virtual world. The metaverse space has also gotten the nod from Digital Fashion Week NYC, which intends to launch an immersive virtual store to showcase digital clothing from various luxury brands.
COMEARTH enables easy transformation from 2D to 3D, enabling the transformation of Web2 ecommerce product images into metaverse-compatible 3D interactive models at the click of a button. Businesses can also gain actionable analytic insights about the traffic their land receives and access lead generation tools, according to the press release.
Other blockchain-based Web3 games and metaverse projects together with Polygon Studios include Decentraland, Sandbox, Opensea, Somnium Space and Decentral Games.
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