Blockchain startup tokenizes the real world for augmented reality real estate

Augmented reality blockchain startup OVR announced that it has tokenized a digital map of the whole earth, and the “land” is for sale.

According to the Nov. 26 release, OVR divided the entire surface of the earth into 1.6 trillion hexagons measuring 300 square meters each and assigned a non-fungible token (NFT) to each one. The NFTs—hosted on the Ethereum blockchain—are meant to represent ownership of each hexagon of digital space, and give owners virtual rights over that area.

OVR intends to leverage GPS and computer vision technology to provide Augmented Reality (AR) experiences incorporating the geographic features of the location. When interacting with those AR experiences, users will see what the owners of the land decide to feature. In the future, the firm plans to create a dedicated marketplace that will sell experiences for NFT owners to place on their land.

In many ways, the project resembles the interactive virtual world of the Metaverse depicted in Neal Stephenson’s seminal 1992 cyberpunk novel “Snow Crash.”

OVR matches hexagonal lands to the location on the real map using their coordinates and names them with a unique code or domain based on a three words system closely resembling that developed by What3Words.

The land hexagons will be sold in exchange for the firm’s OVR token, which will go on sale at the end of the month. The sale will not be an initial coin offering, however. Instead, the developers will introduce the tokens to the market through a distribution smart contract which sells them at prices set by a bonding curve which increases the token’s price when it is bought by users.

OVR tokens will be only created if someone buys them and burned in exchange for the current price if resold to the distribution contract itself. While the announcement does not specify how the system works in this case, such contracts usually establish a bonding curve which increases the asset price with each token sold.

The initiative is reminiscent of a project from August 2019, which divided the surface of the moon into two billion plots for real estate purposes. However in that case, the firm claimed it was “selling” actual territory—not digital air rights in a private map Teresa Lago, General Secretary of the International Astronomical Union dismissed the lunar project clearly stating that the initiative “has no official recognition.”