Geo-location NFT Platform, Area, Brings the Metaverse to the Real World

Set to release a white paper addressing how web3 will connect the digital world to real world products and services.

Area, a decentralized platform for digital assets, products and services tied to real-world locations, is releasing a white paper to address how web3 can bridge the gap between the real world and virtual worlds.

Area has recently commenced the sale of geo-location NFTs covering the entire surface of the earth. These NFTs are collectibles representing an area of the world and building blocks of an entire ecosystem of geolocation applications. The sale represents the first step to building what Area calls the “Metasurface” – a layer of digital activity on top of the real world. Creating this layer will open up possibilities for decentralized ownership of location-related data and assets with the aim of bringing the digital world and the real world even closer.

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“We believe the metaverse is not going to be a virtual world we escape to, but it will be a combination of digital experiences in the world we live in.”

— Founder Marcos Siqueira

Area was started by Marcos Siqueira and Paul Niel, two former executives at Goldman Sachs who left the world of finance to pursue purpose-driven endeavors. Marcos became a serial entrepreneur and Paul a professional explorer. They are joined by Elia Locardi, one of the world’s most recognizable travel photographers and Wiliam Entriken, the lead author of the ERC-721 NFT standard, who is both advisor and lead on smart contracts.

Area NFTs are the foundation of the Area ecosystem. They are divisible pieces of virtual land in the real world sold in 4,000 packs of 10 random Areas. Once acquired, the NFTs can be traded in Area’s own on-chain decentralized marketplace. All of Area’s NFT code is open source and anyone can build on top of the platform. Ownership of Areas also serves as an entry ticket into the Area community which is made up not only of NFT futurists, but also travel enthusiasts, explorers, adventurers and photographers.

Beyond the initial sale, Area is onboarding publishers of location-based content, product and services into its ecosystem. These include not only external parties, but also in-house ventures.

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The first in-house venture by Area is Light, a publisher of highly-curated fine art photography NFTs. Light aims to reimagine the ways we create, collect, interact with, and build communities around art, while also honoring the foundations of good photography developed over the last 200 years. Light is led by Elia Locardi with a curation board made up of well-known traditional photographers, art collectors and NFT-native experts. Light will geolocate most of its photos so they can easily integrate within Area’s broader ecosystem. Light is set to launch by May 2022.

The second in-house venture by Area is the Explorer’s Guild, a curator of experiences and a community focused on travel and exploration. The Explorer’s Guild will be a travel community powered by NFT technology that brings together the exclusiveness of unique experiences with the openness of web3.

“I love virtual worlds, but I don’t want to spend all of my time looking through a VR headset tied to a computer. I started Area for people like me. People who want to enjoy the real world, but are excited about the possibilities of web3. Technology has connected us globally, empowered us as individuals, and expanded our minds. However, it has also disconnected us from local communities, created monopolies, and harmed our mental health. The disconnect between virtual worlds and the real world is partly to blame. This is why we are building a layer of digital activity on top of the real world. We call it the metasurface, a bridge between the digital and physical worlds so we don’t have to choose between the two. We believe the metaverse is not going to be a virtual world we escape to, but it will be a combination of digital experiences in the world we live in.” Founder Marcos Siqueira

In the future, Area hopes to create a non-digital marketplace for services and experiences, real world clubhouses, augmented reality NFTs, and geolocation games.

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