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As Bitcoin continued to make headlines in 2021, additional digital assets such as non-fungible tokens brought more users into the blockchain ecosystem. As more individuals and entities took a closer look at the use cases for blockchain technology, the term metaverse began to emerge across news outlets and social media platforms. With Mark Zuckerberg, the Chief Executive Officer of Facebook, announcing that the organization would become a metaverse company and change the organization 's name to Meta, this announcement came with some criticism in that the Meta metaverse would be centralized. In this case study, the current state of nation-states was viewed through the lens of Hobbes' The Leviathan to assess whether decentralized metaverses will transition to a Digital Leviathan using Bit.Country - a metaverse within the Polkadot blockchain ecosystem. The case study was conducted through interviews and uncovered that the quadruple bottom line implemented in conventional business could be transferrable to a digital world built on various blockchains, non-fungible tokens, and governance in a Digital Leviathan governed by the people.
Keywords: metaverse, non-fungible tokens, virtual reality, virtual worlds, augmented reality, cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology, governance, social impact, decentralization, web3
INTRODUCTION
Blockchain is a technology that acts as a ledger that is decentralized from any controlling central interest. The data - or transactions - are recorded in blocks connected to form an information chain. As this technology continues to grow in adoption, individuals worldwide are collaborating to develop new use cases and solutions due to the decentralized nature of the technology. In late 2020 into 2021, the reintroduction of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and digital ownership began to be discussed in both industry and academia. To better understand the difference between fungible and non-fungible assets, fungible assets are equivalent goods that can be traded interchangeably and do not hold individual value but instead have a measurable worth based on their supply, like money. Non-fungible assets, on the other hand, consist of unique units which cannot be substituted, like houses or physical land (Dowling, 2021; Goanta, 2020).
Today, these assets are protected by centralized authorities, like the government or an institution, by issuing documents such as birth certificates, licenses, or a passport.
Non-fungible tokens are distinguishable and divisible by an individual NFT project, similar to how shares...