Toward Understanding Attention Economy in Metaverse: A Case Study of NFT Value

With the blooming of NFT platforms such as Opensea, metaverse has become the most booming concept in both industry and academia all around the universe. Comprehending the way metaverse economy operates and the intrinsic value propping, it has become the key to the essence of metaverse. We try to reveal the value of metaverse via two academic resources, attention economy and media theory, and describe the principle of value creation in metaverse economy. To better examine how the value of NFT projects is affected by human time and attention devoted to metaverse, we first study systems with structured rules, e.g., blockchain games, to measure the players’ time spent and to quantify the players’ rewards. In addition, we investigate systems without dominant rules, in which the value of the NFTs relies more on users’ subjective valuation of their community symbols. Two representative projects, Aavegotchi and Bored Ape Yacht Club, are examined as cases of the above two scenarios. We analyze the data of NFTs such as price, time devoted, and the number of likes and acquire some meaningful findings of how NFTs drive prices up. Building on the above researches, we consider NFT systems as partly attention economy fused with finance and propose a theory of physical products combined with NFT collections to help set the value anchor of early metaverse. This will have profound implications for areas of economy such as pricing theory.