Metaverses

As metaverses grow, so too will their economies and the exchanging and purchasing of NFTs. Not every NFT will represent a digital asset – a proportion will act as proofs of ownership for physical goods, particularly high-value products like luxury items and collectibles. Many customers will not want to risk damaging or losing these products during delivery to a new owner every time an NFT is traded.

One solution is the creation of secure and insured vault-like warehouses specifically built for storing high-value goods. eBay, for instance, launched a temperature-controlled, 24/7 secured vault for collectible trading cards with its own special digital marketplace in 2022. While ownership of the cards may change hands, the cards remain in place, safe and protected, unless owners request them to be delivered. In 2023, eBay plans to expand this service to other collectible categories and luxury products, storing up to 3 billion USD in assets in its vault.

Overall, we here at DHL foresee more retailers and third parties following in eBay’s footsteps and creating additional services to safely store physical products for NFT customers.

It can be difficult and costly for supply chain managers and planners to test out changes and explore new ideas that may disrupt their current operations. Metaverses provide an opportunity to assess proposals without reconfiguring the physical world.

While no commercially available metaverse currently supports this, it is speculated that metaverses will act as environments to house and experiment with digital twins – exact virtual replicas of physical world assets and systems. Data from sensors measuring characteristics of the physical object will help duplicate a virtual one in the metaverse in real time. For logistics leaders, these digital twins could be everything from a single conveyor belt system or a whole facility to an entire supply chain or network. Users would be able to enter the metaverse and interact with the digital twin, running different scenarios to evaluate the best solution, whether this is rearranging a facility floor or adding another distribution center to a network.

In this way, metaverses provide a space for logistics managers and planners to visualize, plan, and collaborate on upcoming changes without compromising real-world operations.