From Syahrini’s NFTs to Axie Infinity, Southeast Asia is waking up to the metaverse
- Indonesia is showing strong appetite to developing virtual initiatives as tech giants such as Facebook eye building their own metaverses in Southeast Asia
- Apart from providing a platform for trading NFTs and cryptocurrencies, observers say the metaverse has the potential to ‘level the playing field’ by providing users side incomes from play-to-earn games
When Indonesian singer and influencer Syahrini last month announced a metaverse tour sold as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), they were sold out hours after the launch.
Powered by cryptocurrency exchange firm Binance, the 17,800 NFTs came under three categories of increasing exclusivity. The most rare of the digital artworks contained Syahrini’s signature phrase #CetarMembahana, which roughly translates to “so beautiful it’s shocking”, while those in the next tier bore the quote #MajuMundurCantik (“beautiful every step of the way”). The least exclusive of the three had the term #Huss-Huss-Sanah, which is merely a gibberish phrase in Bahasa Indonesia.
Binance said the singer, who has 38 million Instagram followers, was also interested in launching a “metaverse tour in Binance Smart Chain games, such as Glory Planet, Rara, [X World Games], and others”, though it did not give a time frame on when this would happen.
Syahrini isn’t the only celebrity in Indonesia jumping on board the NFT trend. Anang Hermansyah, her duet partner, also launched own tokens called ASIX that can be used as a utility in a blockchain-based, play-to-earn game that he’s developing with local firm IDM Co-op.
Ridwan Kamil, the governor of West Java who is expected to run in the 2024 presidential election, earlier this month turned his personal painting into an NFT and sold it for 1 ethereum, or about US$3,120.
President Joko Widodo has said Indonesia needs to “quickly catch on with the metaverse” so the country will not get left behind.