I don't exactly know what "metaverse" means, but what is clear is that nobody really does right now. Here is an excerpt from a recent article by Benedict Evans:

If the narrow definition of ‘metaverse’ is that VR and AR will be the next smartphone, the broad definition is that there’s going to be a whole new internet. Our experience will be 3D, but much of that will be layered onto the real world as we see it through glasses. Games will become a much larger part of daily life - instead of the current split between a few hundred people playing deep and rich AAA PC and console games and several billion playing much lighter-weight smartphone games, Roblox and Fortnite point to a growing middle ground of persistent, open, accessible and expressive environments that are much more about social and identity than games per se, and that can become platforms and ecosystems for developers. Many of these experiences will blur into each other, and digital goods (skins, avatars and other models of self-expression in digital form) will be portable and interchangeable between these worlds, rather like the characters in Wreck-it Raph could pass between games.

Some people, namely Mark Zuckerberg, believe that VR is going to be the next smartphone. But Benedict raises an interesting point: the direction of travel for tech seems to be toward less immersion, rather than greater immersion. We used to have giant computers that filled rooms. Then computers got smaller. And now we just carry one around in our pocket and pull it out when we're standing in a line and bored. Portability and casual usage are what won out. And so is it reasonable to assume that billions of people are going to want to immerse themselves in VR goggles all day?

I don't see it. Here's my working thesis:

• I am an urbanist. I love cities. And I believe that our deep desire to interact meaningfully with other humans is not going to go away. For this reason, I believe in the less immersion over greater immersion argument.

• At the same time, blockchain technologies have made it possible for us to own, collect, and trade digital assets -- everything from digital fashion to digital art. I think this trend is only going to continue.

• And as this trend continues, we are going to continually look for ways to display and experience these elements of our digital identity. So how do we make that happen? This is an important part of the conversation around "the next smartphone."

• My view is that it's going to be some version of augmented reality, and that we are going to end up with a continuous blurring of the line between physical and digital.

But hey, I could be wrong. Time will tell.

"Luxury" is an overused term in the world of real estate. If you call everything luxury, then ultimately nothing is luxury, right? But let's ignore this particular debate for right now. I was recently in a meeting where our interior design team -- Mason Studio -- made what I think is an important distinction between "classic luxury" and "modern luxury."

Classic luxury is old school luxury. It is the kind of luxury that says, "you can't come in here unless you look like this." And I'm sure that all of you can think of brands that might speak to you in this way.

But I think this idea of luxury is quickly changing. Perhaps a good example of "modern luxury" is the recent collaboration between RTFKT -- the web3 digital fashion company that Nike bought last year -- and high-end luggage company RIMOWA.

This, to me, is a brilliant collaboration. It is a sign of what's to come -- an ongoing blurring of our physical and digital worlds -- and it is a less fussy kind of luxury; maybe I'll mint an exceptionally expensive piece of luggage, maybe I'll mint a digital collectible, or maybe I'll just hang out on Discord.

Now, one could argue that nothing has really changed and we're just talking about different kinds of trappings. But that doesn't feel exactly right. There is something about modern luxury that feels more inclusive to me. And I think that is why it is quickly becoming the dominant form of "luxury" -- whatever that means.

A lot less people are buying NFTs today compared to last year. But that's okay, everything will be fine. So let's talk about some of the characteristics of NFT marketplaces and how they differ from real estate marketplaces today:

• When you create or "mint" an NFT, you are doing so on a particular blockchain, such as on the Ethereum blockchain. You might do that minting through a marketplace like OpenSea, but at the end of the day, your NFT now lives on a public blockchain and not on private OpenSea.

• What that means is that if OpenSea suddenly decides to do something bad that you don't like (I am in no way picking on OpenSea), you can simply stop using them and just access and trade your NFTs from some other marketplace. As I understand it, there are also lots of smart people working on blockchain interoperability.

• Once you have your NFT on a blockchain, you can choose, through various applications, to list it for sale, run auctions with a reserve price, or just hold it and do nothing, among other things. You can also set it up so that any proceeds from a future sale are automatically split with someone else -- maybe they are a co-creator of the NFT that you minted.

• Whether you've decided to list your NFT for sale or not, there is also the option for the market to make unsolicited offers on it. It is up to you whether or not you'd like to accept any of the offers, but in all cases the offers you receive are made fully public to the market. As a bidder, it's easy to hide behind "burner" wallets, but you generally can't hide real intent.

• If/when you do sell, that sale becomes public record for all to see. The blockchain never forgets and it doesn't matter which marketplace you decide to use.

In some real estate markets, it's fairly easy to see the sales history of a property. But in other markets, such as here in Toronto, it's still fairly gated. Generally speaking, you are accessing a controlled database and so you need to abide by whatever rules might be in place. If you want to build a new application on top of your local real estate board's database, that is going to be tricky and it will likely involve more than a few lawyers.

It is, however, fun to imagine how this might all change with public blockchains. And I think that NFT marketplaces do offer some clues in terms of what could happen to our real estate markets.

Consider this potentially unexpected scenario:

In the world of NFTs, there is something known as creator royalties. And they function just as you might expect. As the creator of an NFT, you can set a royalty % that gets paid to you each and every time the NFT is sold. And because the blockchain never forgets, you never have to worry about enforcing and collecting your royalty fee. It just gets automatically distributed.

Now imagine a world where people like the architect and the developer of a new property are able to attach their own creator royalties. This would be massively cumbersome to administer today, but it's entirely straightforward once you've got everything on a blockchain. And it would be a huge boon for business models that today do not benefit from reoccurring revenues.

In theory, it might also better align interests, because if you're a "creator" who wants a good solid royalty fee stream, maybe you're a little more motivated to do good long-term work. Who knows? This model might never actually happen, but I do think it is indicative of the kind of changes and innovations that we might see as crypto continues to filter through the economy.