Digital Intelligence and Investment in Digital Real Estate Assets in the Metaverse: Literature Review

Digital technologies has transformed human experience in the virtual world. Metaverse work as a network of 3-D virtual worlds where human can interact, carry out business, and build connections through their ‘avatars’ or digital identity. These would also grant an access to digital ecosystem through its own currency, property and possessions. In the metaverse, disruptive technologies (such as AR and VR, Blockchain, AI, 3D reconstruction and IoT) support the trading of digital real estate assets (such as sales and purchase of virtual lands) in the form of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). Investment in real estate metaverse is currently experiencing a great return. Presently, real estate sales in the metaverse have been concentrated on the 'Big Four' — Sandbox, Decentraland, Cryptovoxels and Somnium. Therefore, investment in digital real estate assets require some degree of skills and competencies in the metaverse. The concept of digital intelligence is a set of skills needed by investors to meet digital technologies' demand in trading of digital real estate assets and the virtual world's challenges. This paper therefore explore the need for digital intelligence in investing in digital real estate assets in the metaverse from a theoretical perspective. Review of relevant literature in the subject area was adopted for this study. This paper outlined the major benefits of digital intelligence in the purchase of digital real estate assets as identifying the virtual land with the highest traffic, understanding the digital footprints in a geospatial context among others. This paper provide policy implication on the need for investors in digital real estate assets to acquire necessary digital skills (such as digital: identity, rights, security, safety etc.) for a successful business transactions (sales and purchase of digital assets) in the metaverse.