Lifelike virtual humans and an NFT house are among 10 metaverse designs blurring the line between the physical and digital world, which we've rounded up as part of our review of 2021.
As coronavirus restrictions continued to limit interactions in real life, this year saw online environments step up to fulfil many of the same functions with the help of blockchain technology, as well as virtual and augmented reality.
"The virtual world and the real world will integrate," Amber Jae Slooten of virtual fashion house The Fabricant argued at Dezeen Club's metaverse meet-up in April.
"There will be like a virtual layer on top of reality that you'll be able to switch on and off," she added. "And there will be virtual worlds that you can go into." Below, we've charted this emergence of a parallel digital universe by outlining some of the major milestone projects from the past 12 months, ranging from Beeple's record-breaking NFT sale all the way to Facebook's rebrand as metaverse company Meta.

The Shipping by Andrés Reisinger
After rising to fame on Instagram, Andrés Reisinger was among a vanguard of digital designers who managed to monetise their work through NFTs, with his debut drop of 10 virtual furniture pieces (top and above) auctioned off in less than 10 minutes for a total of $450,000.
The "impossible" seats and tables in the collection can be used to build games and animations from scratch or placed in any existing 3D virtual spa...