Terra Virtua, a blockchain-based platform for VR games, is partnering with the Worldwide Asset eXchange (WAX) to bring tradeable in-game items to a more widely accessible cross-site storefront. The partnership aims to use the blockchain to enable users to trade items on their own terms:

“[In] the majority of video games today, the publishers restrict your ability to trade [items]. You can buy them, you can collect them, but they don’t like the trading.”

Game publishers frequently keep tight control over item trading in order to prevent users from selling fraudulent items, falling victim to scams, and participating in money laundering. Sometimes developers simply disable item trading altogether in order to shut down third-party sites that allow money to change hands.

WAX is attempting to change that by introducing a crypto token that works with—and hopefully will be widely adopted by—games that rely heavily on item trading. As more gaming developers adopt WAX, the tokens and items can be traded across different sites:

“In short — any site that adopts WAX can list any item from the inventory of what’s available on the WAX Platform’s blockchain. The same item can be listed on an endless number of websites so long as they adopt WAX.”

WAX works just like spendable money for end users, but gaming platforms that adopt WAX get some of the fees from transactions. Ideally, this incentive will encourage publishers to abandon restrictive trading policies.

Terra Virtua is not the first platform to partner with the Worldwide Asset eXchange. WAX already has partnered with OPSkins and VGO, and the token can be used to purchase weapon skins for The Forge Arena and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Although Terra Virtua has its own token (TVA), it seems likely that it will accept the WAX token as well.

The market for in-game items and skins is very robust—estimated at $50 billion—and VR games are just a fraction of that. But as WAX obtains more slices of the pie, it will bring the innovations introduced by previously niche cryptocollectibles into mainstream gaming.