What is the Metaverse?
In 1992, Neal Stephson introduced this concept when he published his science-fiction novel Snow Crash. While in that time the idea of a metaverse was only fiction, we can now agree that it looks like it’s becoming reality rather than fantasy.
In this new digital world, the financial, virtual, and physical worlds have become increasingly linked. The devices we use to manage our lives give us access to almost anything we want. NFTs, blockchain games, and crypto payments are now available to everyone and fitting the developing metaverse.
What is the Metaverse?
The metaverse is a concept of a persistent, online, 3D universe that combines multiple different virtual spaces. This virtual universe will allow users to work, meet, game, and socialize together in these 3D spaces.
Just as the physical universe is a collection of worlds that are connected in space, the metaverse can be thought of as a bunch of worlds, too, but digitally.
Augmented reality will drive the metaverse through the creation of an avatar or a character. This would allow users to work in an office and socialize, have a meeting in a virtual cafe, play some video games with new people or go to the bank to manage your crypto finances.
Besides supporting gaming or social media, the metaverse will combine economies, digital identity, decentralized governance, and other applications. User creation and ownership of valuable items and currencies are needed to develop a metaverse, features that blockchain provides.
Blockchain and the Metaverse
The use of blockchain technology in the metaverse universe allows to create a digital economy with different types of utility tokens and virtual collectibles (NFTs), while providing transparent and reliable governance systems.
The gaming industry provides the 3D aspect of the metaverse but doesn’t cover everything needed in a virtual world. These are the features that make blockchain the only technology that can make it functional:
- Ownership: By owning an online wallet, you can instantly prove ownership of activity or an asset.
- Value Transfer: A metaverse will need a way to transfer value securely that users trust. If users spend large amounts of time in it and even earn money there, they will need a reliable currency.
- Governance: The metaverse will also need ways to implement fair governance and control the rules of the users interactions in a safe way.
- Accessibility: You can create a wallet without any permissions or fees. This makes blockchain the most accessible way to manage digital identity and finances.
- Collectibility: Just as we can establish who owns something, we can also show that an item is original and unique.
- Interoperability: A single metaverse will need to connect multiple projects. Blockchain technology is continuously improving compatibility between different platforms.
Most popular examples
Although it isn’t 100% developed, some platforms have started including metaverse-like elements. The easiest example to understand would be video games.
- Roblox
Roblox is an online game platform and game creation system developed by Roblox Corporation. It allows users to program games and play games created by other users.
- Axie Infinity
Axie Infinity is a NFT-based online video game developed by Vietnamese studio Sky Mavis, which uses Ethereum-based cryptocurrency AXS and SLP.
- Decentraland
Decentraland is a decentralised 3D virtual reality platform which uses the Ethereum blockchain. It was opened to the public in February 2020, and is overseen by the nonprofit Decentraland Foundation.
What’s the future of the metaverse?
In recent months the metaverse has gained new traction as the virtual games and NFTs markets have grown tremendously.
On the other side, the global augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality (MR) market is forecast to reach 300 billion U.S. dollars by 2024.
Following this new opportunity, Mark Zuckerberg said that in five years, Facebook would be a “metaverse company” and declared it the “successor to the mobile internet”, willing to invest $50 million to build it. The first public step, changing the Facebook name to “Meta”.
However, it is important to keep in mind that for a fully realized metaverse, a global population is needed. Metaverse is not only for a richer community and deeper economy, but also to ensure that everyone around the globe can benefit from this virtual reality.
