All you need to know about Metaverse
Technology transformation has changed many of our lives. The evolution of the internet, smartphone, and the cloud are the best examples of this transformation. The following big digital change will be the advent of the metaverse. It is a superset of virtual reality, augmented reality, and the internet. Its tendencies lie in video games such as Roblox, Fortnite, and Animal Crossing.
In this article, let’s discover more about this new invention in the tech world.
What is Metaverse?
Metaverse is the future of the internet that includes 3D, 2D, and AR linked together into a physically persistent virtual universe. Metaverse will be an immersive, collaborative, and interactive environment. The word Metaverse comes from combining “Meta,” which means ‘beyond’ and “universe.”
The social media giant, Facebook, defines Metaverse as “a set of virtual spaces where you can create and explore with other people who aren’t in the same physical space as you. You’ll be able to hang out with friends, work, play, learn, shop, create, and more. It’s not necessarily about spending more time online — it’s about making the time you do spend online more meaningful.”
In addition to this, metaverse allows you to buy virtual land and construct virtual buildings using cryptocurrencies. You can also offer virtual services, stock trading, crypto trading, and trade goods digitally and physically. Furthermore, you can move many of these virtual assets into the physical world.
As mentioned above, Metaverse is physically persistent, which means that it will exist even when you’re not. Your identity will also be persistent in it, even if you’re hanging out in some other virtual world.
After a brief understanding of what metaverse is, let’s dive in deeper to understand why it matters.
Why does it matter?
Metaverse transforms the way you interact with the digital world. It brings in new opportunities to creators, gamers, and artists in the same way as Non-Fungible tokens have done. It will invent a new economic space for the creators. Metaverse can become its trillion-dollar industry that can include entertainment, commerce, and other places of work.
Metaverse will be the successor of the internet. It is built using blockchains and decentralized applications. Venture capitalist and essayist Matthew Ball predict that metaverse will become “the gateway to most digital experiences, a key component of all physical ones, and the next great labor platform.” He further believes that metaverse will be a driving force to create a new generation of companies similar to the internet.
After understanding the importance of metaverse, let’s explore how metaverse works.
How does Metaverse work?
Think of the metaverse as a visually rendered internet that you connect rather than just observing it. Rather than being behind your screen, inside your device, your device can predict the metaverse around you. You will similarly connect to the metaverse as the internet. It means instead of turning on Wi-Fi or 4G on your laptop or phone; you can visualize the content using a pair of smart glasses or a VR headset.
You can manipulate virtual objects using Facebook’s neural wristband that is a motion-tracking device. An avatar or metaverse persona will walk around, interact with things in the world and meet people’s avatars irrespective of where they are in the physical world. Companies can only control the metaverse and not own it. Similar to how no one owns the internet.
The public blockchain technology organizes all metaverse identities and transactions for enhanced security. Funds inside the metaverse will be a mix of cryptocurrencies and V-Bucks you can buy in Fortnite. Each virtual world will have its tokens based on its blockchain, and you can exchange them with the tokens of the other worlds.
After understanding the workflow of Metaverse, let’s know more about how you can create a metaverse.
How to create a Metaverse?
Creating a metaverse includes three significant steps:
- Construct the infrastructure
- Define the standards and protocols
- Add in the content
After listing the steps, let’s elaborate on each of them to understand the entire process.
- Constructing the infrastructure
For building infrastructure, you need to begin with creating the framework. It should be a concurrency-optimized infrastructure where many people can do lots of digital things at once along with updates in real-time. At present, no technology supports real-time synchronization of persistent communication. Building one such infrastructure can be a challenging task for the creators.
- Defining standards and protocols
After building the infrastructure, the next step is to set the standards and protocols that act like the laws of physics in the real universe. The protocols need to be interoperable, so they should be broad, more resilient, and complex than the existing ones. Metaverse requires consensus from all its participants to issue transactions, security, and persistence.
- Add in the content
The final step is to add the content, assets, and activities. Metaverse will thrive after adding relevant content that can evolve and respond to the selection procedure.
Now that we discussed creating the metaverse let’s dive into understanding the applications of Metaverse.
Applications of Metaverse
There are various applications of the metaverse. Let’s explore the applications below:
- Activities and features that exist in the real universe.
- Non-competitive social interactions rather than goal-oriented games.
- Offering support to the virtual world created by users.
- Virtual economy related to the real world allows users to capitalize on virtual goods, stocks, NFTs, etc.
- Applicable to various features suited to AR and VR headsets.
After understanding various aspects of the metaverse, let’s jump in to know where crypto fits into this virtual universe.
Where does crypto fit into this virtual universe?
Metaverse requires the delivery of permissionless identity, financial services, and high-speed exchange. Also, it requires data should be stored and served to billions of people. All these requirements can be fulfilled through cryptocurrency.
Gaming companies Decentraland and Sandbox created virtual worlds that allow the use of cryptocurrencies. These companies enable gamers to build structures like virtual casinos and theme parks and monetize them. Decentraland enables the use of MANA currency to trade on exchanges like Coinbase. This company also allows you to gamble in MANA, and dealers are paid in MANA to show up at work.
The role of NFTs in the metaverse is prominent where people own their characters, in-game items, and the virtual world. Ultimately, you can buy and sell virtual goods from various games and universes on interoperable marketplaces. For instance, someone may purchase a virtual land on Decentraland and use the funds to buy Fortnite skins.
When metaverse arrives in its final form, we can accurately predict the use of cryptocurrencies in this virtual space. Various industry leaders like Facebook are involved in the Metaverse. One of the trending news is the rename of Facebook to Meta. There are multiple advancements in the crypto and blockchain industry that can contribute to shaping the metaverse future.
