All About The Almighty Metaverse: The Things We Know And The Things Yet To Unfold
“Crypto people say they’re building it. Gamers might already be living in it. The art world is cashing in on it. Web veterans are trying to save it. But what is it?” — The New York Times.
The truth is that no one knows it all about the almighty Metaverse, but this article provides the essential information on what it is at its current stage. It is for everyone who heard about it but couldn’t explain it. We also took our liberty to aim to look into the future and see its potential. We know that even the sky is not a limit anymore.
What is The Metaverse?
According to Emerge and Research Metaverse market report, “a Metaverse is a 3D immersive environment shared by multiple users, in which participants can interact with each other via avatars”. We couldn’t have put it any more straightforward way. But let’s get deeper into the concept of The Metaverse.
Technology has its mysterious ways of making it into our daily lives. It starts with vague concepts of various processes and functions until it develops into something tangible and pronounceable. Around 30 years ago, we first heard of ‘The Internet’ concept. Now — get used to ‘The Metaverse.’
In 1992, Neal Stephenson, a famous American science fiction author, mentioned an online world parallel to the tangible world in his novel “Snow Crash,” calling it “Metaworld.” The word refers to a digital world beyond the analog one in which we live.
Thirty years later..
The Metaverse in 2022
When we talk about The Metaverse in 2022, we refer to several virtual experiences, environments, and assets that gained momentum during the virtual-everything shift of the global pandemic. Together, these new technologies hint at what the virtual space is becoming for the following generations.
Video games like Animal Crossing and Fortnite, where players can build their own worlds, have metaverse tendencies, as does social media. If you own a non-fungible token or some crypto, you’re part of the metaverse experience. Virtual and augmented reality are the closest metaverse experience to the real Metaverse. If you’ve attended a work meeting or a party using a digital avatar, you’re entering the neighborhood of metaversality.
The Metaverse Doesn’t Exist Just Yet
The word about The Metaverse is definitely out. Each NFT or crypto project, an innovative platform, or business has Metaverse planted in their roadmaps. Some have created their personal metaverses only for their users to enjoy. But, the one true almighty Metaverse connecting all the virtual world is yet to be made. Some technologies like the VR experience can be confused with The Metaverse. But while VR and AR will be part of the Metaverse, it’s just as crucial that the Metaverse will work across various device categories. The ultimate Metaverse experience not something that you dip in and out of for half an hour at a time, but something that accompanies you throughout the day: on your phone, your VR headset, and eventually consumer-ready AR glasses.
Why don’t we have Metaverse yet?
The Metaverse is a network. It’s not one single service but a network of services loosely tied together. Therefore, one company or one person can’t build The Metaverse. It has to be a joined effort with everyone doing their part by building interconnecting services amongst their company or make their personal paths from one destination to another. They would eventually lead into a one’ universal’ virtual space where all these paths connect into one.
In a sense, it’s very much like The Internet: a vast network that connects computers all over the world. Only that Metaverse experience is a much more personal one. You can have a taste of it on some social and gaming platforms, but those are just steppingstones toward the entire Metaverse, which is still taking shape.
A trillion-level market potential
According to the report from the crypto giant Grayscale, The Metaverse has the potential to become a $1 trillion annual revenue opportunity across the worlds of advertising, digital events, e-commerce, and hardware. Combined with the booming crypto and NFT market, that together reach over $3 trillion, the ultimate trio is likely to shift the world economy as we know it.
You know when the world is sitting on something mega when the potential of this internet evolution has started to attract Web 2.0 companies like Facebook, which is shifting to a Metaverse company and is changing its name to “Meta.” Other leading Web 2.0 tech companies will likely need to explore the Metaverse to stay competitive, and the spotlight has sparked a new wave of investment in this emerging crypto category.
However, the key to this developing trend is shifting consumer behavior which created the Met Market opportunity not to be missed. A more significant portion of our attention is digital activities, especially for younger generations. Passively watching TV is still trending amongst older and baby boomer generations, but Gen Z likes to get stuck in. Therefore gaming and social media are the two spaces that define the daily life of a regular ‘Gen Zetty.’
Why does this matter? Because Gen Z is the new buying power, our social lives and gaming are coming together and creating a large, fast-growing virtual goods consumer economy. Metaverse, in every way, satisfies the needs that the modern-world consumer is all about.
The fine line between the excitement of innovation and the new buzz word ‘humanization’
In fiction, a utopian metaverse may be portrayed as a new world where social norms and value systems can be written anew, freed from cultural and economic sclerosis. So, how far is it from the reality we live in now?
The truth is that the world is a big place, and you have some excellent people, some bad ones, and the ones that don’t really care. In that sense, there will be various origins of Metaverse links that would connect into one. We can see now that a big part of it is purely for entertainment and the excitement of something new. There are projects, like Decetraland, that, by the help of We 3.0, aims to bring a social change into the world. They call it DAO — Decentralized Autonomous Organization.
In short, the combination of Metaverse and DAO allows creating an open-world metaverse where users can log in to play games, earn tokens, which users can use to purchase NFTs or collectibles, and vote on economic governance or create NFTs. DAO is the new social construct where the power of the governance is taken away from the centralized body and given into the peoples’ hands.
Socialogue was founded with the idea of creating a free and fair virtual community where people could not only trade NFTs but also connect, express themselves and be able to make the changes within the platform. Up until recently, such a platform didn’t exist. So we gave ourselves a purpose to build something that denies the rules of the NFT market that have been created by central governance. We are here for the people, and we do believe that certain rules are to be broken. That being said, the only rules our social marketplace has are the values that we are guided by. Which are:
- Equality — as in any democratic country, all members of our community have equal rights to join, vote, and express themselves.
- Integrity — getting hold of our NFT collectibles grants status and the responsibility to be an active and respectful member of the community.
- Community — is the absolute foundation of our ETHOS. We’re stronger when we are together. And only together can we shake the virtual world.
Each member of the Senate has the right to offer their suggestions on improving the community has the right to vote and express themselves freely. This democratic social NFT marketplace rules are simple — one DAO Senator has one vote.
In this way, we contribute to the bright future of DAO — soon enough, we will be taking it to The Metaverse.
The dark side of The Metaverse
Although you can often find The Metaverse in literature being glorified as a utopian society, metaverses are more oftene dystopian — virtual refuges from a fallen world.
As for now, the prospects of virtual refugees are small. The real threat is the real-life criminals who want to profit instead of build. So they create a distrust before it all properly kicked off by scamming and stealing people’s art, money and hopes.
Digital safety in The Metaverse
It’s all about the data. Of course, how data is shared within virtual worlds will need to be considered more carefully to ensure privacy. But the, entities like The Metaverse will be almost fully integrated into our daily lives, and the more personal data it has — the more personalized experience we receive. So, as much as we can be careful with our data — it will get out there. Therefore, we need serious measures to contain it.
The key is to address the necessity of constructing trusted ecosystems within the technologies developed for the Metaverse. These trusted ecosystems will come into life by building algorithms, structures, frameworks, regulations, and policies within hardware and software development cycles of The Metaverse to address the elements of safety, privacy, and security within the DNA of the technology.
The thorough user verification process is a more straightforward measure that can and has already been taken. In this way, the person can’t pretend to be someone else, and if a cyber-crime or an art theft is committed — the person will be held responsible.
Conclusion
Balancing on the verge between the ultimate humanized virtual experience and the stuff of nightmares of a dystopian society, The Metaverse is coming, whether you like it or not. It will still be a matter of entertainment and prestige for the next few years, but the same as The Internet changed the world as we know it — The Metaverse is likely to do the same.
