To the metaverse… and beyond!
🔭Into the metaverse
A term coined by author Neal Stephenson in his seminal work Snow Crash, the metaverse is certainly a word whose reputation precedes it. But whereas Stephenson’s metaverse was meant to replace the real world, our metaverse is meant to run alongside and enrich it.
You might think of virtual neon cityscapes, impossibly endless bazaar-like marketplaces, or something out of The Matrix and Ready Player One. And in some respects, at least aesthetically, you wouldn’t be wrong. The environment that companies making the metaverse are working to provide is rich and exciting, if not altogether overwhelming. In its nascency, this concept is already a deep one to dive into. And as time goes on and its popularity rises, as with many hot topics in crypto, the metaverse is becoming ever more important to understand. So, without further ado, let us venture… into the metaverse!
TL;DR
The metaverse is the concept of a virtual world where users can buy and sell goods and services as well as collaborate with each other. The prospect of truly ownable assets have been made possible with blockchain technology and the advent of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) which itself has led to a rather recent explosion of development and interest in the metaverse as a place that can supplement and enrich the real world while also existing alongside it.
What does “metaverse” even mean?
At its most basic level, a “metaverse” is a virtual world that parallels our own. At its most literal, it means a universe that is meta-, or beyond, our own! Now, before we cue the sci-fi music and binary code starts raining down, we do want to say that the concept of the metaverse has so many applications beyond being a sort of replication of a physical world, and is much less far out than you might think.
Medtech, social media companies like Meta, other Silicon Valley tech companies, and of course video game developers have been experimenting with applying the metaverse concept to their own businesses.
A bit of context
As mentioned in the intro, the metaverse is certainly not a new concept. And even in the Internet’s nascency (aka Web2), there have been many iterations of what you could define as a metaverse.
Metaverse pre-cursors
The most famous example you will come across is Second Life, a virtual environment launched in 2003 that gives players a virtual equivalent of real-world experiences that they can access with their very own avatars. What this virtual world does is give its users virtual replications of things like movie-going experiences, nights out clubbing, as well as fostering a richer analog of other online experiences such as role-playing communities and community forums. It also offers collectible items in a virtual marketplace that your avatar can use. If this sounds at all familiar, it’s because many of these things, and more, are what the metaverse companies of today are striving to provide. And when it comes to digital collectibles, the ownership is made a reality by the blockchain.
After Second Life, came another virtual world by the name of Roblox, but this time with gaming as a focus. And looking through the lens of the present, we can already see these past ideas giving the modern metaverse its shape. I.e. projects such as Sandbox (which we will discuss a bit more a bit later) that are building a gaming platform on top of a virtual world.
Today, these previously presented concepts are made more immersive, and thus more viable through technology such as VR headsets and NFTs.
Why are we already seeing commercials about the metaverse?
By now, it’s a bit of an open secret that metaverses will have a huge impact on how we interact across the internet, game, and even design products and other real-world objects. It’s for this reason that Meta, Facebook’s parent company and an already looming player in the metaverse, has begun releasing ads for its version of the metaverse, most notably its ad for the 2022 Super Bowl.
In a sort of ironic twist, another reason for the high spend may very well also be the expectation of metaverses to become potent platforms for advertisers themselves. Makes sense, right? The concept of these virtual worlds are to be something with digital analogs like marketplaces, live events, and real estate. And if these worlds are traversable just like our own physical world, it becomes very logical that advertising space would also exist here.
Some big players
It’s already been mentioned a couple of times throughout this article, so you already know we’re going to say Meta, but to start, let’s look at the other companies looking to build the metaverse.
Nvidia
Graphics processor company Nvidia has been steadily stepping into the metaverse by producing technology like Omniverse, which allows for remote collaboration between product designers, visual effects artists and architects. Omniverse allows for the connection of different design software via a virtual space, and Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, has made it known that he sees NFTs as one of the concepts enabling the metaverse.
The Sandbox
Ethereum-based gaming platform Sandbox has a lot of firepower behind it, being that it’s owned by Animoca Brands, a gaming venture capital company based out of Hong Kong. Community-driven and with the goal of allowing users to monetize their gaming experiences, Sandbox is a very popular platform with a very aspirational roadmap, including offering The Sandbox on consoles as well as boasting 1,000 games on the platform in 2022.
Decentraland
A 3D, virtual space built on Ethereum, Decentraland is one of the most recognizable metaverse projects within the crypto space. LAND is the project’s non-fungible expression of a virtual plot of land, which is wholly owned by users. The transactions of LAND and MANA, Decentraland’s token and ecosystem currency, are recorded on the Ethereum blockchain. The project’s goal is to build a virtual world that is owned by the users and on which people can buy, sell or exchange goods and services, both virtual and real.
And of course, Meta
Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has been hard at work building out their metaverse as part of the future of social interaction. Meta’s exact plans toward building on a blockchain are yet to be detailed, but products such as the Novi wallet which users can use to buy and sell crypto, as well as the very recent news that Instagram will soon be able to host NFTs, added to the fact that, according to the Meta announcement on their website, “Meta’s focus will be to bring the metaverse to life and help people connect, find communities and grow businesses”, the metaverse and the NFTs within seem to be in the company’s future. In fact, with regards to Meta’s security and privacy, founder Mark Zuckerberg mentioned that Meta’s metaverse would involve “supporting crypto and NFT projects in the community”.
The NFT connection
How do we make the virtual world more real? One piece of that puzzle is to ensure the ownership of the assets within it. In come NFTs, which is a concept that itself has been a hot topic as of late. Take Decentraland as an example, which utilizes NFTs to represent things like wearable items and virtual land. If we think about someone’s online persona in the context of an NFT, it becomes a bit more obvious how something non-fungible would play an important role in making the metaverse a place where users can represent themselves as well as trade things of real value.
Real-estate
Right now, NFTs are most known for describing the rights to art pieces and music, but what about real estate? Because metaverses can be traversable, host marketplaces and live events, the real estate on which these sorts of things happen has become a hot commodity. This is why projects like The Sandbox have had the likes of Adidas, Snoop Dogg and Gucci purchase LAND on their platform. LAND ownership is expressed through non-fungible tokens, or NFTs.
Gaming
In-game collectibles have been a popular mechanism within the gaming industry for some time now. The reason being that they give a feeling of accomplishment and ownership in the game, which in turn can make it more real. With an NFT representing an in-game collectible, that feeling is no longer merely a feeling, but a reality. With the metaverse, in-game NFTs become even more powerful, with a metaverse acting as a bridge between different games and bringing a rich amount of interaction between them. If this weren’t exciting enough, it appears that numerous titans within the gaming industry such as Unity, Microsoft, and Sony are getting involved in the metaverse. As of right now, many gaming titans are entering virtual worlds through VR, but if the excitement over gaming in crypto is any indicator, we soon might see concepts such as blockchain-based gaming and NFTs pop up in these companies’ metaverse offerings as well.
Other Possible applications
The future of online interaction?
When considering the possibility that the future’s social networking might take place predominantly in the metaverse, let’s go back to Second Life. The early predecessor, although not a current global hit, has proven that there is demand for a more immersive, “real” experience when it comes to social media.
And already, companies like Meta are trumpeting that they are building the future of online interaction. And they’re likely right. The metaverse’s place, when it comes to social media, is to provide a richer experience than the one we have now. Why might this be? Well, simply put, there will be more to do with your friends and family in the virtual world than on a website. Things like movie-going, concerts, shopping trips, gaming, can all take place in our world’s virtual counterpart.
Virtual workspaces
In another universe, this application may not really have gotten a second look, but in the age of globalization and in a world that has undergone many changes due to the coronavirus pandemic, people from all over the world are working together… from home. In a highly collaborative environment such as architecture or product design, there is a real need for a shared space between colleagues where they can visualize and manipulate the objects they are designing. This need is what makes virtual reality, and the metaverse, a prime candidate to become the standard for digital workplaces.
And when talking about protecting a company’s designs, their IP, and even logging the who, what, where, and when of who has been working on any particular project, an immutable ledger comes quite in handy. A metaverse workspace that functions on the blockchain utilizes NFTs to express ownership would be a mighty powerful tool for the new, already quite digital world we live in.
Gaming
As you might have guessed with our mention of Decentraland, The Sandbox, as well as gaming giants such as Microsoft and Sony, the metaverse lends itself exceptionally well to gaming. In particular, building a gaming platform in the metaverse where in-game items can travel between games and be truly by the players is something that is an actively enticing concept to a lot of gaming projects in the space. And because the metaverse can be accessed through VR, the entirety of the experience is very immersive.
And we can’t mention the allure of gaming without mentioning an idea that has been growing rapidly in popularity: Play-to-earn.
This added dimension to gaming makes players feel even more connected when they know they can earn project tokens or NFTs simply through playing and supporting their favorite games. Not only this, but play-to-earn also helps build up an in-game economy, helping the projects and the players at the same time.
…And beyond! The future of the metaverse🚀
As the ideas outlined above become integrated with and adopted by the tech giants, and as they become more well-developed by the crypto projects bringing them to life, we may very well see their presence in more and more facets of daily life. Sandbox, for instance, plans to have a presence on gaming consoles, so imagine being able to play a blockchain-based game on your PlayStation or Xbox, and furthermore be able to monetize that! If you are a remote worker for an architecture or product design firm, you may very well find yourself designing, collaborating, and holding meetings with your colleagues in a virtual workspace. And your favorite music artist’s next world tour may be making a stop in a rather new place: the metaverse.
Metaverse-related tokens on Poloniex
On Poloniex, we have listed a multitude of projects that are building the metaverse, such as Decentraland (MANA), The Sandbox (SAND) and Star Atlas (POLIS). As the metaverse gets built and excitement builds, there is no better time to take a look at which projects you might want to support. Sign-up is easy! Just hop on over to https://poloniex.com/signup/ to start your crypto journey and invest in the metaverse!
