Metaverse — A Virtual Ecosystem beyond place and physical evidence
Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, AR / VR technology, AI, and Cloud Technology are different puzzle pieces coming together to create the ‘Internet of the future’ or what is now popularly known as ‘Web3.0’.
The emergence of this new age is fuelled further by the global pandemic that has seen a massive shift in consumer behavior and driven the growth of internet adoption across regions. In the past couple of years, people have turned to their smartphones, tablets, or PCs to do almost any or all their tasks. Web3.0 has truly given meaning to the expression — ‘world at your fingertips’.
According to a new study on Scotsman.com, an average person spends 59 hours a week using the Internet - that’s about eight-and-a-half hours daily and about 128 days annually. It includes the time spent on the Internet — working/studying, browsing social media, streaming content, playing video games, and online shopping.
According to the Global Internet Overview January 2022 by DataReportal, Hootsuite, and We are Social — a total of 4.9 billion people are active internet users, roughly about 62.5% of the global population. In the figure below, we have summarised some noteworthy indicators which reinstate our belief that the digital ecosystem is the future. For companies that create technology solutions or are actively looking to develop new media technology, the market is ripe, and leading global giants like — Amazon, Microsoft, Meta (previously known as Facebook), NETFLIX, Google, and Nvidia, are heavily invested in creating their own digital ecosystem or their own METAVERSE.
Metaverse — An Immersive Experience
In broad terms, the metaverse is a ‘place’ where people come together within millions of experiences to learn, work, socialize, create, play or entertain.
You can be anybody — a farmer tending to your farmland, growing crops, taking care of your poultry, going to the farmers market, buying more land or animals, or a space rocket blasting rocks, a street fighter, a speed racer, or exploring different worlds and building new things. In the gaming world, you can choose your avatar, choose your quest, and make your own adventure.
Online Gaming is what introduced the masses to the concept of Metaverse, but this digital ecosystem at the moment encompasses all forms of digital content we consume as users daily and enables us to experience more — beyond the constraints of place and physical evidence.
The pandemic saw schools, shopping malls, corporate offices, movie theatres, musical concerts, and more going into lockdown, and globally people turned to the digital platforms to continue having these experiences. Fortunately, the technology to enable life-like experiences was already in development, and the world got hooked on to the metaverse.
Metaverse makes it possible for people to have millions of different experiences with different kinds of IoT devices — mobile, PCs, consoles, virtual assistants, voice automated AI, VR headsets, and more.
In the digital ecosystem, you can now —
- Work remotely — Attend business meetings, industry conferences, participate in group activities
- Play video games — Single or multiplayer games, with your close circle of friends or with anyone across the globe, digital formats of in-person board games have become widely popular, and some esports tournaments have been organized with all players playing from different locations.
- Learn — Virtual classrooms and online classes are hugely popular across students of different ages, fields of expertise, and specializations.
- Shop — Users can buy anything online; online marketplace and social commerce sites allow people to shop for everything from electronic items, daily groceries, medicines, furniture, real estate, luxury items, and more.
- Entertain — Watch live Sports, events, concerts, movies, TV shows on streaming channels and different broadcasting platforms.
- Socialize — Social Media platforms help people stay informed, interact and engage with each other remotely from across different locations. Dating sites and virtual chat rooms also help people socialize and engage with each other in a digital sphere.
All these things make up the Metaverse, but the applications are not limited to the ones mentioned here. Metaverse is more of an evolutionary process. Tech-innovators are constantly pushing boundaries and redefining what’s possible in the metaverse.
The Creator’s Economy on the rise
The US Global Investors have claimed that the metaverse is a $1 trillion revenue opportunity.
“The metaverse will become the next generation platform to replace the mobile internet. We expect the metaverse TAM to be expansive and go beyond the current online consumption market, which is mainly dominated by e-commerce and online entertainment spending.”
- Morgan Stanley
Metaverse, the next big technology platform, has companies and investors bustling around trying to create a virtual 3D world that is social, persistent, and shared. There is a massive market opportunity up for grabs which is quickly being claimed by game developers/publishers, social media channels, content streaming platforms, and other leading technology leaders.
Metaverse has opened up new revenue streams, as web 3.0 enables the physical and digital realms to converge with real-time technology, for example–
Blockchain & Cryptocurrency — Cryptocurrency enables value-based transactions in the metaverse, users can make purchases while they work, socialize or experience the 3D digital world, and blockchain technology provides a decentralized and transparent solution for digital proof of ownership, collectability, transfer of value, governance, accessibility, and interoperability.
Artificial Intelligence — Tracking experiences and transactions to create a platform that is premeditated to follow through with almost all variations of a user’s online behavior and replicating those actions.
AR & VR — Augmented Reality allows users to embed virtual objects into the ‘real’ physical world; Virtual Reality creates a life-like experience using 3D computer modeling graphic designs that lets anyone get immersed in a 3D-virtual environment.
3D reconstruction/modeling — One of the challenges for the metaverse is to create a digital environment that appears as close to our real world as possible. With the help of 3D reconstruction, it can create realistic and natural-looking spaces. Through special 3D cameras, we can take our world online by rendering accurate 3D photorealistic models of buildings, physical locations, and objects. The 3D spatial data and 4K HD photography are then passed to computers to process and generate a virtual replica in the metaverse for users to experience. These virtual replicas of physical world objects can also be referred to as digital twins.
Factors detrimental in the future of the metaverse
- Development of 5G network coverage
- Growing interest and adoption of various AR / VR technologies
- Standardization of digital currency across all digital platforms
- Development and adoption of cloud technology
Conclusion
We at Rocket Capital believe Metaverse is laying the ground for a true tech revolution, that will redefine the way we live, work, and play in modern times. If you are excited about this new media technology and want to share your experience, please reach out to us at mark@rocket.capital and akarsh@rocket.capital.
In the next article, we will explore the scope of the metaverse, the technologies that are being developed, and different industries evolving due to these new tech applications.
About Rocket Capital
Rocket Capital is a VC fund investing in New Media Technology start-ups. We invest in pre-Series A, Series A, and Series B stages, and are open to investing earlier/later if we have strong conviction in the idea and founders, and when we can contribute our expertise to expand it to Asia.
Latest investment news from Rocket Capital — Admix raises $25M Series B to scale up in-game ads, and prep for metaverse gaming
