Metaverse: the next big thing in the internet revolution - Issue #6
Fortnite, a world of many experiences where players can create their own set of rules in the virtual universe hit the front page of the internet last year after launching a virtual concert series with a live performance from popular artists like Dominic Fike, Steve Aoki, Deadmau5 and Kenshi Yonezu. These events pull together tens of millions of Fortnite players into the arena.
What makes it beyond amazing was the state-of-the-technology involved to produce massive LED walls, floors and robocams that can be operated remotely. The events were amazing, no doubt. But here comes another killer news.
Most recently Mark Zuckerberg announced the vision of transforming Facebook into a “metaverse company” relative to social media company like how many see them today.
“In the coming years, I expect people will transition from seeing us primarily as a social media company to seeing us as a metaverse company. In many ways, the metaverse is the ultimate expression of social technology.” - Mark Zuckerberg, Bloomberg.com
He’s not the only CEO that possesses that vision. Following suits are tech giants like Apple, Amazon and Microsoft. Microsoft’s Satya Nadella visualized exactly the same during Microsoft’s earnings call too.
So what exactly is metaverse and why is it such a big deal?
On the origin of metaverse
Metaverse is not entirely a newly created jargon. In fact, it has been there since the early 1990s by Neil Stephenson through his science fiction novel called Snow Crash where the plot took place in a three-dimensional arena that employs the metaphor of the actual world, humans interact with each other and software agents as avatars. The phrase was coined by Stephenson to characterize a virtual reality-based Internet substitute. It was then reconceptualized in Ready Player One as Oasis in the novel written by Ernest Cline.
Theoretically, metaverse pictures to a wide range of virtual experiences, locations, and assets that grew in popularity during the pandemic's digital shift. These new technologies, when combined, point to what the internet will become in the future.
But it’s still very early days for the metaverse community as there is still a lot to unchain. For example, how’d we describe it? Is it a virtual world? Spatial internet? Virtual reality? It may be difficult to clearly pinpoint the precise answer to it now. However, it’s possible to pick out core attributes associate with it.
Ex-Amazon Studio executive and current Venture Partner of Makers Fund, Matthew Ball categorize those attributes into several components:
It never stops and will always be living regardless of place and time. (Persistence)
Participants in the Metaverse will be able to engage with each other and the digital world synchronously, responding to their virtual environment and one another in the same way that they would in the physical world. (Synchronicity)
Everyone will be able to log on at the same time, and there will be no limit on the number of people who can participate. (Availability)
Participants will be able to trade goods and services for the value that is accepted by others. (Fully functioning economy)
Information and assets will be accessible and interchangeable across many digital worlds and settings. (Interoperability)
The NFT opportunity
The metaverse will evolve into a fundamental component of all physical experiences, as well as the next great labor platform. Forever and a day, developed economies have changed as the scarcity of labor and real estate went through peaks and valleys. In the metaverse world, aspiring laborers living outside of cities will be able to engage in the "high value" market via virtual labor. We'll see further disruptions in where we live, the infrastructure that's constructed, and who performs specific jobs as more consumer spending switches to virtual products, services, and experiences.
Yield Guild Games (YGG), a decentralized gaming startup is a great example that enabling those upward social mobilities. YGG bills itself as a "play-to-earn platform" luring users to its platform in the hopes of earning tokens via blockchain-based economics. The concept allows players to earn real money by playing games. Players can gain incentives like in-game assets and tokens by actively engaging in virtual world economies, which they can subsequently trade or sell if they so want.
Axie Infinity is an example of a play-to-earn game offered by YGG.
The company that just recently crossed $1 billion in all-time sales, is an online video game developed by Sky Davis that lets users earn money by purchasing, breeding, and selling digital creatures known as “Axies”. Each Axie is minted as an NFT, allowing gamers to verify the digital creature's originality on the blockchain. By defeating other players, players receive an in-game token called "Smooth Love Potion" (SLP). SLP is necessary to “breed” new Axies in the game.
A few years ago in the gig economy, there’s this phenomenon of the various companies that were renting assets to potential gig workers. For example, if you were an Uber driver and you don’t have a car, there’s a company that renting out cars to those prospective drivers and doing a revenue-sharing model. To put into perspective, think of YGG as the digital metaverse version of those companies in the sense that they lending Axies to prospective players in such a way they can participate and play the game and start earning income.
How far are we from reaching the true potential of metaverse?
There are still a number of roadblocks in the way of a true metaverse. Hardware constraints are the most significant roadblocks: global networking and processing capabilities are currently insufficient to sustain a perpetual digital environment that can be accessed in real-time by millions of synchronous users.
Although this level of connectivity and processing capacity were accessible, the energy usage of such a project would pose a threat to national power systems as well as the environment. When technology is adequate, significant cultural changes are required to encourage the emergence of a robust metaverse. For example, VR and AR technologies of quite high quality are currently accessible to customers, however, less than 20% of Americans have tried them out.
This metaverse is going to be far more pervasive and powerful than anything else. If one central company gains control of this, they will become more powerful than any government on Earth. - Tim Sweeney