What is the metaverse?

The early Internet was almost entirely text-based, with hyperlinks used to navigate between pages of text. Over time, it became more graphic until Internet applications such as Gmail, Facebook, Instagram, etc., became the norm. All this progress still happened on screens (2-dimensional surfaces), but people live in a 3-dimensional world.

The metaverse can be seen as the next phase in the evolution of the Internet. The metaverse is the Internet mediated by graphically rich 3D spaces with an increasing focus on virtual and augmented reality.

Metaverse origin

The term metaverse was coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel Snow Crash. In the novel, the metaverse is a virtual reality world, which, according to Wikipedia, “appears to its users as an urban environment, developed along a single hundred-meter-wide road, the Street, that runs around the entire 65,536 km circumference of a featureless, black, perfectly spherical planet.” The metaverse is experienced from a first-person perspective via virtual reality goggles.

Pieces of the metaverse have existed up to this point. Below we go over some of these proto-metaverses.

Immersive games like Second Life, World of Warcraft and Eve Online are what many conjure up when they think trying to imagine what the metaverse will be – and for good reason. All of these games have rich 3D worlds where your avatar can interact with others, but each has a different focus. Second Life focuses on social. World of Warcraft focuses on fun – it’s a game first. Eve Online focuses on economy.

Social networking platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok aren’t often thought of as proto-metaverse, but they are. Facebook is basically a mini internet unto itself. Although not graphically immersive, Facebook content has become increasingly image-based. Facebook is in the process of becoming graphically immersive by spinning hard into the metaverse, even going as far as rebranding itself as Meta. YouTube and TikTok are both social networks with a main emphasis on video, which is much more immersive than text.

Define the Metaverse

The metaverse needs three equally important components: immersive graphical interfaces, interconnected networks, and cryptoassets. Where two circles overlap, you get an incomplete metaverse. Only when all three overlap in the middle do you get a fully formed metaverse. Let’s look at all the different categories and overlaps.

Immersive Graphical Interfaces: Many articles explaining the metaverse claim that virtual or augmented reality is necessary for a metaverse. This is simply not true. If that technology matures enough to be as integral to life as a smartphone, virtual or augmented reality may become the accepted way of getting around in the metaverse, but it doesn’t have to be. Many 3D games offer an immersive gaming experience.

Interconnected Networks: This is another way of saying, “the Internet,” which is a global multitude of networks glued together. Some parts of the internet are more controlled than others, such as those in authoritarian countries. Large parts of the internet are walled off, like the data in Facebook. The metaverse today will be as diverse as the internet. Some parts will be wild and uninhibited. Others will be manicured and highly controlled.

Crypto Assets: Cryptocurrencies and other digital assets provide a layer of money as well as a way to create digital scarcity. Digital scarcity suddenly makes it possible to have online digital ownership, a crucial component of a sustained world online. Digital ownership allows people to traverse the disparate networks that make up the current Internet while maintaining a coherent personality.

GameFi: A cross between immersive graphical interfaces and cryptoassets, GameFi are games that integrate cryptoassets into the gameplay mechanic loop. The first breakout category of games from this mix is ​​Play-to-Earn (P2E) games, such as Axi Infinity. GameFi is still very young, and most of the games seem less about having fun, and more about making money. Expect this to change over time as more traditional gaming companies get involved. Games have become more and more of a social experience, and one that has pushed more and more into the physical world over time. Virtually every game made these days has a multiplayer component, or it fails completely. Games like Pokémon Go! requires you to traverse the physical world to play. Expect this trend to accelerate in the metaverse.

Gaming Platforms: A mix of immersive graphical interfaces and interconnected networks produces things like gaming platforms and MMORPGs. Platforms like Steam and Epic Game Store are less graphically immersive but very interconnected. That’s changing with things like Steam’s VR interface. It includes PC, MAC and mobile networks, with thousands of games, a social network, review sites and individual stores. MMORPGs are very immersive graphical interfaces for fantastical worlds. Games like World of Warcraft and EVE Online are feature rich. EVE Online can count especially as a gaming platform, as it has a complex economy.

DeFi: Crypto assets distributed over interconnected networks, or blockchains, make up DeFi. DeFi builds an alternative financial system parallel to the legacy financial system. DeFi replicates many of the financial instruments and services that the legacy financial system gives people access to, but the legacy financial system gives access primarily to people in developed countries.

Metaverse: Combine immersive graphical interfaces, interconnected networks and cryptoassets, you get the future of the Internet. An Internet much like the one we have now, but with more personal power, naturally intuitive interfaces (for humans), and the place that will more and more invade the physical world.

How Crypto Fits into the Metaverse

Crypto was the last missing component of the metaverse. Crypto introduced the idea of ​​digital scarcity, which enables digital ownership. Many components of crypto will play crucial parts in the metaverse.

Asset Management: With the help of crypto wallet software, you can manage your online data and digital assets yourself. From now on, every internet-based company owns your data. This includes text and photos, but also things like your social graph – the unique network of connections and reputation you’ve built on that service. You may be able to download your text and data, but the social graph is not portable. These internet companies don’t work together, so your online presence is fragmented and uneven across all the different internet platforms. Crypto asset management allows you to control your data and use it across any service that supports it.

Controlling your data is very important when that data takes the form of crypto-assets, which can be worth tens, or hundreds, or millions of dollars!

Read more: What is a self storage wallet?

Cryptocurrencies: Cryptoassets that are monetary, for example Bitcoin and stablecoins, will be an important part of an online-first economy. Games like Eve Online or services like Steam have money-like digital assets, but the “money” is one hundred percent controlled by the company. The company can create, destroy or revoke that money whenever they want. Additionally, the company could go bankrupt, or decide to abandon the game in favor of a sequel. Cryptocurrencies are widely accepted beyond one company’s ecosystem. They are also cross border.

NFTs: NFTs allow you to manage your digital assets yourself – from clothes and weapons for your avatar, to pieces of real estate in virtual worlds. They can represent digital art such as photos, music and videos. They can even act as tickets to special invitation-only virtual worlds, games, guilds and communities. People are just now starting to explore how to use NFTs. Just like with the internet in the 90s, it is hard to imagine how it will be used ten years into the future.