What Will Become of the Metaverse?

Key Insights

• The Metaverse has the potential to change the way we live our everyday lives.
• People will be able to earn real money in the virtual worlds, doing things they already do in their everyday lives.
• Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have re-shaped the way we think about digital ownership and play a major role in the overall Metaverse.

Throughout the past few years, specifically within the crypto space, there has been a lot of hype surrounding the Metaverse. However, this hype has started leaking into the mainstream, especially with companies such as Facebook rebranding to Meta and pushing their own Metaverse in front of the eyes of millions of users from the pre-existing platforms that they own.

However, the Metaverse is still in its infancy in the eyes of a lot of people, and today, we will be taking a deeper look inside the world of the Metaverse to see how far it can go in the near future.

The Metaverse in a Nutshell

Before we move on deeper, these are the key metaverse terms that everyone needs to know:

• Interoperability – the ability for a virtual experience to travel unchanged across different platforms.
• Decentralization – distributed ownership, not controlled by a central authority.
• Non-Fungible Token (NFT) – a token that is fully unique and used as a certificate of authenticity.
• Digital Twins – physical spaces that have been cloned in the Metaverse.
• Extended Reality – augmented, virtual and mixed reality into one.
• Web3 – the future web, which is decentralized, blockchain-based, and enables a seamless transition from the physical world to the virtual world.
• Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) – are community-led digital organizations that utilize blockchain technology.
• Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality (AR/VR) – computer-generated simulations that integrate the real world or are entirely self-contained.

With that out of the way, let’s dive into the Metaverse.

For the time being, the Metaverse is essentially a simulation, a virtual environment, that takes advantage of numerous pre-existing technologies as a means of making the overall experience that it provides as authentic as possible. These include Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and Blockchain Technology.

Alongside these three main pillars of technology, there are also two-dimensional digital spaces that we currently have and use on a daily basis as they are easily accessible.

Anyone, assuming they have a cryptocurrency wallet, can connect to these pre-existing metaverses and exist virtually within an immersive world that is occasionally inhabited by people.

Content creators can, at any point in time, create unique opportunities and showcase their artistic prowess within these virtual worlds when given the opportunity to do so. Each metaverse character that a user has is a virtual representation of them, and they can modify these virtual characters in any way they see fit, within the limitations of that world.

The main way through which blockchain technology made this concept of a virtual world far more realistic is that it gave actual value to the in-world items. Everything a person gets in the virtual world is in the form of a non-fungible token (NFT), and this means that they can be bought, sold, and traded for cryptocurrencies that can, later on, be converted into real-world usable FIAT currencies such as USD, GBP, AUD, EUR and so on.

However, the real fascination in the eyes of many comes with metaverses that are built on blockchain networks that are interoperable. What this means is that you can essentially collect a wearable in one Metaverse, transfer it to your cryptocurrency wallet, and then re-use it in another metaverse that supports that same token standard.

This isn’t the case for in-game items that have specific stats, just for wearables, but it is a fascinating thought and opportunity on offer from blockchain technology.

The Future of the Metaverse

Ever since the creation of the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain network, we have seen numerous innovations within the decentralized finance space (DeFi), from Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), to stablecoins and decentralized exchanges, there has been a consistent level of progression and evolution within the space.

The Metaverse is similar in this regard, as it is also consistently being developed and improved upon, and this level of active development will contribute to a better future for the technology.

Today, the Metaverse is used within GameFi, Social Interaction, Media and Entertainment, and Virtual Tourism, to name a few use-cases.

This is a space that is constantly being developed and built upon, and in the future, we could see people work and live their everyday lives within the Metaverse, especially with the rise of Play-to-Earn (P2E) gaming, where the value contributed by players within the virtual world is valued in the form of both a native cryptocurrency token found within that world, as well as any NFT that they generate.

Everything won within P2E games can be traded for another cryptocurrency that can be converted into FIAT currencies. This means that users can earn in the Metaverse, do their day jobs there, and live out their lives whilst also getting paid for it in a similar way as they would if they worked, traveled, or played in the real world.

An exciting future is ahead of us, and the Metaverse is likely one of the most engaging and fascinating technologies right alongside NFTs, which can re-shape the way we perceive Web 3.0 and is an indication of what kind of leap we can expect from the current infrastructure seen in Web 2.0.

Blockchain technology, cryptocurrencies, and NFTs also play an essential role in the realization and maintenance of the overall Metaverse, as all of these technologies, when brought together, also enable the people within those virtual worlds to have full control and ownership over everything they do, instead of centralized authorities.