The metaverse can be summarised as a combination of virtual reality and a digital world with a framework structured around the internet.
The term, Metaverse, was coined by Neal Stephenson’s 1992 cyberpunk novel, Snow Crash. Described as, “imaginary places that’s made available to the public over the worldwide fibre-optics network”.
It was detailed that, in the novel, developers can “build buildings, parks, signs, as well as things that do not exist in Reality, such as vast hovering overhead light shows, special neighbourhoods where the rules of three-dimensional spacetime are ignored, and free-combat zones where people can go to hunt and kill each other.”
Over the years, there have been a plethora of attempts at creating the metaverse in online games and networks.
Metaverse and Popular Culture
Metaverse is a term that is commonly tied to the sci-fi genre, with many people imagining the metaverse to be as futuristic as it appears in movies and books such as Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One. Whilst we may not be close to such a Black Mirror-esque type of exciting/scary immersion, decentralised applications, especially in gaming, have begun to pave the way forward.
Blockchain-based games like Axie Infinity and The Sandbox have bridged the economic world between the virtual and real-world through digital tokens for in-game use.
For example, in Axie Infinity, players breed and battle with Axies (in-game creatures) similarly to Pokemon, earning Smooth Love Potion (SLP) as a reward. Now, SLP is a cryptocurrency that can be traded for real money on exchanges.
NFTs
Non-fungible tokens, commonly referred to as NFTs, are also paving the way toward a metaverse. NFTs can be used to express all virtual assets or items and are also effective by providing them with real-world monetary value. Further development of blockchain gaming and other virtual experiences will be able to effectively integrate these tokens into society.
There are already a number of regular video games such as Fortnite that utilise in-game economies, where people can buy and sell goods within the game and use fiat currency to buy these virtual goods – although they generally have no real-world value.
NFTs can bridge these in-game assets to real-world value, with virtual world games like Decentraland having property NFTs that players are selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Many large-scale, triple-A standard games, such as Star Atlas and Illuvium, are in development featuring expansive NFT economies.
The Facebook Influence
Tech giants such as Facebook (now Meta), Google, Microsoft and Samsung are already beginning their development into the metaverse. With Facebook’s rebrand to Meta, it’s still not 100% clear whether Zuckerberg’s interpretation of the metaverse matches that of originator Neal Stephenson.
Zuckerberg re-introduced the term to the market in his Facebook Connect keynote in October 2021, describing, “the best way to understand the metaverse is to experience it yourself, but it’s a little tough because it doesn’t fully exist yet.”
Although, he did explain his plan for the Metaverse is to be an, “even more immersive and embodied internet [where] you’re gonna be able to do almost anything you can image – get together with friend and family, work, learn, play, shop, create – as well as entirely new categories that don’t really fit how we think about computers or phones today.”
“In this future, you will be able to teleport instantly as a hologram to be at the office without a commute, at a concert with friends, or in your parent’s living room to catch up,” wrote Zuckerberg in a letter announcing the rebrand.
Seemingly farfetched to onlookers, only time, resources, and technological advances will showcase what Zuckerberg’s ultimate goal is with the metaverse.
As the scope of the digital world expands, it will provide more opportunities for people to interact and grow with it. It is without a doubt that cryptocurrencies and NFTs will be essential to provide an incentive for people to invest their time and energy into this space, and hopefully provide a gateway to realising the metaverse – whatever that may look like.
