The iNFiniTe Metaverse, Part 1: Real Life 2.0
The iNFiniTe Metaverse, Part 1: Real Life 2.0
How Foundational Will NFTs Be to the Metaverse?
What is the Metaverse?
The term “Metaverse” has gained a lot of attention over the past several months. Many big tech players like Meta (formerly Facebook) and Microsoft announced plans to become “Metaverse companies,” but what exactly does that mean? Even today, the word is still so nebulous and conceptual. Ask ten different people what the Metaverse is and you’ll get ten different answers, although I’m sure the aforementioned Web 2.0 giants would have no problem selling us their experiences/products as the one true “Metaverse.” However, I know many of us want to get “un-Zucked” - to shed the current monopolistic, corporate models built on extracting value from users for the benefit of shareholders. With that, let’s explore what many think will make up the true Metaverse - one already being built on open, empowering tools of Web3, particularly cryptocurrencies and NFTs.
In this article, we will:
Learn where the term Metaverse comes from, where we’re at today, and what forms it could take in the future.
Gain vital concepts from the most foundational thinkers and resources on the topic, how impactful it will be to your life, and why .
Understand why the Metaverse must be built on decentralized Web3 technologies (cryptocurrencies, and NFTs); not just more powerful infrastructure and immersive experiences (AR/VR).
It’s Just a New Virtual Reality Game, Right?
When I first started exploring the topic more deeply several months ago, I went in with fairly ignorant preconceptions. My view at the time was that the Metaverse would just be the next iteration of real-time multiplayer infinite games - those with tons of rich UGC (user generated content) and high numbers of concurrent users (i.e. Second Life (lol), Minecraft, Fortnite, Roblox, etc.).
Infinite games like these tend to lack primary objectives or quests - there’s no real way to “win,” as opposed to Finite Games such as puzzle, linear narrative, and competitive e-sports games like MMOs (massive multiplayer online games).
The concept also applies to “games” in the real world, such as business and war, as Simon Sinek famously speaks on:
UGC-heavy Metaverse “experience” platforms like Roblox (hard to call them just “games” at this point) are appealing because the experiences are so open and cross-genre -a user can pick and choose from something with action, exploration, narrative, social, business, or whatever other objective they choose to pursue in that moment. They also tend to see more equal adoption across genders and geographical demographics (i.e. Roblox users are 40% female and 68% of players are connecting from outside of North America).
Finally, despite mainstream sometimes referring to these types of UGC platforms as their own “Metaverses,” it might be helpful to instead think of them more like destinations; services and ecosystems within a single Metaverse (just as websites and apps make up the internet, and we don’t call Google and Amazon, “internets,”🤣 but I’ll probably eat these words in the future). Also like the internet today, anyone from any audience can connect with their desired community of shared interests and values through social media - the experience will just be taken to entirely new levels in the Metaverse. 😎
Metaverse: the New Buzz Word from 1992
The deeper I went with my research, the more I realized how flawed my initial perceptions were (big surprise). The most insightful voices I came across (not including fiction), and who greatly influenced the Metaverse criteria which we’ll cover next, were visionaries with an entertainment or technology background, including:
Matthew Ball (media analyst and investor; former Head of Media at Amazon; concepts from his series of nine essays titled, The Metaverse Primer, are heavily referenced in this article, and I highly recommend reading them yourself if you have the time)
Tim Sweeney (CEO and co-founder of Epic Games)
the team at Roblox (led by Matt Curtis, VP of Developer Relations)
the team behind NVIDIA’s Omniverse (led by Jensen Huang, Founder, President, and CEO)
Each have their own take on the concept, but all share similar blueprints for a future Metaverse, with lots of overlap and references to those laid out in Neal Stephenson’s iconic 1992 novel, Snow Crash. Snow Crash was so highly cited, that I felt it was necessary to read it before attempting this article (not an excuse for the delay 😓).
While the Metaverse according to Mark Zuckerberg could very well materialize, I just can’t see governments and populations around the world be willing to give the keys to an even more influential, more intrusive “final boss” form of Facebook (think Ogden Morrow and Gregarious Games from Ready Player One 😣).
By this point, I could see that the Metaverse wasn’t just a game or an escape from reality; it is reality. It is the union of analog and digital existence, and it will revolutionize nearly every aspect of how we live. What we have online today with games, social media, e-commerce, etc. is just an early iteration. It enables us to have fun, make connections, and be “productive” (debatable 😵), regardless of where we are located (as long as we have an internet connection and an account on platforms like Telegram or Discord). However, the current experience is not immersive, and for the most part, is heavily siloed. Permissioned walled gardens in which any value generated, even (or especially) those built on UGC such as Instagram and YouTube, is often owned by the platform - not the users.
“The principle here is every creator owns their original creations and has the right to make the profit from them…”
-Tim Sweeney, Founder and CEO of Epic Games (on how companies will integrate the metaverse)
Characteristics of the Metaverse
In building the Metaverse, the long-term vision should be to create something that we cannot even hope to conceive of today. However, now that we have a grasp on the origins and scope of the Metaverse, we can base our vision on both the ideas put forth in science fiction, and the technological and societal trends of today.
The Metaverse Is:
Immersive 🌎
Massive, interconnected virtual worlds that change over time, and that are scalable to any number of participants.Persistent 🏃♀️
A world always running with nonstop activity; a single shared experience for all participants at all times (whether they are connected or not, with no massive local data storage or patch downloads required).Multiplatform 🔄
A seamless experience on any device, across all platforms - imagine surfing the web, only instead of using a web browser to traverse websites, you are exploring virtual worlds, easily and naturally.Collaborative 🤝
Content is created equitably for and by all participants, from individual users to big brands; a shared, synchronous experience for both creators in the building phase, and for users at runtime.
The Metaverse Has:
Identities 👨👩👧👦
User identities that persist with the users universally across various worlds and platforms. Both directly owned and composable digital assets (i.e. NFTs owned by NFTs owned by users) will be key.Commerce 💰
A functioning economy built on transferrable assets of value (i.e. avatar accessories, digital currencies, etc.) with efficient, cross-platform peer-to-peer markets where users can transact and monetize their creations.Crypto/NFTs make this possible through digitally scarce, secure, censorship-resistant ownership. In some ways, the gamification we’ve seen in DeFi (decentralized finance) and monetization we’ve seen in P2E (play-to-earn) games can almost be seen as test data for metaverse developers to base economic models on.
Governance 🏛
In addition to financial applications, tokens hold great value in community governance - the clear and open agreements coded into smart contracts were made to handle coordination at scale, and unlock forms of democracy and free markets that would be unfeasible or corruptible without them (i.e. quadratic funding).Check out my previous article: The Social Smart Contract, to learn more about the possibilities of decentralized governance and DAOs:
Social Networking 💬
A core component tp any modern online experience is the social network - ideally, one that is community-driven and censorship-resistant (blockchain solves this 👀). With the inevitable progression of mainstream AR/VR, our social experiences in the metaverse will be orders of magnitude richer and deeper than on the 2d browser-based platforms we have today.
Dark Forest Capital of MetaPortal, a Metaverse investment community, summarizes with the following:
Interoperability & Openness
Absolutely key for blockchains and ownership. Interoperability could mean between chains, between real world and digital, between virtual worlds, anything. Openness refers to the open source nature of development in this space. To go far, go together.Innovation
We want to look beyond the hype and contribute to projects that move the space forward, always in pursuit of the qualities listed above. Bonus for combining 2+ technologies together (looking at you Alethea!).Decentralization > Centralization
We value a Metaverse that is built on the principle of decentralizing ownership and democratizing opportunity…be they capital or contribution.
Immersive Technologies
As Matthew Ball emphasizes in his first few essays in the Metaverse Primer on hardware, networking, and compute, nothing would have been possible for devices like the Apple iPhone today without the countless innovations made prior in different sectors. Likewise, a truly immersive and interconnected Metaverse experience will not be possible without many more innovations to come in network infrastructure, AR/VR, etc.
“The Metaverse is often mis-described as virtual reality. This is like saying the mobile internet is the iPhone.”
-Matthew Ball, A Framework for the Metaverse
Immersive 3D VR simulations and AR integration will likely be the preferred way to experience the Metaverse. Picture yourself exploring an infinite number of virtual worlds and interacting with other entities as digital avatars (both humans and bots), either through screens and web browsers, or using dedicated peripherals, such as headsets, for the full experience (note that platforms will likely need to support both to promote inclusion until VR/AR truly goes mainstream).
“Digital twinning” is the process of creating an exact digital re-creation of an object or environment, created by feeding video, images, blueprints and/or other data into advanced 3d mapping software. It has been mostly used for simulation in training and study applications (i.e. mechanical engineering and medicine), and for building real-world physical prototypes (i.e. architecture). The more you know! 🤓👍
With Meta’s announcement in October 2021 to invest $10B on Reality Labs (Meta’s AR/VR hardware, software, and content creation division), the company is obviously trying to position themselves as one of the primary gateways to the Metaverse via the hardware market. It will be an arms race between the Meta Quest (new iteration of the Oculus brand) line of devices, and VR competitors like HTC’s Vive and Sony’s PlayStation VR (and PSVR2, announced at CES 2022), and AR/mixed reality devices like Microsoft’s HoloLens (and their recent partnership with Qualcomm). Meta seems to have an advantage on the Metaverse market, being that they’re already established with users and will cover everything from hardware to content to platform. However, don’t sleep on Microsoft, Apple, Google, and NVIDIA - all are likely to officially become “Metaverse companies,” if not already, each with their own hardware and content strategies to compete with Meta.
Remember that according to our criteria, the Metaverse will support multiple platforms, and will enable users to seamlessly hop from one world to another without the need to swap identities or devices. Even if any of these “Metaverse companies” see success with their hardware sales, the devices themselves should be platform agnostic (like how Steam players can use a device made by HTC). Therefore, users would have the choice to use set experience any Metaverse experience of their choosing, including the blockchain-based platforms, which we’ll touch on next.
As the technology becomes more immersive and plays a greater role in our daily lives, remember that we’re still running on the same physical and neural “human hardware.” It might be easy to slip into the same Web 2.0 social media models today, but deeper digital immersion can increase the impact of any toxicity, and as we cover next, there is even more at stake in the Metaverse when it comes to our individual rights and freedoms.
Decentralization: The Key to Unlocking the Metaverse 🗝
To align with our Metaverse criteria, there is no question in my mind that it must use the innovation of blockchain: Decentralized Ledger technology (DLT). Without it, our Metaverse would likely just be another big-tech data-mining platform, where we, the users, are still the product. In the Web3 space, we are seeing the many exciting virtual world platforms, built on blockchains such as Ethereum, forming a network of platforms that closer meet the criteria of what a true Metaverse experience could look like!
The major blockchain-based metaverse platforms at the moment are Decentraland ($MANA, LAND), The Sandbox ($SAND, LAND), and Cryptovoxels (CVPA), but niche offerings like 2d Runescape-like Treeverse and Worldwide Webb, VR-focused Somnium Space (PARCEL), and up-and-comers like Nifty Island and The Nemesis are attracting attention. 👀 P2E juggernaut, Axie Infinity, also recently got into the virtual land plot game, though this might turn out to be more of a Metaverse-lite: a new (logical) iteration of an Animal Crossing or Farmville style of game, built on NFTs.
You can learn more about blockchain-based Metaverse platforms in my previous articles: NFT Collectibles Primer, Part 1 and Games x NFTs. ✅
I predict that each of these Metaverse platforms (with many more coming, creating an ever-expanding Metaverse) will likely appeal to a specific community or be known as the destination for something special, similar to how cities in the real world are known for specific attractions, and how social media platforms are favored for one particular experience. I could see the various worlds becoming hubs for various communities: i.e. maybe Decentraland will be where the live concerts and most casinos are, and Cryptovoxels could be home to most of the art galleries. 💭 Of course, we’re still very early - some could very well fall into obscurity and become this cycle’s MySpaces and Geocities (“what are those?!” 🧒❓), while the killer Metaverse apps of tomorrow might not even be around yet. Best to keep an open mind and go to where communities are both growing and welcoming (no toxicity allowed!), with a balanced userbase of creators, builders, investors, and cultures.
"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 and be a god on Earth.”
-Tim Sweeney (2016 interview)
Open Source 2.0
“Legislators and companies need to work together on this. You cannot just say, ‘I am a good company, I will never do evil things, just give me your data…”
-Ding Zhao, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon
To have a diverse and thriving Metaverse ecosystem, we must be mindful of interoperability and standards - the same way web has HTTP and Ethereum has ERCs, but on a much wider, more tangible scope. Without them, there would be no metaverse - only a more sticky and immersive version of today’s mobile internet and app stores.
Imagine for a moment if private, for-profit TELCO companies built a gated internet with their own standards. Also remember that Apple was built openly with an empowering vision to start, but is now an all-controlling monolith for anyone developing on its platform (*thinks of Gregarious Games vs James Halliday from Ready Player One 🤔).
Decentralization and open standards go hand-in-hand, and in an ideal future, all transactions and digital assets like NFTs would be usable across any Metaverse platform, and interoperable on any blockchain (i.e. my avatar’s party hat 🥳 in The Sandbox app on Polygon could follow me if I jumped into another virtual world on another network like Solana or Efinity).
In the tech stack, there is reason to be optimistic as we see the biggest companies open their codebases for essentials like AI, rendering/physics, and enterprise blockchain (Consensys Besu).
“Blockchain’s going to be here for a long time and it’s going to be a fundamental new form of computing.”
-Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA (2018)
Decentralization of computing power in addition to blockchain synchronicity (i.e. Helium for wireless connectivity; IPFS and Arweave for decentralized storage, etc.) will also be key to ensuring equal access to everyone in the Metaverse - a combination of cloud, edge, and device computing for a concurrent, seamless experience.
In the media software realm, the open source movement has been driving digital content creation (DCC) for many years, with big players like NVIDIA, Autodesk, Apple, Unity, and Pixar already leading the movement with shareable formats like OpenGL for 3d rendering and Universal Scene Description (USD) for 3d assets. A platform called Cesium is also building open geospatial tools, aiming to merge the digital and physical into the Metaverse. Exciting developments happening behind the screens for most users. ⚡
Remember: 👉 if it’s a permissioned network with only a few entities running nodes, it’s a blockchain by name only; more like a massive centralized database with extra steps and slick marketing.
Open-Source Finance = Inclusive
The more a Metaverse platform adopts open technology rails, the more likely they are to also adopt interoperable payment channels like cryptocurrencies and DeFi (Decentralized Finance). In fact, the longest article in Matthew Ball’s Metaverse Primer series is on payments. Much of the Metaverse experience will be the seamless overlap of physical and digital life, and a key part of that is financial. A virtual world with a siloed economy would be no different than the way Web 2.0 platforms lock and withhold wealth within their systems today. We’ll get a lot more into the future of work and some of the economic trends likely to impact us in the Metaverse in Part 2.
Though it’s difficult today to imagine how a handful of startups could hope to compete with (let alone overtake) Meta’s ambitions of Metaverse platform dominance, open source communities have demonstrated that network effects and developer advocacy are powerful 💪, especially now that open source projects can incentivize progress through crypto (a decade ago, very few could imagine that Bitcoin could pose the threat to global financial infrastructure as it does today).
“The decentralized, permissionless, trustless, automatically compensating blockchain model has several benefits…users can invest their time and capital with confidence that a blockchain’s policies, incentives, or economics won’t change arbitrarily over time, or in pursuit of rent seeking.”
-Matthew Ball (2021 essay)
Also, unlike these Web 2.0 tech and media giants, revenues would be unlocked to businesses and content-creators on decentralized systems, in which both the platform and its users would be owners and more equally share revenue generated. Further, users would likely want collective say on platform governance (i.e. the bylaws, if you will, for their virtual property), and not leave it to the whim of a private entity.
Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but Web3 is also early enough that egalitarian, diverse, and inclusive values can be prioritized from the start, where ethics drive our technology, rather than big tech engineering our behavior. 🙏 Organizations like the Oasis Consortium are working to ensure that the Metaverse we build follow this ethos, and include members like Roblox!
UX Growing Pains
Most of the NFT-based Metaverse platforms are currently browser-based, and not available on popular online stores like Apple, Steam, and PlayStation. This is mostly due to platform-specific development standards, hostile policies towards crypto/NFTs, and exorbitant fees for developers.
As we continue to chisel out the building blocks of Web3, and even though the blockchain-based Metaverse experiences themselves are becoming more and more polished (I’m impressed by The Sandbox, in particular), on-boarding users into the ecosystem, and getting them set up with blockchain wallets is still a huge barrier to mass adoption (but slowly improving). Wallets require some time and understanding to get used to, and high fees (though many of the costs on current payment systems can be higher; just hidden from the end-user), network delays, and media FUD destroy credibility in the eyes of newcomers.
Early-stage projects attempting to improve the wallet UX will likely prioritize support for fungible tokens to start (i.e. stablecoins like $USDC), but will inevitably support NFTs also. In an ideal future scenario, our digital wallets would:
Offer a seamless, compatible experience across different blockchains.
Support the same digital assets (cryptocurrencies and NFTs) across these blockchains, synchronously and persistently.
If Web3 was as comfortable to use as the polished, familiar tools of Web 2.0, everyone would already be here, most of the winners building today be established, and most importantly, we could no longer keep telling ourselves: “we’re still early!” 🤣
Your Identity, Your Data, Your NFTs
Your Metaverse avatar(s) will be the digital “you,” and they will be so much more than the dress-up doll interfaces for social games that we associate them with today (btw, remember Disney Infinity? Didn’t think so! 😂). Before we get into what that means, let’s point out a few of the Metaverse avatar NFT projects on the map today:
Genies
Partnered with Dapper Labs and many Hollywood celebs; built on the idea of user ownership.Zepeto
Biggest avatar app in Asia which recently adopted NFTsAWS TwinMaker
Not an NFT project [yet?], but like Meta, it shows that Amazon/AWS is getting ready for something 👀
Celebs like Reese Witherspoon get it!
Control, access, and theft of online identity will become a even bigger world-wide issue moving forward. Digital wallets and the NFTs they hold enable true ownership of one’s digital identity and assets - they are the foundation of Web3, and enable decentralized, censorship-resistant proof of identity (pseudonymous or otherwise), without compromising privacy or relying on a third-party for security.
Virtual property rights and identity are just as vital to the Metaverse as VR.
The ability to hop from one virtual world to another, seamlessly, with persistent identity and assets, is crucial for a true Metaverse experience, as we covered at the beginning of this article. Cross-platform play in gaming (including basics like chat and a single, verified user account, etc.) only became dominant recently, led by Fornite in particular. The trend forced incumbents (like Sony) to open their gates after years of resisting.
In Web3, businesses that try to retain early Web 2.0 tactics and shackle their communities to their platforms will quickly realize that talent and community will be scarce. Owning cryptocurrencies or NFTs anywhere must mean owning them everywhere (not locked to a specific platform like PlayStation or Xbox 😬), and keeping many diverse players abiding by the same public rules will avoid corporate hegemony over many of the most core pieces of the Metaverse.
“NFTs are the digital twin of the physical reality.”
-Justin Aversano, NFT Photographer
What a Time to Be Alive!
Science-fiction has shaped our reality many times in the past. The ideas we dream of, from “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” to “Star Trek” to “Snow Crash,” inspire generations of creativity and ingenuity; they manifest technology that would have been seen as impossible in the past. Submarines, AI, space stations, driverless cars, the Metaverse? If human beings can be said to have super-powers, it would be our ability to imagine, invent, and collaborate with each other. 🤝
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
-Arthur C. Clarke, English Science-Fiction Writer
The Metaverse can be said to be the next stage of the internet, and the successor to the mobile experience, and together with advancements in technology like VR and blockchain, will be a profound Cambrian explosion to human existence. We’ll continue this idea further and explore the future of Metaverse work in the next article: The iNFiniTe Metaverse, Part 2: Virtual Work & Gamified Economies. 🔥
Are you ready, Player One?
As always, thank you so much for taking time to share this journey together with me into the world of NFTs. I hope you found the content helpful, and maybe even fun to read! 😁
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⚠ Disclaimer ⚠
Cryptocurrencies and NFTs are a speculative asset class. Be aware of the risks involved and know that you could lose money. Everything I share references an opinion and is for information and entertainment purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Please consult a licensed professional before making any investment decision.