Metaverse: hype or our future?

The term "metaverse" first appeared in 1992 in the science fiction novel Snow Crash.

Defining its meaning is a very difficult task. To give you an idea of how vague the meaning of the word is, do the following exercise: in any sentence, replace "metaverse" with "cyberspace. Ninety percent of the time, the meaning of the sentence will not change.

This is because the term does not refer to any particular type of technology, but rather to a broad (and often speculative) notion of how we interact with technology.

What is the metaverse?

Metaverses can include:

• A virtual reality with permanent game worlds that continue to exist even when you're not playing them.
• Augmented reality, which combines aspects of the digital and physical world.
• Any other digital worlds that can be accessed without VR and AR.

The metaverse also has a kind of digital economy, where users can create, buy, and sell goods.

In a more idealistic representation of metaverse, it is interoperable, i.e., it allows virtual items such as clothes or cars to be transferred from one platform to another.

There are already examples of detached metaverses.

For example, there is the game World of Warcraft - a permanent virtual world where players can buy and sell goods. Or Fortnite, where concerts and other virtual events take place all the time.

You can also put on an Oculus headset and be in your own personal virtual home."

Initially, the word "metaverse" did not mean fragmented worlds, but a single virtual space, with a seamless transition between platforms.

In that case, saying that Fortnite is a "metaverse" is the same as saying that Google is the "Internet. They are only parts of a whole.

In sum, the term "metaverse" means both a single virtual world for all of humanity and separate fragmented parts of digital reality.

The Role of Blockchain in Metaverse

It is largely thanks to cryptocurrencies and NFT that there was a big hype around this topic. So why is blockchain so well suited to the idea of the metaverse?

Well, first of all, every metaverse has its own economy. And a very handy feature is a direct link between the internal economy of the metaverse and the global market. This is where blockchain technology, and more precisely the cryptocurrency market as an intermediary, can help.

And secondly, the main problem in creating metaverses is the realization of the universality of objects. If you can't create a single metaverse, then instead there will be many separate ones. And for them to be able to exchange items between them, they need a single platform and item format. Blockchain can become this platform, and NFT can become the object format.

Examples of individual metaverses

Theta Network

The Theta Network is a turnkey infrastructure that allows you to run any project in the metaverse. The resources of the platform allow creating special assets and storing them in the NFT format. A promising way to develop Theta Network, is to sign a partnership agreement with Decentraland or Sandbox.

The Sandbox

A metaverse developed on the Ethereum blockchain. The prospect of the project is due to the start of open testing of the virtual reality platform. The user content ecosystem has its own NFT trading platform and gaming platform.

Decentraland

This is one of the first projects launched in 2017 to create a decentralized virtual reality platform on the Ethereum blockchain. The user here is able to acquire land and create artwork.

Bloktopia

Despite the young age of the Bloktopia project, it has already managed to attract the interest of high-level investors (for example, Animoca Brands), as well as get the support of several exchanges (OKEx, KuCoin).

Why a "universal metaverse" is impossible

All of what is now called the metaverse is just a parody of the idea that the word originally carried. There is no full immersion, no unified economy, even an open and content-filled world is often missing.

At this stage of humanity's technological development, we cannot create a full-fledged metaverse, as it appears in fantasies. And here are the reasons:

NFT is not the answer.

In an ideal representation of the meta universe, it is interoperable. That is, it allows you to transfer virtual items, such as clothes or cars, from one platform to another.

But the process is more complicated than it seems. Some argue that NFT technology may be able to solve this problem. However, this is simply not true, and transferring elements from one video game or virtual world to another is an extremely difficult task that no company can solve right now.

The complexity of interaction between companies
As much as we would like to, the realization of the idea of a single metaworld, such as the one presented in the movie "First Player Standby", is currently impossible.

This is partly because creating such a world requires companies to collaborate, which is simply not profitable or desirable.

For example, Fortinte has little motivation to provide a portal for players to go directly to World of Warcraft, even if it could easily be done.

Low processing power

Although Intel is quite optimistic about the idea of a metaverse, it also states that there is not enough computing power to implement this idea.

Limitations of the headset

When tech companies like Microsoft or Meta show artistic videos about their vision of the future, they often tend to be silent about how people will interact with the metaverse.

VR headsets are still very clunky, and most people experience motion sickness or physical pain if they wear them for too long.

Augmented reality glasses face a similar problem, in addition to the problem of how people can wear them in public without looking weird.

There are also virtual reality accessibility issues that many companies have not yet addressed.

Hype is no guarantee of success

In the months since Facebook rebranded itself as Meta, the "metaverse" concept has served as a powerful vehicle for capturing the imagination of speculative investors.

But money pouring into the idea doesn't necessarily mean that a massive paradigm shift is just around the corner, as everything from 3D TVs to Amazon delivery drones to Google Glass can attest.

The history of technology is strewn with skeletons of failed investments.

Problems in the Real World

And finally, the question that many miss when parsing the idea of a metaverse: what will become of reality when some people leave it for another world?

Are we out of crises? We don't have food shortages in the third world? We don't have pollution? We don't have wars?

We have to deal with this world first before we can go to another world.

Hope?

Unfortunately or fortunately, it is now impossible to create a single metaverse where we could go at night while wearing VR glasses. But maybe our grandchildren, or maybe our children, will be able to see this idea come to fruition.

For now, all we can do is watch individual companies realize their idea of what a "metaverse" should look like.