Metaverse: What is the Metaverse, and what to do in it?

In recent years, the concept of the Metaverse has become significantly popular. Thanks to personalities such as Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, they have managed to attract the whole world’s attention and ask themselves: What is the Metaverse?

The Metaverse can be defined as a virtual space where people from different parts of the world can converge and interact in an almost usual way as they would in the real world. We say practically natural since, through more advances in technology-oriented virtual interactions, these encounters will be able to simulate any human activity better.

Of course, this concept is not new, nor has the CEO of Facebook invented it since the term originated in 1992 in a science fiction novel called Snow Crash by the writer Neal Stephenson, where the author tells us about a space of real, virtual and augmented reality where people could go as a refuge to the dystopian reality they lived.

Many of the people who know the word Metaverse or who have heard of this topic associate it directly with cryptocurrencies or NFTs, and it is understandable since the latter helped this term to be recognized worldwide; many do not know that currently, the metaverses are more associated with video games than with other issues.

Something that should also be clear is that the Metaverse is not a brand, project or platform in particular; instead, it is more like a concept itself. We find video games such as Roblox, Fornite, Second Life, the extinct Habbo Hotel and Club Penguin within the most well-known examples of metaverses.

But what separates an ordinary video game from a video game considered a Metaverse? Only what separates these video games from the others is that their very design allows them to simulate activities that people can do in the real world but in a digital space, for example in the year 2021, the video game company Epic Games organized a digital concert where the rap singer Travis Scott would perform within the video game Fornite where it was a total success with 12.3 million users connected simultaneously witnessing the show.

Just as these things are happening right now, it is estimated that this technology will mature within the next two decades and become the cornerstone of modern society. What companies like Meta (formerly called Facebook), Microsoft, Nvidia or Google are looking for is to develop or create the following virtual spaces for social agreement, where people will be able to play, work, live together and carry out various activities without having to be physically fit.

What can be done in the Metaverse or on these platforms?
As we mentioned before, the Metaverse can be used to carry out an endless number of activities, following theoretical idealism. Still, currently, in practice, there are only video games that fit or comply with the concept of the Metaverse, and one or another company specializes in this subject.

A reasonably graphic example that explains in an obvious way what is intended to be done with the Metaverse is what is represented in the science fiction movie called Ready Player One, obviously without the dystopian world that they present as their reality or that their entire metaverse system is controlled by a single company.

With the Metaverse, the creation of a social network is sought in a 3D environment within Web 3. Within this environment, people can carry out daily activities, work, play, hold meetings or mass gatherings such as concerts, various events or emulation of alternate lives.

Currently, two companies have created a relatively straightforward example of what is sought in a metaverse based on Blockchain technology. They are Decentraland and The Sandbox, pioneers in bringing blockchain technology and decentralized services to the Metaverse.

When we talk about the Metaverse and cryptocurrencies, it is inevitable not to mention NFTs, which have been a fundamental pillar for what would be the exclusivity of digital objects within the multiverse, which is one of the recurring questions: how to have something in the Metaverse that is unique?.

It is speculated that NFTs are a perfect option, and leaving aside the fact that they have been used in a very speculative way when selling these parts, NFTs are a great example of how you could have the authenticity of a virtual object in a digital world, logically as in real life there may be replicas of anything, but with the NFT’s we will be able to know which is the authentic object and which is the fake.

The possibilities of crypto assets in the Metaverse are almost endless, whether it is the use of cryptocurrencies as a decentralized means of payment, the use of decentralized applications for the internal management of the virtual world or the control system of digital objects through the NFT.

How does the Metaverse work?

Let us remember that the Metaverse is a virtual space where interaction between people is sought, simulating the real world. However, what is different about this with what we have been doing on social network platforms such as Facebook or the life simulation video game Second Life? ?.

The difference lies in the fact that the Metaverse that is sought is designed so that people can see everything that surrounds them in this virtual space in the first person. Currently, virtual reality viewers must see this virtual world and feel that they are in there. Nowadays, Meta (formerly Facebook) has developed a haptic glove that allows the wearer to feel the “solid objects” of a virtual world; this company also owns Oculus, the largest manufacturer of virtual reality headsets, making it clear to us what important that the development of the Metaverse is for companies as big as Meta, Google or Microsoft.

Is there only one Metaverse?

As we mentioned, the Metaverse is not a single space or a brand. The Metaverse is a concept that can be used by various organizations to create their rooms; logically, the ideal is that no organization has control of a virtual space, and the standard would be a decentralized metaverse.