We heard about the metaverse and even know that Facebook changed its name to Meta, but what is this new platform that people talk about so much? And more than that: what does the future of the metaverse hold for us?
To help answer these and other questions, the Technology Refugee prepared a comprehensive guide to the metaverse. See below!
What is metaverse?
Metaverso is an immersive and interactive virtual reality. In a way, it's an evolution of 'The Sims' and 'Second Life' games in the sense that people need an avatar to live in this virtual environment. But now, in a hyper-realistic way.
Another way to understand the metaverse is to see it as a virtual extension of our current lives, as if it were another dimension. Hence, the name “metaverse” which would mean beyond the universe.
We can observe in practice that this is a new phase for the way of connecting. Therefore, notice that there is a correlation between improvements in hardware and infrastructure: personal computer and fixed internet, cellular and mobile internet, virtual reality glasses and 5G – which promises to be 20x faster than the 4G connection.
What is the origin of the metaverse?
The idea of the metaverse first appeared in the novel 'Snow Crash', published by Neal Stephenson in 1992. In the book, the author described the metaverse as a virtual reality where people lived together through 3D avatars.
In practice, virtual reality has already been experimented with interactive games – 'EVE: Valkyrie' and 'Spider-Man: Homeing' – and online meetings – or the virtual room Horizon Workrooms, by Meta.
To participate in these environments, you often need to wear virtual glasses. These days, these devices have evolved enough to integrate your head movement into games. However, you still need external controls to interact with the metaverse.
In the future, these technologies will be fully immersive and responsive to our movements, we may not even have to wear them, as is the case with current glasses.
does the metaverse work?
At this point, it's worth differentiating what the metaverse is today and what it might work in the future. Today, they call the metaverse games oo 'Fortnite' or 'The Sandbox'. In them, you will have an avatar, find other users, buy or sell assets (like land or skins) and play other people. However, each game is a system and they do not unite with each other. That is, it is not very different from 'Minecraft', 'Roblox', 'PUBG' etc.
On the other side is what the metaverse has the potential to be: a city. You turn on your virtual reality glasses (or whatever other equipment they are yet to invent) and your avatar appears in this virtual city. There, you can consume products and services that are completely virtual or that have physical delivery. There is no owner of the metaverse and what you buy in a store you can use in all environments of this city.
This explanation is basically a summary of the metaverse described by director Steven Spielberg in the movie 'Player #1' (available on HBO Max). For me, the model proposed by the film is the minimum for us to be able to talk about the metaverse.
Ideally, it would integrate several technologies that we see separately, namely: voice assistant, artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, robotics and Web 3.0.
One of the examples of such a metaverse could be observed in the hospital environment. You could be having surgery from a specialist who is on the other side of the world using robotics.
Before performing the procedure, he could explain the problem and the step by step of what would be done in augmented reality – both for the patient and for the medical team.
In this case, your virtual reality glasses would provide different experiences according to the moment, preoperative relaxation on the stretcher, anesthesia and even during the operation, noise cancellation, for example. Another example is the possibility of having individual entertainment in the postoperative period.
At the same time, the equipment and also sensors placed on the body would provide data for artificial intelligence. This, in turn, would be able to help the medical team with a pair of super attentive eyes.
The foreign doctor could speak his language, which would be automatically translated for the team and the patient.
Have a pharmacy preference? It would only be necessary to inform during the registration and as soon as the doctor prescribes the medicines, your pharmacy would be notified and they would arrive at your house.
or use the metaverse?
The metaverse is still very centralized in the sense that until now there is no single virtual space to navigate within it. That is, the metaverse still works on your cell phone: if you want a transport app, you have to download one by one on your device.
Furthermore, although the C# and C++ languages are widely used by metaverse developers, there is also no consensus on which language to use. Therefore, there may be a difficulty regarding the equipment that will be compatible or not with certain metaverses.
What are the advantages of the metaverse?
The main advantage of the metaverse is that you can do immersive activities remotely. That is, you no longer need to go to a physical supermarket, for example, to have an immersive pras experience. You will be able to put everything in your cart in a more dynamic way than it is nowadays (even the delivery apps) and have the order delivered to your home by the store.
Are you hungry? How about going to your favorite bakery and choosing the products directly from the window?!
Traveled away from family? You can attend your children's dinner through a hyper-realistic avatar.
Despite the distance, my sister and I love to watch movies together to this day. the metaverse, we will be able to experience that experience as if we were in the same room. I get a chill just thinking about how amazing that would be!
Examples of building a metaverse
In my opinion, what we have today, examples of the metaverse, are simplified models of what this environment will be like. This is because they are very focused on what we already know the virtual simulation experiences.
For example, Nike wants to create virtual clothing and shoes. How is this different from game skins? Ariana Grande's Fornite concert was another high point for metaverse advocates. But how is this different from a 3D animation clip?
For me, the metaverse will have to evolve a lot to be really “meta”. We're going to have to capture everything from big movements to small gestures, in addition to moving forward to explore the senses.
Hence, the metaverse will not be a pair of virtual reality glasses, but a helmet or a chip in the style of Neuralink sensors so that your brain is stimulated by giving reality scenarios. So you go to a Nike store, you feel the fabric in your hand, because weight and texture information, for example, is being passed from the metaverse to your helmet to your brain. Thus, we leave simulation and take a step towards emulation.
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What are the main metaverse platforms already in operation?
In addition to games that already explore elements of the metaverse, there are platforms that are already much more advanced in the process. This is the case with 'Decentraland' and 'The Sandbox'. Meet them below.
Decentraland (MANA)
'Decentraland' is a virtual world where you can play games, interact with other users and trade goods. In addition to games and challenges, you can own properties and assets.
The MANA cryptocurrency serves not only to make deprs on 'Decentraland', but also the governance token for voting within the platform. These polls take place for users to decide 'Decentraland' policies and keep it a decentralized environment.
The Sandbox (SAND)
Another proposed metaverse is 'The Sandbox'. There, users can play, build and trade virtual assets, as well as invest in the SAND cryptocurrency and also make collective decisions on the platform.
Investments are made through “lands”, which are the lands you can use Ethereum to build digital experiences: dioramas (the name given when the mockup is an exact representation and not a model), games or display of NFTs (non-fungible tokens).
The game was created to surpass the existing 'Minecraft' and 'Roblox' in the sense of giving the creators true ownership of their creations the NFT and rethinking them for their participation in the system.
Several companies have already owned a small piece of land in 'The Sandbox', but the games and virtual experiences that are there make the environment look like a normal NFT repository game. As it stands, it's still a rehearsal for the metaverse.
o Did the pandemic contribute to the expansion of the metaverse?
Before the pandemic, a normal day would be defined by commuting to work or school. During the pandemic, we collectively experienced the routine of work and distance learning. However, it became evident that we need new ways of living together that bring realism to interactions.
Metaverse in Brazil: what are the main challenges to reach a large audience?
We have a series of challenges to popularize the metaverse. Between them:
- High price of equipment to promote immersion;
- Access to infrastructure (ultra-fast, low-latency internet) and services (which are often charged in dollars);
- Popularization of non-bank payment technologies, digital wallets and cryptocurrencies. To capture the size of the challenge, just think that by 2019 there were 45 million unbanked people in Brazil. That total dropped to 34 million in 2021, thanks to emergency aid payments and e-merce growth.
That is, in a country with insecurities related to money, it is still difficult to imagine the metaverse here. What is most likely to happen is unequal access to the environment, which should increase social inequality in the country.
What are the experts' main criticisms of this virtual universe?
In the view of Richard Uchoa, CEO of LEO Learning, there are three issues that are widely debated: privacy; the freedom to create, interact and consume knowledge; and environmental impacts.
However, he highlights a fourth point that will need to be worked on, which I will call “the legacy of the coronavirus pandemic”. This topic includes remote work, changes in management models, the outdated model of universities and mental health.
“Technology has been a facilitator for people to learn in this new moment, but taking care of the tests, learning the experiments of the metaverse and making people's moments of connection in the virtual world productive and make sense is a terrain that still has a lot to do. work,” explains Uchoa.
Another point raised by the experts interviewed by the Technology Refugee concerns access to the metaverse. According to Ohmar Tacla, CEO of VRGlass, there is a limitation imposed by hardware, since “some of the most popular public metaverses require a computer with high RAM memory and a dedicated video card, in addition to not working on cell phones”. And, even in companies where the equipment is available, there is a limitation on the download of programs, as they are blocked by the IT department or by the corporate firewall.
Fábio Costa, CEO of the specialized Agência Casa Mais, draws attention to the limited access of an avatar due to the existence of multiple virtual environments that do not unite: “I believe that the biggest challenge of the metaverse, in addition to the prices of hardware that are not affordable for the majority of the world's population, which makes mass entry to this new universe difficult, is the “centralization” of this virtual world, so that I can use my avatar and the skins that I put everywhere that the metaverse exists”.
In terms of security, Júlio Cesar Fort, partner and director of professional services at Blaze Information Security, considers that even though there are cryptographic protocols in the blockchain, technology used in the metaverse, it is not always enough in itself.
“When we think about the user, phishing is one of the oldest and most known problems on the Internet, and it has been used by hackers as a gateway for intrusions and data theft since the beginning of the Internet. Phishing remains a huge problem for web users3 – an old and known problem, which the blockchain does not solve – where several thefts of digital assets and NFTs have occurred through fake websites that link to the victim's MetaMask wallet, which has their digital wallet of emptied assets”, he clarifies.
In addition, Fort points out other gaps left by the blockchain: security flaws in the front and back end of metaverse services, digital wallets and vulnerabilities in smart contracts.
In terms of privacy, Tacla adds that the LGPD (General Law for the Protection of Personal Data) makes it difficult to create campaigns for employees using public metaverse platforms, as they require the storage of personal data from employees.
The main questions about the metaverse
Now that you know the basics of the metaverse, how about we delve into specific questions? We separate the main questions about the metaverse to be answered.
the prar land in the metaverse?
There are two answers to this question. The first one, going straight to the point, goes like this: you choose an environment or 'Decentraland' or 'The Sandbox' and park a piece of land there using your digital wallet.
Which brings us to the second answer. In theory, the metaverse is decentralized. That is, there is no owner of it, so there is no owner of the web. But in practice, what we see is that you still have to access a game to access virtual experiences. It's no use creating a metaverse without a place to host it.
In this sense, the metaverse is different from a website. Although there are a few browsers, you can access any website from them, you don't need a specific browser to access a social network and another to access an online game. Now, if you create an experience in 'Decentraland', it will not be accessed in 'The Sandbox'.
What is the value of a land?
As of March 17, 2022, the cheapest land in 'Decentraland' costs BRL 58.991,93 (4,175 Ether) and in 'The Sandbox', BRL 39.802,24 (2,8169 Ether). In addition to these two platforms, you can find lands in 'Cryptovoxels' and 'Somnium Space'.
What were the biggest land sales made in the metaverse?
The biggest sale made on 'The Sandbox' was to Republic Realm, who spent $4,3 million on virtual land, and Tokens., who spent $2,4 million on 'Decentraland'.
Can you make money selling land in the metaverse?
Yes, it does. It is a type of speculative and long-term investment. You stop today the idea that the land will increase in value and you sell it for a higher value in the future.
I use the term speculative not only because you have to believe the metaverse will thrive, but also because a lot of big land is available in locations that haven't seen many sales to companies yet. That is, you don't know who your neighbor is going to be.
Metaverse and cryptocurrency: what are they related?
As I've said at other times, the main metaverse platforms are decentralized. For that, you need a universal currency that serves the purpose of buying and selling in these environments. And cryptocurrency brings this possibility, in addition to bringing more security to transactions by the method it works. If you have doubts, read our other article about what cryptocurrencies are.
What is the relationship between metaverse and blockchain?
The idea of the metaverse is to be a truly decentralized environment, you will need to carry out financial transactions and digital assets securely. Currently, the best way to do this is using blockchain technology.
See our guide to understand what blockchain is and how it works.
Is Metaverse Dangerous?
The metaverse is not dangerous at the stage of development it is in today. In fact, it is currently more secure than the internet. Still, there are the usual dangers, scams and stolen data.
However, as the metaverse becomes more complex and ubiquitous, the challenges of keeping your assets and files safe and your privacy protected will increase.
Is the metaverse being developed exclusively by the company Meta?
No, there are other companies that have their own projects in the metaverse. However, Meta is one of the five technology giants and owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, the main forms of communication today.
investing in the metaverse?
There are two ways you can invest in the metaverse. The first of these is using land and digital currencies or creating NFTs within metaverse platforms. The second is in the outside world, using cryptocurrencies, shares of companies that develop the metaverse or ETF funds.
What are the top metaverse games?
To answer this question, we will have to specify what we consider the metaverse. If we use Spielberg's futuristic vision of 'Player #1', the answer will be that we don't have anything yet on the fictional 'Oasis' platform.
Now, if we adopt the notion of a blockchain-based environment where users interact as avatars, we have the decentralized metaverses 'The Sandbox', 'Decentraland' and 'Cryptovoxels' and the centralized 'Somnium Space'. Of these four examples, only 'Cryptovoxels' and 'Somnium Space' are compatible with virtual reality glasses.
Conclusion
Now you know everything about what the metaverse is and the potential that this platform has not only for games, but also for e-merce and social networks.
If you like games, you'll love two guides we've prepared for those who want to know more about streams on Nimo TV and Twitch.
Main image credit: Stephan Sorkin / Unsplash
