Metaverse – The New Reality

As mentioned earlier, the metaverse is the convergence of the real and virtual worlds. Thus, we can visualize the metaverse as a superset of virtual realities or virtual environments. Think metaverse to be in line with those sci-fi movies, where characters transcend into a virtual world, where they represent themselves through their avatars with super-human capabilities. The metaverse works on a similar concept. It allows us to create Avatars and be in a virtual environment to have more meaningful social interactions. For instance, now remote office meetings take place over video calls, and all we get to see is a grid of faces. Yes, we feel connected seeing our colleagues’ real-time faces, but metaverse intends to take the experience to the next level.

It aims to provide us with digital office rooms or meeting halls, where our Avatars will be able to sit with the avatars of our colleagues, make hand gestures, share expressions in real time, just like what happens in an actual meeting room. So, metaverse will provide us with a made-up reality for our remote virtual meetings, making our experiences feel more in sync with reality. Certainly, many technologies come into play here. Blockchain, ML, AI, IoT, VR and AR— all these technologies will converge to power what metaverse intends to offer us.

The metaverse applies to various verticals. Just like offering a virtual environment for a remote office meeting, it can enable friends from different geographical areas to virtually catch up for a live concert or a soccer game; it can allow people to have digital homes where they can invite their friends. It can also offer experiences like virtual traveling apart from offering luxurious virtual spaces like digital art galleries, museums, international expos & trade fairs— the possibilities are endless! Gaming is another industry that will receive major transformation because of the metaverse.

The Internet never ceases to amaze us with how it unravels new possibilities around virtual social engagement, gaming, entertainment and work life. Today for all of us, the internet-powered virtual world is as meaningful as our physical world. We live in the virtual world as much as we live in the real world. Although our real world is digitally connected to the virtual world, they are effectively two different worlds; there is a line of separation between them. The blurrier the line, the richer is our digital experiences.

The metaverse is all about converging our real and virtual worlds to improve our digital experiences related to social media, gaming, clubbing, work or any other Internet-led experience. The Internet has always acted as a bridge for us to transcend into the virtual world, but how strong is this transcendence? What are our powers or possibilities in the virtual world?

The metaverse intends to give us more power than ever by creating new and better ways of virtual social engagement, entertainment, knowledge gathering & sharing, work, and travel experiences, and much more. Metaverse is the bridge that takes us to the virtual world and brings the augmented reality of the virtual world to our world.

The numbers for metaverse market size themselves demonstrate its craze among people worldwide. Stats forecast that the metaverse market size will reach USD 814.2 billion by 2028 at a CAGR of 43.8%. It is also expected that the metaverse will change the face of gaming, VR, and AI entirely.

Let’s explore and understand what all the metaverse brings to us.

• What is Metaverse?
• How can Blockchain empower Metaverse?
• What are the key components of Metaverse?
• Top Blockchain Metaverse projects in 2022
• What Metaverse Services LeewayHertz can offer?

What is Metaverse?

Metaverse is not static; it is, rather, a subset of the Internet evolution. We evolved from text-based chatting to sharing memories through images, and then to video-based social engagement. And now, we are entering the era of building social connections through the metaverse. This virtual universe intends to give us a next-level, interactive platform that is highly immersive, and that enables us to dive into diverse experiences and not just view them passively.

Everything that we do online today- playing games, meeting, working, entertainment and connecting socially, metaverse can make the experience more natural and vivid. Thus, the best way to understand the metaverse is by experiencing it yourself. However, the metaverse does not fully exist yet; it’s in a nascent stage. Some blockchain metaverse projects are already up and live; they are still in infancy but expanding fast with technology, UI, and design advancements.

Nonetheless, even if we don’t have the full-fledged metaverse yet, let’s try to visualize what it will look like?

Visualization of Metaverse

As mentioned earlier, the Metaverse is the convergence of the real and virtual worlds. So we can visualize the Metaverse as a superset of virtual realities or virtual environments. Think Metaverse in line with those sci-fi movies, where characters transcend into a virtual world, representing self through an Avatar, capable of larger-than-life capacities. Metaverse works on a similar concept. It will allow us to take up Avatars and be in virtual environments to have more meaningful social interactions. For instance, now remote office meetings happen over video calls, and all we get to see is a grid of faces. We feel connected seeing our colleagues’ real-time faces, but Metaverse intends to take it to the next level.

It aims to provide us with digital office rooms or meeting halls, where our Avatars will be able to sit with the avatars of our colleagues, make hand gestures, share expressions in real-time, just like it happens in an actual meeting room. So, Metaverse will provide us with a made-up reality for our remote virtual meetings, making our experiences more in sync with reality. Certainly, many technologies come into play here. Blockchain, ML, AI, IoT, VR and AR all these technologies will converge to power what Metaverse intends to offer us.

Metaverse applies to various verticals. Just like a virtual environment for a remote office meeting, it can enable friends from different geographical areas to virtually catch up for a live concert or a soccer game; it can allow people to have their digital homes where they can invite friends, it can add to virtual traveling, create luxuries virtual spaces like digital art galleries, museums, International Expos & trade fairs, the possibilities are endless. Gaming is one industry that will receive major transformation because of Metaverse.

How can Blockchain empower Metaverse?

Blockchain plays a key role as the foundation stone of the metaverse, especially if the idea is to build a decentralized metaverse or an open ecosystem, not dominated by a single company. The metaverse will be a multi-layer ecosystem; and as mentioned above, many technologies will come into play here.

In creating a decentralized metaverse, blockchain technology is useful for regulating areas like digital proof of ownership, collectability of digital assets (such as NFTs), governance, transfer of value through cryptos, interoperability, and more.

The concept of the metaverse is to present multiple interoperable virtual spaces to which users can transcend using AR or XR devices. Take the example of multiverse games. As users have started to spend more time in metaverse game worlds, move from one virtual space to another, own digital identities and in-game assets, participate in gaming activities, they need a reliable currency to power all their activities within the metaverse. Also, the users will need a distributed ledger system and smart contracts to automate their transactions and keep the transaction records. Blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies are ideal for supporting these requirements of the metaverse; also, they keep the security tight.

However, the metaverse, be it a game or social media platform or some enterprise application, is a collection of several 3D projects and virtual spaces. Custom interoperable blockchains or interoperability solutions will be integral for the functioning of a fully functional blockchain metaverse.

Axie Infinity is an NFT-based battling game powered by blockchain and oracles. As a metaverse, Axie Infinity illustrates how a virtual game can level up the real world by providing players the opportunity to derive real value from a game above and beyond the pleasure of gaming. It is not a standard play-to-earn game but a decentralized player-owned economy, where contributors receive compensation so hefty that many consider the game as the main source of their income. For many, working in Axie Infinity is an opportunity similar to working overseas for making an income.The metaverse is a great innovation in making, but it is still in its infancy. Many big tech giants, including Facebook, are investing in building their metaverses. Facebook’s metaverse will be more of a centralized ecosystem. However, there are decentralized metaverse projects too; let’s have a peek into some.for transparent, censorship-resistant and permissionless transactions.What are the key components of Metaverse?

Contemporary blockchain metaverse projects are decentralized platforms. Some function as gaming platforms, some as NFT marketplaces, some as virtual objects development platforms, and some combine everything into a single entity. However, at a basic level, the blockchain metaverse comprises the following elements:

• High bandwidth decentralized network of computers to host the metaverse beyond the control of a single company or a centralized body, facilitating decentralized data transmission for persistent, real-time connections.
• Open and interoperable standards for media, like text, images, audio, video, 3D scenes, 3D items, 3D sequences and vectors to support 3D applications.
• Open programming language standards such as HTML, JavaScript, WebXR, WebAssembly, WebGPU Shader Language, etc.
• Extended Reality (XR) hardwaresuch as smart glasses, Omni treadmills, haptic gloves, VR headsets, industrial cameras and scanning sensors to interact with the metaverse.
• Blockchain and smart contract for transparent, censorship-resistant and permissionless transactions.
• Computing power to support data processing, AI, projection, etc.
• 3D immersive simulations of worlds featuring real-world ecosystems.
• Payment gateways to support digital currency exchanges and payment across fiat and cryptocurrencies.

Top Blockchain Metaverse projects in 2022

Metaverse is a great innovation in making, but it is still in its infancy. Many big tech giants, including Facebook, are investing in building their metaverses. Facebook’s Metaverse will be more of a centralized ecosystem, however, focusing on decentralized metaverse projects, let’s have a peek into some blockchain metaverses.

Decentraland

The biggest and most popular blockchain metaverse is Decentraland. It is an Ethereum-based virtual reality platform that allows users to create 3D worlds, buildings, hotels, parks, casinos, and much more and also sell them to others. In Decentraland, the highest payout received from the selling of a virtual plot is €2.1 million. Users can also put their lands and other creations up for rent.

The metaverse of Decentraland is divided into 90,601 individual parcels or land of exactly 16 x 16 meters. Each parcel is represented by an ERC-721 NFT. The owners of the NFTs or land are free to develop their lands as they want, and prepare them for sale. Decentraland uses a decentralized autonomous organizational structure (DAO) for governance decisions. Decentraland hosts an NFT Marketplace to facilitate the buying and selling of the lands and other creations in it.

Axie Infinity

Axie Infinity is an NFT-based battling game powered by Blockchain and oracles. As a metaverse, Axie Infinity illustrates how a virtual game can level up the real world by providing the players the opportunity to derive real value from a game above and beyond the pleasure of gaming. It is not a standard play-to-earn game but a decentralized player-owned economy, where contributors receive compensation so hefty that many are playing the game as the main source of income. For many, working in Axie Infinity metaverse is an opportunity not to work overseas for making income.

STARL

STARL metaverse is a space-inspired virtual world powered by blockchain technology. It delivers the experience of exploration, discovery, and creation of space-related content along with the experience of gaming and NFT trading. In the STARL NFT marketplace, users can trade in NFTs for assets of satellites, living modules, custom spacecraft, virtual real estate, character modifications, and more. The STARL ecosystem upholds the vast virtual economy with its own cryptocurrency $STARL. Holding on to the concept of the metaverse, STARL intends to upgrade physical world experiences by creating possibilities of exploring and experiencing the space, otherwise limited in the real world.

What Metaverse Services LeewayHertz can offer?

LeewayHertz is always excited to work on futuristic projects like the metaverse. Our developers have a deep understanding and knowledge of blockchains, NFTs, cryptos, 3D development tools like Unity, and the skills required to develop 3D spaces. Our team can render a range of services to support the development of metaverse projects spanning gaming, social media and NFT marketplaces. Our metaverse services include:

• Decentralized Platform Development
• Metaverse App Development
• 3D Space Development
• Non-fungible Tokens
• Metaverse Marketplace
• Metaspace Marketing

If you are looking to optimize or build a decentralized Blockchain Metaverse project, we are happy to partner with you. Please connect with our metaverse experts to discuss more.