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Metaverse Good Read

DApps in Web3.0

Decentralized Applications (DApps) are digital programs or applications that operate on computer nodes. These nodes use a distributed network rather than a single server.

In 2019, the estimated market size of DApps was over $10 billion. As per the current growth rate, the market will reach $368.25 billion by 2027. The growth projection of the DApps market is pacing at a CAGR of 56.1%.

A single authority does not control DApps. Apart from that, DApps can provide services of regular traditional apps while enjoying the benefits of decentralization.

The Role of DApps

Technological advancements and innovation have shaped the world around us. One of the biggest examples of revolutionary technology is the internet. Many scientists, computer engineers, and programmers have developed the internet as a massive hub of information and communication. Over the course of time, the internet has evolved through many stages, culminating in the generation of web 3.0

At the same time, the impact of blockchain in the web3 revolution has brought the limelight to the role of dApps in web 3.0 and how they bring value. The arrival of web3 invited a new breed of applications featuring the benefits of decentralization, immutability, and transparency. However, it is also important to find out how dApps can empower the web3 landscape. The following discussion reflects on the significance of dApps in web3 along with practical examples. 

Before moving towards the importance of dApps in web 3.0, it is required to identify the definition of web 3.0 itself. It is the third generation of the internet, which helps websites and applications process information in smart ways. The support of new advancements such as artificial intelligence, big data, blockchain technologies, and machine learning can help in empowering a new generation of digital applications. 

Where do dApps fit in the overall web3 landscape? As a matter of fact, you can develop a better understanding of web3 dApps only by reflecting on the important traits of web 3.0. The future of web3 demands universal applications accessible on multiple devices and software, with assurance of improved convenience in commercial as well as recreational activities. 

This report contains data and insights about web3 development happening across the Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, and Solana ecosystems. It features data from Alchemy, CoinMarketCap, DappRadar, Dune, Etherscan, Github, and the Internet Archive. This data provides insight into NFTs, DeFi, DAOs, social, and other web3 verticals and the growing interest and development in the web3 ecosystem. Developer data includes insights about libraries like Ethers.js and Web3.js, verified smart contract deployment, and decentralized applications. Featured projects include Alchemy, Chainlink, Ethereum Name Service, Farcaster, The Graph, Lens Protocol, RainbowKit, Uniswap, WalletConnect, and many more.

The rise of data decentralization alongside a secure and transparent environment would depend profoundly on growth of new technologies such as blockchain storage and distributed ledgers. In the web3 landscape, people can find the route to a decentralized web that allows users to exercise rightful control over their data. 

At the same time, decentralized infrastructure alongside application platforms can replace conventional models of centralized tech firms. You can understand the role of decentralized applications in web 3.0 by diving deeper into the properties of web3 ecosystem. Here are the notable traits of web3, which offer the favorable grounds for growth of decentralized applications. 

  • Semantic Web

The semantic web concept is one of the notable components in web3, which focuses on meaning or emotion underlying messages. Semantic web can help in supporting the initiatives for helping computers learn about the meaning of the data. It can enable AI to develop real-world use cases providing opportunities for better use of data. 

  • 3D Graphics

The role of dApps in web 3.0 would also focus frequently on transforming the two-dimensional web into a three-dimensional one. New websites, services, and applications in web3 must be immersive with a 3D design, thereby specifying the new dApps design. 

  • Artificial Intelligence

Machine learning and artificial intelligence would take foremost priority in the web3 landscape. AI can play a crucial role in designing web3 dApps with the capabilities for collecting customer feedback to develop a better understanding of product or asset quality. On top of it, artificial intelligence can differentiate between reliable and bad data sources to provide credible information. 

  • Availability 

The availability of digital experiences to users irrespective of their location is one of the notable traits you can find in web3. As a matter of fact, you can find the same highlight in the case of social media platforms that dominate the web2 landscape. If you look closely, the next improvement in web3 will focus on enabling access to digital services through any type of device, including IoT devices.

Why does DApps matter?

The discussion on the importance of dApps in web 3.0 would also rely on an understanding of decentralized applications. Amidst the rapid pace of technological developments, almost every new advancement focuses on keeping us updated. Today, we have multiple applications on our smartphones and computers for help with access to complex services. 

Now, it is important to note that people have to grant some form of access to their private information for using the apps. For example, users have to enter their location data, contacts, photos, and other personal information for using the applications. These data points can deliver a comprehensive impression of user preferences and the patterns in their behavior. 

Even if the notion of offering your personal information to credible centralized parties can seem reasonable, you must think of the underlying consequences. How do enterprises use the data you offer them for using their applications? The companies use your personal information for targeted advertisements. Enterprises show content to users who can ensure benefits for the organization rather than the users. 

Decentralized apps or dApps can help in eliminating the intermediaries such as the enterprises. They can help users in availing different services without the risk of censorship for their content. On top of it, top web3 dApps examples show how users can avail digital services without the risks of termination of their accounts. Most important of all, decentralized applications prevent the leakage of personal information to unwanted third parties.

The development of decentralized applications on blockchain technology is one of the biggest highlights of the digital landscape. dApps can remove the authority of one particular organization exercising sole authority on its users. In addition, decentralized applications also remove the risks of centralized authorities intruding on user privacy. End users exercise complete control and ownership over their data in dApps alongside the privilege of deciding the precedents for sharing data with third parties. 

The design of web3 dApps would show the use of a distributed system that offers freedom from any malicious attempts at disrupting service. For example, the system would be less likely to have any downtime due to DDoS or Distributed Denial of Service attacks. Since you don’t find data in the vaults of a specific organization, you would find limited possibilities for hacking the dApp network. 

On top of it, decentralized applications also feature censorship resistance alongside a permissionless approach. As a result, users could enjoy the services of any decentralized application without any discrimination. Furthermore, dApps also features high levels of transparency while being trustless, thereby ensuring true decentralization

DApps provide prime importance when it comes to the user’s privacy. In addition, the other benefits of DApps include development flexibility and lack of censorship.

Unlike centralized apps, the users need not provide their personal information for using DApps. The transaction process between two parties takes place with the help of smart contracts.

It is easy to develop DApps. This feature helps app developers to build innovative digital applications. The demand for such DApps has large use cases in major industries such as finance, banking, e-commerce, social media, and gaming.

The discussion on role of decentralized applications in web 3.0 would also focus on the use cases of dApps. A clear overview of the use of dApps for driving value-based improvements across various sectors is quite imperative. You can discover the following important applications of dApps in different sectors. 

  • Social Media Applications

The first entry in web3 dApps examples would draw attention to social media applications. Majority of social media platforms, such as Instagram and Facebook, have emerged as integral highlights in the life of an individual now. Now, it is important to note that social media platforms have control over the personal information and other important data of users. Therefore, the need for decentralization in social media applications is an obvious necessity amidst the rising voice for data privacy. 

If dApps find applications as social media networks, users can have better control over their data. You can explore the scope for plausible improvements in privacy of users alongside security of user data. The lack of a central authority offers the freedom from concerns about third parties capturing or leaking precious user data. Some of the popular examples of dApps serving as social media platforms include Steemit and Sapien. 

  • Cloud Storage

The role of dApps in web 3.0 also becomes evident in the use cases for cloud storage. As of now, the existing data storage servers, such as AWS, are completely centralized in nature. Therefore, it is more likely that the data stored in such servers can be modified or even distributed to third parties without user consent. On the contrary, decentralized solutions for data storage would avoid storing their data on a centralized server.

Decentralized apps would leverage a distributed file system for data storage wherein data transfer is encrypted. Another important highlight in the applications of dApps for cloud storage refers to the division of data into multiple fragments. Subsequently, users can retrieve the fragments according to their requirements. Some of the notable examples of dApps in cloud storage services include Sia and Storj.

  • Browsers

One of the interesting applications of web3 dApps would also draw attention toward browsers. Conventional browsers such as Firefox and Google are basically centralized platforms. On top of it, the centralized nature implies that the browsers can store personal information of users such as location, social media information, passwords, and other details. 

It is important to note that decentralized browsers will be a necessity in the web 3.0 landscape. Why? The answer is quite simple and evident in the term ‘decentralization.’ After all, decentralized browsers will be a staple highlight in the new decentralized web 3.0 ecosystem. The Brave browser is an example of a decentralized browser that can empower the web 3.0 landscape.  

  • Streaming Applications 

Entertainment will also be one of the significant highlights in web3 dApps examples as the world embraces the concept of a decentralized web. Popular streaming applications such as YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Spotify are centralized in nature. The centralized platforms could impose censorship on user content alongside exposing users to target advertisements campaigns. 

Now, the applications of dApps in the field of music and video streaming apps can introduce plausible improvements. First of all, content creators can receive reasonable value for their efforts alongside resolving the problems of copyright. The notable examples of dApps for music and video streaming include LBRY and UjoMusic. 

  • Messaging Applications

The final and most important use case of dApps would refer to messaging dApps. You can understand the importance of dApps in web 3.0 when you figure out the vision for introducing private, decentralized messaging. Almost 3 billion people all over the world use different messaging apps, with a circulation of almost 145 billion messages on a daily basis. 

Secure and private messaging has evolved as one of the prominent needs in the web3 landscape for avoiding privacy violations, data hacks, and cyber thefts. The most promising example of messaging dApps would refer to Secretum, which has been developed on the Solana blockchain platform. 

PancakeSwap

PancakeSwap is a decentralized exchange (DEX). This decentralized exchange, built on Binance Smart Chain, allows users to swap between two BEP20 tokens.

PancakeSwap uses smart contracts to execute all trades. PancakeSwap gained popularity for the liquidity of the listed assets.

The platform also provides features such as Yield Farms, Syrup Pools, Lottery v2, Prediction Markets, and NFT Collectibles. CAKE is PancakeSwap’s native utility token. CAKE’s use case includes staking, yield farming, lottery participation, and governance voting.

To execute the token swap, the user must connect the PancakeSwap platform with Web3 wallets such as TrustWallet, MetaMask, or WalletConnect. The connected wallet stores the swapped tokens.

PancakeSwap users can execute the trade without waiting for the order to match. Another major benefit of using PancakeSwap is its low transaction fees.

Compound

Compound is a DApp that allows users to borrow, lend and earn interest in certain cryptocurrencies.

The Compound is built on the Ethereum network, and the users can deposit crypto funds to generate interest.

The platform allows depositing 14 different cryptocurrencies, such as USD Coin, Ether, and Dai, to name a few top ones.

To access the features Compound provides, the user needs to connect the platform with their wallet. For this, the user needs to connect wallets supported by the Compound platform, such as Metamask, Ledger, Wallet Connect, Coinbase Wallet, and Tally.

The platform uses an automated system to match a lender and a borrower. After finding the matching users, the platform exchanges funds from the liquidity pool. Moreover, the liquidity pool acts as a medium to collect the interest rate from the borrower and reward the lender.

COMP is the governance token and native crypto for the platform. The token allows users to cast votes that determine Compound’s future development. In addition, COMP holders have access to go through the inner workings, treasury, and platform protocol of the Compound ecosystem.

OpenSea

OpenSea is a decentralized NFT marketplace for trading, buying, and selling digital goods.

OpenSea is one of the largest marketplaces for NFTs. The user can open a free account on the platform to trade various listed NFTs. Besides that, the marketplace is customizable to develop NFT-based projects.

The creators are given the privilege to set their fees for their digital creations. The OpenSea user must connect their crypto wallet to trade the listed NFTs.

The trend created around the NFTs after the pandemic outbreak attracted massive users to OpenSea. Likewise, the marketplace lists NFTs in various categories to make it easy for buyers to find their desired NFT collections.

The major categories include art, collectibles, domain names, music, photography, sports, virtual world, utility, and trading cards. For instance, to sell an NFT, the user must create a collection, add the NFTs (video, audio, image, or art) and list them on the OpenSea marketplace for sale.

Splinterlands

Splinterlands is a play-to-earn digital card game. Moreover, the game uses NFTs to provide ownership to the players for their in-game assets and digital playing cards.

Splinterlands is a Web3-powered gaming platform developed to solve the issues faced by traditional card trading games. Apart from that, the gaming platform consists of hundreds of digital cards to enhance the trading game that rewards its players.

Splinterlands has a blockchain of its own that provides in-game stability. Apart from that, the gaming platform is adaptable to frequent upgrades.

The cross-compatibility feature is another major advantage of Splinterlands. As a result, the players can connect and interact with other players of major blockchains such as Ethereum, WAX, and Tron.

Splintershards (SPS) is the in-game governance token of the Splinterlands. Moreover, SPS also acts as the primary gaming currency to trade cards. In addition, SPS holders can participate in various governance-based decisions in the Splinterlands ecosystem.

To add more players to the gaming ecosystem, Splinterlands rewards the players with daily rewards, seasonal rewards, loot chests, ranked battle rewards, and leaderboard rewards.

Uniswap V2

Uniswap V2 is the second iteration of the decentralized protocol Uniswap. With the introduction of Uniswap V2, the users no longer needed to add ETH as one of the crypto assets.

Uniswap V2 allows the users to directly swap between two ERC-20 tokens to reduce the total number of transactions. Moreover, reducing the number of transactions helps the users reduce the gas fees charged.

The major benefit that helped Uniswap V2 to acquire a more user base is the simplicity in the execution of trades. Apart from that, the omission of the order book and other complex traditional trading templates helped to attract more users to the platform.

Another important feature of the Uniswap V2 is the ‘Flash Swap.’ This feature allows the user to withdraw any number of ERC20 tokens from Uniswap without paying an upfront cost. After the complete execution of the transaction, the user can pay accordingly.

Apart from the features mentioned above, Uniswap V2 provides On-chain price feeds that are difficult to manipulate and highly decentralized. Uniswap V2 uses Solidarity language for writing the smart contract. This feature boosts the technical improvement of the platform.

Arc8

Arc8 is a play-to-earn platform for mobile gaming. Also, the game rewards players for their loyalty, effort, and gaming skills.

The main objective of the Arc8 gaming platform is to promote the value of blockchain and gaming tokens to mainstream gamers. Therefore, the gaming categories include impressive 1v1 matches, multiplayer tournaments, and sponsored tournaments.

The GAMEE Token (GMEE) is the ERC-20 utility token of the gaming platform. The GMEE tokens are used as entry fees, gameplay payments, in-game rewards, and voting. In addition, the GMEE tokens can be used to rent, purchase, breed, and upgrade various in-game NFTs.

Arc8 gaming platform also rewards the players for inviting their friends. The platform rewards both friends involved in the referral process with GMEE bonuses at certain gaming levels. Moreover, the gaming platform has over 50 games, including live multiplayer games.

Socios.com

Socios.com is a DApp that empowers the fans supporting various clubs with tokens and rewards.

Socios.com provides fan tokens in the form of finite digital assets built using the Chiliz Chain. Apart from that, the governance power provided to the token holders allows the fans to participate in important fan-related decisions.

The endorsement of Socios.com by celebrity footballers played a crucial role in adding more fans to the community built around the fan token.

Apart from the governance benefits, fans can also benefit from exclusive promotions, perks, online rewards, and VIP experiences. Besides that, the communities built around Socios.com integrates the fans regardless of geography.

The major clubs partnered with Socios.com include PSG, Barcelona, Juventus, Man City, Arsenal, and Atletico Madrid. Moreover, the platform actively adds more major clubs and fans.

All the perks related to the Fan tokens are provided through the mobile application available on Android and iOS devices. Similarly, all the trading activities associated with the fans token occur in the Socios.com marketplace.

Step App

Step App is a DApp that combines fitness and finance. The application uses geolocation technology, metaverse, and NFTs for a better user experience.

The Step App rewards its users for participating in physical activities such as running, jogging, and walking. Apart from that, the app focuses on providing a social, competitive, and immersive experience with the help of user activities.

The trend around movement-based apps added more members to the Step App community. In addition, the reward system inspires the app users to participate in various physical activities.

The Augmented Reality feature provided in the app evolves and grows upon fulfilling fitness goals. Apart from that, the Step App enables users to combine their social experiences with their fitness on a global level.

FITFI is the governance token provided by Step App. The app users can buy SNEAKs to participate in various physical activities with the help of the in-game tokens KCAL. Besides that, the purchased SNEAKs reward the running user with KCAL tokens. In addition to that, the user can mint SNEAKs with KCAL tokens.

Alien Worlds

Alien Worlds consists of an NFT Metaverse that uses digital gaming assets to engage and compete in various gaming modes.

Alien Worlds provides an opportunity for players to stimulate economic collaboration and competition. Trilium (TLM) is the native token used on the Alien Worlds for planet governance, staking, gameplay incentives, and as in-game currency. In addition to that, TLM is also used to purchase NFTs.

Alien Worlds runs on Ethereum, WAX, and Binance Smart Chain (BSC). The active platform users are rewarded with TLM tokens for developing an in-game ecosystem.

The NFTs available on the marketplace are divided based on rarity and shininess. For example, the six rarity levels for the digital item include Common, Abundant, Epic, Rare, Mythical, and Legendary. Similarly, the five shininess levels consist of Stardust, Stone, Gold, XDimension, and Antimatter.

NBA Top Shot

NBA Top Shot is a marketplace that lists digital basketball collectibles as NFTs. Likewise, the fans can also trade, buy and sell the collectibles from the NFT marketplace.

The blockchain-based NBA trading cards were developed as a partnership among the NBA Players Association, Dapper Labs, and NBA.

The NFT platform is built using the FLOW blockchain developed by Dapper Labs. In addition, this project’s famous investors include Michael Jordan, Klay Thompson, and Kevin Durrant.

The NFT marketplace also lists NBA Top Shot Moments, which consists of video highlight clips in the form of NFTs. The video highlight also consists of famous moments from various NBA games. The value of such NFT videos depends on their rarity.

To buy the NFT collections listed on the NBA Top Shot, the user must register on their official website. After the registration process, the user also needs to get verified to take part in buying and selling of NFTs.

The registered users can purchase the NFTs listed on the marketplace with a debit or credit card. Apart from that, the users also can connect their wallets to the platform and purchase the NFTs.

In closing

The role of decentralized applications in web 3.0 extends beyond the scope of decentralizationDecentralized applications can introduce improved security alongside serving value advantages in different use cases. You can notice the transformation of many conventional digital services such as cloud storage and content streaming platforms. 

The revisions introduced by dApps in the conventional services can help in easier transition towards web3. Many enterprises are gradually recognizing the importance of dApps for growing the web3 revolution. On the other hand, businesses must prepare for the web 3.0 transformation by following the necessary best practices. Learn more about decentralized applications and web 3.0 before you adopt any web 3.0 dApps.

The development of DApps helps users enjoy the benefits of decentralized systems. Furthermore, DApps solve various problems faced by the traditional centralized system.

The major benefits of DApp users include privacy, safety, low transaction fees, and flexibility. Despite the advantages mentioned, the user must ensure the credibility of DApp before engaging in any financial transaction.

In summary

Why dApps are the future?
 
🔵 What Are d’Apps
#dapps are digital programs or applications that operate on computer nodes. These nodes use a distributed network rather than a single server. (Geekflare)

In 2019, the estimated market size of DApps was over $10 billion. As per the current growth rate, the market will reach $368.25 billion by 2027. The growth projection of the DApps market is pacing at a CAGR of 56.1%.

🚨👾Over 12,000 and growing!

A single authority does not control DApps. DApps can provide services of regular traditional apps while enjoying the benefits of decentralization.

🔵 Why Do They Matter?

DApps provide prime importance when it comes to the user’s privacy. In addition, the other benefits of DApps include development flexibility and lack of censorship.

Unlike centralized apps, the users need not provide their personal information for using DApps. The transaction process between two parties takes place with the help of smart contracts.

It is easy to develop DApps. This feature helps app developers to build innovative digital applications. The demand for such DApps has large use cases in major industries such as finance, banking, e-commerce, social media, and gaming.
 
🔵 State Of Play?

The discussion on role of decentralized applications in web 3.0 must  focus on the use cases of dApps. dApps are used in a variety of sectors to drive value.
 
📌 Social Media Applications
 
Instagram & Facebook vs Streemit and Sapiens
 
Users have better control over their data. You can explore the scope for plausible improvements in privacy of users alongside security of user data. The lack of a central authority offers the freedom from concerns about third parties capturing or leaking precious user data.
 
📌 Cloud Storage
 
Amazon Web Services (AWS) vs Storj

#dapps leverage a distributed file system for data storage wherein data transfer is encrypted. Users can retrieve the fragments according to their requirements.
 
📌 Browsers
 Google vs Brave Browser
 
Decentralised browsers will be a requirement ito shape the web 3.0 landscape.
 
📌 Streaming Applications 
 
YouTube,Netflix, and Spotify vs LBRY and UjoMusic
Content creators can receive reasonable value for their efforts alongside resolving the problems of copyright.
 
📌 Messaging Applications
 
Secretum
 
Almost 3 billion people all over the world use different messaging apps, with a circulation of almost 145 billion messages on a daily basis. 

Secure and private messaging has evolved as one of the prominent needs in the web3 landscape for avoiding privacy violations, data hacks, and cyber thefts.
 
🔥 Expect to see more #stablecoins in the future. These digital currencies use innovative price-stability mechanisms. Developers creating blockchain-based decentralized applications can expect to create more apps around stablecoins.

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Metaverse Summit Roadshow

[Metaverse Summit] Canvas for 3D, how can business leverage virtual assets with Safwen Bouali

Canvas for 3D, how can business leverage virtual assets with Safwen Bouali

Nowadays, 3D is the most engaging media form there is. Brands and commerce are trying to let audiences interact 3D to spread ideas, rotate, move around, zoom in, inspect from inside. P

ositioned as “Canvas” of 3D, Safwen, CEO of Third Design shared with us his vision around B2B side of 3D creation.

00:00 intro

00:29 How democratize the creation of 3D in browsers

02:17 How can 3d objects fit into the Metaverse?

04:29 What are the vision and the final steps of product development?

06:38 how can the B2B business fit into a metaverse?

12:03 The best-positioned company of future Metaverse?

13:48 DEMO

Session hosted by:

Yingzi Yuan / https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuanyingzi/

Categories
Metaverse Summit Roadshow

[Metaverse Summit] 3D Motion Capture Tools, NFTs & Creator Economy in Metaverse with Yassine Tahi

[Metaverse Summit] 3D Motion Capture Tools, NFTs & Creator Economy in Metaverse with Yassine Tahi

The rapid development of computer graphic and motion capture tech contributed to the exponential growth of Metaverse.

In this episode of Metaverse Roadshow, we invited Yassine, CEO of Kinetix shared his view on how democratized 3D creation tools, user-generated motion capture and NFT are tightly linked in the current stage of development, creating new business model based on asset ownership.

00:00 intro

00:09 What is the metaverse? What is the vision of Kinetix?

01:30 What is the link between 3D and the NFTs DeFi?

03:50 What is the business model of Kinetix that fits into the current business model?

06:14 What changes fit into the new economic model of weapons?

07:56 What do you do with the current metaverses?

09:58 Who will be the winner of the Metaverse tech giants, or Web3 natives?

12:10 What is the state of art for the community?

14:13 DEMO

Session hosted by:

Yingzi Yuan / https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuanyingzi/

Categories
Metaverse Summit Roadshow

[Metaverse Summit] How to become content and experiences builders inside the Metaverses

How to become content and experiences builders inside the Metaverses

In this episode of Metaverse Roadshow, We invited the founder of Supersocial, Yonatan Raz-Fridman (Yon).

Yon is a content and experience builder in Metaverse especially Roblox. Implanted in creator economy era, he aims to incubate highly skill and high potential creators including game devs, game designers, and accompany them from day1 through ideation, creation, distribution.

00:00 intro

00:25 Who is the founder and CEO of super social?

02:41 Who is actually building this virtual world?

06:37 Different target in terms of demographic?

09:58 How do you decide what kind of style, experience, and audience you want?

10:47 Which sense do we need to centralize the creative decision?

13:16 About your future roadmap in 2022?

15:12 Tell us more about the development story.

17:32 What kind of assets may be the idea you will do?

19:18 Is it disruptive for the business model of Roblox?

22:49 Make people enjoy this technology and interfaces?

26:09 Could you tell us more about experiences in the universe?

30:00 What will be the future interaction?

32:47 You thinking of bringing the Ghostopia IP in the future?

Session hosted by:

Yingzi Yuan / https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuanyingzi/

Categories
Metaverse Summit Roadshow

[Metaverse Summit] Buying & Building in the Metaverse: tips and lessons learned

Buying & Building in the Metaverse: tips and lessons learned

00:00 intro

02:51 What defines the metaverse the world has been hijacked?

05:54 Metaverse is already in Sci-fi in gaming then Why does it differ now?

08:26 How do people onboard the metaverse? What are your favorite platforms?

11:06 What platforms are guys on? What are you enjoying about them?

16:39 What communities do you particularly find active in the metaverse?

21:46 When you’re investing in the metaverse?

23:52 What are some key factors you evaluate when investing in a project or a team?

29:04 What are you seeing trending in the metaverse?

Session hosted by:

Yingzi Yuan / https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuanyingzi/

Categories
Metaverse Summit Roadshow

[Metaverse Roadshow] Virtual Reality Metaverse and Virtual Concerts with Louis Cacciuttolo, VRrOOm

Listen to the podcast episode

Virtual Reality Metaverse and Virtual Concerts with Louis Cacciuttolo, VRrOOm

 

Louis Cacciuttolo is the founder of VRrOOm, an influential online media platform dedicated to VR. In 2018, he launched the VRrOOm XR app, which hosts the XR selections of international festivals. Louis worked as Vice-President of THX, a George Lucas company specializing in cinema technology.

 
 
 
 
 
 

Virtual Reality Metaverse and Virtual Concerts with Louis Cacciuttolo, VRrOOm

 
 

 

 

00:00 Intro 

00:30 What projects did you do or would be interesting to show? 
 
02:58 What would you say about the evolution from the past to the future of virtual concerts? 
 
10:18 What are the advantages of the virtual concert? 
 
17:01 What do you think is the future of socializing in virtual reality? 
 
20:01 What do you think about the evolution in social terms? 
 
24:40 There will be a massification of your VR hardware and everyone will be able to access that? 
 
28:07 What do you think about the link between VR and cryptos or NFTs? 
 
33:16 What’s your next project?

 

Louis Cacciuttolo is the founder of VRrOOm, a social XR hub dedicated to the live streaming and 6DoF broadcasting of artistic performances, gamified narrative works and live shows, working with international artists such as Jean-Michel Jarre and festivals like the Venice Biennale or South by Southwest.

VRrOOm is now launching a proprietary metaverse platform aimed to artists, producers, festivals organizers or cultural venues so they can directly meet their audiences and monetize all types of cultural events in live and replay formats.

Louis worked as Vice-President of THX, a George Lucas company specialized in cinema technology.

He was the owner of the Théâtre du Minotaure in Béziers from 1999 to 2020. He is also a screenwriter, director, and producer of awarded films including the feature Cendre in 2014, and the animated short interactive VR film The Last Footprint in 2016. He co-produced the AR installation Digitalis, a participative work by artist Pierre Estève, adapted in augmented interactive audio, which premiered at Stereopsia Brussels in 2019.

Session hosted by:

Yingzi Yuan / https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuanyingzi/

 

Categories
Metaverse Blog Metaverse Good Read Metaverse News

[Metaverse Good Read] Neal Stephenson’s Metaverse Moonshot – LAMINA1

 

  • Technology Roadmap 
  • Mission
    To deliver a Layer 1 blockchain, interoperating tools & decentralized services optimized for the Open Metaverse –– providing communities with infrastructure, not gatekeepers to build a more immersive internet.

  • Belief
  • The Metaverse represents the evolution of our lives online –– graduation to rich 2D and 3D worlds in which we fluidly create, explore, socialize and transact. As we usher in this bold new era of content creation and participation, we must revisit the centralized business models of Web2 to empower creators and consumers with greater agency, ownership and privacy. A creative community that is free to innovate and transact will give rise to a thriving economy. Lamina1 delivers critical infrastructure to enable the trillion-dollar economy of the Open Metaverse.
  • Context
  • “Inexorable economic forces drive investors to pay artists as little as possible while steering their creative output in the directions that involve the least financial risk.” –– Neal Stephenson
  • Web2 introduced a period of rapid innovation and unprecedented access to entertainment, information and goods on a global scale. Streamlined tools and usability brought creators and innovators to the web en masse to build digital storefronts, engage and transact with their customers.
    Owning and controlling that growing ecosystem of content and personal data became a primary, lucrative initiative for major corporations. Consumer behavior, recorded on centralized company servers,
     

Open Metaverse with a multi-pronged approach: 

 

  1. Layer1Blockchain
  2. Metaverse-as-a-Service(MaaS)
  3. CommunityEconomicParticipationandIncentives
  4. OriginalContent
Layer1 Blockchain 
  1. ●  Open Metaverse Data

  2. ●  Carbon Token Staking

  3. ●  Cross-chain Integration

  4. ●  High-scale Payments

  5. ●  OpenID Connect

●  EVM Quality of Life Improvements

Metaverse-as-a-Service Stack

Lamina1 will foster –– with heavy participation from the ecosystem –– the creation of a set of interoperating decentralized services to support virtual worlds, i.e. Metaverse-as-a-Service (”MaaS”).

Our mission is to be the rallying point for an ecosystem of open source tools, open standards and enabling technologies conceived and co-developed with a community of creators.

MaaS and ecosystem technologies will ideally be enhancements to/integrations of existing open source solutions, and/or directly provided by third parties. However, our technical team will be involved in the early launch stages to identify best-in-class tech and tools, highlight key technical areas for innovation and close critical feature gaps — possibly creating spatial technology and tools needed to get the job done — demonstrating leadership and vision toward building the Open Metaverse. That said, we will only build what is absolutely required.

  • Storage Layer
  • World State & Persistence

    Cloud & Hybrid Rendering

Categories
Metaverse Masterclass

[Metaverse Good Read] Legal issues in the metaverse

There are a variety of legal issues concerning the metaverse, especially given that it is a meeting point for multiple technologies, requiring or linked to servers, hosting, software, platforms, hardware and other peripherals (e.g. VR glasses and haptic gloves for sensing virtual objects), content, graphics, maps, buildings, photos, interfaces, as well as blockchain for acquiring and registering tokenised virtual assets. This diversity also raises a host of legal issues ranging from intellectual property rights to data protection and civil law.

Data Security & Privacy
Intellectual Property
Fintech
M&A and other Investment Activity
Regulation of Virtual Assets
Gambling and Lottery Laws
Regulation of Conduct in the Metaverse
Tax

In this series of articles, we explore the key issues concerning the metaverse, including:

Part 1: Trademarks and copyright, NFTs and civil law principles in metaverse

Part 2: Data protection challenges, the importance of cybersecurity, advertising regulation in metaverse

Part 3: Tax, Regulation

Part 1: Trademarks and copyright, NFTs and civil law principles in metaverse

Users can generate virtual creations in the metaverse by interacting with the digital avatars of other users or brands in the virtual space. This raises the question of who owns the intellectual property (IP) and what protection is provided to the creators?

To quote an example, it may become difficult to conclude the identity of a given work’s creator(s) in the metaverse, especially when the work results from a decentralized collaborative process carried out by users hiding behind avatars.

The metaverse can also experience issues with trademarks. Companies in the metaverse use real-world brands such as Nike, Gucci, CU, etc., to create and sell items/accessories for avatars. Circumstances can arise when:

  • Such items are used within the metaverse,
  • A user creates and sells the same item, or
  • When items gain popularity in the metaverse and are then copied and produced in the real world.

Part 2: Data protection challenges, the importance of cybersecurity, advertising regulation in metaverse

The security and privacy of users’ data will be among the most significant metaverse legal implications issues that platform owners will face. While these concerns are not new to tech companies, Facebook being a very popular example, data in the metaverse will be exponentially more valuable than it already is. Technologies will become closely integrated into almost all aspects of the users’ lives.

The sensors would have real-time insightinto the lives of humans. Gears like AR glasses and headsets can particularly bring major privacy threats by serving as mics and cameras inside homes and offices.

Behavior in the metaverse will have the capacity to reveal intrusive information about people’s interests, including biometric data and head and eye movements. Currently, there are no set guidelines for who and what companies can collect, who owns it, and how it can be used.

Since the metaverse aims to be a global environment, it would be difficult to know which data protection laws apply.

Some of the key questions to consider when it comes to privacy and cybersecurity include:

  • What personal information are you sharing on the metaverse?
  • Who has access to your personal information?
  • How is your personal information being used?
  • Is your personal information being shared with third parties?
  • What security measures are in place to protect your personal information?

Part 3: Tax, Regulation

Digital assets, when purchased and/or sold, may be subject to different taxes like income tax, sales tax, etc. For example, the metaverse allows users to buy virtual land and build settlements or purchase NFT versions of real-world objects needed to construct their world. The growth of Web3 has also created an opportunity for people from all over the world to work together on new business ventures with their own rules.

Finally, regarding the provision of public services, several cities have already started a transition towards a virtual public venue. Virtual reality seems to be the choice picked by these cities for greater efficiency and proximity in favor of their citizens. However, this approach presents a strong risk of massive surveillance and monetisation for host platforms. To protect users, European institutions should ensure the complete application of the GDPR provisions to effectively avoid targeted advertising in such online public venues.
Furthermore, our study underlined the transformation that is going to occur in education. The Metaverse will open new possibilities and opportunities for professors to teach to students and to improve pedagogical support. However, studies already mentioned the danger of screens and social media for young people. Their social identity could be deeply modified creating isolation and behaviour alteration. European authorities and actors of health and digital sectors should open a conversation toward the use of the Metaverse for education and its impact on our children’s health.

References:

https://www.sciencespo.fr/public/sites/sciencespo.fr.public/files/Metaverse-Group-report-final-draft-June-12-1.pdf

https://www.cliffordchance.com/content/dam/cliffordchance/briefings/2022/02/the-metaverse-what-are-the-legal-implications.pdf

https://cms.law/en/int/publication/legal-issues-in-the-metaverse

https://abovethelaw.com/2022/09/the-technology-and-legal-issues-behind-metaverse/?amp=1

(Image credit: “The Good Fight” Season6.)

Categories
Metaverse Summit Roadshow

[Metaverse Roadshow] Digital fashion, identity and creator economy in the Metaverse, with Adriana Hoppenbrouwer

Digital fashion, identity and creator economy in the Metaverse, with Adriana Hoppenbrouwer

 

We sit down with Adriana to discuss not only the role of digital fashion but more importantly its link with self-expression, digital identity and creator economy in the Metaverse.

 
 
 
 
 
 

Digital fashion, identity and creator economy in the Metaverse

 
 

We sit down with Adriana to discuss not only the role of digital fashion but more importantly its link with self-expression, digital identity and creator economy in the Metaverse.

In the video, you’ll get to know about :

– The role of digital fashion, its past, the current state of art and the future.

– The link between digital fashion and gaming

– How to establish a long term influence for retail and luxury brands

– The interaction between physical and digital fashion

– Technical infrastructure for digital fashion

– The vision of Metaverse’s future

00:00 Introduction

00:52 How did you enter into the metaverse?

02:06 Why did you do this shift?

05:03 What do you think is going to happen in the near future?

10:01 What’s your current focus, and what is the business model?

14:31 How did you build the technical infrastructure for the fabricant?

14:58 What’s your vision on interoperability?

18:54 How can entrepreneurs build a long-term strategy for the metaverse?

23:59 How can the luxury industry position itself in the metaverse?

26:56 What if I want to have a physical copy?

28:39 When can you have something very unique?

29:41 What’s your personal vision of the future of the metaverse?

Adriana is the co-founder and CCO of THE FABRICANT, a digital fashion house leading the fashion industry towards a new sector of digital-only clothing. Unconstrained by the boundaries of the physical realm, they create intriguing and seductive 3D fashion narratives and experiences.

Session hosted by:

Yingzi Yuan / https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuanyingzi/

 

Categories
Announcement Metaverse Blog

Metaverse Summit Set to Become World’s Largest Metaverse Convention

Metaverse Summit, International Convention Highlighting Avant-garde Innovation and Creativity around Metaverse

Paris, France — March 31st, 2022. Metaverse Summit has announced its official event dates for its 2022 edition during July 16-17th.

Metaverse Summit is an International Convention Celebrating Technology and Creativity around Metaverse. Metaverse Summit gathers leading metaverse entrepreneurs, builders, investors and experts to explore and build the future of metaverse together. 

Metaverse Summit community’s core value is through sharing and transmitting knowledge, which is the most sustainable way to develop a decentralized and fertile future of metaverse. Metaverse Summit is aiming to build a bridge between Web 2 and Web 3, and help individuals and companies to define their positioning and strategy in the future of technology.

Since its creation, Metaverse Summit has gathered more than 10 000 community members from across the world, with events being held in Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Denver, Dubai, Shanghai, Los Angeles and more to come. 

Yingzi Yuan, Founder of Metaverse Summit commented: “We are honored to host the world’s biggest Metaverse convention and festival in Paris, featuring key speakers, media attendees and partners. Metaverse gained tremendous traction during the past years, and are expected to see continuous growth in the upcoming years and beyond. We are here to facilitate the growth of different stakeholders in the industry, to help brands, startups, corporates find their place and strategy regarding metaverse.”

Metaverse Summit’s flagship event this year is a two-day festival during 16-17 July 2022 in Paris. The two day event will be a unique moment for the international community to meet in person, discover new synergies, and develop projects. With discovery and education highlighted as two goals, Metaverse Summit will provide a dedicated space for novices and veterans alike to learn from seasoned experts and foster connections within the worlds of technology, creativity and art. Bringing together enterprise and brands, developers, entrepreneurs, gamers, artists, investors, the event will enable unparalleled networking opportunities, providing greater insight into the projects, companies and talents that underpin the growth of the metaverse and its business opportunities. 

Metaverse Summit will launch NFT ticketing, building the world’s biggest Metaverse DAO and community. “Through NFT ticketing, we aim to consolidate the community of high-profile and highly engaged builders, investors, experts, leveraging the utility NFT to allow community members to participate in our future exclusive events, masterclass, workshops, and even early-stage investment opportunity in the metaverse sector.” said Yingzi Yuan, Founder of Metaverse Summit.

Presenting a complete mapping of the metaverse sector across Technology, culture, social and entertainment, Metaverse Summit includes four main tracks for its conference, exhibition and showcase: 

  • SOCIAL & DIGITAL IDENTITY: Explore creator economy based social worlds. Create, socialize, and participate in a wide variety of new experiences.
  • WEB3 & DECENTRALISATION: Get acquainted with new forms of ownership and how to create, store, sale, protect and manage metaverse assets.
  • GAMING & REAL-TIME 3D: Learn how to establish persistent, real-time connections in immersive digital and three-dimensional environments.
  • MIXED REALITY & VIRTUAL WORLD: Merge real and virtual worlds to produce new environments in real time. Explore AR, VR, and other formats.

More than 200 key industry leaders are confirmed to speak at the Metaverse Summit conference including Sébastien Borget, COO and Co-Founder of Sandbox and President of the Blockchain Game Alliance; Julien Bouteloup, Founder of Blackpool Finance, Stake DAO & Stake Capital; Alan Smithson from MetaVRse; Hrish Lotlikar, Co-Founder & CEO of SuperWorld; Marco Demiroz from The VR Fund etc. Yingzi Yuan, Founder at Metaverse Summit is available for interviews.

About Metaverse Summit

Metaverse Summit gathers entrepreneurs, builders, investors and experts to explore and build the future of metaverse together.  Metaverse Summit is set to explore and build the future of metaverse together. It gathers builders, entrepreneurs, investors and experts from Blockchain, 3D, real-time technology, fashion, art, virtual worlds, social and digital Iidentity, gaming, VR/AR, web3 and beyond. The 2-days event during July 16-17 2022 is a unique moment for the international community to meet in person, create new synergies, and develop projects. We believe that sharing and transmitting knowledge is the most sustainable way to develop the decentralized, fertile future of Metaverse. To learn more, please visit: www.metaverse-summit.org.

Media Contact:

media@metaverse-summit.org

Categories
Metaverse Blog Metaverse Masterclass

[Metaverse Masterclass] Metaverse: the good, the bad and the ugly

Image by Nurudeen Alidu from Pixabay

This is an article by Loic bardon, Chief Innovation & Marketing Officer, Founder PARIS SINGULARITY, originally published here.

When he presented his strategic vision for the future of Facebook (now Meta) Mark Zuckerberg threw a stone in the pond, or rather a tree in the forest. For those familiar with the Gartner hype cycle, Mark Zuckerberg may have pushed the Metaverse concept to the “peak of inflated expectations” phase. Since then, not a day goes by without discovering articles, a newsletter, an interview, Twitter threads, influencers posts, startups, conferences, Discord groups… throwing themselves at this topic like the next cake everyone wants a piece of.

The advent of a new story is never trivial, as Yuval Harari explains. The strength of Sapiens, our strength compared to other species, is our ability to collaborate on a very large scale: by the hundreds, by the thousands, by the millions and now by the billions. What makes this cooperation possible? Our ability to create and believe in intangible, fictitious entities, like countries or companies for example. As far as we know, Homo Sapiens seem to be the only species able to create a story about entities that cannot be seen, touched or felt.

Any group, regardless of its size, that believes in the same fiction shares the same rules and norms to overcome the same problems. Thus, when we collectively decide to change a story we relatively quickly transform behaviors. As we have done with slavery, monarchy, the place of women in society, capitalism, etc.

Actually, the birth of the first static version of the web, on Tuesday March 12, 1989, marks the beginning of a new story that transformed our relationship to time and space. Since then, social interactions, whatever their nature, are constantly increasing in number and frequency. No other species is capable of “connecting” 7.5 billion people.

The Internet IS this story.

And the first lines of a new chapter are being written through the concept of Metaverse for good, for bad and for ugly.

Image by David Mark from Pixabay

There is no consensus about what the Metaverse is

What the etymology tells us

The term “Metaverse” is a contraction of the Greek prefix meta and the Latin universum.

Let’s start with Meta. It means: among other things, change, going beyond.

Universum is itself composed of uni (“one”) and versum (“to turn”). Universum, or “united towards” represents both “all together” and “towards a common goal”.

Thus, the Metaverse could be defined as a common direction towards which we will move together, the characteristic of which would be that it transforms.

Simply put, it would be a matter of moving towards something that transforms.

What could be more difficult than defining something that transforms, a complex hyperobject in constant evolution, the result of an organic and chaotic process?

Why don’t we start by saying what the Metaverse is not?

What the Metaverse is not

Metaverse is not a revolution.

Actually, the history of technology shows that there is never a breakthrough. The perception of a technological revolution implies the convergence of many underlying and prior technological changes.

If for many the iPhone embodies the beginnings of the mobile Internet, this is because they did not perceive that all the necessary technological bricks were becoming mature enough. The iPhone arrived 10 years after the first BlackBerry, 8 years after the emergence of the Wireless Application Protocol (behind the first mobile sites), almost 20 years after the deployment of 2G and 34 years after the first cell phone call…

The Metaverse is not virtual reality. Just as the mobile Internet is not just an application.

The Metaverse is not a virtual mode either. Just as Facebook is not the Internet today.

The Metaverse is not a video game. Video Games like Fortnite offer a non-persistent experience and limit the number of participants (1 million simultaneous users of Fortnite are in over 100,000 separate simulations).

Finally, the Metaverse is also not a collection of technology tools like Unreal, Unity, WebXR or WebGPU.

The Metaverse is a new experience whose potential is just beginning to be explored. It could be something incredibly positive, destructive, or something in between. As was nuclear power in its time. After about 40 years of work and the discovery of the large amount of energy that fission could produce, the first application was not a power plant but a bomb.

We are building the invisible part of the Metaverse.

Each layer has some good, some bad and some ugly.

THE GOOD

Image by Devanath from Pixabay

The current “techlash” is an opportunity

If technologies are the “what”, humans are the “how”.

The Metaverse, in the right hands, could become a tool for a more equitable society. It could act as a mirror of humanity and shed light on dark areas, allowing us to correct the ills of our society through a feedback loop. Utopia you say? Yet, this is what we are currently experiencing through the problematic of the ethics of AI systems used by the web 2.0 giants.

The “techlash” continues to define the state of the technological world in 2021. Government leaders, who have traditionally been the gatekeepers of society’s protection from the effects of new innovations, are increasingly infuriated by the inability of traditional policies to keep up with the unprecedented speed and scale of change. Alerted by former actors of the attention economy like Tristan Harris, platforms that control Web2.0 are increasingly pressured to transform the systems they intend to rely on to build the Metaverse; whether by organizations like the US Federal Trade Commission or the CNIL (see Google Analytics). Increasing consumer demands and employee activism require more aggressive self-regulation.

This is why Twitter hired its biggest critics in 2020 to develop ethical AI. This is why Timnit Gebru (former Ms. Ethics Google) was “thanked” or why MIT researcher Joy Buolamwini’s remarkable work on algorithmic bias was highlighted in the Netflix “Coded Bias” paper.

Twenty years of experience to capitalize on to moderate Metaverse platforms

The social architecture of the Metaverse and the design choices are still ahead of us.

Researchers and designers of virtual worlds are increasingly interested in more proactive methods of virtual governance to address virtual groping once they occur of course, but also discourage such acts while encouraging more positive behavior.

These designers are not starting entirely from scratch. Multiplayer digital games — which have a long history of managing large and sometimes toxic communities — offer critical lessons for fostering responsible and successful virtual reality shared spaces.

Since 2003, for example, millions of people have gathered to work, play, and socialize in Second Life. Users can even create their own digital content and trade goods and services in the world’s currency, the Linden Dollar. Second Life is 650 million US dollars a year in transactions and a million people use it but above all 20 years of experience in the 2D Metaverse. On this subject, the video game sector is clearly ahead.

The most common forms of governance (warning, suspension or even ban) are currently based on users reporting. Given the size of virtual communities, these processes are often automated via algorithms, which have both advantages and disadvantages. They are reactive, rather than proactive. Moreover, automation leads to problems of false positives and negatives, or even algorithmic discrimination.

What about the self-governance practiced in the multiplayer game “League of Legends” for example that is a tribunal system? Due to lack of efficiency, this system was abandoned after a few years. However, it still exists under the name Overwatch in a game like “Dota 2” for example.

What about the Wikipedia moderation model ? Is it an ethical business model to ask voluntary members of the community to do difficult, time-consuming and laborious moderation work for free? “Wikipedia”, a non-profit organization, is not for everyone.

A multiplayer game like Everquest encouraged altruistic behavior by forcing players who died to return to the place where they died. In this way, players were implicitly but strongly encouraged to ask others for help in recovering lost items.

Couldn’t nudge, a concept theorized in the physical world, be integrated into the architecture of the Metaverse?

Image par Gerd Altmann de Pixabay

What if positive choices for the collective “paid off” more for the players? What if the Metaverse offered the possibility to monitor its “positive impact” score? What if the player was alerted when his score was below the average score to activate the social norm bias. Because if the underlying technologies have matured, so have the advances in the understanding of cognitive biases (which can be used to good effect)!

The Metaverse economy will benefit creators and “unbancarized” people

All the actors in the chain can also hope to get a piece of the pie and regain control provided that the Metaverse model is more decentralized than the social web is today.

For years, gamers have given video game giants like Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Ubisoft 175 billion dollars to play on a screen. They have seen the fruit of tens or even hundreds of hours of hard work to earn stars, pass a level, gain a power, and end up in the trash when the game is over.

But once again, video game players are ahead of the game.

In 2010, a nightclub in the Entropia Universe game was sold for $635,000. The virtual equivalent of Amsterdam was sold in Second Life for $50,000 in 2007. A 16-year-old won $3 million in prizes in the Fortnite World Cup.

Recently, Axie, which is at the forefront of this “GameFi” trend, has already generated over $2.5 billion in trading volume. About 35% of Axie Infinity traffic — and the biggest share of its 2.5 million daily active users — comes from the Philippines, where high proficiency in English, strong gaming culture and widespread smartphone usage have fueled its popularity. Axie has thus become the highest valued NFT collection to date.

Unlike the current buzz about “images” NFTs, gaming NFTs “act”, interact with other NFTs and can appreciate in value over time.

Imagine that you have earned KyratCoin by playing Far Cry 4 for a hundred hours. Because YOUR character, Ajay Ghale_xxx, is also an NFT, he is unique and impossible to duplicate. You own this character. Because you have played a hundred hours, your Ajay Ghale is better equipped, faster, better than those who have played only ten hours. Thus, you earn new KyratCoin faster the more you play. The value of your avatar is higher. You can sell your Ajay Ghale to another player if you want.If you’ve played well, your NFT is worth more than when you originally bought it. If you are not the only one in this case, then others have followed your example. As a result, KyratCoin has grown in value, and the Discord community has grown.

Some gamers currently consider that gaming NFTs is just a new way for gaming companies to earn more money. However, just take a look on Reddit and you’ll find people more or less officially selling characters they’ve raised in a game like World of Warcraft for example… Black market has existed for years. Axie’s NFTs are an interesting illustration to follow. Under the guise of the principle of scholarship, actors finance scholarships of sorts. They own NFTs which they “rent” to guilds they own. In a way, the players borrow the NFT and pay back this loan by giving up a part of the cryptocurrencies earned by playing the game.

Eventually, online and ephemeral experiences have also served to extract behavioral data, the same data used by tech giants to identify patterns and sell us products and services, the same data that made them become the biggest market capitalization in the space of a few decades…

THE BAD

Image par Devanath de Pixabay

Open source Metaverse could already be an utopia

After interest in these open source metaverses waned, the tech industry spent a decade obsessing over capturing our attention through free, addictive services from which it “indirectly” derives immense value. This is the internet that the metaverse has inherited.

In the early 90’s, when Neil Stephenson wrote his book “Snow Crash”, the Web was still a mess, each piece being connected only by the “magic” of servers. Novice developers build rudimentary Web sites using HTML and HTTP. Then, web browsers like Mosaic and Netscape were born to solve the problem of sorting and aggregating information.

The Metaverse, as described by Stephenson, is a three-dimensional digital street with virtual real estate, where users’ avatars can stroll, party and do business. The architecture and interoperability between all the players in this 3D cyberspace is managed by a company called Global Multimedia Protocol Group.

In the early 2000s, a flurry of open source Metaverse projects emerged to solve the problem of assembling virtual worlds. Unfortunately none of these projects ever took off.

By the mid-2000s, it became clear that the value was no longer in building individual websites but in creating information sorters, channels, aggregators and publishers — open enough to adapt to user-generated content, but closed enough to reap huge profits. Thus was born web2.0. For nearly 30 years, cyberspace has been in the hands of fewer and fewer technology giants. Promising new players emerge, compete with each other, are bought out and end up becoming real black holes called GAFA.

Is a story where giants like Microsoft, Facebook, Epic Games, Apple, Niantic, Nvidia, etc. decide to collaborate to build the metaverse under open source standards from which no one in particular would make billions really credible?

Why would they partner to create a metaverse when they have already spent decades and billions building their own?

If Big Tech’s growth goes on, there will be multiple Metaverse. Each will be interoperable within a proprietary and controlled ecosystem of a tech giant, in the same way that Apple is. Users like the homogeneity of Apple’s proprietary operating system, the ubiquity of iMessage. And Apple, presumably, likes the 30% commission it can charge developers who sell iOS apps through its App Store.

Who wants a metaverse built in the manner of Web 2.0?

New open source metaverse projects are trying to fight the inevitable to redistribute ownership of the Metaverse.

Play-to-earn may kill the core gameplay loop

Once again, the video game industry is ahead of the curve. Games have always been at the forefront of the notion of digital ownership.

The gaming platform Steam can be credited with standardizing the concept for games, and maybe for other media like movies.

Image par Gino Crescoli de Pixabay

Collecting items of randomized rarity and distribution is one of the main “loops” in many games. Usually the player kills a monster and then gets a better weapon, which allows him to kill a tougher monster, which allows him to get an even better weapon, etc. Moreover, collecting “skins” (i.e. different outfits/permutations of the game character) is one of the most common types of microtransactions in games.

NFTs are designed to dynamically adapt to various rare items with permanent, trackable, and open value. But the way NFTs are currently being discussed in games is in great danger of falling into the trap of killing the core gameplay loop by giving in to the sirens of quick financial gain.

This mechanism has already been tested to some extent. Developers of games with a “loot loop” have long had a problem with players being labeled as “farmers,” who acquire and accumulate game currency and items and sell them to players for real money, against the game’s terms of service. The solution was to set up “auction houses” where players could use real money to buy items from each other.

Unfortunately, this solution had an undesirable side effect. As noted by Jamie Madigan, a well-known game psychologist, our brains are designed to pay special attention to unexpected and beneficial rewards. While much of the joy in some games comes from an unexpected or random reward, easily acquiring a known reward via real money degrades the perception of the reward and thus some of the enjoyment of the game. This raises the question of the sustainability of the success of blockchain games like Axie Infinity.

It has indeed quickly generated enthusiasm around the concept of “playing to win”. Players can potentially earn real money by selling either resources or tokenized characters earned in a blockchain game environment. So what is the main driver for players? Do they care enough about the core of the game itself rather than the potential market value of NFTs or the potential to earn money while playing?

More fundamentally, if real gains are the goal, is this really a game or simply a gamified micro-economy, where “farming” as described above is not an illicit activity, but rather the basic mechanism of the game?

Thus blockchain games face several gameplay problems that fall under the psychology of games. Not solving them will probably prevent them from a massive adoption.

Games can be seen as the training wheels of the metaverse: the ways we communicate, navigate, and think about virtual spaces are all based on mechanisms and systems coming from games. Early adopters of a “metaverse” will be gamers who have honed these skills and feel comfortable in virtual environments.

Image par Okan Caliskan de Pixabay

Yet many brands and marketers who haven’t really done the work to understand games are trying to quickly seize an opportunity that probably won’t materialize for a long time.

Metaverse could be like web2.0… but even worse

A recent experiment at the University of California at Berkeley already shows that synthetic human faces have become so convincing that they fool even experienced observers

When you ask people to name main technologies of the metaverse, they usually name virtual reality headsets, blockchain or even 5G. But the underlying technology that will shape our experience is AI. Indeed, the metaverse will probably be filled with artificial agents controlled by AI that look and act like humans.

They have access to data about our personal interests and beliefs, habits and personality, while monitoring our emotional state by reading our facial expressions and vocal inflections. Actually, they will even have more information than in a web2.0 world to engage us in “conversational manipulation,” targeting us on behalf of paid advertisers without us realizing they are not real.

Since these AI agents will look like anyone in the metaverse, our natural skepticism about advertising won’t protect us.

And the UGLY

Iamge by shykhman from Pixabay

The Metaconomy (economy of the Metaverse) could be a trojan horse to implement a deeper surveillance system

When we make payments using bank accounts and credit cards, we make a deal: convenience in exchange for the fact that our transactions will be visible to the companies involved. Every transaction leaves a trail.

In China, the authorities have invented a concept of “controllable anonymity” for the digital yuan. If participants in transactions are anonymous to each other, the central bank can “un-anonymize”. Helping people who don’t have bank accounts “sounds like a very nice idea, but what if the end result is a system of monitored bank accounts? You can get very good privacy for digital payments, says Ari Juels, a cryptographer at Cornell University who has studied digital currency models for central banks. But it’s not clear how much privacy governments will allow and how much privacy compromises efficiency and security.

And unfortunately we don’t live in an altruistic world.

Investors and bankers deeply disagree about how cryptocurrencies will eventually take hold, but their extreme volatility makes them an increasingly important investment. While bitcoin, ethereum and other digital currencies are gaining acceptance on Wall Street, an ever-increasing number of new, untested currencies are endlessly emerging. Some of which are so dubious they are literally called “crap currencies”. With technical failures and sudden price swings, there’s no guarantee that these tokens can be converted to cash. And in the crypto-currency world, it’s also considered a rite of passage to be scammed at some point.

Ingenious players created a bank in EVE Online in 2009: the E-Bank. They created an account system similar to what already existed in real-world central banks. They made loans, paid interest, had a CEO, a board of directors and were extremely well organized. Then the CEO stole 200 billion ISK (EVE’s currency) and exchanged it for over 6,000 Australian dollars.

This may suit wealthy investors who can handle the risk, but could leave market players vulnerable, especially in developing countries.

Government-backed currencies still dominate the world today. If private digital currencies begin to compete with national currencies, it could make some of them more volatile. Almost 200 years ago, something quite similar happened in the United States. In 1830, 90 percent of the U.S. money supply consisted of privately held bank bills. When Facebook declared that we could buy Libra (a project that collapsed) using local currencies, the fear of the price volatility that private currencies caused in the United States in the 1830s resurfaced. At the time, the unpopularity of the system influenced the government’s decision, a few decades later, to replace it with a national banking system. Out of this chaos came the dollar and its domination. The value of a currency is stable as long as its issuer is credible. The political instability in Venezuela in recent years has contributed to the loss of value of its currency against the dollar. By analogy, if a large company were to issue its own cryptocurrency today but its business model declines, or if people begin to doubt the future viability of the company, then this would certainly impact people’s desire to hold this cryptocurrency.

So some countries, including China and Sweden, are testing versions of this state-owned cryptocurrency idea. The Bahamas has already launched a central bank digital currency, or CBDC, which they call the Sand Dollar. Nevertheless, there are still many details to be worked out.

Who oversees the digital currency?

How is it connected to private banks and payment services?

Which people will want to use it?

Image par Tamim Tarin de Pixabay

Another problem is that digital payments have a hard time staying private.

The Metaconomy is still quite useless and inaccessible to a large number of people

The NFT market volume is said to exceed $700 million, and OpenSea is headed for a $100 billion valuation in record time. Ethereum blockchain-based marketplaces seem to be emerging as a strategic infrastructure that will support metaverse economies, but for now, NFTs are missing something crucial: utility and connected economies.

Digital assets are bought and sold. Thus, it is a speculative market with little real use. To create functional economies in the metaverse, owners should be able to do something concrete with their goods. For example, if I buy a recently minted painting, I would want to be able to furnish my virtual home with it. Right now, all I can do is admire my purchase on OpenSea or another site and give the URL to everyone.

This problem will remain for a number of years while the industry agrees (or not) on standards and interoperability. Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, estimates that we will have to wait at least another 5 to 10 years. This delay could kill the emergence of the metaconomy.

Moreover, the promise of blockchain-based exchanges and the proliferation of different altcoins that power them should mean that transferring the value of goods and services across different metaverse will be easy. But we are still very far from that.

Different virtual worlds are being created, with their own proprietary token-based economies. There is no real connected exchange of value or assets to other worlds. My plot of land in Decentraland may be completely worthless if I want to trade it for a Land in The Sandbox for example. Similarly, the mechanics of buying, selling, and trading through existing platforms require a certain level of understanding of cryptocurrencies and the use of Metamask, for example. Altcoins need to be converted to Etherum or Bitcoin for example, and then back to altcoin of another metaverse in order to be traded — each time incurring fees.

We are still in the early stages of a functional exchange market, as accessible as fiat, but one that excludes a large number of people who want to participate in the metaverse but do not understand how metanomics works.

Metaverse could be one version of the future of the Internet within… at least ten years

If the Metaverse were an iceberg, the visible part would be a new type of experience. While the invisible part would be: social interactions, new business models, devices, communication networks, new individual behaviors, new communities, new uses, killer apps, brands, gaming, physical and virtual hardware… Therefore, the metaverse concept is a combination of several technologies such as augmented reality, the Internet of Things, 5G, artificial intelligence, space technologies, blockchain… All of them being at the service of immersion in what some people qualify as the future of the Internet. Many of these technologies have been slow to mature, but they are approaching the minimum level of performance to make it a success.

For example, most virtual reality headsets still need to be connected to a PC or game console to achieve the processing power and communication speed needed for smooth and immersive experiences. With ever-faster processors and high-speed wireless communications on the horizon, better visual resolution and wireless experiences should emerge in the next few years.

Instead of looking at the news, you could be right in the middle of the news. Instead of learning the history of ancient Egypt or Greece from books, you could immerse yourself in it virtually, travel through the universe and interact directly with the avatars of the people of the time. Instead of watching a basketball game on TV statically, you could turn your head 360 degrees as if you were there. Instead of attending a virtual conference located on the other side of the world in a passive way, you could then go and meet the other participants and exchange with them on the subjects you are passionate about.

Today, augmented reality remains a niche market regarding the small number of use cases. The blockchain has enabled the launch of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin in the last few years. It would allow virtual goods and identities to be purchased and transferred seamlessly between various platforms making up the Metaverse. New blockchain applications, such as NFT fever, are increasing the adoption of the technology and could launch a new kind of creator economy…

Image par Nurudeen Alidu de Pixabay

While some brands are already rushing to grab the pie, widespread adoption will not happen for several years. Indeed, the necessary technologies still have a way to go to optimize their functionality, usability and cost. One semiconductor company has stated that a truly immersive metaverse would require 1,000 times the computational efficiency of today’s state-of-the-art processors.

“When a tree falls, you hear it; when the forest grows, not a sound.”

What if the Metaverse was just a tree when the web3 grows without a sound ?

*******************************SOURCES********** ****************

  1. https://www.matthewball.vc/all/forwardtothemetaverseprimer?utm_source=pocket_mylist
  2. https://www.matthewball.vc/all/interchangemetaverse?utm_source=pocket_mylist
  3. https://www-metapunk-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.metapunk.co.uk/metablog/8-2021-metanomics-building-the-economy-of-the-metaverse?format=amp&utm_source=pocket_mylist
  4. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/facebook-wants-us-to-live-in-the-metaverse?mc_cid=05bfb4716d&mc_eid=9b04217987&utm_source=pocket_mylist
  5. https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/16/for-the-love-of-the-loot-blockchain-the-metaverse-and-gamings-blind-spot/?guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubGlua2VkaW4uY29tLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAMaoF18odRK_1i_9sDJmc7t1pVnUefHF7ZECJZuMj-tJdp8JdmgLNal6Kh0-x2ZrjyiSTlaax_8fXODnMApm54cA1X26mUgvP0wLJJNZllV7TTeLLVjZolJwmwC5G4JLdBqSMzlspCibCtdS0S-1FtxL0DOqUSaAKA3ZAm3v88d3&tpcc=ECTW2020&utm_source=pocket_mylist&guccounter=2
  6. https://www.deccanherald.com/business/into-the-metaverse-where-crypto-gaming-and-capitalism-collide-1045947.html?utm_source=pocket_mylist
  7. https://www.wired.com/story/big-tech-metaverse-internet-consolidation-business/?utm_source=pocket_mylist
  8. https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/11/23/crypto-states-will-compete-with-corporates-in-the-metaverse/?utm_source=pocket_mylist
  9. https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/12/16/1042516/the-metaverse-has-a-groping-problem/?utm_source=pocket_mylist
  10. https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3159562/sandbox-founder-says-open-blockchain-based-metaverse-threatened?CMCampaignID=83414266eab42dc9dbff6d5d7567c2e9&UUID=a395dbfe765ad9e9cd5ba4e8cb05d1f0&tc=11&tpcc=enlz-insidechinatech&utm_source=pocket_mylist
  11. https://venturebeat-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/venturebeat.com/2021/12/26/how-ai-vr-ar-5g-and-blockchain-may-converge-to-power-the-metaverse/amp/?utm_source=pocket_mylist
  12. https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/12/the-metaverse-will-be-filled-with-elves/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubGlua2VkaW4uY29tLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAJN_F84gFIxJQIbQ-wOwONOzm5M6QgwcpI4ecowPYwAmoOrNOT4z1hwiZjyYpZCT-pn4Rs896BnxeZfQ9OUNhTBsdtCP4DMHWgzkLOPgeawH-RnLxsyUMXWamqjYeemH0da4LeGksKbFyy1EpCEws5QTDbOqof71A_JsgWBQmjNq&utm_source=pocket_mylist
  13. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/02/metaverse-monetization-business-guide/?utm_source=pocket_mylist
  14. https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/02/08/1044732/metaverse-history-snow-crash/?utm_source=pocket_mylist

Categories
Metaverse Summit Roadshow

[Metaverse Summit] Web3 Foundation & Polkadot Roadmap and Vision with Joe Petrowski

[Metaverse Summit] Metaverse Identity and Ownership: Legal and Compliance Panel

With the deployment of metaverse in our daily lives, there will be new opportunities for people and firms to extend their activities. At the same time, these activities touch various legal and compliance aspects. In this panel, we’ll focus on two topics : Identity and Ownership.

IDENTITY:

As the next generation of the Internet, the Metaverse should first have the function of carrying the effective identity of users. What are the different approaches and forms of digital identities in the metaverse? What would be the potential opportunities and risks of blockchain-based identity ecosystem? What would the future cross-metaverse decentralized identity ideally be like? (case and examples: ONCHAINID, Crucible)

OWNERSHIP:

The bearing function of user property refers to Metaverse’s recognition of user property ownership. How to judge that someone has ownership of something? Own a movable or immovable property?

Metaverse is not only a new form of entertainment, it will also have real world impact and functionality. How to bridge digital identity, virtual ownership and real-life? How can consumers be protected? (Utrust)

NFTs, IP ownership and Financial regulation:

In response to “right-clicker mentality” — how to balance the ‘perception of ownership’ and the true ‘on-chain ownership’ when it comes to virtual assets?

From a regulatory point of view, is it crucial to determine the nature of NFTs. eg. a means of access/proof of ownership (utility tokens) or rather be considered as securities (security tokens)? What’s the regulatory state of art and future of NFTs in these regards?

Although NFTs are not (yet) specifically regulated, what are the regulatory and compliance obligations that the businesses should take into account?

Metaverse Identity and Ownership: Legal and Compliance Panel

00:00 intro of four panelists.

04:06 What are the different approaches and forms of digital identity in the metaverses?

11:15 What will be the trust metaverse identity regarding user data?

15:09 How to judge that someone has real ownership of something?

21:32 What is the regulatory state of the art?

29:22 What kind of elements should entrepreneurs take into consideration?

31:15 What type of legal framework is there for the current state of art decentralized autonomous organization?

38:38 How can we bridge the virtual world of virtual life with real life?

45:19 How can the user’s rights be protected in the current state of the art?