2021 which regarded as the “first year of metaverse” had left, but at the end of the year, an article issued from the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection seemed to be both concluding and opening or even indicating that “metaverse” concept will continue to be a hit trend in the upcoming year 2022.
Article in CCDI website
On March 2021, American game company Roblox which named as “the first metaverse share” had successfully listed, and the share value had doubled 10 times drastically. Since then, “metaverse” started to grab people’s attention.
As global renowned social media company Facebook changed its name to Meta, the popular metaverse concept became even more well-known to others. At the same time, other related listed companies in A share market also repeatedly reached new highs.
Behind the numerous and complicated news, how should metaverse be defined? What is the relationship between blockchain and metaverse?
What is Metaverse?
The word “Metaverse” is formed from two words which are “Meta” and “Verse”. “Meta” means “surpass”, and “Verse” means “universe”, thus it is construed as “surpass the universe” when combined together. The most typical definition of metaverse is:
“A virtual space that is parallel to the real world and independent of the real world, an online virtual world that mirrors the real world, and a more and more real digital virtual world.”
Source: Network
The concept was originally from the 1992 science fiction novel “Snow Crash” written by Neal Stephenson. The book describes about a world where people use digital avatars of themselves to interact with various types of software in multidimensional space.
Followed by the development of digital technologies such as blockchain, VR, AR, 5G, cloud computing, IoT and etc., while the distance between virtual and reality has reduced, reliable technical implementation route has emerged for immersion, participation, interaction and openness experiences. Based on this, metaverse which follows the trend will become a new trend and direction during the Internet revolution.
In metaverse, no matter where we are, anything we do in the metaverse will not be hindered, including gathering, working, learning, playing, shopping and creating with friends and families.
Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook said that:
“The defining quality of metaverse will be a sense of presence, as if you were with another person or in another place. Together with another person in real is the ultimate dream of social technology.”
Related expert predicted that, within 10 years in future, metaverse will produce 1 billion level of users and hundreds of billions U.S Dollars of digital business, while providing massive work positions, hence this can be seen as a blue ocean market with huge potential.”
How Blockchain Facilitates Rapid Implementation of Metaverse
The biggest difference between metaverse and previous virtual product based on digital technology is that: metaverse world has achieved right confirmation, price fixing, trading and empowerment of data in real, and metaverse world is able to become an objective, open source and dynamically evolving artificial virtual parallel world with user requirement as guide.
Decentralized, tamper proof and traceable characteristics possessed by blockchain make it to become an essential element in metaverse ecology. Blockchain helps to establish thousands of open source metaverse and achieves interconnection via cross chain, thus it benefits long-term development of metaverse.
Firstly, blockchain’s decentralized design can fulfil the governance requirement of metaverse. Metaverse system belongs to all users and organization, individuals which contributes for the system, while achieving governance and order by relying on trigger of market elements instead of belonging to any Internet platform or organization.
Currently, metaverse is in primary development phase, therefore blockchain game and artwork issuance on chain become an important entrance. The reason why this entrance can continue to develop is because of blockchain’s decentralized design which formulates special economic incentives mode so that every user that participates in game obtains satisfaction, earns other rewards while having fun and breaks through simple recreation and social attributes.
Secondly, blockchain technology’s distributed trust system provides basic architecture assurance via achieving data right confirmation, price fixing and transaction. Basically, metaverse is the reprocessing and reapplying of data, hence this is the target that blockchain technology wishes to achieve and realize.
Every node data of blockchain is completely open and cannot be tampered without needing to apply additional security protection mechanism and verification mechanism. It increases efficiency of operations such as data right confirmation, division, sharing and security and trust, carries out clearer confirmation of rights division on ownership and right to use in between means of production and workers in order to establish a multidimensional, multi-fields and multi-agent metaverse ecological system. We can say that, metaverse is the ultimate result of blockchain technology.
Lastly, blockchain’s consensus mechanism helps metaverse to achieve business closed loop. As certain blockchain basic projects with cross-chain as main subject have obtained fast development, public chain system has become more and more complete, while as the underlying layer of value Internet, blockchain’s support has also gradually become solid. This has provided technical possibility for mutual open up of every ecology in metaverse system so that formation of “metaverse island” can be prevented.
Metaverse has shown us a bizarre and dazzling new world, but this new world is hard to rely on a sole technical support. Development of metaverse requires cooperation of various technologies like VR/AR technology, big data, cloud computing, AI and so on to complete it. However, these technologies can only take effect within certain scenarios or parts and cannot truly connect the whole scenarios.
Differed from the technologies mentioned above, blockchain’s characteristics such as consensus mechanism and smart contract not only can establish connection between various new technologies, but also can achieve composition and weighting to other metaverse technology in order to reach “1+1>2” result and construct a complete business closed loop based on new technology.
Conclusion
Behind the popularity of metaverse concept, we must save the redundancy and go back to normal, whether is virtual reality device like AR/VR and etc. or brain-computer interface or even IoT technology, without underlying layer support of blockchain, maximization of effectiveness will hardly be achieved. Hence, we can say that, blockchain technology establishes the “basic infrastructure” of metaverse era.
Blockchain has become an indispensable underlying layer technology in metaverse world. No matter in terms of experience or settlement method or even connection of virtual and reality world, materialization of metaverse world can find solution from blockchain and continuously construct a brand new metaverse era via empowerment of various parties.
As the pioneer of blockchain industry, Vonechain Technology has always been observing in-depth on new industrial trend. On 22nd of October, founder of Vonechain Technology, Mr. Liu Tao gave a speech with the topic of “Metaverse: The Ultimate Form of The Internet” during Apsara Conference. He interpreted in-depth regarding Vonechain Technology’s thoughts on metaverse concept and related contents. Mr. Liu Tao stated that as technologies such as blockchain, VR, AR, sensory interconnection, digital twin, holographic communication and so on continuously become matured, metaverse will finally become the ultimate form of Internet and bring fresher and more unique experiences for this world.
Vonechain Technology sees blockchain as the “foundation” and “basic infrastructure” of metaverse, actively utilizes blockchain technology to empower entity, while under the basis of integrating and progressing with other technologies, Vonechain Technology will open up the door towards future digital world.