Everything You Need To Know About The Metaverse
If you are the type to regularly follow the news or you are into gaming, cinema, technology, or cryptocurrency, chances are you have heard about the metaverse before it took the internet by storm in late 2021. Even if you have no interest in any of the topics mentioned above, there is a slight chance you have seen the extraordinarily sudden increase in chatter around it since Facebook rebranded to Meta and announced plans to build the metaverse.
Although it is not easy to provide a brief explanation of what the metaverse exactly is, it can be said that it is a more immersive and comprehensive version of the internet as we know it, with augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) playing a fundamental role in making online experiences feel more real-world-like.
What you should know about the metaverse
The metaverse is widely believed to be the next major evolution of the internet as it is shifting from closed ecosystems and traditional text-driven websites into shared 3D spaces that allow users to interact with one another via avatars. The metaverse, according to its proponents, can and will be used for a variety of things such as shopping, gaming, socializing events and even work. You are already familiar with the innovation of shared servers in which you can create or choose your avatar in order to play and socialize with other players around the world if you play video games such as Fortnite or Roblox. What makes the metaverse so special is that it relies on blockchain. By using non-fungible tokens (NFTs), it represents ownership of virtual assets, including items or virtual plots of land.
The big difference between video games like Fortnite and the metaverse is that since it is blockchain-fueled, it provides ‘true asset ownership’. That means in the metaverse, users can actually own things they pay for, such as land, digital apparel, avatars and they will also be able to seamlessly migrate them across different platforms via their crypto wallet or re-sell them on third-party marketplaces, while in Fortnite or Roblox, everything is locked into a single platform. In these video games, they money a user pays for virtual currencies in order to buy digital in-game items, remains on the centralized servers of the game makers, cannot be moved from one virtual place to another or be sold, and therefore have no actual value for players.
As metaverse advocates say, it is just a matter of time before we are all vibing online as avatars.
Follow Xapa on social media and stay tuned for more!
