Metauniverse

Over the past few years, the term ?metauniverse? has become very popular - it is mentioned in the context of the games Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, Animal Crossing, as well as AR and VR-technologies.

In July 2021, Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg announced plans to create his metauniverse.

A full-fledged virtual world for work, entertainment and communication, in which users can feel the physical presence of each other.?In other words, the metauniverse is a parallel digital universe that exists parallel to the real world, and people interact in it by the means of their avatars, i.e. digital counterparts.

Venture capital investor Matthew Ball?(the modern ideologue of the metauniverse)?have?indicated?seven main features of the metauniverse:

Infinite existence. It never resets, stops, or ends.

It works in real time and is independent of external factors, although developers can create and plan events in the metauniverse.

There is no limit on the size of the audience and the number of simultaneous users. Anyone can at any moment connect to the metauniverse and participate in its life as equals with others.

There must be a fully functioning economy. People and companies can receive some kind of reward (analogue of money) for ?work? that brings ?value? recognized by others, spend it and invest.?Virtual currencies based on Blockchain?such as ton, etn etc. are well suited?for this.

The metauniverse combines physical and digital worlds, open and closed platforms, private and public networks. It is a ?single digital identity?.

It requires the compatibility of data, objects, assets, content transmitted between digital worlds. For example, a user should be able to transfer cars from GTA Online to Need for Speed or give them to a friend from Facebook.

Metauniverses should be filled with ?content and experience? created by its own users: singles, groups or commercial enterprises.

In the last few years, the metauniverse has evolved from a fantasy future represented in various works of fiction to a reality that does exist, albeit at an early stage of development.?Yes, there are still a number of problems, questions and challenges to solve in order to create a full-fledged metauniverse, but the basis for the emergence of the next set of immersive applications of the metauniverse is already established, and the basic technologies underlying them are steadily evolving.?Since the future state of the metauniverse has not yet been determined, developers, designers, users and dreamers will have to create a user-owned digital universe that will be defined by decentralization, immersion and coherence.

The main example of how the blockchain-based metauniverse will work is Decentraland, an Ethereum-based virtual reality platform that is also available from mobile devices and computers.

But it is impossible to predict how technology will evolve and what the metauniverse will actually be, whether we will see a dystopian reality like the one depicted in the "Matrix" or a gameplay virtual world full of retro-references, as in Ready Player One.?Perhaps the metauniverse will take a form we have not yet imagined.

But we can assume that the metauniverse will revolutionize virtually every industry, from healthcare and payments to goods, entertainment, and wages. New industries, markets and resources, skills and professions will be created for the new future.