The concept of "metaverse", which was introduced 29 years ago, has suddenly attracted the attention of entrepreneurs, capital and the market as it has absorbed the mature AI, game engine, AR/VR, blockchain and other technological achievements in recent years.
What is the Metaverse?
The concept of Metaverse originated from science fiction or pointing to the "ultimate form" of the Internet, the term Metaverse comes from author Neal Stephenson's science fiction novel "Snow Crash", which describes a world where people interact with various software in 3D space as virtual images. world. Conceptually, the term Metaverse consists of Meta and Verse, with Meta representing transcendence and Verse representing the universe, which together usually represent the concept of "beyond the universe": an artificial space that runs parallel to the real world. Looking back at the development of the Internet, from PC LAN to mobile Internet, the immersion of Internet use has gradually increased, and the distance between virtual and reality has gradually narrowed. In this trend, the Metaverse, where immersion and participation are at their peak, is the "ultimate form" of the Internet.
Technically, based on the traditional Internet, the metaverse will have higher requirements in terms of immersion, participation, and sustainability, and will therefore be supported by many independent tools, platforms, infrastructure, and protocols. As the maturity of AR, VR, 5G, cloud computing and other technologies increases, the metaverse is expected to gradually move from concept to reality.
The four core value attributes of the metaverse
Meta-universe: virtual and real highly interoperable, the closed-loop economy with open source platform. Although there is no detailed description of the final form of the metaverse in the industry, it is still possible to determine the four core attributes of the metaverse by refining its features:
Synchronization and anthropomorphism. The virtual space is highly synchronized and interoperable with the real society, and the interaction effect is close to the real one. This means that all the events in the real world will be synchronized with the virtual world, and users can get close to real feedback when interacting in the virtual metaverse.
Open source and creation. Open source means both open source technology and open source platform, and the metaverse will encapsulate and modularize the code to different degrees by formulating "standards" and "protocols". The metaverse will continue to expand.
Perpetuity. The metaverse platform will not "pause" or "end", but will run in an open source way and continue indefinitely.
Closed-loop economic system. Users' production and work activities will be recognized by the platform's unified currency, which players can use to consume content within the platform, or exchange for real currency at a certain rate. The economic system is the engine that drives the meta-universe to keep moving forward and evolving.