‘Crypto-States’ Will Compete With Corporates in the Metaverse
It’s Facebook’s Meta versus open DAOs. And the battle will come down to hardware, specifically, microchips.
Kelsie Nabben
24 November, 2021 [as published in CoinDesk].
What kind of metaverse would you like to live in?
With the announcement of Facebook’s rebrand to “Meta” — where the social media giant designs and builds “the metaverse” and claims the next digital frontier — the battle for the future of cyberspace is on.
What is “the metaverse”?
“The metaverse” describes virtual worlds that break distinctions between digital and physical space. In more detail, the metaverse has been described as “a massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds which can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users, and with continuity of data, such as identity, history, entitlements, objects, communications and payments.”
The concept is aptly depicted in Neil Stephenson’s 1992 Novel “Snow Crash” where people plug in to conduct business and socialize in commercially owned digital worlds, the book turned film “Ready Player One” and the recent Netflix film “Free Guy,” where a non-player character becomes a sentient artificial intelligence.
Metaverse investor and writer Matthew Ball estimates the metaverse could be worth up to $30 trillion in the next decade. How this impending digital reality is built and governed will determine societal outcomes in the near future and for generations to come. This piece argues that the battle for the future of the metaverse comes down to hardware.
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