To work for everyone, the Metaverse must be decentralized

In his monthly crypto technology column, Israeli serial entrepreneur Ariel Shapira covers emerging technologies within the crypto space, decentralized finance (DeFi), and blockchain, as well as their roles in shaping the 21st century economy.

What's in a name? Quite a metaverse is what one could make believe by looking at the rumor around The recent transformation of Facebook into Meta. In reality, of course, there's more to the new name than that - there's also the whistleblower scandal, along with past controversies affecting the company's image, as well as the invasion of rival social media platforms that are more popular. among the young.

But, if Facebook's rebrand is easy for skeptics to dismiss as a public relations stunt, the same is not true of the Metaverse, simply because entering requires more than a public announcement. In addition to Facebook's own intention to invest $ 10 billion in metaverse-related projects this year alone, Microsoft is building its own metaverse and deployment of 3D avatars for teams. In early April, Epic Games, the gaming giant behind teen favorite Fortnite, raised $ 1 billion for his metaverse efforts. Many great players are revving their engines to compete in the Metaverse, and money tends to make things happen.

However, for now, it is not clear what exactly money can make happen in this specific case, because it does not seem clear what the Metaverse will actually look like. Most commentators envision it as a virtual reality / augmented reality interface for online interactions with other people and online services alike, the sleek futuristic technology we see in movies like Ready Player One, where users navigated the world online with 3D avatars. By building a virtual universe where anything can happen, Facebook and Microsoft surely exercised their creative muscle with those 3D rendered business meetings, right?

But let's imagine, if only for the sake of the argument, that this really will be something worthwhile: a human-machine interface that comprises a whole range of stacks of technology to change the way we interact with the universe of connected devices. We put on our augmented reality (AR) glasses - Facebook now presented a couple, not much different from Google's I had to dispose of, and our home is transformed into a tropical island hub where we can hang out with friends from all over the world and access not just websites but full experiences and work in the same virtual space as the AI-enabled tools that they help us get the job done. Our virtual avatar can also go through the real world, projected on the glasses of other users according to the location we establish. In this way, we enjoy the live broadcasts of the available cameras or even have a more or less good point of view projection calculated based on that.

Does all this amount to a full-blown technological revolution? Even with our imaginations racing, it's hard to tell. Would you rather read this article on a virtual sheet of paper that you can fold in an origami crane or put on the wall of your virtual house, not from a computer or mobile screen? Otherwise, the Metaverse may not be as chilling as its architects hope it will be. But then who knows. In ten years, the metaverse may become as ubiquitous as mobile phones today.

What is certain is that there is a colossal work to be done to implement this. The future inhabitants of Metaverse need virtual reality and augmented reality solutions and new platforms and protocols must emerge to bring the disjointed fragments of Metaverse together into a seamless experience. And I'm pretty sure that unless we want the Metaverse to be as bottled up and dominated by surveillance as the internet today, the Metaverse must live and breathe decentralization.

Related: Decentralization versus Centralization: Where is the Future? Experts respond

The blocks that hold up the world

The blockchain is, first and foremost, a database. Databases are not necessarily interesting in themselves, but what is interesting is what can be built from them. Ethereum is the best example of that, fundamentally working for an expanding ecosystem that incorporates gaming, finance, digital art, and many other spheres. There is no central authority, governance is community driven, and there is also no surveillance, in the sense that a crypto wallet is anonymous even though transactions are auditable on the blockchain.

It's crucial to make sure the same principles lie at the foundation of the Metaverse, simply because without that, it will open up a whole new place for the same questionable business practices that we see today. Here's just one example: You used to have CDs with movie copies, but you don't own the shows on Netflix. Imagine not having your avatar, your representation in the Brave new world, any. Why not use NFT as a token that would prove its ownership over a specific virtual mask in a database that is not owned by anyone?

Related: We haven't even started to harness the potential of NFTs

NFTs could be used for other purposes in the Metaverse, as their key function is to authenticate and prove ownership of digital assets, which can obtain (near) real value. For example, OVR, a VR / AR NFT project, uses NFT to give users control over augmented reality in specific geographic areas after touching crypto to incentivize thousands to take pictures of various locations for their virtual mapping of the world. Sandbox, a startup that builds its own metaverse, takes a similar approach, allowing users to build their virtual world and monetize their creations. In today's Internet, you, as a user, own hardly anything. In a metaverse powered by NFT, you will be a stakeholder.

Here's another example of how the Metaverse could expand on existing predatory practices. It's no secret that many digital industries, from mobile games to e-commerce websites, sell visitor data to third-party vendors for marketing purposes. Now imagine shopping in a virtual reality virtual store, a 3D rendering of a normal store with "Add to Cart" buttons hovering over the products on the shelves. Now remember, you can see all of this through the virtual reality viewer. In other words, the system knows where it was looking at any second. Imagine the marketing potential here. Add an AI to the mix and you've got a system that tailors the e-store layout and ad placement for each visitor at the expense of privacy, of course. If this data is stored locally, not in high-tech data centers, with only its hash sent to the blockchain, users will have the freedom to choose whether to monetize it or keep it for themselves.

Related: The Metaverse: Brave New World by Mark Zuckerberg

Cryptocurrencies are also poised to become a major payment option for the metaverse. In the same way that the metaverse is supposed to make the world smaller by bringing it into your VR / AR glasses, crypto is, by definition, transnational. It pioneered the principles of decentralization and anonymity, and these principles will be key to tomorrow's Internet, hopefully more privacy-oriented than it is today. And the established market capitalization and number of users it has today make it a medium of exchange that can become universal across all metaverse platforms and protocols. The alternative is to use fiat, which would immediately bring national state borders and fiscal policies to a world they don't belong to, or have each platform issue its own isolated digital pseudo-currencies, resulting in a segregated virtual space.

Basically, if the Metaverse came into being as an interface that defines our interactions with machines, centralization would leave it in the hands of a single company: the only gatekeeper between users and everything new that technology could bring (again, although just for the sake of argument). The gatekeeper will be able to dictate the standards and policies not only to users but also to developers, establishing himself as the dominant player in the field. By now, we should have learned the lesson that monopolies, as well as oligopolies, work only for the one actor who holds the reins while stifling innovation and making a dent in the user experience. Blockchain and decentralization are the antithesis of such difficulties, and that is why they must be at the core of the Multiverse.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every trade and investment move involves risk, and readers should do their own research when making a decision.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.