By: André Jerusalmy
One of the most striking facts of the year 2021 was the name change of Facebook, which is now called “Meta”. This change was not a mere fad (or opportunism) due to the moment of growth of projects aimed at the virtual environment that is conventionally called the metaverse, but the result of years of work and investment in technologies that allow the user to dive even further into an online life.
| For the more unaware readers, it is important to note that the metaverse is not a simplistic concept in which users will have an immersive virtual experience along the lines of the games “The Sims” or “Second Life”, but rather a complex parallel reality in which everyday acts such as buying property or a work of art will be done in a fully digital way. This kind of multifaceted and decentralized online reality is being called Web 3.0, but to facilitate the understanding of the differences between what is Web 3.0 and the Webs 1.0 and 2.0, below is a comparison between these universes: WEB 1.0 | WEB 2.0 (nowadays) | WEB 3.0 |
| Unidirectional content, in which users consume content on portals/sites
Ex: Yahoo, Uol, AOL, etc. |
Large corporations control digital tools and users share data and creations on such tools
Ex: Facebook, TikTok, Youtube, etc. |
Digital companies, currencies, digital works and entertainment. Users will be at the same time consumers, developers and owners. Reality will be integrated, and it will be difficult to dissociate the real from the digital |
In case the metaverse concept and web 3.0 is not yet clear, let’s try to exemplify: Imagine that a certain user owns an apartment in Decentraland decides to gather some people she met in a virtual way in that apartment. To welcome her guests she will wear virtual reality glasses made by Oculus and her digital avatar will wear a combination of clothes made in NFT by Stella Mccartney that she paid 0.1 Ethereum for. On the walls of her digital home there are also some digital works, but to impress the guests, in the center of the room she has made available her most expensive work, an NFT from Bored Ape Yacht Club that she bought for 10 Ethereums (equivalent, in January 2022 to $32,000.00).
It is possible that even after the above explanation and examples, understanding what the metaverse means is still somewhat nebulous, so we will draw one more parallel: During Web 1.0, people were trying to understand how the then-new language worked and email exchange was a great innovation, causing large digital oligopolies such as Microsoft, Yahoo, and Apple to soon emerge and the Internet to become, literally, invaluable. In the “Web 2.0” generation, the Internet’s value movement became even more intense and the so-called “FAANG” companies (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google) became major powerhouses.
It is difficult to predict the dimension that the metaverse will have, but in a world in which millions of people have already been born digital natives, that is, have as something natural the coexistence with digital means of communication, payment and entertainment, it is possible that very soon we will have exclusively digital coexistence spaces, in which several companies will have more remote employees (or better, in the metaverse), than physically in offices. Bill Gates himself stated, in an article closing the year 2021, that he believes that in two or three years most virtual meetings will cease to be two-dimensional, zoom-style, and will become three-dimensional.
A relevant point is that the metaverse economy will be based on cryptocurrencies, with them being the backbone that will sustain not only the accumulation of equity, but also the functioning of the systems themselves, always based on blockchain. Several brands, including luxury brands such as Nike, Adidas and Gucci are already developing products (in NFTs), with digital assets that will fill the metaverse. In addition, new professions such as digital real estate brokers, NFT stylists, and tokenization consultants will emerge due to new market demands, and those who are attuned to such demands and anticipate the new challenges will have a great competitive advantage over those who do not follow this development.