What exactly is the metaverse? Maybe everyone has a different answer in their hearts. The Metaverse prefix meta means transcendence, and the root verse is evolved from the universe, which refers to the universe and the world.
In Wikipedia, the metaverse is often used to describe the iterative concept of the future internet. Consisting of persistent, shared, three-dimensional virtual space, it is a perceptible virtual universe. Of course, this is very abstract and difficult to understand.
The Metaverse is the digital space for human entertainment, social interaction and even work in the future. It is the main carrier of future lifestyles and a new digital world that everyone can participate in.
Metaverse integrates cutting-edge digital technologies such as blockchain, 5G, VR, AR, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, big data, etc., so that everyone can get rid of the constraints of real conditions in the physical world, so as to achieve better in the new digital space Self, realize the maximization of one’s own value.
In the book, we define the metaverse as the next generation of the Internet, the third generation of the Internet. 2021 is the first year of the Metaverse, and the curtain of the iterative upgrade of the Internet has begun. We will focus on the six dimensions of industry, digital rights, organization, identity, culture, and finance, and help you understand the six major trends in the metaverse era through the latest global cases.
Trend 1: Deep integration of digital economy and real economy
The history of the rise and fall of the economies of various countries has repeatedly proved that the real economy is the foundation of a country’s prosperity. Every technological revolution brings not only changes in lifestyle, but also a great opportunity for industrial upgrading. The development of the Metaverse is by no means “from the real to the virtual”, but to realize the deep integration of the digital economy and the real economy, thereby effectively empowering the real economy to upgrade in an all-round way, so that all walks of life can find a new development space for the “second curve”.
The most critical application scenario of the Metaverse is the industrial scenario. In the Metaverse, people around the world can communicate and collaborate efficiently, fully networked smart devices will be effectively linked, and industrial chain collaboration will become more transparent and efficient.
In the metaverse era, “Internet of Everything” will gradually move towards “Mutual Trust of Everything”, and then to “Transaction of Everything” and “Cooperation of Everything”. In this process, transactions not only occur between people, but also between people and machines, and between machines and machines. At that time, the industry must be upgraded as a whole, and every link must be fully digitalized.
For example, each smart hardware needs to have its own digital identity, the transaction mechanism must be fully automated, the transaction medium must be programmable, and the payment method should be cleared in real time. The changes brought by digital technology to the industry are by no means a simple technological upgrade, but an innovation of the underlying business model and industrial chain.
In the metaverse era, there will be a completely different industrial landscape and business form than now, and the digital economy and the real economy will be deeply integrated.
Trend 2: Data becomes the core asset
In the metaverse era, data is a core strategic resource like oil. The multiplier effect of data on production efficiency is increasingly prominent. Data-based customized products and services not only greatly improve business efficiency, but also make everyone’s life better.
Each terminal device generates data all the time, and the total amount of data increases exponentially, and machine learning greatly amplifies the role of data. At the same time, making good use of data can bring huge benefits to companies, and companies that understand data are becoming more and more valuable.
In the future, in the metaverse, the model of centralized Internet organizations monopolizing data assets and abusing users’ private data will end, and it will be replaced by a new economic system that fully realizes data rights protection, data assetization, and elementization.
Blockchain technology can be used as a “right confirmation machine”, which can provide a very low-cost data right confirmation service, and realize data transaction and value distribution through smart contracts, so that data can become everyone’s real asset, and data Maximize value.
Trend 3: The rise of economic communities
Since the advent of the Internet, many people have been able to make some great achievements that big companies could not do in the past, just by gathering some like-minded people and pulling up a community.
In the metaverse era, the upgrade of organizational form is a deeper change than the transformation of asset form and business model. The “corporate organization” will gradually decline, and the open, fair, transparent and symbiotic “economic community” is expected to become the mainstream organizational form. , the organizational goal has been changed to “maximizing the ecological value of the community”, and with the power of organizational change, it will help various industries to achieve efficiency changes and create a new paradigm of a more equitable, inclusive and sustainable digital economy.
At present, economic community organizations are combined with automation tools such as blockchain smart contracts, and new distribution methods such as “profit farming” and new governance models such as DAO (distributed autonomous organization) have emerged, allowing digital contributors to truly participate in the community. In the governance of the platform, it makes the community governance rules more fair, transparent and effective, strengthens the symbiotic relationship between digital contributors and the platform, attracts more resources, expands the network scale, and forms a “flywheel effect” of a positive cycle.
Trend 4: Reinventing self-image and identity systems
Designing your own digital image is often the first thing people do when they enter the metaverse. The digital image comprehensively reflects a person’s interests, aesthetics, feelings, dreams and many other psychological factors, and can reflect a person’s ideal self-image more than the actual appearance in the physical world. Projection in the digital world.
Therefore, with the further integration of digital life and social life, and the migration of our daily life to the metaverse in all aspects, the digital image will also become our main social image.
A digital image is just an external manifestation of a digital identity in the metaverse. Digital identity is the cornerstone of all digital activities in the metaverse, and everyone will have a digital identity with universality, independence and privacy. Digital identity can open up identity, data, credit and asset systems and gradually integrate with real identity, thus ensuring our good life in the metaverse.
Trend 5: The boom in digital culture
“Digital” represents rationality and precision, while “art” represents sensibility and creativity. The combination of “digital art” has become a popular development direction in the current art world. Art is the natural consciousness of culture, and the development direction of digital art is a microcosm of the prosperity of digital culture. In the age of the metaverse, where there are fewer and fewer physical constraints from the physical world, creativity may be the only scarce resource.
Therefore, the metaverse era will also be an era of great development, great prosperity and mainstreaming of digital culture. IP will be the soul of all industries in the metaverse.
As the value carrier of digital cultural and creative products, NFT is expected to become the core asset class of the Metaverse.
Trend 6: Digital Finance Achieves Global Inclusion
In the metaverse, numbers and entities will be fully integrated, and all economic activities will be transformed into a digital economy. This requires that financial services need to be digitalized, not only in form, but also in true inclusiveness, so that everyone can use digital financial services at low cost and high efficiency.
Now, some pioneers are already trying to digitally reconstruct the global financial infrastructure, eliminate unnecessary financial intermediaries, lower the threshold and cost of financial services, and optimize the way and experience of people using financial services.
A series of innovative practices in the field of DeFi may be an exploratory attempt to build a digital financial system in the metaverse era. DeFi not only enables asset owners to control their assets, but also enables highly secure, transparent and trusted automated transactions.
In the future, DeFi may integrate innovative models such as cutting-edge technology, intelligent business, open organizations, and digital transactions to realize changes in business carriers, distribution models, organizational forms, and industrial relations, and lead the financial industry to a new era of digitalization and intelligence. era.
postscript
Everyone needs to spend a lot of time and energy on learning and thinking in order to truly understand the metaverse, especially to break through the barriers at the thinking level and master the “metaverse new thinking = technical thinking × financial thinking × community thinking × industrial thinking ”, so as to calmly cope with a series of new technological challenges in the future.
“The future is here, it’s just not yet popular.”
William Gibson