Author: Jamie Burke
Translated by: Lu Yifei
Reviewer: Sun Songyang
introduction
introduction
The science fiction novel Ready Player One describes 'the Metaverse' as an end, but also a dystopian process of capture and control. In Ready Player One, IOI is a corporation trying to own and control OASIS' servers and databases in order to gain the power to delete users at will, access any information, change the rules of the world, and print unlimited money for itself.
The first virtual world we experienced in the game has striking similarities with the network in a broad sense: centralized, closed, monopolized and squeezed, shareholders first rather than user-centered. Here, it has become the norm for users to sell their time and private data for “free” access to the platform. This article is a collaborative article from the Outlier Ventures network, which proposes a solution and an argument for how to achieve an open metaverse.
"This metaverse will be more pervasive and powerful than anything else. If a central corporation controls this, they will become more powerful than any government and become gods on Earth."
define the metaverse
define the metaverse
Technically speaking, the original vision and definition of the Metaverse was the point in time when the distinction between physical and digital blurred. This is often considered in the context of AR (augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality), in other words, the metaverse is the moment when mixed reality becomes ubiquitous.
If we think of the Metaverse as a distant end, we're almost certain to be stuck in a nightmare where some fundamental design choices can't be resolved.
However, we think the key is to think of it not as a destination, but as a journey or process. This is because there is an important fact that we need to acknowledge, that is, the origin of the metaverse already exists, "we are just experiencing it in 2D". Understanding this is crucial, because if we view the Metaverse as a distant end, we will almost certainly be in a nightmare, unable to resolve some fundamental design choices about the principles of how we want it to work, and very Potential to replicate or deepen flaws in today's networks.
As this article will outline, this process is multidimensional and has already begun - the Metaverse can be created by creating new This can be achieved through virtual worlds, but it can also be advanced through other social venues and experiences. Each of these processes exists in a domain with several conflicting features: content is produced both by studios and independent creators, and value transfer is bidirectional (from digital to physical and from physical to physical). to digital), the value can be fully converted or displayed, and at the same time be consumed passively or actively by users. This process is driven by market forces and the general direction of technological innovation, mostly bottom-up, but we also believe that the process will increasingly begin to interact and provide relevant information from the top down by governments. Policy information on data rights, privacy rights, antitrust and most importantly financial legislation. Of course, all of these policies vary widely across the globe.
In addition, today people are still used to distinguishing between the real economy and the digital economy, although in fact companies like Amazon are already a hybrid of the two. On the one hand, the direct-to-consumer business model has dematerialized much of the retail supply chain, but it remains a virtual mall, a centralized network that fulfills physical functions driven by physical goods, And a business with a growing portfolio of virtual goods and services, such as e-books, music streaming, and video streaming, available entirely on its proprietary devices and platforms. So are companies like Amazon part of the Metaverse?
It seems that a defining characteristic of the Metaverse is that it is independent of a fiat-based economic system controlled by a state, and enjoys the sense of being a pioneer beyond the old system.
It seems that a defining characteristic of the Metaverse is that it is independent of a fiat-based economy controlled by a state, and enjoys the sense of being a pioneer beyond the old system. That’s not the case for a platform like Amazon: Amazon is primarily a U.S.-based company, its customers and employees use the local fiat currency, the U.S. dollar, it has increasingly close ties to the U.S. government and its various agencies, and ultimately remains Subject to the policies of central banks and governments. If we look back at Facebook's efforts to launch its own digital currency in partnership with Libra (which could potentially be extended to its VR platform Oculus), Facebook has been hit hard by the fact that it is a highly centralized, fiat-based company. regulation, while in fact being emasculated as a truly disruptive and sovereign cryptocurrency.
Some game platforms are so large that they can be seen as closed micro-economy to a certain extent. This economy has an internal currency that is centrally controlled by the platform, as well as experience point systems, in-game items (such as skins) and market value system. In these systems, vast amounts of wealth are held and traded by players. From a younger generation perspective, it's even more important when you look at it as part of personal wealth. But the reality is that due to restrictions imposed by governments over money laundering concerns, only a handful of platforms allow players to use fiat currencies to trade between their closed platforms in order to interact with the "real" world. But more importantly, assets earned by players cannot be transferred directly between these micro-economies into a virtual meta-economy with a native currency. And generally speaking, players cannot use virtual wealth to buy physical assets, which puts digital native assets at a disadvantage in terms of economic value. 63% of gamers said they would actually spend more on skins if the virtual wealth had "real world value".
It is for this reason that this paper proposes that perhaps the defining characteristic of a true metaverse is that it has its own economic system and native currency in which value can be earned in a physical or virtual sense in a seamless switch Take, spend, lend, borrow, or invest, all without government intervention.
Competitive Multiverse
Simply put, we observe at least two versions of the metaverse emerging: one dominated by closed platforms or large tech companies (like Facebook/Oculus), and one built on open protocols (like Decentraland) Up.
In fact, we have various conjectures about the metaverse, and it's unclear whether these conjectures can coexist or will necessarily compete with each other. In short, we observe at least two versions of the Metaverse emerging: one dominated by closed platforms or large tech companies (like Facebook/Oculus), and one based on open protocols (using blockchain , such as Decentraland).
However, the difference between open and closed is not just the degree to which technology choices and platforms adopt open source principles in their treatment of code and data, but more importantly whether they have closed economies within or between their proprietary games, or whether they Whether to allow the transfer of value outside its ecosystem, and how that transfer of value interacts with fiat-based systems, and the extent to which they can or cannot control the monetary and fiscal policies of the underlying economy itself.
In addition, there is another technical and philosophical distinction, the metaverse between assumptions and emerging realities can be described as: Low Fidelity (Lo-Fi) vs High Fidelity, Hi-Fi -Fi). Some platforms are determined to push the technological boundaries of the product experience by stacking high software and hardware requirements (like Oculus), while others are designed for minimum standard equipment and bandwidth configurations (like Cryptovoxels, a completely open free sandbox game, Players do not have any target tasks, they can do whatever they want in the game). Although we must admit that access to all these virtual worlds still requires at least a smartphone, and currently sixty percent of the global population is still locked out.
We can roughly divide the metaverse platform and the virtual world in the form of coordinate axes. These two axes are the most important considerations, because when they are combined, they represent the cost of entering the economic system, and by earning Different groups value the ability to offset costs.
Regarding whether the platform allows user-generated content (UGC, User Generated Content) can also be used as a third classification method, but we think this difference will gradually disappear over time. Most platforms will allow UGC like Roblox or Minecraft to varying degrees, but generally not to the extent that a virtual world can be called "open", so when we look at the future of the Metaverse, UGC as an independent dimension is not important.
Over time, an open metaverse built on shared open-source protocols, open infrastructure, and a consistent unified (but open) financial system will erode, or "swallow," and may eventually become a reality due to its powerful network effects Replace closed platforms.
Our belief, which is also the argument of this article, is that over time (we cannot give a specific time point), a financial system built on shared open source protocols, open infrastructure, and consistent unified but open The open metaverse of the Internet will erode, or "swallow," and possibly displace closed platforms due to powerful network effects. At that point, the only remaining difference between virtual worlds will be whether they are low-fi or high-fi. And that last point is just so important: we as an industry should always do what we can to be inclusive so that more people can come out of the old economic order and into the world of the open metaverse.
Web 3, an open metaverse technology stack
So why do we believe so much in this possibility? This is because we believe that there are some technology trends that are beginning to converge. This started with a trend we outlined in 2016, which this paper calls convergence theory, which argues that the Internet of Things (IoT) ( IoT), virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and artificial intelligence (AI) will begin to interact and reinforce each other, thereby forming a new network.
Although this trend is still in its infancy, as predicted by others (remember, it was proposed decades ago), this trend is already starting to play out and become our investment philosophy as venture capital firms , and this accelerator has gone through several iterations: the second was The Convergence Ecosystem in 2018, and then The Convergence Stack in 2019.
Web 3 is a unique and independent Web paradigm of Web 2 today. Compared with Web 2, which is built on a centralized monopoly platform and a highly regulated fiat currency financial system, Web 3 is constantly decentralizing and based on user-oriented The central principle is to protect users' data and wealth sovereignty.
However, the more common view now is that Web 3 is a unique, independent, and moving from today's Web 2 based on the previously described centralized monopoly platform and highly regulated fiat currency financial system to an increasingly decentralized and Based on the user-centered principle, it is committed to protecting the user's data and wealth sovereignty evolution of the Web paradigm. In fact, "the user is the platform".
Web 3 is an eventual blockchain-based paradigm whose atomic unit of account becomes the means by which value as a form of wealth is "newly produced" (created), stored or transferred among other technologies. But such digital assets are programmable, meaning an increasingly complex range of assets: from in-game items and virtual land, to loan agreements or futures contracts. In general, it represents a brand new financial system, often referred to as DeFi (Decentralized Finance, decentralized finance).
In an evolutionary sense, virtual worlds are giving birth to web3 by using an open metaverse operating system.
We can think of this fusion technology as a general-purpose operating system with an open metaverse, which is located between hardware, application software, and users. Due to its open source nature, everything that exists on the chain is transferable. Yes, its metadata is visible, i.e. what the DNA of the virtual world is built on, in whole or in part, can be passed on or inherited. In an evolutionary sense, virtual worlds give birth to web3 by using the open metaverse operating system.
