Produced | Vernacular Blockchain (ID: hellobtc)
Produced | Vernacular Blockchain (ID: hellobtc)
On October 21, the Global Times quoted a report from The Verge, an American technology information website, saying: “Facebook, the company that created Facebook, the largest social media platform in the United States, may change its name next week.”
One stone caused a thousand waves, and this move by Facebook, the absolute giant of the Internet, has aroused widespread speculation. According to a related article in The Verge, there are two main reasons for Facebook’s name change:
On the one hand, Facebook is optimistic about the development of virtual reality technology, and is preparing to deploy VR and AR technologies extensively.Earlier, Reuters reported that "Facebook plans to create 10,000 jobs in EU countries in the next five years to build its metaverse platform".
In July of this year, Facebook CEO Zuckerberg announced his vision for a virtual world, and then released Facebook's first "Metaverse" product - a digital conference app. Facebook’s above-mentioned move is considered a sign of its aggressive entry into the blockchain “Metaverse” field.
On the other hand, The Verge related articles analyzed that Facebook’s move is to “free” Facebook from a series of controversies in recent years.Since 2018, Facebook has been involved in a series of user data leakage scandals. Facebook is accused of leaking the data of 50 million users and conducting illegal abuse.
Last week, U.S. Attorney General Karl Racine in Washington, D.C., planned to add Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to the list of defendants in the Cambridge Analytica lawsuit.
In fact, although it is not common for large Internet companies in the United States to change their names, they are not unique. Google and the social platform Snap changed their company names in 2015 and 2016 respectively to announce the company’s overall business transformation.
But among the trillion-dollar companies in the world, Facebook is the only one with substantial plans to change its name.Although the new company name has not been announced, it is enough to show that Facebook will undergo a major change in its future development direction.
No matter which field Facebook turns to, it will undoubtedly mean that a behemoth with a market value of trillions of dollars will invade the market and completely subvert the market pattern in this field.first level title
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Facebook's ambition to dominate the metaverse
In the eyes of Internet practitioners around the world, Facebook's "rename" plan set off a "carnival for naming the new emperor", from FB, Fakebook, Bookface to Zuckussy, all kinds of serious or funny "new names" It was brought up, and even the American gambling website opened up a betting market for Facebook to change its name.
In addition to the spoofing of netizens on this matter and unscrupulous gaming companies using hot gimmicks to "collect money" crazily, there is currently a widely recognized consensus that,It is indeed possible that Facebook will fully pivot to the field of virtual reality (metaverse) that it has been developing.
According to analysis,The main development after Facebook's rebranding has to do with a project it's been working on, called Horizon.Judging from Facebook's recent frequent actions:
1. Facebook is planning to recruit 10,000 new employees in Europe in the next five years.Nick Craig, Facebook's vice president of global affairs, and Javier Olivan, Facebook's vice president of core products, said in a recent blog post that Facebook will work with governments to "find the right people and the right markets" for hiring.
2. Facebook is already in the "Horizon" (Horizon), Oculus Quest headset, virtual reality interactive project (Horizon Workrooms), and Horizon Worlds in the beta testing phase, etc.The research and development of the project has achieved considerable results, and has accumulated quite comprehensive technology and experience.
3. Facebook has announced the establishment of a "metaverse product department", Mark Zuckerberg recently saidFacebook will be a "metaverse company" within the next five years.
Through the above-mentioned series of Facebook actions, it is almost certain that Zuckerberg's next ambition will be to dominate the "Metaverse" (Metaverse).
In March 2021, Roblox, the first stock in the Metaverse, went public with a market value of nearly US$4 billion. In less than half a year, the market value quickly rose to US$30 billion. The concept of metaverse stimulates the influx of major institutions, manufacturers and entrepreneurial teams in terms of the ability to leverage the capital market.
In the new Internet landscape where the dividends of PC Internet and mobile Internet are gradually disappearing, the metaverse with a more grand concept may become a new growth point for Facebook, a "behemoth".
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Zuckerberg's Elementary Conception of the Metaverse
The word Metaverse comes from the science fiction novel "Avalanche" by American science fiction author Neil Stephenson in the 1990s. In the word Metaverse, Meta stands for transcendence, and verse is the abbreviation of universe.
In Neil Stephenson's novel, Metaverse is described as an Internet world that simulates the real world that can be entered using brain-computer excuses and head devices. The Internet world is constructed by computers and has the same time schedule as the real world. A virtual universe parallel to the one we live in.
After 2020, the concept of Metaverse has been further extended and is usually used to represent the next stage of the Internet formed by the combination of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR).
According to Zuckerberg's vision, the metaverse concept will first enhance the social level that is currently widely used. The combination of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc. will form a new social universe in the Internet world, expanding the Internet from a virtual plane to a virtual reality. Or it is to move Internet social interaction to real society through technology.
To understand simply, Zuckerberg’s initial idea of the Metaverse has two directions:
One is to build a social platform on the Internet.This social platform will be a "real world" in the Internet, parallel to the "real world", and can form a "human society" in the Internet through the social needs of users.
And Facebook will become the builder of this Internet virtual society, and it can even be understood that Zuckerberg will become the "God" of this world, and once users integrate and experience the social interaction of virtual reality, they will become the "God" of this virtual world people";
Second, Zuckerberg envisages projecting virtual technology in reality, and users can affect the virtual world of the Internet through actions, language or other operations in reality.In the brand new world of the Metaverse, you can do anything you can do in the real world, and you can also do things that you can't do in the real world.
The reason why Zuckerberg can be sure that the metaverse can be realized stems from the following eight attributes of the metaverse.
1. Identity
If the metaverse wants to "copy" and "map" the real world, then everyone cannot be "virtual", everyone should be "special", and to meet this prerequisite, it is necessary to give everyone A person who enters the Metaverse has a unique "identity".
2. Friend
Information transmission and "traffic" in the metaverse will be much faster than in the real world, so everyone's social needs are more.
3. Immersive
The Metaverse must be large enough that all users around the world are online at the same time. Only when it is large enough to bear at least all the information in a certain area or even on the earth, and can undertake all the changing data calculations in this area, can it create a sufficient sense of immersion.
4. Low Friction
The metaverse is another "parallel world", and entering the metaverse in the real world is more like a "dream", so the threshold must be low. Anyone has the ability to enter the metaverse world.
5. Variety
If the feeling in the metaverse is to be extremely close to the feeling in real life, the diversity in the metaverse must be guaranteed.
6. Anywhere
The Metaverse must ensure that it never stops, that like the real world, time does not pause or rewind.
7. Economy
Living, working, and socializing around the metaverse will inevitably form a "metaverse economy" within the rules of the metaverse.
8. Civilization
The world of the metaverse has its own independent identity and economic system, so civilizations in the metaverse must be formed.
Although it sounds far away, the metaverse is not a castle in the air, but a virtual space based on the real Internet world in the future, and the scope covered will also expand from pan-entertainment to every corner of the Internet.
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Facebook's name change, its impact on the blockchain metaverse
The financial attributes of the blockchain itself make it naturally capable of mapping the financial system when it is integrated with the concept of the metaverse, and thus forms a visual finance, which integrates the actual currency issuance, economic operation, and value cognition into the game Presented in this way, it eventually became the Gamefi field (DEFI+GAME) we are familiar with.
The mapping of blockchain technology and visualized finance perfectly presents the metaverse concept in front of us.NFT (non-homogeneous token) solves the identity (Identity) attribute requirements in the metaverse, each value or person can be replaced by a different NFT;
The blockchain consensus mechanism naturally forms a community, to solve the needs of the Friend attribute; the game method lowers the entry threshold, as long as you can play games, you can adapt to the blockchain metaverse, which meets the Low Friction attribute requirements;
The launch of a large number of chain game projects,A variety of blockchain game themes fulfill the attribute requirements of Variety;
Blockchain 7*24 hours transactions, once the blockchain is online, it can passThe distributed structure runs continuously, meeting the property requirements of the Metaverse Anywhere;
Gamefi comes with real-world economic system mapping,Conforms to the property requirements of the economy system (Economy)；
At present, in addition to Gamefi’s lack of immersion (Immersive) attributes, under the Play-to-Earn economic model, a metaverse around value and economy is realized earlier than the “parallel world” metaverse.
Since Facebook is going to transform into a metaverse company, the corresponding investment will definitely not be small. Since 2014, Facebook has continued to make large-scale investments and acquisitions in Metaverse-related fields.
In 2014, Facebook acquired Oculus for $2 billion to lay out AR/VR hardware.
In 2017, Facebook announced that it would invest another $3 billion within 10 years, trying to bring AR/VR to hundreds of millions of users.
In 2020, Facebook invested nearly $5 billion in AR/VR business.
In the 2021 Q2 financial report, Facebook revealed that it will continue to invest in the construction of the Metaverse at an annual scale of US$5 billion in the future.
On September 27, 2021, Facebook announced a $50 million fund focused on developing the "Metaverse" platform.
In the 2021 Q3 financial report, Facebook stated that it expects to invest $10 billion in R&D expenses for its Facebook Reality Labs within 2021, helping Facebook Reality Labs accelerate its research and development in virtual reality and augmented display, and will provide Facebook with an Reality Labs commits more resources.
no doubt,Facebook’s investment in the metaverse is beyond the reach of blockchain companies. Once Facebook changes its name and turns to the metaverse, the Gamefi field will undoubtedly become more popular.
More users will enter this field, and the market will expand rapidly, from affecting the global game industry to affecting the global financial system. Asset transactions and game development around Gamefi will surpass the mainstream digital asset market.
On the other hand, Facebook's actions will also raise the development threshold of the industry, and the living environment for more small blockchain game teams will become increasingly difficult.
More likely, the Gamefi market will form a new industry around Facebook, similar to the global crypto asset trading industry formed around Bitcoin. Of course, any possibility is still just a "possibility", and the extent of Facebook's influence on Gamefi and the entire blockchain still needs further observation.
