In 2021, with the listing of the first Roblox in the industry, the concept of "metaverse/metaverse" suddenly emerged, and "metaverse+" became a new trend sweeping the Internet, VR/AR and financial investment circles. , mankind seems to have opened the "interstellar navigation era" of the virtual universe.
The word "metaverse" Metaverse is formed from the prefix meta "meta" (meaning beyond) and the stem verse ("universe"); the term is often used to describe the concept of a future iteration of the Internet consisting of persistent, Shared, 3D virtual space composition. A metaverse in a broad sense may refer not only to the virtual world, but to the entire Internet, including the full extent of augmented reality.
The term was coined in Neil Stephenson's 1992 science fiction novel Avalanche, in which humans, as avatars, interact with each other and software agents in a three-dimensional virtual space that uses real-world metaphors. Stephenson used the term to describe a virtual reality-based successor to the Internet. As early as 1981 in the novella True Names, concepts similar to the Metaverse appeared in the cyberpunk genre under various names. Stephenson in The epilogue states Snow Crash, and after finishing the novel, he learned about Habitat, an early MMORPG similar to Metaverse.
first level title
secondary title
Origin and core features of Meteverse
The word Metaverse is derived from the combination of "meta" (beyond) and "verse" (universe), meaning "a universe beyond reality". The concept of metaverse (Metaverse) originated from the bold idea of science fiction writers. It was first proposed by science fiction writer Neal Stephenson in his science fiction novel "Snow Crash" in 1992. A fantastical cyberpunk world where you interact with software agents or other people's avatars. According to Wikipedia, its precise definition is as follows:
"The Metaverse is a collective virtual shared space that includes all virtual worlds and the Internet combined, including but not limited to derivatives or copies of the real world, but is not equivalent to augmented reality. The term is often used to describe future iterations of the Internet The version refers to the perceivable virtual universe formed by the interconnection of many 3D virtual spaces that are persistently shared.”
From the definition of Metaverse, we can use "first principles" to simply summarize its main core features as:
Immersion: Metaverse aims to build a virtual shared space that transcends the real universe. Therefore, Metaverse must be combined with technologies such as VR, AR, and even brain-computer interfaces to have basic holographic sharing, 3D virtual, low-latency, and real body sensations. , real-time interaction and virtual identity, so as to provide users with a sensory experience that is real enough but beyond the real world;
Openness: The metaverse should inherit the openness of the Internet, allowing anyone to freely access and leave the metaverse, and also encourage everyone to create and socially interact in the metaverse, so as to be able to widely absorb technological innovations and financial innovations , business model innovation and high-quality content, etc., to achieve the sustainable prosperity of the ecology;
first level title
Evolution of the Metaverse
secondary title
Internet: Infrastructure for Virtual Interconnection
The Internet is an important prerequisite for the birth of the Metaverse. It not only provides a material network foundation integrating network and computing power, but also produces a large number of original high-quality content (such as games, audio, video, etc.), thus actually forming the Metaverse. Infrastructure for virtual interconnection. The Metaverse is the inheritance and development of the Internet, and it is the future iteration of the Internet.
Today, with the miniaturization and mobility of general-purpose computers and the maturity of high-speed network technology represented by 5G, the Internet has been thoroughly integrated into all aspects of human society through terminals such as computers, mobile phones, tablet devices, and smart wearable devices. , and build an important material foundation for the era of globalization of human society. People can use the Internet to meet almost all living, social and entertainment needs, including work, social interaction, entertainment, catering, shopping, travel, etc. At the same time, a large number of online interactions of people will deposit a large amount of original content (UGC content). Further attract offline activities to shift online. At the same time, with the ravages of the new crown epidemic around the world, a large number of offline activities have shifted to online, and the "flywheel effect" and "network effect" have become more prominent. Human beings all over the world are accelerating into the era of virtual interconnection of networking and virtualization.
VR, AR and Brain-Computer Interface: Immersive Interactive Experience
The metaverse is not consistent with the ideal heaven or paradise in traditional religions, and it is also different from the "Neuromancer" that often appears in science fiction. Instead, it aims to build a persistent virtual shared space while still maintaining a sense of reality perception and experience of the world. Because of this, the development of the metaverse not only needs to realize the virtual interconnection of players, but also needs to allow players to obtain a real virtual experience, that is, to provide players with a realistic and immersive interactive experience to the maximum extent, and at the same time to allow players Maintain a perception of the real world. Therefore, the construction of the metaverse also requires immersive devices based on VR, AR and brain-computer interface technology as a necessary means of interaction.
VR technology, the full name of Virtual Reality, refers to a computer simulation technology that creates and experiences virtual worlds; while AR technology, the full name of Augmented Reality, refers to a technology that ingeniously integrates virtual information and the real world to achieve a surreal sensory experience. . Obviously, both VR and AR technologies can become important technical components of the Metaverse, and related equipment can provide immersive or surreal interactive experiences for Metaverse players.
first level title
The Industrial Ecology of Metaverse
secondary title
hardware industry
In the immersion requirements of the Metaverse, users must obtain real-time real-time physical sensations through interactive devices, which puts forward extremely stringent requirements for hardware. Therefore, hardware is an inevitable requirement for moving towards the Metaverse. Hardware can be divided into general-purpose hardware foundation and special-purpose hardware foundation. General-purpose hardware mainly includes computing power and transmission network, while special-purpose equipment mainly includes VR and AR equipment.
General hardware base
The general hardware foundation of Metaverse mainly refers to computing power and network transmission. Among them, network transmission mainly ensures low latency of user interaction in order to obtain a more realistic somatosensory experience. The latest technological progress is the high-speed and low-latency network represented by 5G Transmission technology; and in terms of computing power, the computing power required by Metaverse is almost unlimited, which puts forward higher standards for personal terminals in terms of portability, high performance, and parallelization. Therefore, cloud computing technology has been widely valued because of its stronger scalability of computing power and its ability to effectively utilize computing power clusters and edge computing resources, thereby lowering the threshold of computing power for personal terminals. At present, cloud computing has been applied in the field of cloud games to a certain extent, and it is expected to become a powerful computing power support for the Metaverse industry in the future.
At present, the high-speed network industry represented by 5G has entered large-scale commercial use, and has become a must for the telecommunications industry of various countries. China began to promote 5G commercial use in 2019, and began to significantly speed up construction in 2020. At present, it has built more than 800,000 5G base stations, accounting for about 70% of the global proportion. 5G-related companies mainly include Huawei, Nokia, ZTE, Samsung, Ericsson and Qualcomm.
Dedicated hardware foundation
The dedicated hardware foundation related to the Metaverse mainly refers to related equipment that ensures the user's real interaction and immersion, including AR equipment, VR equipment, and brain-computer interface equipment. Among them, VR and AR devices are relatively mature and can already be applied to some commercial scenarios, such as 3D movies, 3D concerts, simulated driving training, online virtual tourism, etc.
However, VR and AR devices are still far from reaching a fully mature stage, and are unable to provide users with smooth, stable, long-lasting and virtual shared large-scale interaction and sharing experience. The reason is that VR and AR terminals are not only complicated and heavy, but also can only give people a super-realistic experience of local senses, and cannot realize the sharing and interaction of all senses. Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) technology also stands out.
Brain-computer interface technology refers to the establishment of a direct signal channel between the human brain and other electronic devices, thereby bypassing language and body to achieve interaction with electronic devices. Since all human senses are ultimately formed by transmitting signals to the brain, if the brain-computer interface technology is used, in principle, it will be possible to completely simulate all sensory experiences by stimulating the corresponding areas of the brain.
secondary title
content industry
In the Internet age, "flywheel effect" and "network effect" are two important laws that drive the continuous prosperity and development of the entire industry. Similarly, these two laws are also applicable to the industrial development of the Metaverse.
That is, the content industry in the metaverse needs to be attractive enough in terms of category and quality to form a "network effect" and reduce the marginal cost of scale expansion; when it develops to a stage where the ecology is sound and prosperous enough, a "flywheel effect" will be formed, Enter the stage of continuous prosperity of ecological self-promotion and high-quality content self-proliferation. At present, many Internet companies are actively deploying the content industry of the Metaverse, such as Valve Steam developed around the content of the Metaverse, Facebook's oculus & Horizon platform, Nvidia's Omniverse, and Code Universe's interactive physics engine.
Generally speaking, to form a healthy virtual world, at least the basic needs of people in reality, such as entertainment, social interaction, and work, must be met. And because the Metaverse has incomparable advantages in terms of immersion and interactivity, virtual games that focus on user experience will become the breaking point of the Metaverse, and will most likely become the focus of social and work scenes in the Metaverse. main carrier.
secondary title
Minecraft
Minecraft is a famous sandbox game whose first public version was released in 2009. The game offers players nearly unlimited creative freedom, with an emphasis on letting players explore, interact, and create on their own. Players can use the material blocks and environment monomers provided by the game to perform various activities including map transformation, building construction, ore collection, combat adventures, etc.
secondary title
Roblox
Founded in 2004, Roblox has made a lot of innovations on the basis of sandbox games. It not only provides users with richer and more comprehensive material libraries, editing functions and creative content, but also is compatible with VR game creation and provides development-oriented The author's Reblox Studio and Roblox Cloud, a point-and-play game cloud platform. More importantly, Roblox also provides economic incentives for players by introducing virtual tokens in addition to content creation incentives.
By the end of 2020, Roblox has an average of 32.6 million daily active users, 8 million active developers on the platform, and millions of 3D game experiences. In 2019, the MAU of Roblox’s community players exceeded 100 million, and more than 10 million creators used Roblox to create. By Q1 of 2021, the platform has more than 18 million game experiences, and the DAU is as high as 42.1 million. 7 million developers. At present, Roblox has been listed, and its market value exceeded 40 billion U.S. dollars on the day of its launch, making it a well-deserved "first stock in the Metaverse".
secondary title
DeFi and NFTs
DeFi provides an open finance that fits the characteristics of the free sharing of the metaverse, and can provide financial services including transactions, loans, and insurance to help reduce the creation cost and realization cost of works for metaverse players.
DeFi provides an open finance that fits the characteristics of the free sharing of the metaverse, and can provide financial services including transactions, loans, and insurance to help reduce the creation cost and realization cost of works for metaverse players.
So far, according to the statistics of the blockchain data tracking website DeFi Pulse, in the entire blockchain industry, DeFi has accumulated a huge amount of liquidity on the chain, and its overall lock-up value is as high as 8.11 billion US dollars. The business scope of DeFi and The products are also becoming more and more perfect and mature, covering various financial businesses such as decentralized exchanges, lending, payment, derivatives, asset management, and insurance. Typical projects include Aave, Compound, Uniswap, and Maker. Among them, Uniswap has become the first DeFi agreement in history with a total revenue exceeding US$1 billion.
As a "non-homogeneous pass", NFT is a middleware between the application layer and the blockchain public chain. It mainly provides various virtual assets (including data and works, etc.) The rights and interests record and absolute control rights allow users to issue, store, mortgage and transfer virtual assets in a fair, transparent and safe manner. At present, NFT has been widely used in the marking and trading of virtual assets and virtual rights in various fields. According to the statistics of NonFungible.com, the highest weekly sales of NFT in the whole network exceeds 375 million US dollars.
Take Cryptopunks, the number one original cyberpunk art project, as an example. From 2017 to the present, its total transaction value has reached approximately US$650 million. Among them, "CryptoPunk #7804" and "CryptoPunk #3100" in March 2021 were sold for 4200 ETH (worth about 7.5 million US dollars). In Christie's New York's "21st Century Art Auction" on May 13, 2021, a group of nine PUNK heads were sold for another $14.5 million.
secondary title
GameFi
secondary title
pet raising games
The earliest explosive product of this type of blockchain game can be traced back to the pet development game launched by the Dapper Labs team in 2017: the encrypted cat game CryptoKitties. It was officially launched on November 28, 2017. By December 5, the game had accounted for about 25% of the total transaction volume on Ethereum, which once caused serious congestion on the Ethereum network.
Another pet-raising game, Axie Infinity, also created in 2017, has made more significant improvements in playability, user experience and economic model after continuous iterations from 2018 to 2020. The game internally uses the AXS and SLP dual-token economic model to split the fuel cost and equity income, and joins the combustion deflation mechanism, scholarship system, gold lease and other modes, which greatly improves the funds of the entire game Turnover.
secondary title
Fan Economy Games
In 2017, after the popularity of the CryptoKitties game exposed the performance problem of the poor scalability of the Ethereum network, its publisher, Dapper Labs, subsequently launched Flow, a public chain platform specially developed for blockchain games, and in 2020 Flow After the mainnet went live, the NBA and NBPA jointly launched a fan economic game: NBA Top Shot. The game focuses on the collection of sports stars' peripherals. The core gameplay is through the official card packs, and allows players to buy, sell and collect NBA officially authorized collections in the trading market (currently there are players' wonderful moments).
secondary title
sandbox games
first level title
Timeline of well-known platforms and developments
1993 – Metaverse is a MOO (a text-based low-bandwidth virtual reality system) operated by Steve Jackson Games as part of their BBS Illuminati Online.
1995 – Based entirely on Snow Crash's Active Worlds, the distributed virtual reality world at least implements the concept of the Metaverse.
1998 - Therebucks were created where users displayed as avatars and socialized could use virtual currency to buy items and services therebucks, which were purchased with real world money. There.com shut down on March 2, 2010, but re-emerged in 2011 as an invitation-only world for users 18 and older.
1998 – blaxxun created a 3D virtual community using vrml technology, CyberTown is an example.
2003 - Linden Lab launches Second Life. The project's stated goal is to create a user-defined world, such as the Metaverse, where people can interact, play, conduct business, and otherwise communicate.
2004 – X3D is approved by ISO as the successor to the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) as an open standard for interactive real-time 3D (web3D). Today, X3D is the standard defining the 3D web and mixed reality Open Metaverse by combining virtual, mirrored and augmented reality with the web.
2004 – IMVU ,Inc., founded by Will Harvey, Matt Danzig, and Eric Ries, started out as an instant messenger with 3D avatars.
2005 - University of Michigan launches Vmerse in response to U.S. Supreme Court rulings in landmark affirmative action cases (Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger) to make it easier for impoverished minority prospective applicants to gain access to their campuses .
Vmerse has been described as a revolutionary innovation to increase diversity on campus, the metaverse is embedded on a computer via the Internet as a video, a combination of forms, via virtual reality, into a mirror world. Also used for alumni relations, giving events, and emergency training. Vmerse technology is also used by Louisiana State University, Iowa State University, Columbia University, Stanford University, Western Illinois University, and others. The U.S. Department of State deployed Vmerse as "Your 5 Steps to U.S. Studies" to assist international students applying to U.S. colleges, and it has been used by over 1 billion users around the world. Founded and invented by Bhargav Sri Prakash in 2004, Vmerse is now a proprietary underlying platform adapted by Bhargav Sri Prakash. Friends learn to use it in medicine.
2005 – Solipsis launched, a free and open source system designed to provide the infrastructure for a Metaverse-like public virtual realm.
2005 – The Croquet Project began as an open-source software development environment for "creating and deploying deeply collaborative, multi-user online applications across multiple operating systems and devices", with the aim of being less proprietary than Second Life, 2007 After the release of the Croquet SDK in 2009, the project became the Open Cobalt project.
2006 – Entropia Universe, the world's first true cash economy MMORPG.
2006 – Roblox Publishing.
2007 – Multiple social networks provide profiles and networking features for Metaverse avatars, including Koinup, Myrl, AvatarsUnited. These projects face a number of challenges related to Avatar's lack of portability across virtual worlds and try to address the possibility of managing multiple accounts on a single dashboard. (AvatarsUnited was later acquired by Linden Lab, then shut down after adding some social networking features to Second Life.)
2007 – OpenSimulator appears, developing free and open-source virtual world software compatible with the Second Life license, while allowing users to move between otherwise independent installations. It is based on Second Life's client viewer as a platform for building virtual worlds.
2008 – Google Lively was launched by Google via Google Labs on July 8, 2008. The service was discontinued at the end of December.
2013 – High Fidelity Inc is founded as an open source platform for users to create and deploy virtual worlds, explore and interact together in them.
2014 – VRChat is launched as the Social VR Platform (SVRP), enabling users to post 3D spaces and avatars developed using external tools.
2015 – AltspaceVR is launched as SVRP, enabling users to publish 3D spaces developed using external tools.
2016 - Sinespace is launched as SVRP, enabling users to publish 3D spaces and content developed using external tools. Rec Room launched as a social VR game and expanded in 2017 to support user-generated spaces. Anyland and Modbox launched as social VR games, allowing users to publish 3D spaces developed using built-in tools.
2017 – Sansar launched on July 31, 2017. The platform supports user-created 3D spatial social spaces. Avatars include voice-driven facial animation and motion-driven body animation.
2018 – NeosVR Metaverse launched by Solirax, Cryptovoxels launched in 2018 as a user-owned metaverse, using the Ethereum blockchain.
2019 - Facebook Horizon is announced as a Facebook for social VR worlds.
2020 – Decentraland launches as a decentralized virtual platform owned and operated by its users. Sandbox, a Metaverse launched by Animoca. Core is launched by Manticore Games. Rival Peak, a cloud-powered reality show starring AI contestants in a virtual environment, debuts on Facebook Watch, where individuals or groups of viewers can watch or interact via Facebook, contributing directly to the AI contestants' progress on the show contribute.
2021 - Epic Games directs fundraising to build Fortnite into the Metaverse.
2021 - Microsoft Mesh, a mixed reality software that enables virtual presence through Microsoft devices such as HoloLens 2.
2021 - Facebook announces attempt to develop Metaverse. Facebook is the most well-known "Metaverse" concept company besides Roblox, and has launched the VR social platform "Horizon". Facebook acquired Oculus, a virtual reality company, at a high price of US$2 billion in 2014, and currently one-fifth of Facebook's entire workforce is devoted to the AR/VR business. Zuckerberg said when he acquired Oculus that year , Oculus VR will first change the game, then it will change the digital social, and then, it will change the whole world.
At present, the beta version of the VR social platform "Horizon" that Facebook has launched is considered to be an important step for Facebook to Metaverse. Facebook's horizon belongs to the [experience layer], and the acquired Oculus belongs to the [human-computer interaction layer]
2021 - South Korea announces the establishment of the National Metaverse Alliance, with the goal of establishing a unified national VR and AR platform.
Tencent continues to invest in companies and products related to the Metaverse concept. Among them, Roblox and Epic are on its investment list. At present, the basic ecology of Metaverse has also been initially built, moving towards the era of "Full Internet" proposed by them. .
In April 2021, Bytedance invested nearly 100 million yuan in the Chinese version of Roblox-Code Qiankun. And Tencent has long invested in the competing product of Code Universe - Mini Play. Code Universe's leading product "Restart World" is similar to Roblox. Players can use a variety of basic modules, or deform or splicing them to create characters, items and scenes of different styles, and the assembled materials can obtain physical characteristics similar to the real world. . This feature is endowed by the physics engine developed by Code Universe.
Metaverse: A cyberpunk future within reach?
By sorting out the entire development and evolution history of the Metaverse and the current industry status, we have drawn the following inferences:
The metaverse originated from the Internet, but it is bound to grow into a more magnificent and fascinating world, but it is still too early. The Metaverse may be one of the most beautiful and fascinating flowers that can ever grow on the big tree of the Internet. However, according to the review results of the development status of the entire industry chain in this article, although the flowers of the Metaverse are beautiful and attractive, there is still a long distance from the fruit of the Metaverse in the final form we expect.
The development of hard technology has become the biggest bottleneck in the development of Metaverse, followed by the heterogeneous integration of blockchain and the Internet.
So far, the content industry and the blockchain industry in the Metaverse have developed unexpectedly rapidly, but the current development of the Metaverse still cannot avoid the development of hard technologies including AI, VR/AR, high-speed networks, and brain-computer interfaces. bottlenecks in the field. In addition, the blockchain and the Internet are heterogeneous systems, and how to combine the huge user base of the Internet with the self-motivated economic rules of the blockchain is another problem that needs to be solved urgently. The above two points will lead to a significant decline in user experience, and it is difficult to form a virtuous circle of "network effect" and "flywheel effect".
The importance of the blockchain to the development of the metaverse is still seriously underestimated.
Due to differences in the regulation of blockchain among countries around the world, the nascent industry of blockchain has to survive in the cracks of national supervision. excavation. The economic base determines the superstructure, and so does the development of the Metaverse.
Gamification, entertainment and economy will be the indispensable development direction of Metaverse.
However, this development trend does not always bring good results, it will also make deprivation easier and more hidden, blockchain may be our only solution.
Be wary of the false bubbles of NFT assets and beware of stepping into a liquidity trap. Although NFT is popular all over the world, it is also easy to become a pure seller's market, and it is easy to be manipulated by less funds. Once the market consensus collapses, the price of NFT assets is prone to a cliff-like decline until liquidity is exhausted;
The development prospects of GameFi are worth looking forward to, but the abnormal turnover and profits of some projects may not be replicable
