About that second life
This article was completed two months ago and has not been published. The original intention is to provide readers with some newly discovered metaverse information, but after two months, the amount of new information in these contents is limited, and it can only be regarded as sorting out. We interviewed some relevant people, hoping that these viewpoints can provide you with some new ideas.
Written by: 0xclancularius, Rhythm BlockBeats
"Those who put you in despair, you who are confused
Take you Give me all those who are afraid and wandering eager to see the light of victory
Send all those who are lost in spirit and wandering in soul:
Beside this golden belief, I will hold up the lamp for them."
Liu Cixin " Inscription on the pedestal of the sculpture in front of the Faith Center in the Three-Body II Dark Forest"
This passage from the science fiction novel "Three-Body" is adapted from the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in New York The poem above, its original text is: Give me all you weary ones, you poor ones, all you huddled ones longing for the air of freedom / Send all those homeless and storm-beaten /Beside this golden gate, for them I will lift up the lamp.
At the end of the 15th century, the Italian navigator Columbus discovered the New World of America, which opened up European exploration and overseas colonization that lasted for centuries The great era of the territory. The discovery of America cast a "pebble" in the already somewhat dull and solidified Western world at that time, and the ripples were full of unknowns, adventures and excitement. Along with the vigorous historical gears of the Industrial Revolution and the Information Revolution, the aftermath of its influence continued into the 20th century, when, as the poem of the Statue of Liberty says, the "lost" of the world saw "America" as a place to start a new life, A new territory to realize the dream of life. There, it seems that there are infinite possibilities and infinite hopes.
Time turns to the present, the momentum of the spread of the new crown epidemic is difficult to improve, low interest rates have become the financial norm in major countries around the world, and political "populist" "Globalization" and conservatism are also on the rise in developed countries led by the United States. The smooth runway of the high-speed mobile Internet has begun to bump up. Cases of giant monopoly, big company disease, and individual rights being destroyed are not uncommon. Finding a job, maintaining a living, and maintaining "little happiness" has become the goal of most people.
Looking around, it seems that there is no new hope for excitement and longing in the three-dimensional physical world. Confined to buildings, cubicles and large and small screens. Hope and adventure are precisely the driving force behind human beings. In the face of weak reality, we can't help but ask, is this the future? What's next?
Liu Cixin once said that "The Three-Body Problem" is not a fantasy, there are two roads in front of human beings: one goes outward , leading to the sea of stars, and one inward, leading to virtual reality. He believes that the future of mankind lies in the former path, and the latter path will bring about involution, which makes him feel anxious.
However, the world's top tech companies and investors seem to have voted with their actions and capital in the air race to explore outer space After all, it is only a competitive game between big powers and people at the top of the pyramid. The future that most technology companies see is still: Metaverse.
Every article that talks about the metaverse will mention that the word originally came from the 1992 science fiction writer Neal Stephenson's work "Avalanche ". At present, the most common and concrete imagination about it is the Hollywood movie "Ready Player One" or the American drama "Westworld". You can't escape the prediction of the future virtual reality, and you can't escape the framework and coat of the game.
Maybe our imaginations are still not big enough.
Matthew Ball, a well-known venture capitalist in the entertainment industry and the most respected opinion leader in the Metaverse field, believes that Metaverse should be regarded as An inherited state of the mobile Internet, we cannot predict its specific form, but it will bring about tremendous changes in social operations and ways of thinking, just as the electric revolution not only lights up the lights, the information revolution not only changes How we communicate. The Metaverse will revolutionize all industries from healthcare to payments, consumption, entertainment, hourly workers and more. In addition, entirely new industries, markets and resources will be created, as will new types of skills and occupations. The combined value of these changes could be in the trillions.
If you think of the metaverse as an "empty island" suspended above the real world, we have all heard of it legend, but no one knows what it looks like. At present, many forces on the mainland have launched a voyage adventure in search of "sky islands", including metaverse concept games native to the encryption industry led by Axie Infinity, Decentraland, and The Sandbox; global technology giants such as Facebook, Nvidia, and Tencent are early Layout; more cutting-edge forces such as Metaverse concept stock Roblox, the American game company Epic that released "Fortnite", the Chinese sandbox mobile platform MetaApp, and the game company Mihayou that launched "Yuan Shen" are deeply testing the water.
However, companies from different fields and backgrounds have different understandings and assumptions about the metaverse. The technical and conceptual grips are also different. Under the competition and intertwining of various forces, what does the real metaverse look like? Is the metaverse that tech giants and encryption companies are leading to the same? In the encryption industry, the question we are most concerned about is, what role does Crypto play in the Metaverse? This article will try to clarify one by one.
When the virtual shines into reality
"You can think of Axie as a country with a real economy."
Axie developer Sky Mavis
When talking about Metaverse in the encrypted world, people first think of explosive NFT avatars, Play-to-Earn mode, virtual land, and pixel-style virtual world. Of course, the most important thing is the value growth and wealth effect behind NFT avatars and virtual world tokens.
Currently, virtual worlds and chain games headed by Axie Infinity, Decentraland, The Sandbox, and CryptoVoxels have begun to take shape in the Metaverse , and came under the spotlight this year, becoming an undoubted hot topic in the encryption industry.
TokenInsight data shows that in the second quarter of 2021, Metaverse will become one of the hottest tracks. Total sales for the second quarter reached $38.81 million, a 56.05% increase over first quarter sales. Compared with the sales of Metaverse for the whole year of 2020, the increase reached 140%.
The most eye-catching project is Axie Infinity.
This Vietnamese online virtual chain game, which was first released in 2018, has quietly changed the real offline life of many people.
At the end of 2017, Trung Thanh Nguyen, founder and CEO of Sky Mavis, was inspired by Pokémon and CryptoKitties (encrypted cats), through cute Axies creates a game kingdom where players can fight, collect, and raise pets. In this country, players can not only hold Axies in the form of NFTs, but also earn ERC-20 tokens AXS (Axie Infinity Shards) and SLP (Smooth Love Potion), which can be directly exchanged with legal currency to obtain income, not only Just holding NFT and other appreciation.
As Axie co-founder Jeff Zirlin puts it, "Through something fun, familiar and nostalgic, introduce something new, Kind of scary stuff (cryptocurrency). Then, adding property rights and economic freedom makes this game really special.”
In addition to game mode innovation, Axie also has a very bold plan, which is to use people to work in the "Metaverse" to reshape economic policy and local governance.
In places such as Vietnam and the Philippines, tourism and international labor services have been suspended due to the impact of the epidemic, and the lives of many residents have come to a standstill , but this also gave Axie Infinity an opportunity to spread rapidly. A documentary called "Play-to-Earn" shows how in a small town in the Philippines called Cabanatuan, local residents can earn income by playing Axie games to subsidize daily household and medical expenses, including elderly people who run convenience stores The most ordinary people who know nothing about blockchain technology, such as couples and single mothers.
Play Axie Infinity
In addition to Axie, the blockchain games that also belong to the metaverse concept include sandbox games represented by Decentraland, Cryptovoxels and The Sandbox. Its prototype is the popular sandbox games Minecraft (My World) and Second Life (Second Life). In this type of game, players can create their own virtual identities, conduct business transactions, artistic creation and social networking around the open virtual land, and build their ideal world on a new open platform.
Luo Shen, a senior designer and developer in the game industry, told Rhythm that blockchain games are still in the stage of imitating Internet games, " If you just look at the production of these games, they are still not up to the sophisticated standards of Internet games. For example, Axie, which is very popular now, its economic system may only be a subset of Fantasy Westward Journey, which has been done for a long time. But their advantages It is the decentralized blockchain technology and the circulation of highly liquid tokens, which allow gamers to truly own the sovereignty of virtual assets and have very convenient cash channels.”
“The most important point, I think NFT and GameFi have given the encryption industry a new direction, that is, everyone’s consensus is not only on tokens, but also on NFT And games. Metaverse is originally a virtual world, which shows that the value generated by our consensus in the virtual world is actually no different from the value in the real world. Rich people can speculate on famous paintings in the real world, and they can also speculate on NFT in the virtual world , Through blockchain technology, the boundaries between the virtual world and the real world have begun to blur.” Luoshen said.
All roads lead to the Metaverse?
"The door to the virtual world and the real world has been opened, whether it is from virtual to real, or from real to virtual , are committed to helping users achieve a more realistic experience.”
Tencent CEO Ma Huateng
Let’s temporarily zoom out, leave the encrypted world full of digital and pixels, and return to the Internet industry that everyone is familiar with.
In the Internet world, metaverse is also the most popular concept of "outlet". At present, among the companies that clearly show the banner of "Metaverse", there are not only global technology giants such as Facebook, Apple, Tencent, ByteDance, and Nvidia, but also cutting-edge game forces such as Roblox, MetaApp, and Epic. These companies clearly use different paths and concepts as their starting point, climbing towards the unknown mountain top.
In March this year, Roblox, a UGC game creation platform, was listed on the US stock market, and the company’s valuation exceeded 40 billion US dollars. Just a year ago, Roblox was valued at just $4 billion. This social game, which is popular among elementary and middle school students in the United States, has been praised by players and paid attention to by the industry because of its unique model of platform, development tools and user ecology. With the ambition to build a virtual kingdom, Roblx also introduced the concept of "Metaverse" in the prospectus. Therefore, Roblox became the first stock to officially announce the concept of "Metaverse" to the capital markets of the world.
In April of the same year, Epic, an American game development company, announced that it had received US$1 billion in financing, with a valuation of US$28.7 billion. Last August's valuation of $17.3 billion was up 65.9%. Epic said that the funds from this financing will be mainly used to develop the Metaverse business. This is by no means just shouting slogans. In April 2020, American rapper Travis Scott held an online virtual concert in the sandbox game "Fortnite" developed by Epic. Just 10 minutes of online performance left a deep impression on the world. Players followed the singer to swim on land, deep sea, and space. The stunning scenes and novel experiences attracted more than 12 million people to participate, creating the record for the highest number of simultaneous online viewers in the music scene in the history of the game.
SIG Heiner Asia Capital led the investment, old shareholders founding partners CCV and Yunjiu Capital followed up, and Light Source Capital acted as the exclusive financial advisor. It was called "the largest single financing in the metaverse industry in China".Behind these metaverse game companies, it is difficult to ignore a giant: Tencent.
At the end of 2020, Tencent CEO Ma Huateng wrote in the internal annual special issue "Three Views": "Now, an exciting The opportunity is coming. The mobile Internet has been developing for ten years and is about to usher in the next wave of upgrades. We call it "Full Reality Internet"... The door to the virtual world and the real world has been opened. Into the virtual world, we are committed to helping users achieve a more real experience.” From a conceptual point of view, the “Full Reality Internet” is similar to Metaverse.
Tencent said so, and it has already done so.
Its metaverse layout can be traced back to 2012, when Tencent acquired a 48.4% stake in Epic Games for US$330 million. Cut into the underlying core technology of the game industry to make up for the weakness of the underlying game development.
In May 2019, Tencent officially announced that it will cooperate with Roblox to establish a Chinese company and launch the Chinese version of "Roblox". In February 2020, in Roblox’s US$150 million round G financing, Tencent has participated in the investment and is the exclusive agent for Roblox’s product distribution in China.
In addition, Tencent has also invested in Wave, a virtual concert operator, and has become a major shareholder of Snap, a social giant that has entered the AR field. Tencent is behind social and entertainment dark horses such as expression tool Bitmoji, camera Kit, social software Discord, and streaming music service provider Spotify.
While sweeping goods around the world to build an ecology, Tencent is also integrating resources internally.
In April this year, Tencent carried out the fifth organizational structure adjustment, and the most striking adjustment was the creation of Yao Xiaoguang, head of Tianmei Studio of "Glory of the King", also serves as the head of PCG's social platform business, in charge of QQ. Yao Youguang will also personally lead the team to develop a game masterpiece that will be compared to the virtual world "Oasis" in "Ready Player One".
An insider close to Tencent told Rhythm, "In fact, Tencent has a lot of information and discussions about Metaverse. Ma Huateng proposed The Quanzhen Internet is a bit like a three-year or five-year plan at the national level, which must be the top priority of Tencent’s future development. I understand it as after WeChat, Tencent is trying to seize a ticket for the future world.”
The person who did not want to be named believes that "Yao Xiaoguang is also in charge of the QQ business. In fact, QQ can be said to be an early virtual ID, and QQ space is a personal virtual space. In the Internet era, this account is only used within the QQ system, but in the future Metaverse, this identity has more and greater possibilities. Tencent I may have seen this too. ”
If the main focus of Tencent’s entry into the metaverse is games, then Facebook and Nvidia will focus on hardware technology, and in this Xia Tian swiped the screen because of "Yuan Universe".
At the end of June this year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced a new goal of Facebook to the world: to create a metaverse world.
“Today we are seen as a primarily social media company, and in the future we will effectively Cosmos Inc," Zuckerberg said.
Following the $2.3 billion acquisition of Oculus, a maker of virtual devices for One-third of manpower is invested in AR/VR business, and the Quest series launched in recent years has dominated the VR equipment market with more than half of the market share. In 2021Q1, Facebook’s non-advertising business revenue was US$732 million, of which Oculus contributed a lot. At the 2021 Q2 earnings conference call, Facebook management stated that in the future, it will invest billions of dollars each year to accelerate the layout of the Metaverse.
Zuckerberg is determined to use VR/AR as the entrance to open the door to the metaverse, and Nvidia CEO Huang Renxun has heavily increased the Omniverse virtual world.
Just last week, the topic of "True and False Boss Huang" was swiping the screen in the industry, but in the press conference video, Nvidia, It is an indisputable fact that the 14-second "Boss Huang" avatar was secretly replaced by graphics computing technology. This fake virtual human image is made through Omniverse technology.
Omniverse in Chinese can be translated as "the whole universe", which is essentially a virtual world created based on various physical characteristics of the real world , both belong to the metaverse category. At this year's GTC conference, NVIDIA launched Omniverse, a real-time simulation and collaboration platform for enterprises. Huang Renxun's description of Omniverse is "a platform that connects the 3D world to the shared virtual world."
For the role of the Omniverse in the Metaverse, Huang Renxun envisions, "There will be many designers and creators in the future, Design digital things in the virtual reality Metaverse; then complete the design in the real world, including cars, bags, shoes, etc. Products. I believe this will be a bigger market and a bigger field. Maybe the world in the Metaverse will be bigger than Our real world is hundreds of times bigger.”
Huang Renxun believes that such a virtual world needs an engine capable of rendering high-fidelity audio and video, and Need to comply with the physical laws of particle physics, gravity, electromagnetic waves, light, pressure, etc. Secondly, the world must be open, "so we chose the USD (universal scene description) language invented by Pixar. With USD, the AI agent (AI agent) can enter and exit through AR/VR through the wormhole."< /p>
“Most importantly, our Omniverse is also scalable on the cloud.” After such a grand vision and three years of polishing Afterwards, Omniverse came out and became one of the important forces in creating the Metaverse.
Does the metaverse need Crypto?
"2007-2010 I had a lot of fun playing World of Warcraft , but one day Blizzard removed the damage component of my beloved sorcerer Siphon's life spell. I cried myself to sleep the day I realized how dire the consequences of a centralized platform service would be. I quickly decided to leave the game. 2011 , while looking for a new purpose in life, I discovered Bitcoin.”
Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin
After a rough inventory of companies that have entered the metaverse, we found that the entrance and model of the encryption industry and the Internet industry to create the metaverse are completely different. Giants led by technology companies such as Tencent and Facebook are more inclined to start with the game ecology and hardware technology, and it is difficult to see Crypto in their layout.
So, does the Metaverse really need Crypto?
To answer this question, perhaps we can clarify the concept of metaverse first. In an article earlier this year, Matthew Ball clarified the key characteristics of the metaverse, including: it must span the physical and virtual worlds; it must contain a complete set of economies; and provide "unprecedented interoperability", meaning Users will be able to move their avatars and items from one location in the Metaverse to another, regardless of who operates each location; it is crucial that the Metaverse will not be run by a single company, but by many Different parties operate in a decentralized manner.
"After paying attention to this industry for a long time, you will find that the industry has actually reached a consensus that the world of the Metaverse needs three major technologies Support, namely VR/AR, AI and blockchain, and the role of crypto in it, in addition to serving as the native currency of the digital virtual world, is to make the Metaverse a decentralized world that is not controlled by a single party .” Luoshen told Rhythm.
The birth and maturity of the concept of NFT (Non-Fungible Token) provides an important technical ladder for Metaverse. NFT mainly guarantees users' absolute control over various virtual assets (including data and works, etc.), allowing users to issue, store, mortgage and transfer virtual assets in a fair, transparent and secure manner.
At present, NFT has been widely used in the marking and trading of virtual assets and virtual rights in various fields. In the metaverse and the world of games, NFT can guarantee the independence and autonomy of users' assets, without worrying that centralized managers will easily deprive users of their rights, and let the tragedy of V God playing "World of Warcraft" reappear.
“In addition, one of the most important functions of encryption technology is to ensure a stable and smooth connection between different worlds in the Metaverse Get up, because I believe that the future metaverse must not be like the "Oasis" in "Ready Player One", where there is only one grand virtual world with all things in it, but it is composed of many different types of worlds." Talking about In the future metaverse, Luoshen thinks so.
Cao Yin, managing director of the Digital Renaissance Foundation, agrees with the view that there is not only one world in the Metaverse. He believes that "Internet companies such as Tencent actually want to open up all their product lines in the metaverse, that is, turn the original portal website into a portal metaverse. After entering their metaverse, users can definitely use 3D /VR/AR and other technologies achieve sensory enhancement and a real sense of immersion, but users are still only in the world it controls, which is very centralized.”
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If you compare the metaverse to an undeveloped new continent, all companies are now on the same starting line. "When developing the New World of the United States, the British, French and other European colonists must have had greater advantages than the Native Americans, but in the end the official British colonies were annexed by the American Puritan folk colonies. The development of the metaverse is more important than ideology Whoever can hit the hearts of users will win." Cao Yin said.
Although the metaverse games in the encryption industry cannot compete with the Internet giants in terms of technical investment and financial support, "they are the biggest The biggest advantage is openness.” In Tencent’s world, we can imagine that users still experience Tencent’s ecology through WeChat or QQ accounts as IDs, but it is hard to imagine that users in Tencent’s Metaverse can enjoy the services of other companies. "However, in the crypto-native Metaverse, users can establish brand-new identities, establish brand-new social relationships, shuttle in different virtual universes, and gain new life experiences."
< p>Zuckerberg also pointed out that the metaverse must be interoperable and portable, "You have your own virtual avatar and virtual items, you can move anywhere instantly, and Not trapped in one company's product.
In this context, like the standard protocols of the World Wide Web, the Metaverse requires Construct a common protocol to allow each company to develop in a common and interoperable universe. "The emergence of encryption technology and DeFi has made the industry see this hope. Only through blockchain technology can both distributed and decentralized It can also realize the seamless connection between the various universes. So as to build a real metaverse that belongs to everyone.” Luoshen commented on the role of Crypto in the metaverse.
Avatar: Let ordinary people become "gods"
"In order to save mortals, Vishnu took human form and became the prince of Ayodhya, Rama. At the age of 16, he was already a role model for mortals. He is strong, humble, handsome, calm, and pious. He is a model that mankind strives to emulate, but due to various human flaws, no one can truly become him.”
Introduction to the character Rama in the game "Smite"
In the Internet age, avatar has a new meaning - the avatar of the individual in the virtual environment of the network, representing the image of the user The image of , which is what we often call "head portrait".
In the coming metaverse, avatar will refer to each person's unique virtual ID, so that everyone can create a new The unique and imaginative identity gives everyone the opportunity to become their own "God".
After the new crown epidemic, the way people live has slowly changed. "Many people start to think about who they are and what they want to do. Metaverse gives people a brand new opportunity to redefine themselves, acquire a new identity, and build a social relationship that has nothing to do with the real world." Speaking of people entering Cao Yin thinks so when it is the most important need of the Metaverse.
Taking the NFT art field, which is currently the most concerned in the encryption industry, as an example, relying on encryption technology, the art industry is no longer Only artists who have graduated from prestigious schools and held solo exhibitions can be recognized. Theoretically speaking, everyone can become an artist, display and sell their works online through NFT, and accept the public review of the market.
“Currently in Decentraland or CryptoVoxels, there are already many popular encryption artists on the chain, and a dentist, An actor, even a car repairman. But in the encrypted art community, they are very popular artists. This is impossible in the real world, and it is impossible in the metaverse of Internet giants. In the system of the economic system, the giants will definitely set strict KYC policies."
Luoshen believes that in AR/VR, AI , blockchain, 5G and other technical means, with the help of digital economic systems and value chains such as cryptocurrencies and NFTs, what Metaverse wants to provide to the public is nothing but a decentralized virtual world that is parallel to reality and transcends reality. New World. Everyone there will have their own new virtual ID, which can build new social relationships, establish a new revenue model, and experience super-sensory, immersive entertainment and leisure activities. "As long as you think of it, you can achieve it."
"Metaverse actually gave everyone a second life, the second This is the first chance to start." Cao Yin said. That's the hope it brings.
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