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Blockchain technology is the key? Analyzing the Three Driving Forces Behind the Metaverse Boom

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In the process of forming the metaverse, blockchain technology, hardware and infrastructure, and user economy interact with each other, and none of them can be dispensed with.

Original author: Time Space Cloud

Since this year, the popularity of the metaverse has continued to rise, and the giants have successively announced the layout of the metaverse track:

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announces that Facebook will be renamed "Meta" (from "Metaverse" Metaverse), and regard the development of Metaverse as the focus of future company development

At last week's Ignite conference, Microsoft said it was tweaking its signature software product to create a more enterprise version of the Metaverse

April this year , ByteDance spent 100 million yuan to invest in Metaverse-related game manufacturer Code Qiankun; in August, ByteDance announced the acquisition of Pico, a leading VR company

In addition, some news outside the business field also continues to stimulate people's reverie about the metaverse:

The Seoul Metropolitan Government recently announced that it will create a "metaverse platform" to provide public services to citizens

Philippines The central bank considers the metaverse concept project blockchain game Axie Infinity as a payment system operator

The China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, a public institution directly under the Ministry of State Security of China, released "Metaverse and National Security", discussing the influence of the Metaverse on national security< /p>

This Year 12 In March, the second session of the Boao Forum for Asia (one of the most influential international forums held by China) set up a metaverse theme session at the blockchain sub-forum of the Science and Technology Innovation Conference, inviting all walks of life in politics, academia and business to discuss the development prospects of the metaverse.

So what exactly is the Metaverse?

Some people say that metaverse = the maturity of VR and brain-computer interface technology

Some people say that the Metaverse = Internet of Things + blockchain + cloud computing + big data + 5G/6G + ultra-high-speed Internet + smart phones + virtual reality + artificial intelligence +. . .

The metaverse is indeed difficult to describe, because it is not a product or game, nor is it created by a company , but a new interaction mode and business ecology that have not yet appeared in human society.

The real metaverse should be able to realize such a scene:

Wearing smart devices, you can socialize, play games, and work in another digital and simulated world. This world is more exciting, and you can experience immersive adventures without leaving your home. At the same time, this world is more scalable, everyone is a creator, and can choose to establish the value of their own roles in different worlds in the Metaverse.

More importantly, there will be far more communities and economic ecology in this world than in the real world , Digital assets supported by blockchain technology will be able to circulate across borders. For example, the NFT artwork you get from fighting monsters in the game can be hung on the wall of the virtual property you bought, and the income from selling this virtual property can make you a fortune in reality.

Combining the layout of the metaverse by domestic and foreign technology giants, as well as the research of foreign scholars and media professionals, The author believes that the final mature metaverse will have three elements: user economy, hardware and network infrastructure, and blockchain technology.

In the process of forming the metaverse, the three interact with each other, and one is indispensable. As shown below.

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Let’s talk about the internal driving forces of these three metaverses in detail, and the key point is the third How will the driving force——blockchain technology become the key to the realization of the Metaverse.

Driver 1: New User Economy

(Keywords: Attention Economy, User Ecology, Advertising)

< p class="MsoNormal">The internal driving force of the user economy on the metaverse comes from the bottleneck encountered in the current development of the Internet user economy.

The concept of user economy is very broad. In the traditional Internet field, it refers to everything that is achieved by satisfying the needs of Internet users The economic model also includes the user ecology formed by users through content creation and interaction on a product. But in a nutshell, the core of the Internet economy is to use digital technology to meet the various needs of users, including leisure and relaxation needs, convenient social needs, efficient office needs, and knowledge acquisition needs.

It is an indisputable fact that the explosive development of the Internet economy has come to an end. It has been difficult to stimulate greater user demand.

The traditional Internet has changed the way people consume, socialize and obtain information, and has correspondingly created electronic The profit models of the three major Internet businesses, social networking, and search engines, but the Internet has encountered a bottleneck of saturated demand if it wants to further advance.

This is actually easy to understand, after all, people only have so much time in a day.

Products like Douyin try to grab people’s attention as much as possible, you can use Douyin on the way to work , and even use Douyin while waiting for a red light, but you can’t use Douyin in the time and space away from the screen.

But the metaverse offers a possibility to break through the limits.

Metaverse is not trying to grab attention with new products, but trying to create a true digital The world, moving people's office, entertainment, social networking, consumption and other behaviors online.

At that time, the Internet will open a new economic field, and the digital assets that can be sold on e-commerce platforms will likely exceed physical objects The value of assets, social platforms will have more ways to play due to the diversity of people's identities in the Metaverse, and the content that search engines can provide will be infinitely richer than the current ones.

For the Internet giants, it is more important to open up the source of advertising revenue again. Advertising slots will make them rich again.

Now we may think that such an idea is too whimsical, but the Internet giants have already gradually brought people A plan to enter the metaverse. It is Facebook's idea to use content as an attraction to build a user economy. Facebook executive Jason Rubin once described Facebook's plan to realize the Metaverse in a document:

Now Facebook has laid out many metaverse games and developer platforms, including the acquisition of Big Box VR Studio, the developer of the VR "chicken-eating" game "POPULATION: ONE", and the launch of the XR version of VR fitness software FIT and Supernatural, Published VR developer tools platform Oculus Developer Hub and more.

And Microsoft also has its own user onboarding program.

In order to guide people to finally enter the real meeting room of Microsoft Teams with avatars, Microsoft intends to In the first half of next year, the function of virtual characters will be launched in the online meeting software. Jared Spataro, the head of the Microsoft Teams team, said that at the beginning, a participant "talked to you in a cartoon way, and you didn't feel out of place." < /p>

The Internet giants are serious about reaching the accumulation of the initial users of Metaverse through Quanzhen, and the investment in hardware equipment shows their confidence.

Driving Force 2: Hardware, Network Infrastructure

(Keywords: XR, distributed storage, Web3.0)

The hardware and network infrastructure are the support for the realization of the metaverse. The driving force in this aspect comes from AR, MR, VR and other technologies and brain The advancement of computer interface technology, on the other hand, comes from the innovation of Internet data transmission, data processing, and data storage technology.

First look at hardware devices, which mainly include VR, AR, MR and other mixed reality terminals.

< p class="MsoNormal">VR, AR, and MR technologies are now regarded as the entrance to the future metaverse, and the main promoters of these technologies are still Internet technology giants.

Facebook is one of the first players to start laying out this track. Oculus, a start-up company that has invested in VR headsets, is laying out VR products. After the completion of the acquisition, Facebook increased its R&D investment in the VR business from US$5.9 billion per year to nearly US$18.5 billion, and released the first consumer version of the Rift virtual reality headset as early as 2015.

Apple, Google, Microsoft, Huawei and other large technology companies are also vying for the entrance of this metaverse. A lot of technical layout and exploration were carried out respectively. Apple has established an AR R&D team of thousands of people and developed ARKit; Google has developed ARCore for the Android platform, which is convenient for Android developers to call and develop it; Huawei has developed HUAWEI AR using the powerful AI chip integrated in the Kirin chip The Engine system realizes important AR basic functions such as motion tracking, plane detection, gesture recognition, hand bone tracking, and human bone tracking.

The brain-computer interface technology shows the human consciousness and the Internet The possibility of a deeper combination also brings more fantasies to the realization of the Metaverse.

But the current brain-computer interface technology is not yet mature, the most famous company Musk's brain-computer interface company Neuralink is mainly engaged in the development of Musk's so-called "neural lace" technology, developing computer and human brain fusion technology, and implanting micro electrodes into the human brain that may be able to upload and download thoughts in the future.

In addition to hardware equipment, the greater driving force of the metaverse is also reflected in Internet data transmission and data processing technology , including technological innovations in data storage.

Among them, artificial intelligence provides high interactivity for digital characters; cloud computing and edge computing solve Driving efficiency; 5G/6G offers wide data lanes.

The most critical blockchain technology in the Internet Web3.0 era is also changing the Internet at an alarming speed Shape.

Speaking of this, the focus of this article is coming, that is the role of blockchain technology in the Metaverse .

Driving Force 3: Blockchain Technology

(Keywords: Decentralization, non-tamperable identity, autonomous ecology)

As the driving force of the metaverse, blockchain technology is The core elements that the Metaverse can realize.

The blockchain is essentially a decentralized Internet database, and anyone can Verification, but there is no single user that can control it. With the power of encryption algorithms, blockchain technology provides people with a new mechanism of trust and collaboration using mathematical methods.

This kind of trust and cooperation mechanism has two meanings, which are reflected in the two driving forces mentioned above—— The user economy and network infrastructure of the Metaverse.

1. Blockchain and user economy

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First of all, in terms of user economy in the Metaverse, blockchain technology enables any individual or organization to use digital asset data and Explore business models based on digital assets.

Therefore, all kinds of assets can be transformed into digital tokens that can be circulated online. The widespread circulation in the blockchain system is the so-called "token economy".

This greatly enriches the user economic system of the Metaverse, making it possible to create an A complex economic world becomes possible.

Maybe it is difficult for us to understand the significance of digital assets being confirmed and circulated, but we can Let's learn about NFT and blockchain games.

The full name of NFT is Non Fungible Token. The globally recognized smart digital ID card for everything.

NFTs are unique because they are based on blockchain technology and have been associated with specific digital goods since their birth Establishing a unique mapping relationship can be used as the corresponding and unique proof of rights for digital goods on a specific blockchain.

The proof of rights of digital assets on the blockchain establishes the relationship between digital assets and real individuals in reality The ownership relationship solves the problem of confirming the rights of digital assets. People can buy and sell the NFT they own through simple operations, which has also caused a recent boom in NFT transactions:

According to data from the official website of CryptoPunks, as of October 2021, the number of CryptoPunks sold in the past year was 11,752, with a total cumulative sales of 1.43 billion US dollars. Among them, the pixel with the highest price is CryptoPunk#3100, the price of this alien is as high as 108.6 million US dollars.

According to the data provided by Nonfungible's official website, the number of NFT buyers in 2020 will increase by 66.94% year-on-year, and the number of sellers will increase year-on-year 24.7%. In October this year, the number of NFT active wallets exceeded 150,000, an increase of 97.09% compared to 2019. The transaction activity of the NFT market also continued to increase, and the transaction volume in US dollars increased by as much as 299%. So far, the total sales of NFT on the Ethereum chain have exceeded 8.5 billion US dollars.

Axie Infinity, the blockchain game with the highest market value at present, also shows us the blockchain technology Huge possibilities for application in game digital assets.

The resources in the game are all digital assets whose rights are confirmed on the blockchain, and resources can be produced in the game At the same time, it can be traded with various groups of cryptocurrencies on the blockchain and exchanged for real assets.

Axie Infinity has found a profit model that is different from traditional Internet games selling game props: players want to get more Good experience and more game resources are willing to buy high-quality assets in the hands of others, the rise in asset prices drives more players into the game, and a large number of resource transactions bring benefits to developers who charge transaction fees.

This cycle keeps adding more players, and at the same time pushes up the value of digital assets in the game, making the game All the rage:

2. Blockchain and Metaverse infrastructure

In terms of Internet infrastructure construction, blockchain technology will use distributed features to reconstruct data storage and processing way, to provide the Metaverse with a more secure data transmission channel and a more powerful data flow processing capability.

The reconstruction of the network infrastructure by the blockchain is mainly to replace the traditional center with a point-to-point (P2P) transmission network mode of transmission.

Point-to-point transmission solves the problem of information inequality and trust at the same time. In the point-to-point network, each user is both a node , the nodes can transmit to each other, which means that each node has the function of a server, and there is no center in the entire network.

In this process, the role of traditional Internet centralized nodes is replaced by the blockchain's own system and decentralized This also solves the problems of the traditional storage mode system being prone to crashes, high storage costs, and inability to store permanently.

At the same time, blockchain technology also has good security. The article "IPFS will be Bringing a Piracy-Free Internet Era? ", emphatically describing the value of IPFS, a distributed storage technology supported by blockchain technology, in terms of copyright confirmation and data credibility.

As a relatively mainstream system protocol in the field of blockchain technology, IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) has become popular in recent years some. IPFS is also known as the "Interplanetary File System". It is a peer-to-peer distributed file system protocol. You can understand it as a network transmission protocol for network content storage and file sharing.

Under the premise that the Internet infrastructure and underlying data are mature, IPFS can effectively protect and encourage content creation, Data credibility, copyright protection, and transaction credibility can be achieved in terms of copyright confirmation and genuine verification. In terms of preventing piracy, technologies such as "file fingerprinting" and "file deduplication" can be used to prioritize duplication checks and priority protection.

More importantly, the P2P transmission network is a network that truly follows Metcalfe's law. In other words, the more people participating in a network such as IPFS, the higher the transmission efficiency, the faster the speed, and the more valuable the network.

Being able to efficiently process and store data is the way blockchain technology can reconstruct Internet infrastructure in the future key.

Metcalfe's law: the value of a network is equal to the square of the number of nodes in the network , and the value of the network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users.

Currently, China already has a very clear lead in the IPFS ecosystem Advantages, China's major Internet companies and IPFS service providers are also actively deploying metaverse infrastructure to help China's metaverse construction in the Web3.0 era.

In recent years, in response to the national call for new infrastructure, domestic telecom operators have established distributed storage infrastructure, Ali Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Huawei Cloud, Inspur and other companies are entering the market to deploy IPFS. At the same time, some technical service providers focusing on the field of decentralization have also become exporters of the underlying technical community.

Conclusion

Through the analysis of the three metaverse driving forces, we can see two forces that promote the progress of the metaverse: "Blockchain faction" and "Internet faction" .

Blockchain faction believes in the power of decentralization, they take advantage of blockchain technology and have A huge user economy has been established through the NFT market, chain games, etc., while the Internet infrastructure is actively promoting the development of the Internet towards a more open and equal Web3.0 era.

Internet faction mainly refers to traditional Internet companies. They rely on capital accumulation and technological advantages to promote the Metaverse It is developing in the direction of real office, immersive games, etc., hoping to establish a new user economy on the basis of existing users. In terms of hardware, it is developing VR and other technologies to compete for the entrance of the Metaverse.

It should be said that both are important roles in the construction of the Metaverse.

However, the author believes that it is not only difficult to achieve more efficient data transmission and storage in the Metaverse without blockchain technology , At the same time, it will only once again become the stage for the monopoly of giants.

The giants control the database and data transmission entrance, mine identity information from users, place advertisements to obtain income, and users But get no benefit from it.

With blockchain technology, the underlying network infrastructure can be fair to each node, everyone All can participate in the metaverse with a safe identity, and obtain the only token of digital assets in the metaverse, and share the benefits of the development of the metaverse.

Only such a metaverse can truly become a parallel "universe" that users are willing to participate in and build.