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Universal blockchain Xiao Feng: Meta-universe and telecom operators

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What is the underlying logic of the metadverse?

Universal blockchain Xiao Feng: Meta-universe and Telecom Operators

原文作者：万向区块链

preface

On December 7, Dr. Xiao Feng, chairman and General manager of Wanxiang Blockchain, was invited to deliver a speech at the GSMA-5G Innovation and Investment Forum. In the era of COVID-19, 5G technology has played an important role in promoting the upgrading of consumer and industrial Internet, while 5G is also rapidly integrating with other technologies, such as blockchain, Internet of Things and cloud computing. This year, the "metasverse" is definitely the hottest concept. Is there any place for 5G, or telecom operators, in this field?

In his speech, Dr. Xiao feng took "Metasomes and Telecom operators" as the theme, and analyzed the underlying logic, layered architecture and core technology of the metasomes. Meanwhile, he further analyzed the role that telecom operators can play in the metasomes.

Different people have different understandings of the meta-universe. For Dr. Xiao Feng, who has been studying blockchain for seven or eight years, what exactly is the meta-universe? Is it inevitable for the future? Read the excerpts of the speech below.

It is a great honor to have this opportunity to share my personal views on the metasurses and the role that telecom operators can play in them. Thank you for your invitation!

Metasurverse is a popular term in recent times, and there are very different opinions about it. Some say the meta-universe is a huge, new commercial outlet; It is also said that the metasomes are the largest internal scroll of human society. My point of view is: if human beings stick to the space of the Earth, it is the biggest inner coil. I believe that whether we are looking to expand the physical space of The Earth, for example, to colonize Mars, or to build a virtual space like the metasverse, it is a search by human society to break out of closed systems, bring in new energy, and reduce entropy.

I think the meta-universe is a new world that is coming whether you like it or not. I summarize the following reasons:

First, from "online" to "online" to "present"

From PC and mobile phone to VR/AR headset and glasses, the connection between human society and virtual world has gone through three stages.

First of all, in the PC stage, the main behavior pattern of our relationship with the virtual world and the Internet is "surfing the Internet". We need to turn on the computer, type a web page into the browser, and look for the network. After browsing, we turned off the computer and left. The next time we go looking for the site, we have to type the url into our browser to keep going. It's based on PC and laptop hardware

Then, in the age of the mobile Internet, came the smartphone. Smart phones provide us with connections to the Internet in the form of apps. Our behavior mode has changed from "online" to "online", and the business value of the "online" mode is 10 times greater than that of the online mode.

In the future, in the age of the meta-universe, VR, AR and other new hardware devices will provide us with the experience of "presence", which is a new mode of relationship between human beings and the virtual world. I believe the business value of being present is 10 times greater than being online. It is possible to realize poetic fantasies like the ancient people's "bosom friends across the sea and distant land being near" in the era of the meta-universe.

Second, from 3D reality to 2d screen to 3D virtual reality

The real space of human life is a three-dimensional real world. The Internet has brought us a planar and two-dimensional virtual world, while the meta-universe will bring us a three-dimensional and three-dimensional virtual world.

The big difference between the three-dimensional, three-dimensional virtual world and the three-dimensional real world is this: in the virtual world, time and space can be reorganized, while in the real world, space is fixed and time cannot be traced back. However, in the three-dimensional virtual reality, time can be shuttled, space can be reorganized, such as you can use digital avatar to traverse Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen three conferences, in the three conferences to express different views, these are your digital dopant, are your point of view.

Third, the business scene expands from physical space to virtual space

Humans are always looking for new business scenarios, new consumer demands. The meta-universe will help us expand the business scene from the physical space to the virtual space. This virtual space will make our consumption demand continue to expand 10 times or even dozens of times, and the new phenomenon of decreasing scale cost and increasing scale return will appear.

Fourth, from virtual characters to digital characters

Technology has brought us digital, virtual human beings like avatars and digital avatars. There are now more than 7 billion people on the planet, and these virtual ICONS and digital avatars are probably 10 times as many as there are in the real world, maybe 70 billion. If we're doing business in a world of 70 billion people, it's going to be a lot bigger than doing business with 7 billion people.

For these four reasons, I believe the metasomes will inevitably come, independent of one's own will.

So, what exactly is the meta-universe? In a word, the meta-universe is a three-dimensional virtual world of human society. If further subdivided, the metaverse includes the concept of a virtual society, the concept of a digital world, the concept of a human conscious world, and the idea that the metaverse is a programmable world.

I think the meta-universe has six layers:

The first layer is the physical layer, including VR, AR, XR, MR and other hardware.

The second layer is the data layer, on top of the hardware, on top of the Internet, where everything is interconnected and digitally symbiotic.

The third layer is the algorithm layer. If everyone really wants to enter and thrive in the meta-universe, every user of the meta-universe cannot be required to be able to program. Therefore, low code, especially code free AIGC and private computing technologies will be the foundation of the meta-universe.

The fourth layer is the governance layer. The meta-universe is a virtual space, and the governance mode of virtual space and real space will not be completely 100% the same. In the virtual space where time can be reorganized and space is infinite, the governance layer must be distributed, self-organized and decentralized.

The fifth layer is the incentive layer, the meta-universe is a new economy, economy must have its own economic model and incentive mechanism. The incentive layer needs to build a new financial system and a new economic incentive mechanism with digital assets, digital currency and digital tokens.

The sixth layer is the application layer, the main participants of the application layer are various content creators, from the point of view of digital survival or digital production to provide content.

I have summarized the meta-universe into these six levels, so that you can understand what the meta-universe is. I've been doing blockchain research for seven or eight years, and from a practitioner's point of view, the organizational model of the metasurverse is likely to be very similar to that of blockchains such as Ethereum. The meta-universe is a network to trust. In the digital world, it is difficult to transfer the trust system that relies on third-party organizations in the real world to the meta-universe. Second, the meta-universe must also be a decentralized network, one that can be joined or left without permission. At the same time, it is a self-organizing network, a network of large-scale collaboration.

Having given an overview of the metasurverse, I'd like to talk about the chemistry between the metasurverse and telecom operators.

First, technology

From a technical point of view, the metasexes have very high requirements for bandwidth, storage, computing, etc., which may be up to 10 levels higher than the requirements of the Internet era. For example, in a 3D environment, the storage of all 3D audio, video and images requires a huge amount of storage space. At the same time, any process or flow in a 3D environment involves a huge amount of computation, which is 10 times larger than the requirements of the Internet age. Therefore, I think telecom operators can play the role of service provider of metasurverse infrastructure in terms of bandwidth, storage and computing.

In particular, I would like to mention that the energy consumption of the digital economy may be 10 times greater than that of the industrial economy. The amount of bandwidth, storage and computing required to support everyone in the metasverse when everyone is in it is more energy intensive than 8 or 9 factories. Therefore, we should try to reduce the energy consumption per unit and greatly increase the proportion of green energy, rather than hoping to reduce or limit the total energy consumption of the whole society.

Second, the role

There are four characters in the metaverse: tool builders, such as virtual reality platforms like Nvidia's Omniverse or Microsoft; The second role is platform builder, such as Facebook or Tencent; The third type of character is the app builder, such as Roblox or Disney, which provides many apps. The fourth category is content creators. I think telecom operators can get a piece of the pie not only in tool builders, but also in platform builders. Kt is building a metasurverse platform for meetings, socializing, games, and entertainment, based on enough bandwidth, enough storage, and enough computing.

Third, patterns

From the point of view of business model, telecom operators can also play some roles in it. Based on the distributed, decentralized, self-organizing metasexes, telecom operators can build a platform within which to provide infrastructure services to open, eco-oriented commercial economies. This infrastructure service goes beyond communication services to include storage, computing, and even some development environments on top of storage computing, such as AIGC algorithms for code-free development. This is what telecom operators can do, but they cannot build a closed system, they must build an open, distributed, self-organized ecological platform.

Thank you very much. The above are some of my preliminary and superficial views. Thank you again for inviting the conference, and thank you all for listening!