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In the first year of the metaverse in 2021, NFT and GameFi will take turns to play, how to understand the metaverse on Web3

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In the eyes of a thousand people, there are a thousand metaverses. What is the metaverse on Web3?

About the metaverse, some people think it is illusory and should not be encouraged; others think that it is human nature: human beings are a creature that cannot fully live in reality , from the birth of novels, movies, games, etc., it is not difficult to see that people need a "virtual world" to entrust their ideals that are difficult to achieve in real life.

Entering 2021, the metaverse ushered in accelerated development, and drove the investment boom in NFT and GameFi tracks, becoming an important part of the encryption circle, technology circle, It is a hot topic that is constantly discussed in the investment circle and even major official media; major Internet technology giants such as Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple are vying to deploy, and domestic companies such as Tencent, NetEase, and Baidu are also speeding up their entry. As the carrier of the integration of the virtual world and the real world, the metaverse contains huge opportunities for social, entertainment, creation, office and other scene changes.

But in the eyes of a thousand people , there are a thousand metaverses. In recent years, with the advancement of global science and technology, the connotation and extension of the Metaverse are also constantly evolving. In the current transition from the closed network of Web2 to the decentralized open network of Web3, what kind of connection will it have with the metaverse that spans the digital and physical worlds, and how should we understand the metaverse on Web3? Next, Rhythm BlockBeats will explore the truth for everyone to refer to.

The metaverse exploded, Internet technology giants accelerated their approach

From the perspective of the mainstream market, Metaverse is an immersive virtual space that provides users with rich consumer content, fair Creation platform, reliable economic system, immersive interactive experience, etc. Users can carry out cultural, social, entertainment and other activities in it. These behaviors do not require personal participation, but they can interact with reality.

At first, the concept of the metaverse came from the science fiction novel "Avalanche", author Neil In this 1992 novel, Neal Stephenson conceived of a Metaverse that grew out of, and parallel to, the real world. People in the real world can break the boundaries of time and space, as long as they connect through the public entrance, they can enter it as a digital identity (Avatar) and start another life different from the real world.

In 2018, "Ready Player One" directed by Spielberg brought this concept into the mainstream. In the "oasis" depicted in the movie, not only classic IPs from different dimensions of film and television games gather here, but also a fully operational social and economic system. Countless digital content and digital items can pass through this "metaverse" .

It will pass The year 2021 will be a year in which the development of the metaverse will make great strides, and it can be called the "first year of the metaverse".

On March 11 this year, Roblox, known as the first stock in Metaverse, was officially listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The valuation reached $45 billion. Roblox is a platform for game creation and large-scale community interaction. It has attracted more than 7 million freelance game developers and developed more than 18 million game experiences. At the same time, as the first company to include the Metaverse in its prospectus, Roblox's brand-new narrative and unique business model ignited the technology investment circle.

In August, a "virtual human" video of Nvidia CEO Huang Renxun was screened on major social platforms. In a public speech, Huang Renxun used a 14-second "virtual human" stand-in, but because it was too realistic, no one noticed. This "virtual human" is generated by Omniverse, an infrastructure platform used by Nvidia to create virtual spaces. In the future, in addition to the application in personal scenarios, it will also be copied to the industrial field to improve efficiency.

After becoming one of the hottest topics in 2021, the Metaverse has also become an outlet for Internet technology giants to compete. Facebook even changed its company name to Meta after its continuous investment in the VR field; Apple acquired NextVR to enhance its VR capabilities in entertainment and sports; Google’s layout in VR focused on software and services. Such as Youtube VR; and Microsoft also announced at the Ignite conference in November this year that it plans to realize the metaverse through a series of new applications that integrate virtual environments, allowing the digital world to share and communicate with the physical world. At the same time, looking at the country, Tencent, Netease, Baidu and other major companies are also successively deploying the Metaverse.

In addition, many internationally renowned consulting agencies have also Optimistic about the future of the metaverse. The Bloomberg Industry Research Report predicts that the Metaverse will reach a market size of US$800 billion in 2024; PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that the market size of the Metaverse will reach US$1.5 trillion in 2030.

NFT has become popular, Yuan Universe real estate has ushered in investment boom

However, the concept of the metaverse has remained at the imaginary level since it was invented, and has begun to usher in accelerated development in the past two years.

On the one hand, in the field of encryption, the emergence of NFT (non-homogeneous Token) realizes The assetization of virtual items in the Metaverse. It can map any data content on the chain and convert it into value assets that are easy to circulate, and has since accelerated the circulation and transaction of various equipment, decorations, and land property rights.

In addition, NFT can also become a token for confirming rights in the Metaverse, and applications can pass Identify NFT to confirm the user's permissions, which will realize the decentralized transfer of virtual world rights. Moreover, virtual property rights can be traded without the need for a third-party registration agency, which greatly enhances the efficiency of data asset transactions and transfers, as well as the interoperability between protocols and applications within the metaverse economic system.

At the same time, NFT technology also greatly facilitates the linkage of virtual assets between different projects. The virtual assets of the project can be traded away from the project. For example, game assets and plots in Decentraland can be traded not only on the internal platform of the project, but also on other platforms such as OpenSea.

Now, the metaverse craze has spread to the field of virtual real estate transactions. In the past month or so, more and more investment institutions and high-net-worth users have begun to snap up land in virtual worlds such as Cryptovoxels, Decentraland, and Sandbox.

Virtual real estate as For real estate in the metaverse, each piece of land is given its unique and non-replicable NFT, and this is used to distinguish each piece of land and each transaction. Game developers and players can buy or sell in primary and secondary markets on the platform, and use virtual properties for immersive residential or commercial experiences.

On November 23, on the virtual world platform Decentraland, a piece of digital land was sold for a high price of 2.43 million US dollars (about 15.52 million yuan), which is higher than the average price of a single house in Manhattan, USA high. On the same day, singer JJ Lin also announced on Twitter that he purchased three pieces of virtual land on Decentraland and began to set foot in the metaverse real estate industry. According to estimates, Lin Junjie spent about 123,000 US dollars, or about 784,000 yuan, to purchase the three lands.

In addition, 12 On March 2, digital real estate developer Republic Realm bought a piece of land on the virtual game platform The Sandbox from video game company Atari SA for US$4.3 million (about 27.39 million yuan), setting a record high for virtual land sales prices.

Technology continues to change, the metaverse breaks through the boundary between virtual and reality

On the other hand, the continuation of the current global epidemic and the rise of the Z generation YOLO (You Only Live Once) culture have further accelerated The arrival of the metaverse.

The market has underestimated the accelerated changes in corporate working methods and personal career choices under the digital wave: the post During the epidemic, with the development of online office and education habits, people began to spend longer in the virtual space, and the proportion of online life continued to increase; and the Internet provided more freelance opportunities, social enterprise organization forms Constant evolution, and Generation Z's immersion in virtual worlds have made the metaverse a trend.

In addition, the popularity of the metaverse also has corresponding technical support behind it. From the perspective of the development of the digital world, the metaverse is not achieved overnight. In the past, the popularization of smart terminals, the improvement of 5G semiconductor infrastructure, and the budding of the sharing economy are all preludes.

Professor Shen Yang of the School of Journalism and Communication of Tsinghua University believes that the Metaverse is the result of integrating a variety of new technologies A new type of Internet application and social form that blends virtuality and reality, which provides immersive experience based on extended reality technology, and digital twin technology to generate a mirror image of the real world, builds an economic system through blockchain technology, and integrates the virtual world and the real world in the economy. system, social system, and identity system are closely integrated.

After years of development, virtual reality, blockchain, artificial intelligence, wearable devices The application of the underlying technology is becoming more and more mature, and in some specific scenarios, people have begun to capture the changes that the Metaverse may bring to life. From participating in virtual concerts in games to participating in meetings with avatars in virtual spaces, these cases have become reality, breaking the boundary between virtual and reality to a certain extent.

For example, in August of this year, the popular American singer Ariana Grande held 5 consecutive concerts in the game "Fortnite". Tens of millions of players around the world use their own game characters to attend, which is different from the general online live broadcast experience. Fans can have immersive interactions with their idols in this concert, and they are the absolute protagonists just like in the game.

In addition, the first Metaverse product that Microsoft is testing is a Teams chat and meeting-style application that can provide digital identity functions. Scheduled to launch in the first half of next year, customers will be able to share the functionality of Office productivity applications such as PowerPoint in a virtual world.

Berkeley even moved the graduation ceremony to the game, rebuilding the campus in "Minecraft" (My World), and the graduates gathered on the campus in virtual images to attend the graduation ceremony. As a result, the metaverse is no longer a recreation of leisure time or a virtual haven to escape from real life, but increasingly an extension of reality.

The heat of the metaverse overflows, triggering the GameFi boom

It is worth mentioning that games are a key presentation form of the metaverse, just like the entrance of the first generation Internet is a search engine, the second generation The entrance to the Internet is the same as the application, and the main entrance to the Metaverse is generally considered to be a game, and this has also triggered another upsurge in blockchain games/GameFi in the encryption field this year.

This fiery phenomenon is also supported by the data of Footprint Analytics. In 2020, the number of NFT investments related to games in the NFT investment project category is still at the bottom, but this year the game category has grown significantly to the first place, accounting for nearly 13% of all investment projects. In 2021, institutional demand and interest in blockchain games is increasing, and VCs have even invested a total of $4 billion to support the development and creation of blockchain-based games and their underlying infrastructure.

According to DappRadar 2021 According to blockchain game report data, as of the end of the year, there are currently almost 1.4 million UAWs (unique active wallets) interacting with game Dapps every day, accounting for 49% of the total industry usage; head games such as Splinterlands and Alien Worlds alone On average, its Dapp attracts more than 200,000 UAWs per day. In terms of transaction volume, game NFT will account for 20% of the total NFT transaction volume of 23 billion US dollars in 2021.

GameFi 作为DeFi The in-depth integration with the game industry, as well as concepts such as "Play to Earn" (earn while playing), is attracting widespread attention from the encryption community, traditional game industry, and investment circles. With the rapid rise of blockchain games, Metaverse has also ushered in its "Mayflower" - Axie Infinity.

In the GameFi field, Axie Infinity developed by Vietnamese studio Sky Mavis is undoubtedly the king of the track. Its single-day revenue was once close to 20 million U.S. dollars, more than twice the revenue of "Glory of the King", and it is currently the highest-grossing mobile game in the world. Axie Infinity adopts decentralized technology and runs on a distributed storage network such as the blockchain. Players have full ownership of game accounts and assets.

Axie Infinity also shows out of block The amazing potential of blockchain powering decentralized gaming. According to Messari data, the current market value of Axie Infinity is comparable to that of traditional video game companies. In October this year, it followed Electronic Arts and ranked fifth in the market value of global video game companies. It is also close to 4 times the market value of Ubisoft. .

In addition, Axie Infinity players also established a YGG (Yield Guild Games) guild to help players obtain in-game prices through crowdfunding, leasing, etc. You can earn valuable characters and guide them to develop better in the game to earn virtual assets. During the epidemic, YGG organized a large number of local players in Southeast Asia who lost their jobs to make a living, earning hundreds of dollars a month in the game.

Moreover, such an organization is gradually evolving into the form of a decentralized organization "DAO", which is the main form of community organization in the Metaverse. Every game in the future may carry different user groups and community cultures, but everyone can use a unique identity to travel between different games, as if jumping freely between many parallel virtual worlds.

Metaverse on Web3

From "surfing" only using the computer's wired network, to using smart terminals such as mobile phones and tablets to access anytime, anywhere, the impact brought by the mobile Internet era is still fresh in my memory. Right now, although the concept of "Metaverse" is not yet clear, it is increasingly connected with the next-generation Web3 Internet. People are constantly imagining what it will look like, imagining the Second Life world created by Metaverse without giants and data monopoly.

In addition, Grayscale, a well-known investment institution in the encryption field, pointed out in its "Metaverse Web3" report , the Metaverse is at the forefront of the evolution of the next generation of the internet, giving us a glimpse into the future of the internet and bringing it into a market that could potentially exceed $1 trillion in annual revenue, compared to today's roughly $15 trillion Web 2 companies compete.

Up to now, the development of the Internet has been divided into three stages.

From 1991 to 200 4 years or so, is Web1 stage, the main products are mailboxes and web pages that people are accustomed to. The Internet at that time was "static", and "surfing the Internet" could only be read, that is, what to read, which was almost an electronic newspaper for most people.

Then from 2004 to the present, the Internet is in the Web2 stage, and smart mobile devices have become the protagonists. At this time, people can not only read but also write, and create a large amount of content on various platforms, and the platform acts as an information distribution center, and then pushes different content to different people through algorithms. At this time, people who use the Internet become users of different platforms. Everyone's attention and time constitute the traffic of the platform, but the traffic and generated data belong to the platform rather than the users themselves.

Since the development of Web2, Internet products have become more and more like an "attention cage", constantly locking users in by improving stickiness and retention. At the same time, the "Metaverse" in the context of Web2 is also a product created by a large company, such as the centralized Roblox mentioned above. Under its rules and logical framework, it attracts a large number of developers to create various scenarios and content in the form of UGC, and then uses the logic of traffic to obtain C-end users to come in and realize their operations.

But in the world of Web3, assets such as data on the platform can be confirmed through technologies such as blockchain and NFT, and are owned by users. The metaverse built on top of Web3 is also a decentralized, non-permissioned Internet, and forms a permanent economic system that spans the digital and physical worlds and is owned by users themselves. In recent years, the number of users of the virtual world of the Web 3 metaverse has grown rapidly, with approximately more than 50,000 users (active wallets), an increase of approximately 10 times since the beginning of 2020.

Currently, the Metaverse is in its infancy, but many key components are already taking shape and are transforming everything from entertainment to social networking and even real estate. It is estimated that Metaverse will create trillions of dollars in revenue opportunities in advertising, social commerce, digital events, hardware, and creator monetization.

But at the same time, The metaverse industry is still far from reaching the ideal state of full industry coverage, open ecology, self-consistent economy, and interoperability between reality and reality. At present, the metaverse industry is still in the foundation stage of the application of "social + game" scenarios, and there is still a long way to go in terms of technology, law, and ethics.

Therefore, when dealing with the Metaverse, we must maintain a sense of prudence and rationality while maintaining curiosity and exploration. Even though the metaverse may become an extension and expansion of the real world, when looking forward to the potential opportunities and possible changes, we need to rationally view the current upsurge in the metaverse and be wary of any traps in the name of technology and the future.

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