Why Blockchain is the Core of the Metaverse?

First used in Neal Stephenson’s novel “Snow Crash” in 1992, the term “metaverse” used to be an utopian idea of an imaginary cyber realm where people can live in a virtual reality. And as Stephenson’s imagination aimed to project such a far-fetched idea of future innovations, he wasn’t so far-off our current reality. His “imaginary realms made available to the public across the worldwide fiber-optic network” is pretty much what we get to experience via virtual reality and augmented reality today.

So far, people mostly have fictional and story-like conceptions of what the metaverse is. But in fact, the metaverse is an augmented projection of the real world into a virtual one that functions according to very specific attributes.

1. It is synchronous and live:

The metaverse simulates and mimics real life and therefore, real time. It is a living experience with self-contained events where anyone can exist and have an impact just like they do in real life.

2. It is persistent

The metaverse isn’t a game. You cannot reset it, pause it, or even end it. It keeps on going endlessly just like time as we know it in real life.

3. It is available individually and concurrently

Joining the metaverse means that you can take part in very specific events, activities, and even be in places with other people simultaneously. It is available for you to be in it individually and collectively if you want to join others.

4. It has a fully functioning economy

Creating, owning, investing and selling must be real and possible to process in the metaverse. This virtual world englobes a fully functioning economy.

5. It is an experience

The metaverse contains a physical as well as a digital world. It also englobes private and public networks.

6. It has a wide range of contributors

Several contributors like companies, freelancers, and other informally organized businesses create its contents.

7. It offers unprecedented interoperability

As it is a revolutionary upgraded version of the internet and how we get to experience it, the metaverse offers a noticeable data, content, digital assets, and other interoperability for all the experiences that it offers. So you could move a car displayed and developed by Rocket League and use it in Roblox. Everything would have its own rules, unique ID cards, specific measurement units, dress codes, and many other real life norms reflected into the virtual world.

Blockchain in the Metaverse

The metaverse is not as simple as the concept of interconnected virtual spaces in a virtual reality. In fact, it has a cryptic identity which links it back to its core: the blockchain. ( Discover all about The Blockchain and Its Impressive Use Cases that you didn't know about.)

Web 1.0 was solely an information provider only managed and controlled by centralized companies like Microsoft, Google and Yahoo. Web 2.0, the internet as we widely know it today, is a much more interactive space. It allows users to socialize and to react on its platforms enabling them to also monetize their use of the internet and to advertise whatever real life projects they might be working on. Web 3.0 is the basis and the foundation of the metaverse. And how will it function? Unlike Web 1.0 and 2.0, it will be blockchain enabled and therefore pretty decentralized. These decentralized applications will support an economy built upon user-owned crypto data and assets. Consequently, the only means for it to function well is blockchain.

The metaverse needs encryption

Providing people with an augmented reality is no piece of cake. Surpassing the physical reality via realistic and impactful experiences, systems, and regulations is literally us reinventing the world. So, what kind of world would it be, if we didn’t make sure it functioned correctly? This is where the blockchain comes into play.

The blockchain is firstly immutable and pretty impossible to hack. For a virtual reality to gain broad adoption, it first must be a safe ground where no hackers can tamper the system. It is always possible for hacks and breaches to happen. However, the more people adopt a virtual environment, the more it will be supported by a secure operating platform.

Besides safety, blockchain and crypto assets are logically an integral characteristic of how people will operate in the metaverse. Functioning in the metaverse will require transactions to be done on demand via blockchain.

In other terms, since the metaverse mimics the functionalities of the real world it must stand upon a strong financial system. And what is a practical world without a solid economic cycle and a practical financial system? Users must be able to process their financial transactions securely and rapidly as if they were initiating them in person. They must also trust that the system will impeccable carry out those transactions.

This type of interactions happening in the metaverse are programmable through smart contracts. Their conditions and outcomes are coded into smart contracts which are blockchain-based software procedures that run automatically according to some pre-determined circumstances. So in the metaverse, you have to use blockchain smart contracts to buy and sell a certain digital object.

The importance of blockchain-based interoperability in the metaverse

As mentioned before, the blockchain enables you to own digital assets in the virtual world. So, if you purchase an NFT, you will also own it in the metaverse. However, it is key to remember that different companies and groups will be creating different virtual worlds. And for you to co-exist and to use whatever you purchase from one virtual world into the other, they must be interoperable and interconnected. Therefore, all of these virtual worlds together, would make the metaverse.

And now, as you move between those worlds in the metaverse, you’ll have to move some of your things with you. If two worlds and interoperable, the blockchain is going to authenticate “proof of ownership” of whatever digital assets you have in both worlds. And most importantly, remember that as long as you can access your crypto wallet in a virtual world, you can have access to all of your crypto assets. You see? It all comes back to the core of it all: blockchain technology.