Metaverse is part of a modern digital revolution, but we can freely call it a new industrial revolution. Besides changing our daily lives, it will undoubtedly revolutionize the economy and how we live our lives.
There are a lot of speculations about Metaverse’s use cases and stories about its bright future, even though it is the “new buzz idea” of the blockchain and cryptocurrency market.
What is Metaverse? What characterize it? What can you do with it? How can you earn from it? and Why is it so important? are questions that bother many people. In this article, you will get the answers to all these questions.
What Is Metaverse?
The Metaverse is short for “beyond the universe” and it is sometimes referred to as the internet’s next development phase and the shift to Web 3.0. To clarify, Web 1.0 is web pages, Web 2.0 is the era of social networks, and Web 3.0 is Metaverse and beyond. To read more about how Web3 and the Metaverse fit together, read our blog.
Metaverse is primarily built with the idea to completely immerse the user within the online experience, mainly via virtual and augmented reality. Due to its ongoing evolution, the term “metaverse” is challenging to define in a single sentence. There are many metaverses, and you can engage in any of them, depending on individual preferences.
But we can agree that the Metaverse is a broad term for a virtual experience or virtual environment you typically enter as an avatar.
Metaverse Characteristics
The Metaverse has no boundaries. There is no restriction on how many virtual worlds can be created. It is a highly flexible platform for people that wish to design their environment.
Transparent and secure: The blockchain technology that powers the Metaverse is both. In this distributed database, transactions are validated and documented, making it difficult for anybody to tamper with them.
The Metaverse is customizable. Users can design their virtual universe that will function according to their own rules. Users control the environment and what features their virtual world would have.
Interactive: Users can interact with each other in real-time, do commerce, and make partnerships.
Immersive: You can access the Metaverse from anywhere, regardless of the technology you use (VR headsets, glasses, or simply your smartphone). Compared to social networks, the experience will be more immersive. The goal of the virtual environment is to mirror the actual world and allow users to carry out daily activities.
What Can You Do in the Metaverse?
We have already provided some hints as to what Metaverse will let us do or the kinds of experiences it is developing. The actual use of Metaverse goes beyond entertainment; it will also allow us to tailor spaces for work or study.
Playing Games and Having Fun
Games and entertainment will probably attract the most attention. Everything will be considerably more realistic and engaging. As a comparative example, we can mention the movie “Ready Player One”, in which the protagonist escapes a world that is on the edge of collapse to reach Oasis. You can enjoy adventure, racing, and trading stocks in this Metaverse.
Physical Exercise
The pandemic has transformed how people go to the gym, and one of the most significant improvements this technology will bring is the ability to play sports without ever leaving the house. Many individuals have workout equipment in their homes. Still, it is usually dull and limited to YouTube videos or simulators that let us see a path on the screen while using an exercise bike. But it may be much better if we could box in a virtual arena while posing as fighters and engaging in actual combat with our opponents.
Of course, there are drawbacks to staying at home and missing out on actual nature, but this may be an alternative in cases of inclement weather or cold temperatures.
Future of Employment
Even today, remote working has become one of the preferred employment types. In Metaverse, we could create a virtual office where an avatar would represent you. Today something similar, but on a much smaller scale, can be achieved with online working environments. But imagine being able to interact and communicate with a coworker like you would in an office.
Online Dating
Another activity we often engage in online is dating. Several applications like Tinder let us do this, but using a metaverse might make the experience far more engaging than just swiping left or right. The potential idea is to create virtual selves who could wander around various environments and interact with real people before meeting them in the real world.
Learning
Imagine combining the real world with the Metaverse to learn to play the piano. If a popular mobile app, Piano Tiles, would evolve, it could offer piano lessons where your piano at home is overlaid with virtual piano. The same goes with academic learning: one can completely enter the human body to study anatomy and biology.
Online Shopping
Internet shopping is convenient and straightforward because we can buy almost anything without leaving our homes. However, it could be considerably more lifelike, allowing you to browse a store for the things you need and talk with virtual sellers about fashion, colors, and availability. We could even try on clothes to see if it looks good. This is not just for clothes but for any other item we can see in 3D.
How to Earn From Metaverse?
Metaverse provides many income opportunities with a new kind of user experience, adding a fresh perspective to our consumption patterns.
Trading
Undoubtedly, one of the most promising applications of the Metaverse for individuals looking to sell goods there is e-commerce. Large corporations are already using it. Recently, we learned that Nike had purchased RTFKT, a startup that outfits avatars in the Metaverse.
Advertise
Many believe that the Metaverse can invent the marketing of the future by creating new advertisements and brand promotion techniques. This new virtual and connected universe seems to bring together a new, tighter community that could be even more loyal than the physical world.
Create a Business
Beyond virtual fashion, online shopping, and marketing, you can start any company in the Metaverse, such as hiring a metaverse-focused architect or designer, creating games, running an online casino, or planning events like concerts or parties.
Invest in Real Estate
The Metaverse’s digital land market is expanding, and virtual real estate is in high demand, particularly for setting up online marketplaces and planning events and gatherings.
Why Is Metaverse So Important?
As part of a new platform or content medium, the Metaverse can be worth billions of dollars. It is often regarded as a crucial element of physical activity and the next major job platform.
Additionally, the Metaverse has the potential to replace the Web as the platform we know today. It tends to offer more opportunities than the Web does. There will be an explosion of new businesses, goods, and services to handle business-related activities. These aspects include managing payments, confirming identities, employing, distributing advertisements, and producing content.
More generally, the Metaverse has the potential to alter how current resources are offered and paid for. Labor and property shortages have been transforming Western economies for millennia. In the Metaverse, future workers who choose to live outside of cities will be able to participate in the “high value” economy through virtual work.
What Metaverse Is Not
The term “metaverse” has sometimes been misused. While it is not its true meaning, some people see it as a virtual world. Games and virtual worlds featuring AI-driven characters and those with “actual” persons in real-time have been around for decades. This isn’t a “meta” universe. It is only a manufactured and imaginary universe created with a specific goal in mind (a game). Both virtual spaces and virtual realities are not a metaverse.
The Metaverse is not a game, either. It’s true that its objectives resemble those of a game and that it includes games and uses gamification. But it’s not a game. Likewise, it is not focused on any particular objectives. Last but not least, the Metaverse is not a place where innumerable Internet users may “produce,” “share,” and “monetize” material as they do on YouTube or Facebook.
Conclusion
To summarize, the Metaverse, a fully immersive virtual reality, enables users to enter and communicate with others in various virtual environments. The Metaverse is accessible via several platforms and can be joined by several devices. Other gadgets and devices are developing to broaden the metaverse application to the real world.
Metaverse offers many applications, literally influencing every aspect of human life. It will define the future of learning, having fun, exercising, loving, shopping, doing business, and many other activities. It would be best if you considered entering the metaverse world at its beginning to be up to date with this new concept.
