Metaverse has suddenly emerged in the IT world, acting as an innovative technological trend. So what is exactly Metaverse and how does it work?

Facebook has rebranded itself with the new name “Meta” and declared the metaverse to be the internet's future. Epic Games, the designer of the online multiplayer game Fortnite, acquired $1 billion in investment earlier this year, demonstrating that investors are prepared to commit large sums of money into immersive online experiences. The big bosses in the technology industry are in a strict race to compete for the first in the technology trend.

The term "metaverse" has increasingly become the most popular in the IT world, and every investor desires a piece of it. But, exactly, what is metaverse? Is it only about wearing virtual reality glasses and playing video games? Is it already fully overhyped? And where do the main money-making possibilities lie inside it? Here we discuss the details about this new term and its potential development in the future.

What is the metaverse, and how does it work?

In 1992, a science fiction writer - Neal Stephenson introduced the word "metaverse," which he defined as a computer-generated cosmos in his “Snow Crash” novel. It's commonly thought of as a highly immersive, shared virtual environment where people meet to play games, socialize, and work. It's also linked to the creation of Web 3.0, which some say will be the internet's next chapter. 

The idea isn't entirely original. There were several forerunners of the metaverse in the early 2000s, including Linden Lab's Second Life (opened in 2003) and Sulake's Habbo Hotel. Since then, they've fallen off a lot of people's attention, but both are still running strong - Second Life has 200,000 daily active users.

With the debut of Facebook Horizon in 2019, Facebook launched its first excursions towards constructing a virtual reality world. Facebook Horizon is an invitation-only immersive environment that users may visit by donning an Oculus headset. Horizon Workrooms, a tool that allows coworkers using VR headsets to attend meetings in a virtual space where they all appear as cartoonish 3D representations of themselves, was released in August.

However, the metaverse is expected to become a far more developed space in the future. The metaverse will be "a fully functional economy... where people and corporations will be able to develop, own, invest, and sell" things, according to venture capitalist Matthew Ball in a blog post. There are already gaming tokens on the market based on blockchains that, ideally, would democratize access and power. 

Are NFTs integrated with the metaverse?

NFTs are a means of documenting who owns a specific virtual product, and manufacturing and transferring virtual goods that is a large element of the metaverse. As a result, NFTs are a potentially valuable financial architecture for the metaverse.  Alternatively, if you buy a virtual shirt in Metaverse Platform A, NFTs smoothly establish a permanent receipt that allows you to redeem the same garment on Metaverse Platforms B.

Many NFT designers are selling collector avatars such as CryptoPunks, Cool Cats, and Bored Apes for exorbitant prices. Currently, the majority of them are 2D art that is utilized as a social media tool. However, there is already considerable overlap with "metaverse"-style services. Polygonal Mind, for example, is developing CryptoAvatars, a system that allows consumers to buy 3D avatars as NFTs and then utilize them across numerous virtual worlds.

How is the Metaverse reshaping our world? 

The experience of being physically engaged with locations and people rather than seeing them through a window is believed to be one of the metaverse's primary features. Using a site like Spatial or Facebook Horizon to gather your coworkers around a virtual table, for example, may feel more natural to certain individuals than gazing at a grid of Zoom thumbnails.

There are some notable advantages to a non-real-time internet. High-end computers, game consoles, and virtual reality headsets with rich virtual landscapes are evaluated to be rather costly. Moving an avatar to a real-time 3D is problematic for people with mobility limitations or sluggish internet connections. These challenges are mitigated with the aid of accessibility professionals, but there is still a long way to overcome before they are resolved.

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