What is the relationship between Blockchain and Metaverse

“This is the world of ‘Oasis’, where the only limit is your own imagination.”

In 2018, “Ready Player One” directed by Steven Spielberg became popular immediately after its release, and the popularity continued. This also made Steven Spielberg the first person in history to have a global cumulative box office breakthrough of 10 billion. After the male protagonist wears a VR device, he enters this virtual world that is in sharp contrast with reality—an oasis. In the oasis, he can not only do real things, but also realize more impossible things. In 2018, we were still marveling at this beyond ordinary people’s imagination. In 2021, the popularity of the “Metaverse” indicates that we are slowly approaching this impossible.

What is the Metaverse?

Metaverse is concept actually appeared as early as 1992 in the novel “Avalanche” by American science fiction writer Neo Stevenson. The novel depicts a parallel digital world that is separated from the real world but is always online——Metaverse, where real people live freely as avatars one by one. It is similar to the “Oasis” built by “Ready Player One”.

At present, there is actually no clear definition of the metaverse. In the available information, I found a definition: a collection of virtual spaces, consisting of a series of augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and Internet composed of. More generally speaking: it is a parallel universe formed through certain technical support, and each virtual character (Avatar) can also be regarded as the connection point between reality and virtuality.

Peek into the development of the Metaverse from the game

The game and the metaverse have actually been entangled since the moment they were born.

Just like “Super Mario Bros” and “Pokémon”, these early stand-alone games can be called Metaverse 1.0

The emergence of MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online games) such as csgo and lol can be regarded as Metaverse 2.0. At this time, the games have social attributes, from pure self-entertainment to multiplayer in the same world. interactions in.

Metaverse 3.0 appeared with the birth of VR games and other somatosensory games. Players can experience the virtual world through multiple senses, which greatly improves the sense of reality of the virtual world and shortens the distance from reality.

But even in the 3.0 era, the concept of metaverse has not been fully recognized by people, why? Let’s go back to the original concept of metaverse: a collection of virtual spaces, “virtual space” and “collection”. Obviously, 3.0 only stays at the former, and the various spaces have not been opened up to form new connections.

The emergence of the blockchain has brought the metaverse to 4.0. To some extent, it provides inspiration and theoretical support for the connection between various virtual spaces.

How does the blockchain make the Metaverse a parallel universe?

In the virtual space, you who are constantly upgrading to fight monsters and stand at the top of the pyramid may just hang out in Internet cafes and eat instant noodles in reality. And, if the operator goes bankrupt, the “world” you created will be bye bye~

However, with the intervention of blockchain technology, you can say byebye to the above questions. The decentralization of blockchain allows you to invest with confidence, because it is not subject to unilateral constraints; and the economic system that is gradually improving can also smoothly Get in touch with reality.

The cross-chain solution in the blockchain provides inspiration and theoretical support for the collection between virtual spaces to some extent.

Just like Bitcoin and Ethereum, these public chains were initially independent entities, but with the application of cross-chain solutions, most public chains began to map and transfer their original assets.

In fact, we can understand it this way. We can regard the public chain as a circle. At first, it was like a small circle of friends forming a group to play, but lack of intersection with other circles. After the “cross-chain” appeared, the small circle became It became a big circle, and people in the circle started to move around.

With the emergence of NFT (non-homogeneous tokens), it can identify the ownership of land, houses, pets, personal data, etc. in the Metaverse. It also becomes a digital asset issued on the blockchain. This asset can be game props, digital artwork, tickets, etc., and is unique and non-replicable.

In this way, you shuttle through various circles with assets, establish social relationships, accumulate assets, and gradually complete what you can accomplish in reality, then this forms a parallel universe.

Perhaps such a metaphor is biased, but it can also explain why the blockchain has provided inspiration and theoretical support for the development of the Metaverse to a large extent, making the Metaverse a parallel universe.

Will the Metaverse come to fruition?

So many people will ask, will the metaverse really come true? How long will it take to realize the metaverse?

In 2020, “Fortnite” (a third-person shooter game) joined hands with the famous American rapper Travis Scott to stage an “immersive” large-scale concert called “Astronomical” on major servers around the world, attracting a total of More than 27.7 million players went to watch it.

In the Ethereum-based open world game Decentraland, a virtual real estate plot was sold for more than $913,000; in early 2021, Hashmask sold 16,384 works of art with a total value of $16 million.

It can be seen that the metaverse and the real world are intersecting. The blockchain brings us closer to the metaverse, but this is far from the end, it is just an accelerator for us to the established future. Although the metaverse in an ideal state is still far away, and there will actually be many problems encountered in the real progress process, its existence will definitely be a trend in the future, a key carrier of future lifestyles, and a concept that everyone needs to understand parallel universe.