Metaverse, this is the word that resonates more and more in the technology sector that aims to give a 360 degree turn to what we know today as internet.
The most basic vision is that of a virtual environment in which we can perform tasks of our daily lives with certain advantages such as the digital economy, international trade online, the fracture of physical borders that today we can have with our business based on an office, store or infrastructure, thus making all information accessible to the whole world, providing greater visibility and with much lower costs such as those arising from a rent or purchase of such property or monthly bills for gas, water, electricity or even taxes.
At the birth of these new virtual spaces everything seemed to indicate that these were going to be available to anyone and yet these have also been inflated gradually as a real estate bubble, in this case virtual, which has led to the prices of small plots to prices not very accessible, even now with all the bear market we can find some properties that have been sold from $ 9,000 to 24,000 $ .
The metaverse scales beyond mere plots
But what I have mentioned above is just the tip of the spear of what the metaverse is all about, which involves many more technologies such as :
- Artificial Intelligence
- IOT ( Internet Of Things )
- Blockchain
- VR, AR and XR
- 3D Construction and Reconstruction
This of course creates a universe of job opportunities for different types of professionals among which we can find:
- Engineering professions: systems, IT, data, electronics, augmented reality, telecommunications, blockchain and virtual reality.
- Design professions: product designers, 3D and visual graphics, video game designers, UX/UI, animation, prototyping and VR. New players in all fields, from virtual content generators, NFT’s (unique and irreplaceable creations that can be stored digitally), attire, etc.
- Marketing and Social Media Professions
- Sales Professions
- Operations and Administrative Services Professions: business support agents, project managers, business planners, security and data analysts.
- Legal: rewrite all contracts from scratch, to regularize all life in the Metaverse, legislate and monitor behaviors of the avatars and arbitrate behaviors, crimes or transactions and their respective disputes (Here we would perfectly find the BAS).
In addition to all this , the metaverse offers entertainment , or so it should . I say should because it is one of the most pressing problems of the projects created today and those in development. They are all based on a “viewing”, an “immersive” experience an “immersive” experience with hardly any walkthrough installed on the exhibition of virtual buildings, art or various furniture.
For this and much more, the user figures are not encouraging with an average in Decentraland (the most visited and active project along with The Sandbox) of 28 users per day, although this figure is not accurate because not all users interact with the SM (Smart Contracts). That figure if we reflect it in video games , would mean a dead project . No self-respecting environment deserves such low figures . There must be an average daily interaction of at least a few thousand to say that we are in an initial adoption in its earliest stage , but as I said , development and lack of innovation in this regard does not accompany .
Added to this, the current legislation seems to be being towed , where stones are put in the way before the slowness of the processes that protect the community in cases of scams , theft or hacks to the platforms , so many of these users or even companies interested in diving into these worlds , prefer to be cautious in their decision making and not enter into perhaps too slippery grounds that may damage their image.
On the other hand, there are much braver brands that have entered fully, such as Adidas, Nike, Reebok, Hyundai, JPMorgan, Mediamarkt, Telefónica and many others that are joining in drips and drabs trying to position themselves in this disruptive environment.
The future of the metaverse
The famous Web 3, based on the new generation of internet where there is much more interaction and users are participants of the World Wide Web thanks to decentralization, token economy and many other factors thanks to Blockchain technology is the one that comes to change things.
But the metaverse, as an immersive virtual environment must evolve and must do much, much more than a simple room without interoperability, massive simultaneity of users, without integrated blockchain …. This already existed for a couple of decades , virtual reality developers know it and know that there are no significant advances without some parameters that we can count on today.
This environment must be a “living organism” that does not depend on a single core, otherwise we would speak of a centralized project and this would perhaps break with many of the basic principles not only of blockchain technology but also with the fundamental principles of privacy, anonymity and open source on which developers could work extensively, although it seems that this finally will not be as nice as we thought and of course, the legislation will always be present along with the monitoring and control by specialized departments in the detection of illegal conduct. In fact there is talk of virtual police as there is already playing against cybercrime.
For investors, I must say that the market is confusing and it is very important to have specialized consultants in this type of environment to know very well where to land with your business, otherwise, there are so many existing projects that most likely you will suffer the consequences of the disappearance of many of them. Remember that today there is no massive interoperability that allows us to transport or move our business between metaverses, so if we fall into the wrong environment, our assets and investment will close with the closure of the particular project.
My recommendation is to be advised and helped by professionals, not experts, with experience in this wide range of opportunities. Your business may not be able to establish itself in the long term, but it may be advisable to have a short exposure in a given environment to make noise and create evolutionary expectations. This is what the big brands are doing, knowing the risks that these platforms can carry with them. Of course, their investment is often minimal because they play in another league and provide them with more benefits in terms of communication and press than what they could have spent directly on marketing.
The metaverse is a huge ecosystem, in which new planets, satellites and stars are being added day after day and it is important to be updated. What was useful as a starting point a month ago, may be obsolete today. If you are not willing to take a huge risk, do not agree . But as they say, if you don’t risk, you don’t win.
I do not want to end the article knowing that the metaverse sounds like Chinese to you and that is why I want to put the red pill and the blue pill , knowing that the first is the one that will make you see the new reality :
- If with the blue tablet we see online stores like Amazon where you can buy a product like a sofa and decide in 2D if you like it and buy it , with the red tablet you can have that sofa as a digital twin at 1:1 scale in your home and try it through your mobile to see if it indeed fits in your living room and the measurements are correct . Not having this type of advance, can mean the arrival of the sofa, transport, upload it to your home and then it was not what you expected, did not fit or just “had to see it on” to decide. Come on, a great waste of time that we could have saved. Of course, I want to emphasize, this is not the metaverse, but it is a piece of this great puzzle.
- If with the blue pill we have an art gallery in a local we have rented in our city and we are overwhelmed with the rental costs and other bills in addition to the little visibility that gives us the local as it is limited to the local public and tourists , with the red pill we can have a virtual gallery where anyone from anywhere in the world can view our digital art , but not only that , as they could acquire the art virtually and also want the physical work . And they could do it in their local currency, or in digital currencies, there are endless ways of payment thanks to blockchain.
In conclusion, the metaverse is a puzzle of many pieces that together, form a conglomerate of advantages and opportunities for many sectors that today are obsolete, they need a natural technological evolution and this may be their path to success, or not.
