Metavers: What exactly is it?

Let’s try to keep it simple and basic.

You may still be wondering why this term has flooded the internet in recent months. The word, first written in France “Metaverse”, has recently dropped its last letter to become “Metaverse”. You’ll tell the stories, but this spelling adjustment is the real illustration of the ever-changing behind the word’s definition but also its composition. So much so that players in the sector can’t even agree on the exact meaning of what is adequately (also) simply summed up for a virtual world. But what we do know is that the term first appeared in 1992 in the novel “Snow Crash” by Neil Stephenson. In his literary work, the author envisioned realistic avatars meeting in realistic 3D buildings and other virtual reality environments. The term that Mark Zuckerberg democratized during the main broadcast at the end of last October is still striving to embody it perfectly. According to Zuckerberg, it could take up to 10 years. In the meantime, here are some ideas to try to understand if you’re actually living in the Metavers without even realizing it.

Let’s start by backtracking on some facts. The Metavers is not a video game like Fortnite or augmented reality experience. The Metavers aren’t 3D cinema glasses either, or even some kind of Matrix-style theme park. Perhaps these kinds of experiences are an aspect of the Metavers, like Matthew Ball, a New York Times columnist and Including blog Describes in detail the development of what Time has agreed to define as A place parallel to the physical world. On the other hand, you will find all these so called metaversal experiences in Metavers. From Ariana Grande or Travis Scott’s Fortnite party, to virtual Hermès merchandise purchases, including sneaker sets designed by Nike to wear your Roblox avatar. But Metavers isn’t limited to a real-world version. It is actually more complex and widespread and has not yet consisted of a single platform. Many players in this field like Roblox or Animal Crossing may not offer spaces that allow you to evolve in a virtual world, but they are not Metavers themselves. Just representatives of what would become of the Metavers. So yeah, The Sims created in 1987 were really representative of what we’re talking about today.

dictated by blockchain

On the other hand, what we do know is that as everywhere, “It’s the currency that rules the world, it’s the currency that rules the Earth”. Not so surprising eh? In fact, Metavers relies on the so-called Blockchain, which is a kind of public ledger, anonymous and anti-counterfeiting where we find all transactions made with cryptocurrency, and the means of payment used in Metavers. Since there are many currencies in the real world, there are also many cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin remains the most popular but is in direct competition with dozens of other currencies such as Ethereum or Ripple. It is she who allows you to purchase NFTs (we explain what they are here), which we will popularize in this article as virtual objects. At the moment, you usually need money to buy these cryptocurrencies, and eventually its defenders imagine a world where the dollar, the euro and the British pound no longer exist. Only these virtual currencies will be exchanged. Crypto enthusiasts are also the ones thinking about building Metavers, while video game fans are already thinking about living in them.

Finally

The bottom line is that there is no universally accepted definition of true metaverse. Its representatives extend rather to describe it as the successor to the Internet, a kind of more developed successor. They are built with new heroes every day who come to change it, to shape it, each with its own goal: to earn money, to defend it, or to have fun coding it. He must also face threats that already exist in the real world, such as counterfeiting luxury brands, or even sexual assaults on women already mentioned in the Metavers.

^{December 23, 2021}