Where is Blockchain in the Metauniverse?
There is an area that is being talked about more and more every day among blockchain technologies: Metaverse. There isn't much work done on the technology behind the metaverse, where the conversations about its effects usually take place. In this article, we will take a closer look at the technology on which metaverse technologies are based, as well as their social and cultural effects.
First of all, you have to start here. What distinguishes Metaverse from other blockchain technologies is its strong potential for digital adaptation. This is expected to happen especially in areas such as business culture, entertainment and education. While providing this, it is expected that technologies such as virtual reality and augmented reality will activate a wide application area that has not yet found application. Let's start.
What is Metaverse?
The word meta is of Greek origin and means “more”, while “verse” is an abbreviation of the word universe, meaning that which carries time and space. The metaverse, which is the abbreviation of these two words, aims to turn traditional social networks into a digital life and adaptation space. To achieve this, it aims to use technologies such as virtual reality, digital twin and blockchain. It promises to have a life in this virtual universe, just as users can work and have fun in the real world.
So what are the technologies behind the metaverse?
Let's start with blockchain technology first. Blockchain does indeed play an irreplaceable role in the metaverse. It is only possible for users to have their own digital assets by providing these assets on a decentralized server. Otherwise, the metaverse technology will not be resistant to censorship and will open the door to the realization of user rights crises similar to Web2. So what is Blockchain? Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology, whose backbone is formed by the consensus algorithm, and which does not fall off the agenda, especially with the Bitcoin whitepaper.
For the Curious: Why Do We Need Evidence of Space in the Metaverse?
Apart from these algorithms, one of the subsets of consensus algorithms in order to understand the importance of blockchain technologies in the metaverse issue is the algorithms, which we can consider as proof of space and which can be considered as proof of space. In PoSpace, there are so-called proving and verifying positions. The verification process in the network needs to be efficient, that is, consume a small amount of space and time. From a security standpoint, it should be hard for the prover to pass verification if he's not actually allocating the requested amount of space. The IPFS protocol, which we can translate into our language as the Interplanetary File System, which emerged in the past years, also uses a space proof consensus algorithm. This is how the files on the metaverse are kept decentralized not on a central server, but through a consensus algorithm.
Another important technology is the digital twin technology. A digital twin is a virtual representation that serves as a real-time digital equivalent of a physical product, object, or transaction. Here, too, the characters or avatars of the users will work integrated with digital twin technologies.
Apart from this, one of the most important technologies on the metaverse is reality technologies, including AR and VR technologies. While AR technology can display digital information in the physical world, VR technology allows to live directly experience the digital world.
What Are Metaverse Applications?
We took a brief look at the technologies behind Metaverse. Now let's give 2 examples of Metaverse application areas.
Online Video Conferences
Especially with the pandemic, online conferences are now a part of our lives. One of the application areas that Metaverse technologies will address is video conferences. Because although online conferences allow people to access information easily, they cannot provide many advantages of face-to-face communication and using body language. It is thought that the metaverse has a potential because eye contact and body language can be used in metaverse concepts.
Digital Real Estate Industry
real estate in the physical world; It refers to the use of a land or building for living, investing, renting, selling or buying. In fact, virtual entities can be used for all of these situations on the metaverse. Similarly, various features such as the location of this asset can affect its price. What makes real estate valuable here is that supply is limited in universes on the blockchain. In other words, since the number of assets that can be purchased in the meta-universe is limited, a certain price will occur.
Similarly, many fields from entertainment to education, from art to business can be used in metaverse technologies. The part up to this point included the sectoral features of metaverse technologies. Now let's move on to the more technical part. Let's take a closer look at where blockchain technologies stand in the metaverse.
The Role of Blockchain Technologies in Metaverse
User Privacy and Security
We often state at conferences that Web3 technologies are based on two main concepts. The first is trust and the second is users' ownership of their digital assets. The most important reason why we could not provide these in Web2 technologies was that the data was stored on a central server and entrusted to a technological authority. The first intersection of metaverse and blockchain comes to life here. Since it is not possible for the data stored on the blockchain to be misused by a central authority, users are provided with privacy and security.
Increasing Data Quality and Accuracy
Another role of the blockchain on the metaverse is to increase the quality of the data to be used here. Applications in many fields from education to health will be developed on Metaverse. It is thought that high quality data may emerge as the decision trees in the artificial intelligence models to be used in the background of these applications can strengthen the algorithm with blockchain technology instead of a central authority.
Data Security and Continuity
It is thought that an area where blockchain technologies will be effective will be the uninterrupted realization of the metaverse service and the provision of general security. If we take Bitcoin as an example, it has been on its way in an uninterrupted and unhackable way since it came to life. However, considering that some projects with the Proof of Stake consensus have problems such as network downtime or exposure to attacks, even momentarily, time will tell whether the claim for the metaverse is true.
Interoperability
Although interoperability may sound a bit confusing at first, it is an essential part of blockchain technologies. If we think of the internet as a garden, different flowers can bloom in different places. Just like these flowers, the interaction of blockchains that emerged in different times and places with each other is an important problem. A similar problem is also on the agenda in metaverse concepts. It is possible with various protocols for users in different virtual universes to carry and use their assets in these universes.
Ensuring Data Integrity
Users' digital assets on the Metaverse must be held consistently and accurately. Otherwise, the efforts of the users in the system may be wasted, and even problems may arise that affect their personal reputation. Since all transactions made in blockchain technology are recorded in an unchangeable way, the integrity of the data is clearly ensured. Blockchain can provide precise information if users are in doubt as to whether a transaction is correct or not.
Financial System
We have said that many areas such as the digital real estate sector, entertainment and education are reinterpreted here in the application areas of Metaverse. Every application that will take place in this virtual universe will require an intensive transfer of financial flows. So to speak, hundreds of millions of internet users who are socially integrated on Web2 will be financially integrated on Web3. Can existing banking and payment systems meet this? Unfortunately the answer is no.
Imagine that you are making virtual music on Metaverse and 250 different people from 100 countries donate $0.1 each. Can you imagine doing this digital activity for which you collected $25 in total with the banking system? For this reason, blockchain technologies will build the financial system to be used for the metaverse.
Smart Contracts
Smart contracts are programmable, transparent and verifiable contracts that do not require a trusted authority operating around a program. Smart contracts are what will provide the "intelligence" of applications that will take place on the Metaverse. Let's give an example scenario again. Let's say you have a billboard on the metaverse, you want users who interact with that billboard to gain a presence. At the same time, the advertiser gives you a presence for every user that interacts with it. Let's complicate things even more. If a person makes their friend interact with this billboard, they earn an extra NFT. You can imagine how difficult it would be to implement such a scenario without smart contracts.
NFTs
One of the star technologies of the past year was NFTs. Not many people understand why NFTs are so important. In fact, we can think that NFTs can form the smallest building blocks of digital identities that people will have in virtual universes. Let's take a closer look at this issue. What was the feature of NFT? Rare, unique. This made it a little different from cryptocurrencies. When something is rare, the user who wants to have it can have it not only for a financial purpose, but also for an emotional purpose. This purpose can be many details such as happiness, ego. Here, one of the areas where users can best reflect these feelings will be the metaverse. In this sense, NFTs are a blockchain technology that can be seen as the building block of the metaverse.
Is that all? Of course not. Different developing areas such as DAOs, play-win concepts can also be included in the metaverse universe. The fact that blockchain technology finds a new application area day by day makes the components of the technological infrastructure of the metaverse dynamic. It is a dazzling yet interesting field to watch.
