Decentraland

 

 

Today there are many virtual spaces that can be accessed, although all of them are still working in progress. Nevertheless, to access the Metaverse once wore the right VR headset, 4 more steps follow. An example is given with Decentraland. The steps are:

1. Create a 3D Avatar: A digital world needs a digital avatar. Indeed, metaverse allows the creation of customized avatars (e.g., eye and hair color, clothes, accessories, etc.), and anytime the avatar outlook can be updated to suit the user’s expectations.
2. Explore and familiarize yourself with the world around you: after creating a personalized avatar, the next step is to start exploring the Metaverse. Indeed, the avatar will be dropped in Genesis Plaza, the starting point in Decentraland. After that, avatars are free to move around, teleporting from one point to another.
3. Enjoy and play games: besides exploring the environment and interacting with other users, Decentraland offers the possibility to play games, and avatars are rewarded for their performance.
4. Connect with people and make friends: most importantly, the Metaverse aims to create a virtual space to make new friends by playing games and exploring the Metaverse world together.

 

Looking at the Metaverse from a practical perspective, the most relevant word is people. Indeed, “a lot of people are talking about ‘the metaverse’ these days. Coming off eighteen months of Zoom, Netflix, and Doordash, you can count me out – at least in the form that most folks are imagining,” wrote John Hanke, CEO of the tech company Niantic in a recent blog. Furthermore, he discussed the fact that digital technologies and virtual reality shouldn’t replace the physical world. In fact, people wouldn’t agree to extend their lives in the virtual space. Hence, Manke declares that digital technologies should be considered to enhance the human experience, but not replace their capacities. Accordingly, many others raised this topic such as Philip Rosedale, who argued that the metaverse is “not for everybody” while supervising the Second Life. Across technologies, augmented reality (AR) received much attention over VR. Indeed, it is estimated that the future of the Metaverse will be based on AR, which would be a synthesis of the physical and digital worlds. Not surprisingly, Niantic was recently valued at $9 billion, and many other Tech companies such as North (Google), Snap, Nreal, and Tilt Five are also about to launch their AR products.

 

Moreover, with a futuristic and sci-fi scenario, the Metaverse would go beyond AR and VR to embrace BCI technologies. For instance, having already shown their capability of restoring speech and writing skills in disabled individuals, BCIs would be capable of replacing screens and hardware in the Metaverse. Accordingly, it will be discussed in the following paragraph how Neurliank aims to generate BCIs to upload whole brains digitally. Another significant example comes from the tech company Valve which in partnership with OpenBCI aims to investigate the field of BCIs from gaming to healthcare.