* By Starcoin community author：WGB
Hot New Thing: Metaverse
Ready Player One was released in 2018, OASIS one game from this film has shown us concepts of metaverse, people can do anything in this game,diversified game contend, complete immersion experience, after this movie release, people are crazy for AR and VR. In April Travis Scott held his online virtual concert in Fortnite, more than 12 million people were attracted and participated in the concert, in the same month, installations of Fortnine for mobile increased 6 million,received US$40 million. In March 2021, GreenPark Sports and NBA reached an agreement and raised US$14 billion in financing, GreenPark Sports will create a virtual space that fans can watch NBA games together. Around September 2021, ByteDance takes first step into Metaverse with CNY 9 billion acquisition of Pico. Before September 2021,Facebook,some companys, such as Nvidia,Epic Games, Tencent, NetEase, etc. all of them join into metaverse through variety methods. VR, AR, blockchain, AI, and other technologies are getting mature, discussions about metaverse concept are getting more and hotter. Some super companies start focusing on metaverse, it looks like metaverse is ready to go! What is metaverse? What does it have?Does it has some relation with blockchain? Now so many people have no clear ideas about these questions. Let’s explore metaverse concept together from now.
Metaverse
Wikipedia:
The word “Metaverse” is made up of the prefix “meta” (meaning beyond) and the stem “verse” (a back-formation from “universe”); the term is typically used to describe the concept of a future iteration of the Internet, made up of persistent, shared, 3D virtual spaces linked into a perceived virtual universe.[1] The metaverse in a broader sense may not only refer to virtual worlds, but Internet as a whole, including the entire spectrum of augmented reality.[2]
History of Metaverse
Wikipedia:
The term was coined in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash, where humans, as avatars, interact with each other and software agents, in a three-dimensional virtual space that uses the metaphor of the real world.[3] Stephenson used the term to describe a virtual reality-based successor to the Internet.[4] Concepts similar to the Metaverse have appeared under a variety of names in the cyberpunk genre of fiction as far back as 1981 in the novella True Names. Stephenson stated in the afterword to Snow Crash that after finishing the novel he learned about Habitat, an early MMORPG which resembled the Metaverse.
Understand Metaverse
what is Metaverse
Metaverse is a super concept, in general,it’s a parallel digital world, it’s composed of software,hardware,internet,mobile web,IoT,AI,VR,AR,MR,smart wearable device,IPSF,blockchain and other series of technologies. With these and future technologies constitute metaverse, metaverse is not a real universe,it exists in the internet, to enhance current ecosystem,and could create a new ecosystem.
Elements of Metaverse
Roblox Corporation is forerunner of metaverse games, they proposed eight elements of metaverse: identity,friends,immersion,low latency,diversification,anywhere,economic system, and civilization.
Identity: Get a virtual identity
Friends: To make social
Immersion: Deal sight and other senses data same as you are in real world
Low latency: Anything in metaverse are synchronous
Diversification: Variety and difference contents
Anywhere: Get in metaverse anytime and anywhere
Economic system: You can buy and sell in economic system of metaverse
Civilization: Create virtual digital civilization by interaction between players
In metaverse, virtual universe has been displayed by VR, AR, MR and other methods, at same time, to interact with smart wearable devices, with this, to improve immersion. Enter metaverse no matter anytime and anywhere through coordinating between telecommunications, such as, 5G, WIFI6 and variety platforms. People can assimilate into metaverse by trading and identity verification which through blockchain private key, with blockchain and decentralized management to create civilization, this can make civilization and last for a long time. As most of elements of metaverse exist in blockchain, one node’s data can transmit to all other nodes, so this can guarantee low latency in metaverse.
Most important element of Metaverse
To the whole metaverse, economic system is the most important, the main reason is in metaverse concept, socialization and transition of resource are needed, same with real world, economic system exist in almost games, such as a web farm game, you need to buy seeds and fertilizers use gold coins, after harvest, you can sell crops to earn gold coins, another example is Honour of Kings, you can buy heroes in store use gold coins, you can get gold coins by battling with others,but in metaverse, trade does not limit between players and system, also among players. This means economic system of metaverse needs a secure and steady trading medium, and an identity, and secure assets management, this is superiority of blockchain.
Starcoin and Metaverse
Move boosts Metaverse
Development of blockchain technology is start from Bitcoin, blockchain is a decentralized trading system, it uses Turing incomplete script language as contract language, aim to solve who owns funds, issues of trading among nodes. Vitalik Buterin was inspired by Bitcoin in the following years, and launched Ethereum project, and also support Turing complete script language so that users can construct arbitrary custom smart contract, with the development of decentralized applications, more and more bugs occurred, such as Poly Network project, hacker broke into and transfer large amount of funds because of contract vulnerabilities, same situation also occurred in other projects. Starcoin has chosen Move as smart contract programming language to reduce errors while developing, feature “move” of Move can make Token,NFT and other resources can transfer between different by “move”, can avoid additional issuance that caused by forgetting release original resources after resources were copied. To additional issuance of Token and NFT, this can be controlled by cast ability in Move, only the one who casts these Token or NFT can issue, others can not issue, Starcoin can securely protect trading assets with features we mentioned above.
NFT boosts Metaverse
NFT is called Non-Fungible Token, has features of uniqueness,traceability,scarcity,liquidity, etc. These characteristics can suit the needs of assets in metaverse well, and it’s common laws in real lift. Starcoin has secure, combinable NFT protocols, developers can create any type NFT application with low cost, you can batch process NFT , lower your operation cost. Starcoin’s NFT protocols are very flexible, can be applied in different NFT scenario. Click this link to get more content about NFT of Starcoin.
By combining Starcoin standard NFT protocol with other protocols, you can securely create variety meaningful NFT, such as NFTs issued by Starcoin can be used as membership card, vouchers, art NFTs are also can be collect securely. Starcoin’s StarMask supports preview of NFT, it’s easily to view your own NFT.
Assets management boosts Metaverse
When all metaverse in Starcoin, even can realise that different metaverse has same decoration,characteristics. This is different from traditional games, in traditional games, you need upgrade, collect equipment, accumulate resources, etc. The economic system established in Starcoin can be applied in other applications by assets mapping, so that the resources of other applications can be applied and displayed in this new application.
Flexible layer structure boosts Metaverse
Starcoin support layer concept, in the first layer, Starcoin mainly build “value precipitation” and “value empowerment”, this can be reflect in PoW consensus,on-chain governance DAO, billable state, Move contract language. To popularization and future-oriented universe, Starcoin’s second layer hope to integrate all concepts such as state pipeline, rollup and side chain, shield technology details from general users, conveniently and easily enjoy the advantages of blockchain, all these features make Starcoin is suit for metaverse and empower metaverse. With the continuous improvement of Metaverse, Starcoin’s on-chain governance can also flexibly make different proposals to upgrade and improve Starcoin, to realize secure new generation layered smart contract and distributed financial networks.
NFT related Protocol
Starcoin’s NFT protocols introduction:
https://starcoin.org/en/developer/protocols/starcoin_nft/
NFT implementation and extension protocol SIP22:
https://github.com/starcoinorg/sips/blob/master/sip-22/index.md
NFT implementation code:
https://github.com/starcoinorg/starcoin-framework/tree/main/sources/NFT.move
