Thought of the Week: Common Ground in Metaverse and Web3
Web3 and the Metaverse don’t refer to exactly the same thing. But there are important connections necessary to build out if both are going to live up to their potential…
The argument for using technical jargon has always been that it fundamentally simplifies. As any good writing editor — at least, one with an eye for brevity — will tell you, “Why use ten words when you can use one?” But sometimes jargon can obfuscate, either purposely or simply because those who use it don’t necessarily understand it. Once an idea or a phrase goes viral, its popular meaning no longer belongs to those who birthed it. It belongs to everyone.
A great illustration of this is Web3 and the Metaverse. These two terms are frequently lumped together as amorphous next-gen technologies the world is excited about. But unlike plenty of other concurrent concepts that the world happens to be excited about simultaneously (say, 3D organ printing and the next Grand Theft Auto game), there is something about Web3 and the Metaverse that encourages the belief that they’re not just occurring at the same time, but that they are fundamentally linked. Heck, in many cases you’ll find the two used as synonyms.
This very newsletter groups Web3 and the Metaverse together by including stories about both in our news roundups. While your humble author is very precise in their wording, so as to avoid conflating the two, there is a link between both — at least in the sense that both will likely have to work together to make the next generation of technology as revolutionary as it can be.
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Sure, it would be very possible to build a Metaverse without any Web3 technologies. Nothing about writer Matthew Ball’s definition of the Metaverse as a “massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds that can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users with an individual sense of presence, and with continuity of data” necessarily requires Web3 to work. But the dream of a truly open (and thereby interoperable) Metaverse is the Web3 dream of decentralization based on distributed technologies such as decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) and blockchain instead of centralized on servers that are the property of individuals or massive corporations.
Furthermore, the kind of Web3 technologies companies like AAG are building, helping create the tools necessary to sustain individual identities in the Metaverse (crucially with the data behind them being the property of the user) are going to be critical for helping the Metaverse vision go mainstream. The same is true for the use for the tools that will allow users to both own and also control their digital assets: essential for building a Metaverse that will resemble the ownership rights of the real world, already being perfected by Web3’s support and enablement of cryptocurrencies and myriad other digital assets such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) which can be used and traded.
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking Web3 and the Metaverse are the same. But they’re also not totally separate. Like roads and cars, one needs the other to truly live up to expectations. At least, that’s this author’s two cents!
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Join us: Make sure you follow us on social media to follow the latest work that we’re carrying out. Last but not least, send any Metaverse news or questions to luke@aag.ventures to have it featured in a future newsletter. Keep well, until next week.
