Source: Vernacular Blockchain

Recently, Bitcoin has continued to hit record highs, just shy of $100,000. Encryption Many tracks in the industry are also showing signs of recovery, but the once-unparalleled "Metaverse" is still a little lonely at this time. This is not only the case with the encrypted Metaverse, but also the "Metaverse" in the entire technology circle has remained silent.

The Metaverse, which was hailed as the "next generation Internet" at that time, with technology giants rushing to place big bets, and which is comparable to the current AI concept, is now no one talking about it and has almost "disappeared" , what happened to the metaverse? Can it still "kill" it back?

Not long ago, meta’s financial report showed that its Q3 Metaverse department was still suffering serious losses. According to public reports, social giant Facebook will fully transform All in the Metaverse in 2021 and change its name to Meta. Its department responsible for the Metaverse, Reality Labs, was established in 2018. The large-scale transformation in 2021 will increase investment in the Metaverse, but at the same time It has also opened up room for losses, and it has lost tens of billions of dollars in recent years.

In the company's open letter in March 2023, Zuckerberg stated that Meta will focus on company efficiency, concentrate on streamlining projects and reducing expenses in the RL business, and continue to invest in metaverse-related businesses. Focus on the combination of AI and the Metaverse. Although meta has reduced expenses, it still cannot reverse its losses.

Although it continues to suffer serious losses, Meta does not seem to have given up on the metaverse track. It has always believed that the metaverse "is the core that defines the future of social connections", and it continues to adjust and optimize its business lines and continue to invest. and layout.

On the other hand, there are media reports that Alibaba is also optimizing and adjusting the scale of its Metaverse department "Yuanjing" in response to the cooling trend in the Metaverse field, and laying off dozens of employees. This move It is said to aim to optimize the business structure and improve organizational efficiency. In the future, it will continue to focus on the development of Yuanverse applications and tools and provide relevant services to customers.

In the capital market, the financing amount of Yuanshi Chuangyue Company this year is also very low. According to Crunchbase data, this year, companies related to AR, VR and Yuanverse have raised financing from seed rounds to growth stages. The amount is approximately US$464 million. This is also the lowest level for the industry in many years. It is reported that many Yuanverse startups have not completed a new round of financing again after financing in 2021.

Both Metaverse and Web3 proposed by the encryption community are called the next generation Internet. Although they have certain differences, the scope of the two concepts overlaps quite high. Some people say that Crypto and Metaverse are the same. A match made in heaven, blockchain is also the cornerstone of the Metaverse.

The Crypto Metaverse once had high hopes, and it was also a large-scale application scenario that the encryption industry was looking forward to, but nowJudging from the extremely low display rate and almost 0 interaction volume of the social network account of the leading crypto-metaverse, it is also slightly sluggish. There is no obvious sign of recovery with the rise of Bitcoin. Most people seem to have lost it. attention to the track.

The only exception at present is Roblox, once known as the first stock in the Metaverse. Its financial report shows that its revenue and users have maintained strong growth. Because of the support of strong data, even if the concept of the Metaverse does not No matter how popular it is, the company's stock price has risen from the bottom of 21.6 US dollars in 2022 to the current US$52, reaching a market value of approximately US$36 billion, which can be said to be a good performance.

It is clear that the Metaverse is in the classic "post-bubble trough" of the technology industry. New technological concepts will go through such a period after they are proposed. The Internet, blockchain, and AI have also experienced it. Of course, every industry in the trough period will encounter its own problems. Perhaps when these problems are solved, it will be the Metaverse. When we start to get out of the trough:

1) Infrastructure and technical bottlenecks

According to the ultra-high-definition and high-sleep experience space interconnection in the metaverse vision, this application is It can be almost perfectly implemented in a stand-alone environment. This is similar to many 3A games, but most of these 3A masterpieces are single-player. It is very difficult to connect these large virtual spaces, which often exceed hundreds of gigabytes, to the Internet for large numbers of users to use them at the same time. One is The Internet infrastructure is not enough (bandwidth and network speed are not enough), and the other is that the existing technology is not enough to support such a scenario.

Take meta’s metaverse space as an example. The rough and “abstract” picture Zuckerberg posted during the demonstration was criticized wildly. This is not at all like the metaverse we imagined. . Simply put, there are bottlenecks in the current infrastructure and technology, and it is impossible to achieve both high image quality and smooth experience at the same time.

2) Funds and attention are "diverted" by AI

AI is too popular, and the few funds and attention in the market have been attracted by AI, with high investment The metaverse will naturally be cold. Not only these, AI also occupies the GPU computing chip resources that are also urgently needed in the Metaverse. Just like the crypto asset mining occupied and pushed up the graphics card resources of gamers, these external factors make the innovation and exploration of the Metaverse now difficult. More difficult.

3) Lack of profitability

The Metaverse products currently on the market have no products except for some AR and VR hardware equipment purchased by early users to satisfy the novelty and curiosity. Although Meta firmly believes that the Metaverse is the future, the current Internet is more efficient, more convenient and low-cost to use. Rough applications of the Metaverse like Meta have not been favored by users and are not rigidly needed, which is why The main reason why they have been unprofitable.

In an industry that has been losing money, only some giants can continue to lose money. MostThe entrepreneurial team had no choice but to give up halfway.

The value and future of the Metaverse are certainly undeniable, and giants such as Meta have actually not stopped investing. Zuckerberg believes the future will come. So how will it come back in the future?

1) The updated 3A masterpiece, we are approaching the future of the metaverse

The first domestic 3A masterpiece Black Myth Wukong, which became popular some time ago, moved ancient buildings into the virtual space, making us Experience cultural treasures immersively in the game, an experience that foreign gamers are full of praise for.

It is reported that the works brought by the Black Myth Wukong team use the latest AI technology blessing (AI-driven DLSS3) to bring higher frame rates and better image quality, derived from AI-powered DLSS which is AI Powerful revolutionary breakthroughs in graphics that double performance. DLSS 3 leverages AI to create more frames and improve image quality. In other words, from the side, we can see that the infrastructure and technical bottlenecks of the Metaverse are being broken through bit by bit.

2) Crypto + Metaverse continues its legend

When the Metaverse was at its peak, people would say that Bitcoin and other crypto-assets were taking advantage of the popularity of the Metaverse, just like earlier Many technology companies have taken advantage of the hot concept of blockchain and have withdrawn from the "copycat version of CryptoKitties" game. Now that the price of Bitcoin has broken through, the crypto-metaverse sector may bring more funds and possibilities. As funds and talents continue to flow in, the original concept will gradually recover.

The Metaverse blessed by Crytpo will be more perfect, and the complementarity of the two is shaping a new virtual economic model. The two were once called a match made in heaven. The main points of integration include the following aspects:

A. Virtual asset ownership and digital identity

NFT (non-fungible token) is Just like the "bricks" that build the metaverse, in the future open metaverse space, each user will have ownership of his or her own virtual asset data and a unique identity, protecting personal assets and personal privacy in the virtual world through encryption. Technology manages and verifies user identities to ensure data security, privacy protection and transaction transparency.

In The Sandbox, the leading project of the encrypted metaverse, users can freely trade virtual lands and items. These virtual assets are composed of NFTs and are protected by the blockchain.

B. Decentralized economic system, incentive mechanism and creator economy

Crypto has also brought a complete set of decentralized economic systems to the Metaverse, from Token incentives to The creator economy has been verified by the encryption industry. These are very important for an open and collaborative virtual world. Concepts such as P2E have brought real benefits to the activities of creators, players, and communities in the virtual world. When everyone adds fuel to the fire, a sound economic system can build a sustainable virtual world.

In the future, with the development of the Metaverse and Crypto, NFT virtual assets can also be used to open up different Metaverse spaces and realize the interconnection of virtual worlds.

In general, the Metaverse is like a parallel virtual world, and the native assets in the virtual world are encrypted assets. The combination of the Metaverse and Crypto is still very compatible.

The reason why it is compared with AI is not that the Metaverse is not good enough, but that AI is more urgently needed and its value is more intuitive in an environment of lack of liquidity. In fact, the current round of market trends in the crypto market is almost exclusively dedicated to Bitcoin and Meme-related tracks. When the general environment improves and liquidity is sufficient, the Metaverse and many concepts with practical application value should be able to recover one after another. However, it is not easy to truly get out of such a money-burning track. We still need to look forward to the "ChatGPT moment" of the Metaverse. 's appearance.