You should have a clear image about what is the future of the Metaverse before it’s too late.

At the end of 2021, the technology circle and venture capital circle have not heard more good stories in the past two years. Until 2 months ago, a word called Metaverse suddenly became popular in the major media. If you look back now, as long as the well-known media seem to have reported news about the development of the Metaverse, some platforms even produced it. The topic of the meta-universe has been discussed, but perhaps many people still don’t understand this term until now.

Metaverse consists of two parts: "meta" and "universe". Therefore, it is not difficult to understand that Metaverse can actually be regarded as an extension of our current existence, and is usually used to describe the concept of future iterations of the Internet. Metaverse is the bridge between reality and virtuality. It can expand our vision, sound and touch, integrate digital objects into the physical world, and allow us to enter a fully immersive 3D environment at any time. This series of technologies are collectively referred to as eXtended Reality, Extended Reality (XR). Industry insider Eric Elliott once predicted that Metaverse will one day bring huge economic benefits, and even grow to 10 times the current global economic value.

The broad definition of Metaverse has also given countless companies room for interpretation. For a while, countless Internet companies claim that their companies are to be Metaverse, and some startup-stage companies have obtained huge financing only relying on the concept of Metaverse, even social software. The giant Facebook has changed its name to Meta.

In fact, Metaverse can indeed serve as the "successor" of network functions-greater coverage, longer time spent, more business activities-the economic advantage may also be greater. In any case, the opportunities created by Metaverse should be similar to those created by other networks-new companies, products and services will appear one after another, including payment processing, identity verification, recruitment, advertising delivery, content creation, security and more. This also means that many existing or traditional businesses may be replaced by Metaverse.

Looking back at the technological development of the past 30 years, it is not an exaggeration to describe it as “subversion”, especially after entering the 2020s, we can intuitively see that 5G is accelerating, and IoT devices are rapidly entering people’s production and life. Intelligence started a new journey after AlphaGo. At the same time, the chip field is still developing in accordance with Moore's Law, and even we have seen people's pursuit of higher use of the Internet, including the gradual landing of blockchain and Web3.0. Of course, there are more and more portable VR/AR devices, which is a real technological advancement.

More broadly, the development of the Metaverse will change the way modern resources are allocated and monetized. Over the centuries, with the decline of the labor market and the real estate market, changes have taken place in advanced economies. Under the Metaverse model, potential laborers living outside the city will participate in the "high-value" economy through virtual labor.

Although science fiction, animation and movies all tell virtual stories, they can sometimes predict the future of the human world. The development of the Metaverse has a bright future that can be expected. But we can not only see the convenience brought by technological development, but we must also consider a large number of new problems that may be faced, such as the moral and ethical issues of the virtual world, legal governance issues and even virtual border issues. And these-no matter where you are, I am afraid that technology companies alone cannot solve them.