The internet has added a new layer of reality to our lives-a cybernetic one. Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter would likely be the first that come to mind. This layer allows for social relations in a way that were unimaginable a mere twenty years ago.

Come 2021. The concept of the ‘metaverse’ is one that has been gaining traction recently. Most notably, Mark Zuckerberg himself took the bold step of saying that “the metaverse is the next generation of the internet and the next chapter of us as a company”. It may be defined as “a collection of shared online worlds in which physical, augmented, and virtual reality converge.” In other words, quite literally another layer of reality, experientially speaking. Now, if we want to have such a world built upon 1s and 0s, we must have the basic tenets of the physical world baked into it. First and foremost, this would involve means of social cooperation-This is what the past decade or so of the internet was. Facebook, Twitter, and Discord provide, at least conceptually speaking, the social substructure required for the metaverse. Within a few decades, when we look back at this era, the advent of Facebook in 2004 will likely be thought of as the conceptual progenitor of the metaverse.

Indeed, Facebook has been a metaverse company all along. Zuckerberg’s seemingly esoteric ambitions are merely the natural evolution of his empire.

If we think about the genesis of civilization itself, we first developed means of social cooperation, and then economic cooperation. This is essentially a truism, for there can be no means of exchanging goods if there is no means of exchanging ideas. Therefore, it is only logical that the same would hold true for our possible virtual world or ‘metaverse’. We have established the proof of concept of mere social communication in the form of social media websites.We are now in the midst of unraveling the same for the economic aspect. The seemingly inane world of exorbitantly priced cartoons displays the proof of concept for the same.

A fundamental philosophical underpinning of an economy is the fact that while currency is fungible, goods are not. One cannot exchange one’s Bentley for a Honda, or even a Bentley for another Bentley for that matter, and pretend as if they are the same. The very notion of differential relative value stems from and is made possible by the innate lack of fungibility in goods. This is because the intrinsic variability of goods necessitates an economic system that allows for and justifies disproportionate value-often to an absurd degree.

Now, if we are to have a virtual world, one would assume that there would be differences in goods as well, at the very least with regards to subjective traits if not ‘quality’ or outright ‘superiority’. However, because of the type of creatures we are, we will invariably assign relative value for these subjective traits characteristics-just like we do in the ‘real’ world. Therefore, if one is to agree with the notion that we shall have any online social ecosystem that has any sort of assets, one logically believes in NFTs; they are, after all, Non-Fungible Tokens. Indeed, cosmetic changes on Fortnite, and player cards in FIFA Ultimate Team are both basically NFT’s.

This is why the decentralized nature of the blockchain is so relevant. In the aforementioned examples, Epic games and EA sports have complete autonomy and proprietorship over the in game items and currency-even though it is the users that pay for them (in FIFA’s case, off the real world secondary market as well, at least when I used to play). Now, imagine an entire virtual reality ‘world’ where you can meet people, attend concerts, and as is already possible (https://oncyber.io/), go to art galleries*.

Of course, this would be a kind of experience that would be considerably more immersive than today’s internet. Anyone that has fleetingly used a VR headset could corroborate that.

Now, the social rails for the metaverse (ie-Twitter, Facebook) are obviously centralized. Musk’s attempt to acquire Twitter was at least in part motivated by his desire to open-source the Twitter feed algorithm. It is likely that the visuo-spatial metaverse we are about to build will be orders of magnitude more immersive and significant to our lives (for better and worse).

I would imagine it’s not a controversial opinion to think that any one individual or organization shouldn’t have complete hegemony over the imminent virtual economy. Therefore, we need a system on which these ‘virtual economies’ can function as simply economies. Not the ‘Facebook’ economy, or the EA Ultimate Team economy, but simply self sustaining economies. For this, the blockchain is essential, and today’s NFT’s provide the proof of concept for the same. Furthermore, the blockchain also creates the bedrock upon which the social rails for the metaverse can also be built. (services like ethmail.cc that utilize Ethereum wallets for email are already functional).

Therefore, it is imperative that the socio-economic rail the metaverse is built on top of is the blockchain, as it is the only decentralized public good that can act as a neutral substrate upon which we can further immerse ourselves digitally.