So what is the Metaverse to me?

Before answering this question, I want to discuss what I learned from reality. I am a geneticist, so I will talk from a genetic aspect:

The biological information for each living organism on this Earth is stored as genetic codes in physical form. Specifically, A (adenine), T (thymine), G (guanine), and C (cytosine) are the four types of nucleotides in DNA. (Incredible, right? Humans are “written” by only four letters!)

But what’s even more impressive is that our biological system has an imperfectly perfect machinery to transcribe (DNA to mRNA) and translate (mRNA to amino acids) these biological codes into different phenotypes, such as hair color and height. (The imperfect part differentiates us from AI 😀).

Now comes the fun part; let’s imagine we are living in a simulation…

The storage and processing of digital information could largely resemble biological information, except they are using different coding systems, which are the ATGC coding system and binary coding system.

For computers or any digital devices, the digital information is stored as binary codes in clouds. Computer language helps to compile and interpret binary codes (“0” and “1”) into different applications.

The similarity between biological and digital systems shows that illusion and reality could really be one, and we are already in a Metaverse called Earth.

Now, we want to build another Metaverse not only for our bodies but also for our consciousness. That’s how web3 comes. It is a generation when human consciousness is unprecedentedly converged and centralized, but the information of our consciousness is no longer owned by our physical forms but by capitalism.

Therefore, web3 aims to dismantle the clouds, and decentralize the ownership of all digital information; that means we need blockchain technology to store our digital information like how we store biological information in our bodies; meanwhile, we could still interact with each other; and therefore regain the ownership of our consciousness. It is when the Metaverse will truly come.

In the end, I want to quote paragraphs that are written in Next Earth’s white paper describing a Metaverse in 2030 based on the Next Earth platform. Imagination is the beginning of creation.

You wake up in the morning and connect to the Metaverse. It’s not a VR-only environment but an interlinked group of devices all connected to the same platform where all your data including your identity, your avatar and your different profiles are truly owned and managed by you, enabled by blockchain. All your devices are operating as interconnected group of wallets.

Your mobile phone, your smartwatch, your computer and TV are all connected to applications that run on the Next Earth Metaverse ecosystem. You log into a 3D environment where you can meet up with your friends, access services that are powered by a 3D provider and run on their system.

Every shop you visit, you can visit in this environment. You scout out your daily activities in this digital replica of the world then log out.

If you don’t like what the 3D provider has to offer, you can log into a different one as competition is open and welcome within Next Earth.

You look up your daily quests on Next Earth, run by businesses. You can complete these quests that vary from simply trying out a new product through creating content or even writing some code for a company. You are paid in NXTT for completing such quests. The value of your work is based on your contribution not archaic employment contracts that exploit workers. This is how you generate income.

You check your Next Earth profile to see how your lands are performing as developers are using your lands for their apps. You have your own portfolio of lands generating income from Platform Fees and you have your UNIT balance. You also check your portfolio of NXTT staking that generates further income.

You take part in community events. You’re not bounded by physical locations as you can use VR and AR technology to visit events anywhere in the world, attend conferences or concerts. Since all of these technologies are running on Next Earth infrastructure that you and other landowners are all owners of, your experience is essentially the same as it was with the Internet, but now you also generate revenue through these activities, because you are truly part of the ecosystem.

Then you look at the governance portal to make decisions on how the fate of the Metaverse should go and you vote using your NXTT in decisions about policy, new initiatives, evaluating Ambassadors who are essentially your civic representatives within the Metaverse. You check your local Metaverse Tribunal for disputes where you vote in a similar way, integrated with governance systems, essentially creating a DAO-based direct democracy. It’s 2030 and Next Earth hosts a sea of businesses. Some of these businesses provide 3D environments for users, some are gaming activities while others are simple like e-commerce stores, social technologies or financial services.

You think about how you used to be a powerless product, a pile of data packaged and monetized to oblivion by large corporations. Ever since these companies integrated their back end with Next Earth, their operations started to clear up. Conversations about universal basic income are irrelevant anymore, because you’ve spent the last 3 decades creating enough value to leverage: data. You’re now generating a living wage from just taking part of the ecosystem of value creation.