Recently, the cryptocurrency market witnessed a critical event that would change the whole industry. Ethereum declared the merge of the blockchain platform network.
"And we finalized!... Happy merge, all. This is a big moment for the Ethereum ecosystem,"
Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum creator, confirmed on his Twitter.
The developers claim that this move will allow the entire system to spend 99% less electricity and generally run faster. This new algorithm no longer needs tens or hundreds of video cards. This update would be especially relevant in the current situation with the energy crisis and global warming issue.
The Ethereum team has repeatedly claimed that the platform is actively growing and developing. Transactions are getting larger and constantly need to be confirmed. The network is becoming slow and requires high electricity costs.
Previously, ETH has been mined by using video cards. The main Ethereum blockchain has been running on PoW (Proof-of-work) since its launch in 2015. Ethereum's technical problem on PoW was that the transaction speed limit was frozen at 15 transactions per second. This is not a good indicator, as traditional systems work much faster. For instance, Visa processes 1,700 transactions at the same time.
In 2020 developers created a new blockchain called Beacon Chain with PoS technology (Proof-of-Stake). Theoretically, PoS will help Ethereum to speed up to 100 thousand transactions per second. Also, the new algorithm looks safer at the architecture level. It has both technical and organizational preventive measures. Now the systems PoW and PoS have been merged. Transactions are confirmed without solving mathematical problems on miners' video cards. Ethereum has moved to data validation via virtual voting.
Talks about the feasibility of mining with video cards have been going on for years. The global semiconductor crisis inflated the prices of components, and the number of disillusioned miners increased. People invested money but did not get the expected profit. Rising energy prices made it even worse: Most video cards will pay for themselves in 20 years at best. Thus, today, video card mining is only profitable with free electricity.
Obviously, miners can redirect their power to alternative coins like Monero, Ravencoin or Ethereum Classic (it works on PoW). Bitcoin is not going anywhere, but the former accessibility of earnings is a thing of the past. Now miners have to decide whether to sell their crypto and wait for some other coin to take off or explore new areas of business.
As we know, cryptocurrencies affect the environment in quite a negative way. It takes a lot of energy to mine, especially Bitcoin. In addition, it requires a lot of energy to buy and sell cryptocurrency. This year it took at highest 204 TWh and 70.92 Mt CO2 emission, generally only for Bitcoin! Researchers estimate that the Ethereum network consumes 23 million megawatt hours of energy per year. The platform developers compare the network's total annual electricity consumption to an entire country, namely Uzbekistan. At times when the problem of global warming is very acute, cryptocurrency creators must be concerned about their environmental impact.
The ETH Merge environmental aspect is an especially strong highlight by developers and journalists. Theoretically, switching to PoS would reduce electricity costs by 99.95 percent to 2,600-megawatt hours. Also, the total carbon footprint should decrease from 11 million tons per year to 870 tons.
Nevertheless, all "green" efforts of Ethereum will become irrelevant if someone comes up with a full-fledged analog to ETH in the near future. Then people will return back to mine the new (or refined old) coin again, disregarding the environmental damage.
On the one hand, Vitalik Buterin and his partners are pioneers in many areas of the crypto world. On the other hand, they haven't done anything supernatural yet. PoS is new to Ethereum, but the algorithm itself has been around for a long time. Cardano blockchain and its ADA coin, for example, run on PoS. Both of these platforms and the coin are much less popular, so comparing the projects is not quite correct. It is also worth waiting for the market reaction to the disappearance of thousands of miners and the appearance of hundreds of validators.
There is also a lot of skepticism regarding the merge. The main concern is that this innovation may be an attempt to centralize one of the most popular cryptocurrencies. There is a fear that this is how the "51% vulnerability" will manifest itself, with the most affluent investors taking control of the currency. At the time, roughly two-thirds of the coins were owned by five large financial and crypto businesses, and 52% of Ethereum's infrastructure resided in Amazon's cloud services.
Another concern is the functionality of the new PoW system. Al Morris, a co-founder of Web3 company Koii Network, shared:
"One question which remains is whether the new Stake-based model will attract as many node operators, since tokens must be purchased before they can be staked as collateral, rather than simply burning energy as was normal under Proof-of-Work."
The Ethereum project has twice been rejected by teams that saw Buterin's innovation as a violation of development principles. Now investors and miners are taking a closer look. Ethereum's creators are looking for "basically letting us create a simulated universe that has its own laws of physics."
We will observe how such a technological shift of Ethereum will affect the crypto market as well as the world. It may happen that other large cryptocurrencies will follow this trend in response to the energy crisis around the world.
Due to the strong growth in sales in the first quarter, Adello hired another employee.
Ana Cecilia Bravo Lopez is the fourth person to join the team this year. She studied marketing in
in Karlsruhe. With her passion for data analysis and digital marketing, she is the ideal candidate for the Big Data company.
Cecilia Bravo on her new position: "I like data. What fascinates me about Adello is the combination of technology and behavioral patterns to achieve better results. By making the decision regarding the company, the dynamic, young team was also very important to me. I hope to learn a lot and contribute to make digital marketing even better."
We still have open positions in the areas of:
Contact
anja.prosch@adello.com
About Adello
Adello analyzes human behavior in real-time and combines it with fully automated, self-learning
technology for maximum mobile marketing ROI. Global market research agency Technavio ranks our technology, which is protected by various patents and winner of nearly 20 awards, among the top 16 in Big Data worldwide.
Since 2022, the company has been refocusing on emerging Metaverse technologies Blockchain, Gaming,
Crypto/NFT. Adello has among its customers hundreds of the world's leading brands and agencies such as BMW, Clear Channel, GroupM, McDonald's, SBB, and UBS. Adello operates offices in Europe, Asia, North America, and is a Swisscom Ventures portfolio company.
On 2.2.22, the leading Swiss mobile technology provider, Adello, streamed live the 28th industry event on METAVERSE via LinkedIn and YouTube for the 180 registered industry professionals. The topic of the discussion was “Metaverse: Technological Gimmick or the Most Important Invention after Mobile?”
Thomas Hutter, CEO of Hutter Consult, was invited as a guest and a keynote speaker. In his presentation, Thomas disclosed from a critical point of view what challenges and opportunities could offer us the Metaverse in the near future.
Thomas started his presentation by defining Metaverse in a quite extraordinary way: instead of Thomas, the virtual avatar has explained it:
“The Metaverse is a collective virtual space created by the convergence of virtual, augmented, and physical reality, physical persistence in virtual space, including the sum of all virtual worlds of augmented reality and the Internet.”
Thomas added that the Metaverse encompasses the digital world the same way as the physical one. At the same time, those worlds are interconnected, and the border between them is blurred. That is how the Metaverse allows us to enrich the physical world with new digital opportunities that wouldn’t be possible in reality.
Thomas shared that the concept of the Metaverse is not new. The notion of “Metaverse” was mentioned for the first time in the book “The Snow Crash” by Neal Stephenson, released in 1992. The actions in the book take place in a virtual reality, where people exist and interact with each other as their avatars.
Today some traits of the Metaverse can be presented in different online games where people play specific roles behind the virtual characters. Nevertheless, those games still cannot be considered the Metaverse. In fact, the Metaverse includes the interaction with the physical world, which most of the games don’t have yet.
The Metaverse obtained its popularity very quickly. That happened right after Mark Zuckerberg declared that Facebook’s main focus will be the Metaverse. This consequently created a range of different discussions and concerns if Meta (previously Facebook) will have a monopoly on the Metaverse.
Thomas Hutter ensures that there is no reason to suggest this. Different companies provide or will provide platforms for the Metaverse very soon. For example, Thomas pointed to Fortnight (a free-to-play battle royale game by Epic Games) and AltspaceVR (a social VR platform acquired by Microsoft), which plans to create a virtual working space.
However, according to Thomas, there is room for some concerns. For instance, Meta encompasses a significantly broad audience of 3 billion people by owning Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, and others. Moreover, Meta owns a subsidiary company Oculus. Oculus will provide the suitable equipment to enter the Metaverse, including a headset and sensor glove. Furthermore, there is no doubt that Meta has enough resources to invest in Metaverse R&D.
To draw a line and eliminate the misconception of what the Metaverse actually is, Thomas shared the 7 core attributes of the Metaverse described by Matthew Ball.
Revealing the core attributes of the Metaverse, Thomas continued with the discussion on how the Metaverse can serve people.
Social connections are one of them. The Metaverse could broaden the horizons in human communication and interaction. Thanks to the Metaverse, the geographical and linguistic borders will be erased.
Another important usage will be entertainment. The Metaverse will facilitate virtual activities in meta-reality, for example, concerts, movies, exhibitions, cultural events, and others.
Gaming is another important aspect. Transferring games into the Metaverse will invent new gaming experiences.
Sport has an excellent potential to be transferred in the Metaverse. It will transform sports and fitness activities, enriching them with gamification.
Thomas also mentioned that shopping could be changed within the Metaverse. In the Metaverse, buyers can discover a new range of various experiences that have never been available before.
Speaking about education, the students will be able to obtain a professional experience thanks to the virtual training in the meta-reality.
Another aspect that can be changed with Metaverse is professional life. Metaverse will help in arranging the business meeting in the virtual space.
Metaverse is constituted from the different components that in their entirety create an entire ecosystem. Here are the components of the Metaverse ecosystem:
Thomas described factors that have been undertaken in the past which led to the appearance of the Metaverse. One of them is Internet speed, which has increased enormously in the last several years.
Another factor is technological change and especially mobile phones. Today smartphones have a wide range of functionality that nobody could imagine 20 years ago. Thomas compared such a quick improvement of mobile devices to the possible future development of the Metaverse. For instance, VR sets are currently not designed yet for Metaverse usage. But those devices may be improved in a very short period of time.
There are already concepts that could help perceive virtual reality in a more convenient way, such as Google Glass and Oculus. Moreover, such concepts might have great potential to replace smartphones and become the next device-number-one.
Another tool that contributed to the Metaverse development is the brain interface. A brain–computer interface (BCI) is a device designed to exchange information between the brain and computer. In unidirectional interfaces, external devices include signals from the brain that can receive signals from the brain. Thanks to this device, thoughts can be read and interpreted.
According to Thomas Hutter, the Metaverse can be an innovation jump in the digital field. Thanks to the Metaverse, it would be possible to start creating new experiences in different sectors that could benefit business development.
Moreover, new business and sales models could be developed. The goods and services will be changed. The Metaverse offers tremendous opportunities to sell digital objects and contents (for instance, courses and workshops).
At the same time, advertisements will move to a completely new level. New marketing opportunities will transform the whole industry and provide marketing methods that wouldn’t be possible in reality. The changes in marketing will bring new approaches to content personalization.
Furthermore, the new workplaces will be created in Metaverse, and the working environment could be changed correspondingly.
Then Thomas explained the challenges on the path to the Metaverse adaptation. He drew the audience’s attention to the history of the Internet. It has already been 20 years since the appearance of Web 1.0, and people still haven’t used it to its full potential. There are still poorly designed websites and UX/UI, slow Internet. The same problem appears with web 2.0. Today we are stepping into the Web 3.0 era, which users and businesses just began adopting. The inescapable truth is that for a moment, the majority of users still don’t understand the main concepts of Web 3.0.
Metaverse will combine the techniques and know-how from the Web 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0, VR, AR, and analog world. Moreover, it will include other aspects such as 3D, UI/UX, video, real-time, and many others. Furthermore, it will require resources such as labor, time, and money.
Thomas Hutter gave his recommendations on what businesses could do to pave the path of Metaverse adoption. In his opinion, business owners should learn the lessons from Web 1.0 adoption. Then it will be necessary to continue establishing and improving the knowledge of Web 2.0. Moreover, brands would have to observe how the future and Web 3.0 will develop. To adopt the Metaverse, businesses would have to analyze and decide in what direction of the Metaverse should they move. Once the direction is established, they would have to constitute the strategy of their further actions.
It is essential to start now and work from a long-term perspective. According to Thomas, the Metaverse will probably not develop as fast as expected. It will require years before the meta-world will firmly integrate into our daily life. Nevertheless, the first steps towards the Metaverse development have already been made, and those companies that become Metaverse pioneers will have great potential in the future.
The gaming industry is the fastest-growing entertainment sector today. In 2021, total spending on computer games worldwide constituted $180.3, which is 1.4% higher than in 2020. In 2026 the gaming industry will reach a market value of $314.
Gaming technology is rapidly changing. This technological growth has placed the gaming industry at the forefront of the metaverse discourse. You have probably already heard that the metaverse derives from the games. Indeed, computer games became an inspiration for the world between reality and virtuality that we now call meta. Games and metaverse have various constituents in common. For instance, both of them can encompass real physical space within the virtual world, offer avatars to operate, and unique economic systems to use. The last one allows, for one, to own the different objects, earn and spend money.
The definition metaverse takes its root from the novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, written in 1992. In his book, there is a worldwide virtual space in which people interact with each other through digital avatars.
However, already back in the day, video games had similar elements to the metaverse we know today. The game Habitat from 1985 is considered the first game of such kind. Habitat is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Same as in the metaverse, game users were playing behind their avatars. That is how players could see, speak, and interact with each other. Habitat was operated by its citizenry. That means the users were responsible for rules and acceptable behavior within the game.
Another important game that is considered a pioneer of metaverse games with social media elements is Second Life. In this game, users get the opportunity to choose the most appropriate way of virtual existence for them, such as participation in communities of interest, creating virtual goods, building, creating virtual art objects, traveling, and many others. There is a virtual economic system with a virtual currency called the Linden Dollar (L$) in Second Life. The players can exchange Linden Dollars for real money.
Today more and more games adopt the technologies from the metaverse. The developers create their own NFT based economy, add digital twins and non-gaming events. For instance, concerts and social events are already ordinary features in games like Roblox and Fortnite.
There are more and more metaverse games that appeared very recently. We would like to shortlist the most remarkable ones that deserve your attention.
Illuvium is a metaverse game where the players can create an avatar to explore the open world. Users can travel the world of Illuvium, participate in quests, play-to-earn, and place their assets in a decentralized system.
In this game, players are a crew on a transport ship who receive a distress signal from a mysterious shattered planet that is almost entirely covered by a vast crystal ocean. An extreme weather event on the planet’s surface creates a burst of radiation that disables the ship engines, causing it to crash-land on the planet. The player’s character is the only survivor who has to explore the world and discover majestic creatures with divine elemental powers.
In the world of Illuvium, participants can interact with objects. All in-game assets, including skins, items, and collectibles, exist in the form of NFTs, which can be traded in-game or on the decentralized exchange IlluvDEX or OpenSea. Play-to-earn games like Illuvium are commonly referred to as GameFi, which is a combination of the words “Game” and “Finance”. This is a completely new class of blockchain games. They include digital assets and digital currency for completing tasks and participating in quests.
In the blockchain game, The Sandbox gamers have the opportunity to create their own worlds with unique objects. The idea and even graphics of The Sandbox are very similar to Minecraft. However, unlike Minecraft, Sandbox has one indisputable advantage - a well-implemented blockchain and a goods market where players buy and sell their creations. The Sandbox has implemented an NFT marketplace. With its help, registered members can buy objects that can later be used.
“Think Axie Infinity meets Pokémon Go but in a fully immersive virtual reality environment.’ - says the Revomon website while describing the game. Revomon is an online role-playing game that combines a VR experience with the technology behind NFT tokens.
With Revomon games, players can interact with each other and be a part of the gaming community. Revomon has been gaining a lot of popularity lately. In fact, the game offers an amazing VR experience, which creates an attractive gaming process.
Alien Worlds was launched in 2020. It became the first blockchain game to reach 100,000 users and then over 2 million.
According to the game plot, the player is a space explorer traveling the six planets. The main mission of the game is to mine the in-game currency Trilium. Every planet has its own elected government. The players can also participate in “voting”, however, the voting rights depend on how much Trilium the gamer owns.
CyberTrade is another free play-to-earn game that has gained a lot of popularity recently. According to the CyberTrade website, there are already 191,957 pre-registered members.
The gamers are located in the futuristic city of Metropolit in 2101. The main goal of the game is to prevent others from taking over the player’s city. The gamers use their avatars to fight, level them up and upgrade, and earn in-game currency.
Star Atlas is a strategy game dedicated to space exploration.
Players can earn money by selling items represented as NFTs on the online marketplace and exchanging ATLAS tokens. The game has built-in deflationary mechanisms where materials used to create items are destroyed when a new item is created. Assets such as ships, crew, and equipment will be NFTs. Some in-game items, such as raw materials for production, will be fungible tokens. Players can buy, sell and trade them on the in-game market using ATLAS, which is the utility token of the Star Atlas ecosystem.
As we mentioned before, the game technology is developing very fast, and the metaverse will contribute in the direction the game development will vector in the future.
For instance, thanks to the metaverse and its economy, the big “injustice” of the game are getting resolved: Previously, the gamers owned only virtual items that had a certain value only in the context of the game. Today, however, thanks to the NFT technology, the owned assets actually will have their value and can be traded.
Game design and UX will be changed too. They will be defined by two fundamental infrastructures: the network architecture and the underlying technology. The big challenge for the game design will be creating an immersive design that will be convenient while gaming. For the same reason, suitable equipment will take place for mass production.
Another important change will be game migration to the cloud. For instance, recently, Amazon announced their cloud gaming platform Luna. Moreover, Google, NVIDIA, and Sony have announced three proprietary cloud gaming platforms: Stadia, GeForce Now, and PS Now. These services are already available to users as a complete product. Microsoft has also proposed its xCloud platform, which is currently in testing.
In the beginning, computer and video games affected the appearance of the metaverse. Today, the metaverse affects game development. The expansion of the meta-technologies will radically change the gaming industry bringing it to the next stage, where the games make dreams come true.
Important to mention that many people already depend on digital games, and metaverse gaming might only increase this addiction. One should remember the old rule to protect yourself: “To use, and not abuse”. Following this principle, the metaverse and metaverse games will bring not only joy but also a range of new opportunities.
In 2021 we witnessed how the metaverse began appearing on the headlines in Forbes, The Washington Post, The Economist, and other major publishers. At the same time, tech giants worldwide began proclaiming metaverse as part of their new strategy. Indeed, we are on the threshold of Web 3.0, where the metaverse is an inseparable part of it. However, only a few can understand the processes behind meta-technologies. In order to understand their work, it is essential to understand the metaverse ecosystem.
In fact, the metaverse is complex and constituted of several components. Each of its components has a certain role and contributes to the work of each other. The collaboration of the several components allows users to experience to interact, communicate, play, create, and more inside the meta-world. Let’s dive deeper and overview each component that constitutes metaverse.
It is important to mention that gateways in metaverse can be either centralized or decentralized. What does it mean?
The centralized metaverse has been existing already for a long time. Earth2 and Meta, for instance, are examples of the centralized metaverse. This kind of gateway is a dominant model of virtual worlds that is controlled by a single entity. As a rule, one person or group has control and operates the entire metaverse.
This kind of gateway has certain flaws. One of them is the risk that malicious actors can interevent in centralized meta-space. That is why many players prefer decentralized metaverses. Another problem of the centralized metaverse is censorship. Freedom of speech and self-expression are limited there. Furthermore, centralized identity providers, where users’ digital identities are created and stored, have precarious custodians of data and user interests. Those are the reason why in the future, the developers will give preference to the decentralized gateway.
Decentralized metaverse also has a certain form of control. However, it belongs to the community, where the users govern the meta-world.
Decentralized networks are built on blockchain. This approach ensures that there is no monolithic control. In fact, for the metaverse to survive, it requires to be open-source, interoperable and controlled by the community, not by a few people.
In the era of Web 2.0, design was user-centered. In the coming Web. 3.0 design will be reoriented to the environment around the user, who will immerse this virtual world.
When we speak about “good design” in Web 2.0, we mean user-friendly, clear, and aesthetically pleasing design. In Web 3.0, however, the metrics will be different. Web 3.0 design must be immersive: the fusion between the player, its avatar, and the virtual world around them. Thus, the good design in metaverse will depend on how deep the immersion between the player and the environment will happen.
Another challenge will create an equity-focused design in the metaverse. Since the designers will build not only visuals but a whole new virtual society, user equity and accessibility will be important aspects. To create a healthy society in the meta-world, designers would have to understand how societies work in the real world, which could be the probable threats and pain points.
The metaverse is just starting to develop. For a moment, designers have a lack of know-how. However, already in the near future, designers will be required to broaden their field of expertise and gain knowledge in economics, urbanism, and other related sectors.
The word “Avatar” can be translated from Sanscrit as ”manifestation of a deity on earth”. In a similar way, users create their own digital versions, which are called avatars in the metaverse. That is how users can interact with the meta-world from the avatar’s point of view.
Avatars will bring certain challenges and ethical questions once the metaverse expands. Some problems appear already nowadays. Several users of Meta complained that they had experienced harassment. Meta representatives declared creating a user bubble – avatar personal space that cannot be crossed by other players.
Any society, independently the physical or the virtual one, requires an economy. Within Web 3.0, Economy 3.0 will follow. For the companies, this would be an opportunity to showcase innovation, as well as implement low-cost marketing projects on such platforms. That could be one’s metaverse home, car, farm, and other objects.
Cryptocurrencies facilitate secure transactions in the metaverse economy, enabling users to buy, sell, and trade virtual assets effortlessly.
Blockchain-powered cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, Polygon Matic or Etherium, ensure transparency and trust, allowing verifiable ownership of virtual assets like NFTs and enabling creators and users to engage in virtual commerce confidently. Native tokens within metaverse platforms establish decentralized economies, empowering participants with incentives and governance, fostering vibrant virtual communities.
The economy will need a marketplace. It is suggested that in the metaverse NFT marketplace will take place. It will allow users to purchase, sell, or bid on the digital land, avatars, or other objects in the metaverse. Thus, the advertisement of NFT for sale will be possible. NFTs will enable the property transactions that will be driven by the metaverse.
It is important to mention that human interaction will necessarily take place in the metaverse.
In Web 2.0, social media shifted our horizons of how people can communicate with each other. Thank to social media, many obstacles, such as distance, language barrier, and impossibility to see the interlocutor, have been overcome
Within the metaverse and Web 3.0, society can even go beyond that and make communication (especially on distance) even more interactive. Thanks to technologies that will immerse us into the meta-world, such as VR glasses and sensory glows, meta-users can be “present” in the meta-world and even be physically felt.
Those who play video or computer games are familiar with play-to-earn and play-to-collect notions. Players either earn or collect rewards that help them to advance and stay motivated to continue the game. This principle will also be implemented in the metaverse.
As an example, the popular play-to-earn game Axie Infinity allows its users to purchase, battle, and breed virtual creatures, which are called Axies. Players can purchase and sell Axies peer-to-peer using cryptocurrency since each Axie is represented by an NFT.
It is suggested that metaverse will work on the basis of cloud computing. Some companies already release cloud technology that is designed for the metaverse. For instance, Amazon Cloud Technology recently presented several new services for computing, IoT, 5G, serverless data analysis, mainframe migration, and machine learning. According to reports, Meta uses Amazon Cloud Technology as a supplement for its existing local infrastructure. In the future, Meta plans to use more Amazon Cloud Technology’s computing, storage, database, and security services for in-cloud privacy.
Some objects from the real world can be transferred into the meta-reality. This is called a digital twin. Those objects, same as in the real world, have their value and can be purchased or sold.
Creating digital twins will be applied in the different fields into the metaverse. One of them is tourism, where, for instance, the whole city can be transferred in the meta-space. Another example - is shopping. For one, the “digital twin” of the piece of closes can be transferred in the meta-reality and be worn by the avatar.
Recently the sport shoe company Nike announced, that they will create a a range of digital fashion products trainers and clothes. The items will be sold as NFT and be availible in metaverse.
It is hard to imagine the work of metaverse without artificial intelligence. Metaverse’s AI will encompass several aspects such as content analysis, computer vision, supervised speech processing, and others.
Recently, Meta created an “AI supercomputer,” which is specifically designed to train machine learning systems. The company claims that its new AI Research SuperCluster (RSC) system is already one of the fastest machines of its kind and the fastest AI supercomputer in the world. Also, Meta says RSC will work for metaverse experiences.
As we mentioned previously, in order for the metaverse to survive, it needs to be decentralized.
A group of more than 70 projects is currently working to establish the decentralized infrastructure for the metaverse. The group, which is led by Enjin, is going to create the decentralized infrastructure for cross-chain metaverse on Efinity and intent to create a ‘cross-chain NFT superhighway.
“Our goal is to bring NFTs to everyone, and working closely with our ecosystem partners brings us one step closer to this reality”. - said Enjin CTO Witek Radomski.
There is no doubt that the metaverse will offer room for advertisement. Indeed, metaverse can be the next game-changer for digital ads. It can create a new stage that will be beyond ordinary advertising and marketing. The metaverse allows creating absolutely new experiences, which will be more engaging and interacting. It is suggested that the regular ad format that we are used to won’t work. Advertisement in metaverse will require creativity because engagement will become the main KPI.
Several marketing campaigns have already happened in the metaverse. For one, Vans created their own skate park in the metaverse world of Roblox. There the players can ride and buy company merchandise for in-game currency.
British out-of-home company Ocean Outdoor will introduce digital billboards into video games and the metaverse. The company signed an agreement of partnership with the London-based startup Admix, which places ads in games, as well as virtual and augmented reality.
In order for the metaverse to happen in real-time, fast internet connection and low latency will be essential.
Some mobile providers have already started investing in infrastructure improvements that will allow their subscribers to connect to the metaverse. Last year T-Mobile announced that its 5G network is used in the companies like Taqtile, building AR solutions for frontline workers. Moreover, T-Mobile shared that they are interested in using its 5G network for holographic telepresence. This technology is used for real-time holographic video calls on a user’s mobile phone and is expected to be used in the metaverse.
Analyzing the rich meta-environment, one may conclude that some technologies implemented in the metaverse are already well developed, meanwhile, others are still in their infancy. Nevertheless, the first steps toward the metaverse development have already been made. Indeed, the metaverse will require more years to become what we can see in sci-fi movies. And it’s truly wonderful to be on the threshold of its development and see how the metaverse will slowly grow and expand.
