Facebook to Meta

On October 25, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook the company is changing its name to Meta to reflect its growing focus on the metaverse. Facebook and its apps Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp will be housed in a separate division from Facebook Reality Labs, which makes the company’s augmented and virtual reality products.On October 25, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook the company is changing its name to Meta to reflect its growing focus on the metaverse. Facebook and its apps Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp will be housed in a separate division from Facebook Reality Labs, which makes the company’s augmented and virtual reality products.

What Is Metaverse and How Does It Work?

Metaverse, as a phenomenon, is based on science fiction. It is a combination of two prefixes, “meta” means beyond, and “verse” means universe. Metaverse is a technology that is expected to change the face of gaming, AI and virtual technology. All the internet-enabled virtual worlds created out there are the ultimate result of the Metaverse. It creates a virtual world for immersive experiences where people across the world can meet, play, watch, and trade online using IoT. Augmented reality and virtual reality have successfully created avatars that interact virtually, having digital assets that are end-to-end blockchain encrypted. It is a virtual-reality space in which users interact with each other there is an auto-generated environment.

Companies are investing in developing and programming new techniques for bringing the actual world into 3D reality which benefits the general population to entertain, play games, and invest in the business and various other benefits. Moreover, developing metaverse platforms for the educational sector to help open avenues for the market.

Metaverse Market

The Metaverse market size is expected to reach USD 814.2 Billion by 2028, exhibiting a CAGR of 43.8% during the forecast period. The rising interests in the areas such as socializing, entertainment and creativity are booming the metaverse market globally. Another factor that is driving the growth of the market is the advantage for cross-company collaborations and working together in areas such as gaming, advertisements, share business, and others.

North America is believed to increase rapidly in terms of CAGR in the coming years. This is attributed to the rising demand in the social media industry. Major players from the metaverse platform are originating from the U.S. and hence have a huge advantage of development and chances for higher investment in this region. Asia Pacific is also believed to grow at the fastest CAGR in coming years, this trend is due to the increasing young population in this region. Countries such as India and China are relying majorly on social media platforms for advertisements and marketing which will directly impact the growth of the Metaverse market in these regions.

Tech companies from North America are showing interest in joining Metaverse, as shown in exhibit 1.

Exhibit 1: List of Prominent Players in the Metaverse Market

Making Profit in the Virtual Reality: Blockchain and Metaverse

As Metaverse was normalized as a system running on blockchain, there were a lot of different types of entries introduced into people’s lives. By focusing on how virtual worlds work, investors have the opportunity to invest in both active and passive ways.

The active way involved the user in playing the game and being a part of the virtual world. Metaverses, being a complete world, had a lot of categories with different use cases. A player playing the game and is a part of the Metaverse is earning monetary benefits and Non-fungible tokens (NFT). These earned tokens have actual importance in the financial, which can be sold across marketplaces that the metaverse supports. Along with that, users even have the option of replacing the tokens with major cryptocurrencies.

Another approach of investing in Metaverses is the exposure that the investors can gain on buying a metaverse ETF. An exchange-traded fund (ETF) is a bunch of securities and safeties that trade on an exchange just like a stock. A Metaverse stock ETF enables the investors to invest in companies already having a good position in the crypto ecosystem.

Exhibit 2: Layers of the Metaverse

The Value Chain of Metaverse

The future Metaverse will be powered by creators and built upon decentralization. Metaverse will be the huge platform where individuals entertain, work, live and form communities. Each individual entering the metaverse is not only a consumer, but also creates value in various levels. These values are from the most basic facilities and technologies to the virtual community. Exhibit 2 shows the potential value chain of Metaverse.

The economy of the metacosmic community
Metaverse is the inexorable dematerialization of physical space, distance, and objects. Metaverse includes 3D games like Fortnite on our game consoles, Beat Saber in our virtual reality headsets, and Roblox on our computers. It also includes Alexa in our kitchen, Zoom in our virtual offices, Clubhouse on our phones, and Peloton in our home gyms. Meanwhile, traditional industries such as travel, education, and live performance will be reshaped around game-thinking and the virtual the economy of abundance. Through the metaverse, people conduct a variety of commercial activities, including advertising and marketing, opening shops and so on. As content itself gets easier to exchange, trade, and share within more metaverse contexts, the content itself will also become a marketing asset. An example that’s already emerged is NFTs. This is a vast ecosystem, and one of the most lucrative for many businesses — including some of the largest in the world.

The Creator Era
As we move from the engineering era to the creator era, coding will no longer be the bottleneck for creators and developers, and they can add their abilities to the unique aspects of a project. This era is defined by a dramatic and exponential rise in the number of creators. Creators gain tools, templates, and marketplaces of content that reorient development from a bottoms-up, code-centered process to a top-down, creatively centered process. For example, you can launch an e-commerce website in Shopify in minutes without knowing a single line of code and websites can be created and maintained in Wix or Squarespace. In Metaverse where anyone can be a creator, experiences will be increasingly live, social, and continuously updated.

Technologies and Infrastructure
Technological innovations are the deepest and most basic level to build Metaverse. Metaverse needs spatial Computing, blockchain technology, human interfaces and a high-speed network to keep its features running smoothly.

Spatial computing proposes hybrid real/virtual computation that erodes the barriers between the physical and the ideal worlds. Spatial computing has exploded into a large category of technology that enables us to enter into and manipulate 3D spaces, and to augment the real world with more information and experience.

Blockchain technology is a large part of decentralization, enabling value exchange between software, self-sovereign identity and new ways of unbundling and bundling content and currencies. This area of innovation is called Web3, which frees financial assets from centralized control and custody. With the advent of NFTs and blockchains optimized for the sort of microtransactions required by games and metaverse experiences, we’ll see a wave of innovation around decentralized markets and applications for game assets as well.

Human interface is the equipment we use to enter Metaverses, such as smartphones and wearables. They are becoming more powerful with further miniaturization, equipped with sensors, embedded AI technology, and low-latency access to powerful edge computing systems. These devices will support more and more types of applications in Metaverse.

The Infrastructure of Metaverse includes the technology that enables our devices, connects them to the network, and delivers content. 5G networks will dramatically improve bandwidth while reducing network contention and latency. 6G will increase speeds by yet another order of magnitude.

Conclusion

By changing its name to Meta, Facebook shifted the vision of its business to developing virtual reality. The launch of the Metaverse project had a huge impact on businesses and individuals around the world. It’s a huge opportunity for anyone to get involved as it keeps developing in the future. In this article, we introduce the concept of the Metaverse and its currency mechanism. More importantly, we analyzed how Metaverse was structured and how can companies and individuals positioned themselves to participate.