The metaverse is often presented as the next step of the evolution of the internet and, to see why, it’s helpful to look at its key structural components.

Taking up the analysis presented by Jon Radoff, an American game designer focused on online communities, internet media and computer games, we can look at the metaverse as consisting of the following layers: experience, discovery, creator economy, spatial computing, decentralization, human interface and infrastructure.

When it comes to experience, the metaverse is essentially a transition from observing virtual worlds to being able to interact with and experience them. This can have multiple implications in almost every existing industry. Everything from enhancing the online shopping experience with virtual and augmented reality (being able to virtually walk through stores and purchase items on display), experiencing travelling through the virtual world (for example exploring heritage sites through VR), learning and educating in interactive classrooms held in VR (would come in handy during a pandemic), to simulating gadgets and vehicles in the virtual space and much more.

We might transition to a world where things are initially constructed and tested in the virtual space and only then the plans get uploaded to the real factory where actual products get built. Content marketplaces will become an alternative to application marketplaces as a means of discovery.

This shifts focus from discovering what people like to discovering what they’re doing right now, which is highly relevant in a metaverse, where so much of the value will come from interacting with friends through shared experiences.

In regard to the creator economy we’re now living in an era where creativity is limited by engineering capacity. Soon we’ll transition into the Creator era, which will enable anyone to earn a living or build a business around an audience, unconstrained by the high technological barriers that existed in the past.

Spatial computing mostly relates to designing systems that push through traditional boundaries of observing action through a screen and keyboard, giving the ability to interact with the interface and consequently other users.

Importantly, the metaverse needs to be as decentralized as possible, since its aim is to provide a distributed and open environment without a central authority to control it. Users of such systems share the same permissions and interact with each other via decentralized digital identities, which can be connected to their wallet addresses.

As far as human interface is concerned, the rise of computational power, further miniaturization and accessibility of sensors, as well as lower and lower latencies make even the smartphone a potential interface for more and more applications and experiences from the metaverse. Moreover, we’re already witnessing the evolution of different gadgets that will also serve as intermediaries among users and metaverse.

Lastly, when it comes to infrastructure, the evolution of chips, networks, IoT, sensors and computational power is making sure the metaverse will take off this time, despite its roots dating back almost 30 years. The infrastructure to scale virtual reality to a massive scale is emerging only now, and the recent situation with the pandemic has only increased its pace of development.

Metaverse