The Biggest Metaverse You Haven’t Heard Of
The Biggest Metaverse You Haven’t Heard Of
1. The US Military is Innovating The Metaverse
History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. In the 1960s, the US Military created a ‘resource sharing network’ connecting mainframe computers across the country and allowing universities, government agencies, and defense entities to communicate directly. This was the first integration of the internet as we know it.
Many claim that ‘the metaverse’ is simply the next iteration of the internet. Well, the military is working on that too. And while The Otherside may be a headline grabber, STE is making far more progress than most realizes.
They have been hard at work developing a ‘metaverse’ well before the term went mainstream. Development on the STE (Synthetic Training Environment) actually started back in 2017.
What is it? We’ll let the US Army speak for itself: Synthetic Training Environment is an emerging capability that will converge current live, virtual, constructive and gaming environments into a single simulation training environment.
Their ‘metaverse’ is a cloud-based 1:1 digital twin of Earth allowing access to accurate 3D simulations of any part of the globe for the purposes of virtual training and mission rehearsals.
And to top it off, it is interoperable… Allowing many different softwares to leverage it. It could be used for purposes well beyond military training in the future.
2. ‘Metaverse’ Concerts Becomes a Category
In April of 2020, Travis Scott set both the gaming and music world on fire with his foray into the metaverse. His 9 minute set in Fortnite was wildly popular and earned him over $20M via ‘skins’ sales (essentially virtual merchandise).
The precedent set by Travis Scott was enough to inspire dozens more virtual performances spanning well beyond Fortnite as a platform.
And just over a year later, ‘Best Metaverse Performance’, has been established as an awards category in the upcoming MTV VMAs. The competition is already stiff and the ‘metaverse venues’ are varied.
Fortnite, PUBG Mobile, Minecraft, Roblox, and Wave are all represented and have hosted major acts like Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber.
And as these virtual worlds continue to gain adoption and larger userbases, expect the competition for this award to get steeper!
3. The Merge (Coming Sept ‘22!)
The Merge is coming and will be one of the biggest events in crypto’s history. There’s a lot going on with it, so here’s the TLDR:
Like Bitcoin, Ethereum’s consensus mechanism is based on Proof of Work which secures a blockchain network via energy expenditure.
The Merge will transition Ethereum off Proof of Work (PoW) and onto a Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism which secures a blockchain network via users locking up capital.
The net result… Post-Merge, Ethereum will consume ~99.95% less energy than its current usage.
It will also reduce the amount the network has to ‘pay’ for security, adding less ETH to the ecosystem (i.e. number go up).
So what exactly is The Merge? Here’s the anology that The Ethereum Foundation uses:
“The community has built a new engine and a hardened hull. After significant testing, it’s almost time to hot-swap the new engine for the old mid-flight. This will merge the new, more efficient engine into the existing ship.”
Basically there is a second blockchain that has been running parallel to Ethereum since 2020, but using PoS instead of PoW. On the date of The Merge, they will… well… merge. And the main Ethereum blockchain will be PoS.
There are ‘resistors’. Some believe PoS is flawed, and others have hefty investments in Ethereum’s Proof of Work system that they don’t want to see become worthless. Some of these people have banded together to create yet another Ethereum blockchain that continues to operate on Proof of Work.
Similar ‘rebellions’ have happened in the past with both Ethereum and Bitcoin. Those chains (Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum Classic) are still running, but have far less users and value than the main ones. Only time will tell.
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