Does the Metaverse need blockchain to ensure widespread adoption?

Many assume, too, that blockchain technology will play a key role in the Metaverse, along with other emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR). But, is the use of blockchain really a foregone conclusion?

Stanford University professor Jeremy Bailenson recently moderated a World Economic Forum panel with some of the world’s leading thinkers of the Metaverse and blockchain. “The first question posed to the panel was ‘Do we need the blockchain for the metaverse?’” Bailenson, founder of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, recounted to Cointelegraph. “The consensus was that the Metaverse could exist without blockchain.”

As an example, Bailenson offered up metaverse pioneer Second Life, founded in 2003, which has 70 million current registered accounts and is adding another 350,000 new accounts each month to its online multimedia platform. Second Life has developed “a robust economy where digital assets are bought and sold,” said Bailenson. “The typical GDP of Second Life is about half a billion dollars each year. And, the world runs robustly without using the blockchain.”

“Could the next iteration of the internet exist without blockchain technology?” asked Tonya Evans, professor at Penn State University’s Dickinson Law School. “Yes, it could,” she told Cointelegraph. After all, distributed decentralized ledgers and cryptographically-secured assets — including smart contracts — are only one part of Web3 technology, along with AI, 3D printing, VR, augmented reality, the Internet of Things (IoT) and others.

Many are thrilled at the prospect of the Metaverse with its virtual worlds that can be used to play online games, but also to train surgeons on 3D organ models and enable students to visit recreated villages in ancient Greece astonishingly brought to life.

Exclude it at your peril

But, omitting blockchain technology, while doable, could still be a mistake. “The Metaverse without blockchains would likely just advance the ball for Big Tech,” added Evans, and it would come at the expense of those same people left behind by Web2 — “the very people a truly decentralized web would empower.”

Yonatan Raz-Fridman, founder and CEO of SuperSocial — which develops games for the Metaverse — agreed that blockchain technology is not absolutely necessary. “No, you don’t need blockchain to enable the Metaverse,” he told Cointelegraph. There is no a priori reason why avatars can’t be created in 3D and games played with closed platforms, like Second Life’s.

But, Web3 is arguably a reaction against the FAMGA companies — Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon — with their privately-owned platforms, and Raz-Fridman predicted that companies like Meta will have to compromise on the matter of interoperability if they expect to participate. This means allowing avatars to freely travel from one Metaverse project to another — along with all their digital clothes and jewelry. As NYU marketing professor Scott Galloway put it recently:

“Why buy clothes if you can’t wear them out of the store? Why buy a Birkin bag if you can’t show it off in the Metaverse?” 

Consumers are now demanding a Web3/Metaverse more like that depicted in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash, added Raz-Fridman, “where everyone owns their digital assets and has the freedom to bring them with them as they move from one place to another.”

Interestingly, novelist Stephenson himself is the co-founder of a recently launched metaverse project Lamina1, “that will use blockchain technology to build an ‘open metaverse’ — one that’s open-source and decentralized,” the Washington Post reported.

All about people, places and things

The Metaverse is an elusive term — various parties define it differently. Most agree, though, that it involves immersive three-dimensional virtual worlds with…