Metaverse "cooling off period", what should be the next step?

If 2021 is a fiery year for the metacosm, then 2022 will be the year when the metacosm concept returns to rationality.

At the just-concluded 2022 two sessions, a number of CPPCC members pointed out that it is necessary to think coldly about the metaverse, and proposed to be vigilant against the metacosm", and try to avoid the phenomenon of using the metacosm to hype.

"Deep thinking and dispassionate analysis of the metacosm are currently relatively absent." Wan Jie, member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and chairman of Artron Culture Group, believes that the metacosm is still an emerging thing that has not yet taken shape, and its related application scenarios are still in the initial stage of development. Wanjie pointed out that there are signs of scams under the banner of meta-universe, and some enterprises and capitals follow the rhythm of the trend, blindly investing, preemptively registering trademarks, misleading the market and other behaviors.

The emergence of any hot spot is indispensable to the suspicion of "hype" and "following the trend", perhaps the reason for the above phenomenon is that so far, there is no standard definition of the metaverse, just like "there are a thousand Hamlets in the eyes of a thousand people", when the definition of the metacosmology in the industry is inconsistent, it will cause the capital market to be difficult to distinguish between the "true and false metacosm".

So what exactly is the metaverse? According to the book "Metacosm and Carbon Neutrality" co-authored by Yiou, "defining the metacosm in one sentence" is that the metacosm is a new form of society in which human beings are digitalized and intelligently highly developed.

How to understand this definition? The metacosm is a new form of society, the next generation of human society, neither technology nor industry. It is characterized by the "fusion of virtual and real", that is, the full integration of the virtual world, the digital world and the real world, and it will be "difficult to distinguish between virtual and real" after developing to a certain extent.

When the "outline" of the metaverse is slowly clear, when the market enthusiasm returns to rationality, how will the metacosm develop next?

According to the "three main lines" of metacosmology development proposed in "Metacosm and Carbon Neutrality", in the future, metacosm will build a new form of virtual-real integration from the three dimensions of "human six senses interactive experience", "various engines and their content generation platforms" and "blockchain economy and governance".

So at present, what is the development status of the above three dimensions of the main line? What are the problems and challenges they face?

Interaction: The beginning of the fusion of virtual and real

In fact, most people look at the metaverse like "seeing flowers in the fog": not completely ignorant, but also not "completely".

In other words, many people still have little understanding of the real metaverse, but they already know the prototype of the concept of the metacosm, because many literary and artistic workers use rich imagination and various forms of expression to present the virtual world of science fiction to the public, and tell the audience, "You must know that in the vast universe, there may be another 'you', and that 'you' will transcend reality and have extraordinary freedom and ability." ”

If you can see the future through a pair of glasses, then for now, this pair of glasses must be VR glasses. Perhaps the end of the universe is still unknown, but at present, the fiery "meta-universe entrance" is already in front of everyone.

In 1935, Stanley Winbaum conceived of a spectacle capable of virtual reality (VR) in his novel The Glasses of Pygmalion.

In 2018, the first thing that brought the metaversics into the public eye was Spielberg's movie: Ready Player One. In this movie, the VR headset links the "real world" and the "virtual world", allowing the protagonist to shuttle back and forth between the virtual and the real. That is, associating and interacting with the virtual world is the first step in the metaverse.

According to "Metaverse and Carbon Neutrality", in a narrow sense, the interaction technology in the main line of metaverse interaction development refers to the "interaction between man and metaverse", not only AR/VR/MR, but completely covers the six dimensions of eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind.

The main line of interaction development in a broad sense also includes "the interaction between things and the metaverse", both how things link digital objects, digital people and digital systems in the metaverse (through new Internet of Things systems, etc.), and how the virtual world in the metaverse affects and controls the things, things, and people in the physical world (including new composite multi-matrix 3D printers, etc.).

At present, the main concern in the industry is still the narrow sense of "interaction between people and the metacosm".

According to IDC data, in 2020, the global VR and AR (augmented reality) market size is about 90 billion yuan, of which the VR market size is 62 billion yuan. It is estimated that in the five years from 2020 to 2024, the average annual growth rate of the global VR/AR industry will be about 54%, of which VR will grow by about 45%.

Since the second quarter of 2016, VR products from HTC, Samsung, Sony and other companies have been shipped in the Chinese market. In the same year, domestic technology giants such as Xiaomi and Huawei also announced their entry into the VR market. Subsequently, domestic VR companies have mushroomed.

According to the data of Huajing Industry Research Institute, the number of VR companies established in mainland China increased year by year from 874 to 3088 in 2015-2020; in 2021, 1997 vr companies were newly established in the first half of the year alone. As of the first half of 2021, the total number of VR-related enterprises in mainland China has reached nearly 20,000.

VR provides humans with a high sense of immersion, high resolution, high simulation of the visual and communication methods, although from the technical and product point of view, to achieve the naked eye can not distinguish the particle size, refresh rate, delay and so on still need 3 to 5 years, but it is not far away.

"Metacosmity and Carbon Neutrality" expects that the "six degrees of freedom" consumer products with low and medium cost and medium and low effects are expected to detonate the market in about 1 year, which mainly depends on the progress of several large manufacturers, especially Apple and Meta.

At the end of October 2020, Meta (formerly Facebook) released the Oculus Quest 2, a VR wearable all-in-one, and achieved cumulative sales of 3 million units three months after its launch. In February 2021, the product became the largest VR headset on the SteamVR platform. According to investment bank Evercore, Oculus Quest 2 sales have exceeded 8 million units in 2021.

According to the "2021 China VR/AR Industry Research Report" of Yiou Think Tank, with reference to the ecological development path of the computer and smartphone industry, the two major prerequisites for the ecological prosperity of the VR industry are that the global VR shipment volume exceeds 10 million, and the monthly active users of VR game content are not less than 8 million (accounting for more than 80% of the total monthly active users).

Meta founder & CEO Zuckerberg has said that about 10 million people use and buy VR content as a "threshold" for developers to continue to develop and monetize. Crossing this "threshold", content and ecosystem will achieve leapfrog development. The continued growth in shipments of VR is a testament to the viability of commercialization of VR.

In the first quarter of 2021, global VR headset shipments increased by 52.4% compared to the same period in 2020. According to IDC, between 2021 and 2025, global VR headset shipments are expected to reach an average annual growth rate of about 41.4%. The China Academy of Information and Communications Technology predicts that in 2024, the global shipment of VR terminals will reach 33.75 million units, with a compound annual growth rate of 56%. At that time, the market size of the VR industry will reach 240 billion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of 45%.

Yiou Think Tank predicts that the shipment volume of VR headsets in the Chinese market is expected to reach 1.43 million units in 2021; from 2020 to 2025, China's VR/AR terminal hardware shipments will increase from about 4 million units to nearly 60 million units.

According to the calculation of Yiou Think Tank, the scale of China's VR/AR terminal hardware market is expected to reach 178.9 billion yuan in 2025; under the domestic application market segmentation scenario, excluding the impact of hardware revenue, the vr consumer application market size will be no less than 29.6 billion yuan in 2025, and the enterprise application market size will not be less than 93.1 billion yuan.

It can be said that at present, VR is developing rapidly, and the "end of the world" in the metaverse era will eventually become a reality because of the development of interactive technology.

Content: Monetizing the game is a challenge

If interaction is the first step into the metaverse, then various engines and content generation platforms are the souls that make the metaverse transcend reality.

Various engines and content generation platform main lines include game engines, digital twin engines, industrial design and simulation engines, digital human engines, educational courseware engines, architectural engines, clothing design engines, art creation engines and other engines and content generation platforms, realizing the great development from PGC (professional production content) to UGC (original content) to AIGC (AI technology automatically generated content), providing solid and rich tool support for the content explosion of the metaverse.

"Metacosm and Carbon Neutrality" mentions that the metacosm era will be an era of extreme abundance of human spiritual products and services, and an era of extreme prosperity for creators' economies. Like the Internet, quality content is at the heart of the metaverse.

Here we mainly talk about metaverse game content.

"The essence of the metaverse is to create games." Microsoft CEO Satya M. Nadella said: "The metaverse can put people, places, things into the physics engine, interconnected, essentially creating games. ”

Whether the essence of the metaverse is game content or not, we will not talk about it for the time being, but it is undeniable that at present, the game content is indeed the closest landing scene to the metaverse.

"Roblox listing", "Facebook changed its name to Meta", "Microsoft acquired Blizzard", can be said to be the "three iconic events" of the metaverse in the field of games.

In March 2021, game platform Roblox, as the first company to write the concept of "meta-universe" into the prospectus, successfully landed on the New York Stock Exchange, with a market capitalization of more than $40 billion on the first day of listing, detonating the circle of technology and capital. In addition, the continuous rise in stock price and market value after Roblox's listing has also fed a "reassuring pill" to capital, and capital has seen that the seemingly illusory concept of the meta-universe can really be exchanged for "real money and silver".

Subsequently, the "wind of the meta-universe" became more and more intense in the capital market. When Zuckerberg bought Oculus for $2 billion and renamed the company Meta, the game of metaversity became even more exciting.

However, the good times are not long, and it turns out that the story that can be "monetized" is called a good story. When neither Roblox nor Meta stand the test of earnings, their stories become less "nice."

Roblox's net loss per share attributable to shareholders in the fourth quarter was $0.25, well above Wall Street's expectation of $0.13; bookings were $770 million, lower than Wall Street's expectation of $772 million; and daily active users reached 49.5 million, down from the 50.5 million analysts expected.

After the earnings report, Roblox's after-hours stock price fell 15.28% to $62.1 per share on the day. As of March 14, 2022, Roblox shares were down nearly 7 percent.

Coincidentally, Meta achieved revenue of $33.671 billion and net profit of $10.285 billion in the fourth quarter, down 8% year-on-year, the company's first year-on-year decline in profit since the second fiscal quarter of 2019; global daily active users fell for the first time, from 1.930 billion to 1.929 billion. Monthly active users were 2.91 billion, which was no increase compared to the previous quarter.

In fiscal 2021, Meta's revenue was $2.27 billion and its operating loss was $10.19 billion. In other words, Meta's "achievement" in the meta-universe business is to lose about one B station (market value of $10.787 billion) a year. After the earnings results, Meta's stock price plunged more than 20%, and the market value evaporated by $200 billion.

For Roblox and Meta, the current problem is commercial monetization.

The maturity of engine technology will have the maturity of content production platforms, according to the "Metaverse and Carbon Neutrality", game engines have two major development directions in the future:

One is to continue to provide professionals with "professional and complex" but "comprehensive and powerful" features;

The other is an easy-to-learn and easy-to-use function for the public, providing a fool's virtual world construction capability for various UGC platforms, and further developing into an AIGC platform.

Blockchain: Commercialization is difficult and has security risks

Blockchain is an important infrastructure of the metacosmection and the foundation of the metacosmic economy and governance system. In the related technology of building the metaverse, if there is no blockchain, the metaverse may always be a game form, but after the blockchain opens the bridge between "virtual" and "reality", it will make the "virtual world" become a "parallel universe".

The just-concluded 2022 two sessions involved a number of proposals on meta-universes, mainly including encouraging technology-based enterprises to work hard in blockchain and other fields, combining blockchain technology to create a digital ecosystem for ports and shipping, and guiding social capital to continue to increase investment in data technology innovation such as blockchain.

It can be seen that the state has attached importance to the landing application of blockchain technology.

If you take the popularity of the metacosm as an example, judge the perfection of the blockchain ecology, and even use this as an example to argue that the blockchain era is coming, it is inevitable that it is a bit hasty. However, it is undeniable that blockchain, as a new generation of Internet underlying technology, has been applied in many fields and has successfully landed cases.

According to the 2021 China Urban Blockchain Composite Index Report, the Shanghai Blockchain Composite Index ranks second in the country, second only to Beijing. At present, there are nearly 1400 blockchain companies with input and output in the country, and Shanghai accounts for about 1/4.

In addition, in the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, the technology represented by blockchain has played an important role in all aspects, and the Winter Olympics have opened up a good start for the application of blockchain technology, and also provided a sample of blockchain solutions for the value expansion of financial consumption scenarios.

However, with the development of blockchain, challenges and security risks have gradually emerged.

"Metaverse Era, How to Develop blockchain" mentions that the volume of blockchain data stored by nodes is getting larger and larger, and the burden of storage and computing is getting heavier and heavier, which will bring great difficulties to the operation of the core client of the blockchain.

In addition, the application efficiency of the blockchain is low, a transaction of Bitcoin requires six confirmations, each confirmation takes about ten minutes, and the whole network confirmation takes about an hour to complete, so the efficiency is not suitable for high-performance financial transaction transactions. If these problems are not properly solved, it is bound to affect the commercialization process of blockchain technology in the metaverse.

At the same time, criminal acts about blockchain are taking place.

According to incomplete statistics, there are currently 97,000 blockchain-related enterprises registered in the mainland, and from 2017 to 2020, the global compound growth rate of the blockchain industry will be 73.2%, and the compound growth rate of the mainland will reach 83.5%. Blockchain companies are "mixed", and there is no shortage of enterprises that have begun to harvest users with the "hat" of "chain game" and "metacosm".

Among them, using concepts such as "meta-universe" and "blockchain" to package their own "Agricultural X World", "X Valkyrie", "Colony X Star" and many other suspected fraud games, claiming that "3 days can return the cost", "daily lying to earn 70,000", "customers have doubled their assets", "forced to get rich new ways", in fact, these games are the same as ordinary games, most of them are web 2D games.

It is worth noting that blockchain application security is also a key link that cannot be ignored in blockchain security. Although blockchain technology integrates cryptography, distributed storage and other security control technologies, it still has security vulnerabilities. In addition to technical risks, there are also compliance risks and speculation risks in the process of integration of blockchain and the real economy.

End

Some people believe that "when the domestic leading Internet giants such as Tencent and Ali began to experience a decline in net profits, Douyin, which was considered to be a byte 'printing machine' by the outside world, also began to grow and slow down... When the growth of all Internet giants begins to be weak, reducing costs and increasing efficiency has become an inevitable choice in the context of the times. ”

For Internet companies that have gone through a decade of ups and downs, they need a "new story." At this time, the metaverse appeared, and it would be the appropriate "salvation" of the Internet.

No matter what direction the metaverse moves, it is undeniable that capital and business will never cease their thirst for growth. For the future of the metaverse, we just need to believe that time will tell.

For countless individuals, the metaverse will not bring the eternity of time and the extension of life, and perhaps what we need to do is as the "Three-Body Problem" says: "Give the years civilization, not the civilization years."