Bitcoin is already 100,000, but the Metaverse, where giants have made huge bets, is still silent?

Source: Vernacular Blockchain

Recently, Bitcoin has continuously hit new all-time highs, just one step away from $100,000, and a number of tracks in the crypto industry have also shown signs of recovery. The once-popular "Metaverse" is still a little lonely at this time.Not only the crypto metaverse, but the "Metaverse" of the entire technology circle is keeping silent.

The metaverse, which was once hailed as the "next generation of the Internet", technology giants rushed to place heavy bets, and was not much inferior to the current AI concept, is now no one talks about it and has almost "disappeared". What happened to the metaverse? Can it come back?

01 How is the metaverse now?

Not long ago, Meta's financial report showed that its Q3 metaverse department was still suffering from heavy losses. According to public reports, social giant Facebook fully transformed into All in Metaverse in 2021 and changed its name to Meta. Its department responsible for Metaverse, Reality Labs, was established in 2018. The large-scale transformation in 2021 increased investment in Metaverse, but also opened up room for losses. In recent years, it has lost tens of billions of dollars.

In the company's open letter in March 2023, Zuckerberg said that Meta will focus on the company's efficiency, concentrate on streamlining projects and reducing expenses in RL business, and focus on the combination of AI and Metaverse on the basis of continuing to invest in Metaverse-related businesses. Although Meta has reduced its expenses, it still has not been able to reverse the loss situation.

Although Meta continues to suffer serious losses, it does not seem to give up the Metaverse track. It has always believed that Metaverse "is the core of defining the future of social connections" and has continuously adjusted and optimized its business lines and continued to invest and layout.

Looking at the domestic market, some media reported that Alibaba is also optimizing and resizing its Metaverse department "Metaverse" in response to the cooling trend in the Metaverse field, laying off dozens of employees. This move is said to be aimed at optimizing the business structure and improving organizational efficiency. In the future, it will continue to focus on the development of Metaverse applications and tools to provide relevant services to customers.

In the capital market, the amount of financing raised by Metaverse Chuangyue this year is also very low. According to Crunchbase data, this year, the amount of financing raised by companies related to AR, VR and Metaverse from seed rounds to growth stages is about US$464 million. This is also the lowest level in the industry in many years. It is reported that many Metaverse startups have not completed a new round of financing after financing in 2021.

Metaverse and Web3 proposed by the encryption community are both called the next generation of the Internet. Although they have certain differences, the scope of the two concepts overlaps quite a lot. Some people also say that Crypto and Metaverse are a match made in heaven, and blockchain is also the cornerstone of Metaverse.

The crypto-metaverse was once highly anticipated and was also a large-scale application scenario that the crypto industry was looking forward to. But now, judging from the extremely low display rate and almost zero interaction of the social network accounts of the leading crypto-metaverse, it is also slightly sluggish. There is no obvious sign of recovery as Bitcoin rises, and most people seem to have lost their attention to this track.

The only exception at present is Roblox, which was once known as the first stock in the metaverse. Its financial report shows that its revenue and users have maintained strong growth. With the support of strong data, even if the concept of the metaverse is no longer popular, the company's stock price has risen from US$21.6 at the end of 2022 to the current US$52, reaching a market value of about US$36 billion, which can be said to be a good performance.

02 What's wrong with the metaverse?

Obviously, the Metaverse is in the classic "trough after the bubble burst" of the technology industry. After a new technology concept is proposed, it will go through such a period. The Internet, blockchain, and AI have also experienced this. Of course, every industry in the trough will encounter its own problems. Perhaps when these problems are solved, the Metaverse will begin to get out of the trough:

1) Infrastructure and technical bottlenecks

According to the Metaverse's vision of ultra-high-definition and high-calm experience space interconnection, this application can almost be perfectly realized in a stand-alone environment. This is similarly reflected in many 3A games, but most of these 3A masterpieces are stand-alone. It is difficult to connect these large virtual spaces of hundreds of G to the Internet for a large number of users to use at the same time.One is that the Internet infrastructure is not enough (bandwidth and network speed are not enough), and the other is that the existing technology is not enough to support such a scenario.

Take the metaverse space as an example. Zuckerberg was criticized for the extremely rough and "abstract" pictures released during the demonstration. This is not like the metaverse we imagined. Simply put, there are bottlenecks in the current infrastructure and technology, and it is impossible to achieve both high-quality images and smooth experience at the same time.

2) Funds and attention are "diverted" by AI

AI is too popular, and the limited funds and attention in the market have been attracted by AI, so the high-investment metaverse is naturally cold. Not only that, AI also occupies the GPU computing chip resources that the metaverse also urgently needs, just like the crypto asset mining industry occupied and pushed up the graphics card resources of gamers. These external factors make it more difficult to invest in innovation and exploration of the metaverse now.

3) Lack of profitability

At present, the Metaverse products on the market have no output and profit except for some AR and VR hardware devices purchased by users in the early days to satisfy their curiosity.Although Meta firmly believes that the Metaverse is the future, the current Internet is more efficient, more convenient and cheaper to use. Meta's crude Metaverse applications have not been favored by users and are not rigidly needed, which is the main reason why they have not been profitable.

In an industry that has been losing money, only some giants can continue to lose money, and most entrepreneurial teams can only give up halfway.

03 Will the Metaverse come back?

The value and future of the Metaverse are certainly undeniable, and giants such as Meta have not actually stopped investing. Zuckerberg firmly believes that the future will come. So how will it come back in the future?

1) With the replacement of 3A masterpieces, we are approaching the future of the metaverse

The first domestic 3A masterpiece Black Myth Wukong, which exploded some time ago, moved ancient Chinese buildings into the virtual space, allowing us to experience the treasures of Chinese culture in the game, which has won praise from domestic and foreign gamers.

It is reported that the work brought by the Black Myth Wukong team uses the latest AI technology (AI-driven DLSS3) to bring higher frame rates and better picture quality. DLSS, which is powered by AI, is a revolutionary breakthrough in the field of AI-driven graphics, which can double performance. DLSS 3 can use AI to create more frames and improve image quality. In other words, from the side, we can see that the infrastructure and technical bottlenecks of the metaverse are being broken through little by little.

2) Crypto + Metaverse Continues Legend

When the Metaverse was in full swing, people would say that crypto assets such as Bitcoin were riding on the popularity of the Metaverse, just like many technology companies earlier came to ride on the blockchain concept and withdrew from the "copycat version of CryptoKitties" game. Now that the price of Bitcoin has broken through, the crypto-metaverse sector may bring more funds and possibilities. With the continued influx of funds and talents, the original concept will gradually recover.

The Metaverse blessed by Crytpo will be more perfect, and the complementarity of the two is shaping a new virtual economic model. The two were once called a match made in heaven, and the main points of connection include the following aspects:

A. Virtual asset ownership and digital identity

NFT (non-fungible token) is like the "bricks and tiles" for building the metaverse. In the future open metaverse space, each user will have ownership of their own virtual asset data and a unique identity, protecting personal assets and personal privacy in the virtual world, managing and verifying user identities through encryption technology, ensuring data security, privacy protection and transaction transparency.

In the leading project of the crypto metaverse, The Sandbox, users can freely trade virtual land and items. These virtual assets are composed of NFTs and are protected by blockchain.

B. Decentralized economic system, incentive mechanism and creator economy

Crypto also brings a complete set of decentralized economic systems to the metaverse, from token incentives to creator economy, all of which have been verified by the crypto industry. For an open and collaborative virtual world, these are very important. Concepts such as P2E have brought real benefits to creators, players, and communities in the virtual world. With the help of everyone, the flames will rise. Only with a perfect economic system can a sustainable virtual world be built. In the future, with the development of the Metaverse and Crypto, NFT virtual assets can be used to connect different Metaverse spaces and realize the interconnection of virtual worlds. In general, the Metaverse is like a parallel virtual world, so the native assets in the virtual world are crypto assets. The combination of the Metaverse and Crypto is still quite compatible. 04 Summary The reason why AI is outperformed is not that the Metaverse is not good enough, but that AI is more rigid and has more intuitive landing value in the environment of lack of liquidity. In fact, the current round of the crypto market is almost only a special session for Bitcoin and Meme-related tracks. When the overall environment improves and liquidity is sufficient, the Metaverse and many concepts with practical application value should be able to recover gradually. However, it is not easy to really get out of such a money-burning track, and we still need to look forward to the emergence of the Metaverse's "ChatGPT moment".