Coming Soon to a Metaverse Near You: What’s Being Built Out There?

The metaverse isn’t even built yet (for the most part) and already Facebook, one of the largest entities on the planet, has gone all-in on the name “Meta” as the name of its parent company.

That ought to tell you something. When a behemoth of web2 is making moves like this into the metaverse, it’s a rather good indicator that it’s not going to be just a flash in the pan.

Let’s disentangle a little of web3’s origins, from those of the metaverse, since they are quite distinct concepts.

In fact, metaverse is a term which has only recently started to become more than just an idea. First coined back in 1982 in the novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson it came to mean a continuous, immersive virtual reality.

Despite the recent explosion in virtual reality, augmented reality tech and other expanded reality (XR) technology, we are still some way off from this full version of the metaverse as originally conceived.

The metaverse projects which are in development are multiple, and largely disconnected from each other, although it will be fascinating to see some of them bridge and interconnect as time unfolds.

The Metaverse & the Blockchain

Of course, the word metaverse is not synonymous by any means with blockchain or cryptocurrency and has no necessary relationship to them.

Still, integrated, trustless finance and decentralised data storage are incredibly useful scaffolding from which to build web3 gaming and immersive experiences, so it is a pretty natural fit.

The metaverse is here to stay, and many of its assets will live forever on the blockchain.

Sheesha Partners

Slowly, and selectively, we’re honing in on 100 partner projects, now standing at over 70.

We choose only to work with those who we are confident can truly shake up industries with innovative tech offerings. We help our partners scale and execute in a very fast-moving space.

Naturally then, several key partner projects are heavily focused on metaverse creation.

Animal Concerts are bringing virtual concerts and immersive live shows and having partnered up also with Opensea and Decentraland they look set to make a major impact on the scene. Featuring some big-name artists such as Alicia Keys and Busta Rhymes, these are one to watch in bridging the gap between real-world performers and metaverse events.

One of the most awesome of all the web3 projects out there is surely MetAmazonia, which sets out to support the Amazon Rainforest in a variety of amazing ways whilst offering an immersive representation of the land in a digital virtual twin reality. With the aim being to integrate supporting local landowners and protecting the forest using digital land ownership and gameplay, this project is a fascinating case in point demonstrating how metaverse projects can have real-world implications and meaning.

Open-Source & Decentralised Worlds

Two projects out there which it would be well worth keeping an eye on in this space are Webaverse and OM.

Webaverse plan to be fully open source, meaning that anyone can use or implement the code behind their creation for their own projects. This doesn’t mean that someone can do so without restrictions in that use, however, which can be limited by the license to prevent malign usage.

The Open Source definition ensures that commercial use of open-source code is allowed, meaning that it helps to keep important emergent code such as that used in machine learning in the hands of a broad, distributed community.

The spirit of this projects is absolutely in step with the ethos of open, community-built decentralised technology, which is what blockchain is at its heart about.

Webaverse recently launched their Genesis Pass for founding members to join through purchase of an NFT pass to build on their central boulevard – UpStreet.

The founder of OM is none other than the legendary thought leader in the NFT space, punk6529.

An outspoken advocate of decentralised community and technology, punk6529 has set up OM very much as a call-to-arms, to bring together enough talent and passion in a community or hub of communities to rival the scaling power of the major web2 entities entering the metaverse, such as Meta, with whom we started this little tour of metaverse-in-development.

Here it Comes

The hardware also continues to develop at eye-watering pace, with augmented and virtual reality glasses now hitting the high street with products such as VIVEFLOW.

The metaverse may just be closer than you think.