In the Metaverse, There Are New Ways to Make Money

More On: Bitcoin

Investigating how to make advertising more 'appealing,' online buying more social, and when to use a DAO.

Bad business models are avoided in an open metaverse

Here's a simple fact: the decentralized web, also known as Web 3, will develop tremendously throughout this decade, but it won't have any real influence until the next. Web 3 has the potential to fundamentally alter the internet's identity, utility, and equitable revenue structures. When that time arrives, the internet will mostly be run through decentralized nodes, allowing token economies to exercise their full potential.

Enterprises, tech billionaires, and nation-states, on the other hand, will continue to dominate and influence the outdated and centralized internet (Web 2). CBDCs [central bank digital currency] and readily surveilled identity protocols are likely to be integrated by today's internet giants over time.

Web 2 might potentially serve as a portal for individuals and platforms to access the open metaverse, but only time will tell how technology develops. In such a society, today's technological manipulations and injustices – such as business models built on exploitation of users' free personal data - will be ridiculed and difficult to implement. In the end, the metaverse and the promise of token economies will fuel a multiplicity of hitherto unimaginable monetization methods. Let's keep learning and growing.

— Irina Karagyaur, Unique Network Advertising's head of metaverse growth, done tastefully

Advertising and other traditional internet business models are likely to survive in the metaverse. However, if we build the foundations correctly, one's privacy may be safeguarded in the metaverse using blockchain-adjacent technologies like decentralized identity and zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP). However, utilizing these types of privacy and identification technologies, particularly ZKPs, may come with the added complication of slower latency [since] performing a zero-knowledge proof can be computationally costly.

Recommendation engines work in real time on the internet, connecting viewers to the most appropriate ad spot in a fraction of a second. Companies will need to devise ingenious solutions since ZKPs can increase delay of many seconds or minutes. In a decentralized metaverse, recommendation engines (which aren't only for adverts, but also for directing users to new experiences, events, or people) will calculate suggestions even if you're out of sight of the virtual banner in the geographical context or entirely offline.

As a consequence, meaningful suggestions for products, services, or experiences tailored to the individual may be made while maintaining privacy rights and providing complete transparency into why and how this recommendation engine decided to show me what it did, if requested. These types of events, I believe, are likely to occur in the metaverse. While we can still produce value for infrastructure providers using tried and true business models from "yesterday's internet," we can do it with more style and taste.

— SupraOracles CEO Joshua Tobkin

DeFi, meet the Metaverse

The metaverse is quickly becoming one of the numerous locations where people's digital and real-life identities collide. More social, gaming, and financial firms will begin to migrate into the metaverse, bringing their products and services there, as they understand the unique connection they can make with their people via the metaverse.

This will result in the introduction of means for consumers to transact with their crypto in the metaverse for decentralized finance, a sector that eliminates gatekeepers from economic instruments. This might include things like sending tokens to pals and communicating with staking pools. Much of the enthusiasm stems from what is potential but has yet to be accomplished.

— Teller Finance's founder and CEO, Ryan Berkun

Identifying your tribe

It's in our nature to want for a sense of belonging and connection. We establish groups based on shared interests, values, and experiences. The metaverse is just a new manifestation of our identity, reflecting the things that people are interested in and want to be associated with. Many metaverses will exist to serve certain affinities.

Individuals will be able to travel between metaverses, bringing their identities and assets with them (financial, data or otherwise). Sports enthusiasts will be able to play games and discuss their experiences with others who share their interests. Music fans will be able to discover and connect with new musicians in ways that were previously impossible to achieve owing to dispersed fan groups that made it difficult to meet up in person. Fashion businesses will be able to preview collections, obtain feedback on new goods, and offer their commodities in a more personal way, as their regional retail footprint will no longer be a constraint.

In many respects, the internet has enabled each of us to "find our tribe," or a community of people who share our beliefs and interests. This fosters a sense of belonging and understanding, both of which are extremely good to one's sense of self. If all exposure to new ideas and ways of being is eliminated, it can lead to social cracks and deadly echo chambers. To preserve the future health of our societies, we will require serious creativity on how to solve for both connectivity and cross-pollination.

— Tara Fung, CEO of Gesso Labs and co-founder of Co:Create

A benefit to the general population

Since the commencement of the [coronavirus] epidemic, we've all been living in the first incarnation of the metaverse. The normalcy of being online, living on Zoom calls, and forming intimate connections with individuals we've never met before illustrates how rooted the "actual" metaverse will be in our daily lives. Because the metaverse will function as a utility, unlike what Facebook/Meta [FB] is promoting, it will be classified as a public benefit, similar to internet access.

As with utilizing the internet, there will be several advantages to be enjoyed, but there will also be risks to be considered. This emphasizes the necessity of having solutions easily available to assist users in protecting their privacy, enhancing security and resilience, and removing the hurdles of an outmoded username-password login approach for a secure and user-friendly experience.

— John Jefferies, Blocknative's chief marketing officer

Connected, modular, and collaborative

Neal Stephenson invented the word "metaverse" in his 1992 sci-fi novel "Snow Crash." The metaverse is portrayed in the book as an immersive replacement to the internet, similar to the Oculus-connected version we know today. It delves on anarcho-capitalist themes, such as individuals rejecting the dollar in favor of less regulated "electronic currencies," and nation-states being "decentralized" and replaced with private entities.

It was difficult not to think of Stephenson's dystopian ideas when Facebook renamed to Meta in October. Meta's embrace of the metaverse reveals its long-term goals: to create an immersive, high-fidelity extension of the current web – that is, a platform steered and maintained by a few large corporations, fueled by ad-funded content and gaming models, and underpinned by Facebook's existing social graph.

In contrast to Meta's centrally managed metaverse, builders from all over the world are collaborating to lay the groundwork for a new ecosystem: the hyperverse. The hyperverse, also known as Web 3, is a gradually decentralized web as well as a linked, composable, and collaborative internet. It's a nonlinear digital environment. It is supported by blockchain technology, which operates as a permanent and permissionless shared infrastructure layer, and contains multimedia, community, and financial protocols.

This movement symbolizes a redistribution of ownership across a network of interconnected technology, media, and protocols, reshaping online power relations. From music, video, storytelling, art, and games to tokenized incentive systems and programmable money, it has a wide range of uses.

To enable this transformation, new organizational models such as DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) are developing, realigning platform incentives toward producing community value. The objective is to reopen the internet via collaborative economics, which will be accomplished by combining traditional companies with DAOs, traditional incentives with tokenized models, and traditional technology with blockchain-enabled systems.

— Timshel, a key BitDAO contributor

=====

** Information on these pages contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Markets and instruments profiled on this page are for informational purposes only and should not in any way come across as a recommendation to buy or sell in these assets. You should do your own thorough research before making any investment decisions. All risks, losses and costs associated with investing, including total loss of principal, are your responsibility. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of USA GAG nor its advertisers. The author will not be held responsible for information that is found at the end of links posted on this page.