Centraverse: The Centralized Metaverse

With Metaverse tokens taking a -50% dive, I wanted to talk about why what we currently have is not a Metaverse, moreover, all we have is the centralized Metaverse aka the Centraverse.

This is my 501st post, welcome to the journey to financial independence and learning about blockchain!

The Centraverse is my way of referring to what is really the centralized Metaverse. The core concept of the Metaverse is decentralized so it’s important to call what we have now what it really is. There is no single entity that can remove you from the Metaverse in principle, but that’s what we have today.

The real Metaverse is meant to be many digital spaces that are interoperating together. The easiest way to conceptualize this is by referring to the movie Ready Player One where users could port between worlds and bring all their gear and items wherever they went. We currently have nothing like this and the closest we’ve gotten are games like Roblox, Second Life, Nintendo Miis, Snapchat avatars, Xbox avatars, Fortnite, Minecraft, and so on.

With the recent purchase of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft and then announcing cross-platform bans and block lists, I believe this had already started to conceptualize. Microsoft is attempting to become a gatekeeper for the gaming community and with it, locking in its piece of the Metaverse. Also, Gamestop announced they would create NFTs for games and the Metaverse which boosted their stocks by over 25%. This is just more fluff, they won’t be backing the Metaverse but likely just releasing collections and such. Expect more and more to be following suit and cashing in.

The only reason corporations are cashing in is because they have control. If they are able to capitalize on this before we have a truly decentralized Metaverse, then maybe they can capture the masses on their system because in comparison it will perform much better.

What we are seeing now with blockchain games and Metaverse-related cryptocurrencies like Sand, Decentraland, Ceek VR, and more is nothing more than centralized interfaces interacting with NFTs. 95% of what you experience on these platforms would not be kept if their servers were wiped. The only thing that is on the blockchain for almost all of these companies are their NFTs. The NFTs by themselves are just simple collectibles and only with these centralized interfaces are we able to interact in a Metaverse-esque way.
One thing that’s important to consider too is that a lot of what is being created doesn’t really require blockchain and it seems like most things are being built in reverse from the idea that crypto must be involved in order for them to cash in. 99% of what I see is an NFT distributor with some kind of interface application masquerading as Metaverse technology.

Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey were right to criticize the Metaverse, but they wrongly conflated it with Web3. Web3 can refer to any blockchain decentralized applications and virtually the whole ecosystem of Hive. A lot of Web3 is actually fantastic and not related at all to the Metaverse concept. I will again call out Hive as I believe it could actually provide the framework for some future Metaverse given that it actually can store a lot more data on the blockchain and isn’t just some centralized interface that connects to NFTs like most platforms.

Now that you’ve heard everything I had to say, I’d love to hear from you. Is the Metaverse centralized? How long until we see a true Metaverse concept? Will we ever get a decentralized Metaverse? Let me know what you think about this in the comments below and don’t forget to subscribe!

Disclaimer: This is not financial advice and is purely for entertainment purposes. What you see, hear, or read is my personal opinion, and any statements made are based on my views and should not be misconstrued as fact. My crypto portfolio may or may not be simulated

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