Metaverses Aren't Subjected to the Rules of Physics, says Elena Obukhova

HackerNoon Prompt: So let’s start! First, tell us a bit about yourself. For example, name, profession, and personal interests.

My name is Elena Obukhova, I’m a serial entrepreneur, mentor, keynote speaker and writer in Blockchain. I’m currently running FAS | Fintech Advisory Services, an international consulting ecosystem that focuses on Blockchain Startups and SMEs and FlashBack, an NFT ticketing platform that reshapes the industry making every ticket a digital art collectible and enables safe and efficient events.

I’m keen on emerging technologies and currently deeply involved into NFT industry and metaverses. You can read more about me [here].

Please sum up what the metaverse is in 1 to two paragraphs.

Metaverse is a virtual universe where everyone can interact and transact with each other and digital 3D objects. For instance, you can go to a virtual cafe and e-meet with your friends there or visit a virtual art gallery with a digital art exhibition.

Are you currently, directly or indirectly, working on building a metaverse?

I’m not involved in a building process, my goal is to bridge businesses and technologies and that’s what I’m doing with metaverses.

In your opinion, is the metaverse inevitable, or is it just another passing trending tech topic that'll lose hype?

Metaverses have been around for a while. Remember World of Warcraft? That’s also a metaverse with an established economy where characters can interact and transact with each other. Many items from the game have a real-world value and are sold for quite an impressive amount of money.

The current metaverse boom is only confirming the demand and letting us walk into the future of virtual worlds. We already can see various digital galleries opening in Decentraland and The Sandbox. Such big names as ABBA and Ariana Grande also joined the space with their virtual concerts. Metaverse technology enables all fans to attend a concert of their favourite celebrity without a need to have a big pocket to afford flight tickets, accommodation, and the concert ticket. It helps celebrities to engage with their fans more frequently and even have a virtual fan meeting.

Companies are opening their virtual offices, people are replicating the whole cities. For example, Miami can already be found on metaverse. Even though we’re living in a fast pace globalising society, it might be still time-consuming to fly to another place for an event or a meeting. The majority of such meetings can be done online at a virtual office, for example.

Large companies tend to be more conservative when it comes to new technologies and hypes on the market. Therefore it’s also a good indicator when we see such tech giants as Facebook and NVIDIA actively working on metaverse projects. From my side, I am strongly determined we’re entering a new era of virtual worlds and there’s no way it can just pass.

Why is the metaverse such a revolutionary concept?

Metaverse also isn’t subjected to the rules of physics that we have to follow in the real life. It is also free from regulations and other rules that are being dictated at the physical world. This means all the creators have full freedom to create.

Metaverses democratizing many industries and bringing fans and communities closer. We used to have text-oriented engagement, then voice-oriented engagement that shifted towards video content and video interactions. Now we’re exploring a new way to communicate through virtual 3D worlds that could enhance individual involvement within communities.

Going back to the “freedom” part. Can you build a new skyscraper in the middle of NYC easily? Yes, if this city is in the metaverse. Have you seen architectural disasters that are spoiling some city’s landscape? There are quite a lot, to be honest. Metaverse allows people to build a project in the replicated virtual world that is an absolute 3D copy of the real city where you can decide and even let people vote on the new architectural projects.

You can also build your dream home project in the metaverse to decide on its styles and design.

What can people build in the metaverse that we can't build on the Internet, or in virtual reality today? What limitations of our current technology does the metaverse free us from?

As mentioned already, metaverses free us from physics, rules and regulations, granting complete freedom to digital creators and enabling digital economies. We can’t just build a tower in the middle of Manhattan. However, we can do that in the metaverse. It can be a fun project of a digital creator or can be a serious project designed by an architect to evaluate whether it will fit in well in a real life. It can even be a competition to win a tender for building a tower in a certain place (e.g. Manhattan) where people can vote and decide on who is winning this tender.

We also can’t host music festivals or concerts for number of people larger than a venue’s capacity. A venue in metaverse can always host more people than a real-life venue.

One of my friends is founder of pop-up digital art gallery in New York City. He is looking to expand internationally, however, it’s quite challenging to understand what would be the best location to choose. He though of hosting these pop-up exhibitions in the metaverse if different countries he is trying to choose from. If a certain location will gather a big crowd, they can host an actual event there in the real life. Metaverse in this case is a cost-efficient way to test out the market for your “product” and that is extremely important for small businesses.

How are the metaverse and blockchain related? Can we build a metaverse without blockchain technology?

Metaverse is a virtual world, it can exist on Blockchain (Decentraland, The Sandbox) or can exist without it (World of Warcraft). Blockchain technology adds data protection, security, and transparency to metaverse empowering its economies and ensuring the system resilience. It always depends on the level of decentralization that certain blockchain has but generally speaking, this technology adds enormous value to metaverses.

Answering the question, yes, you can build a metaverse without blockchain, but would you?

How quickly do you think the metaverse will be developed? How much can we expect metaverse tech to grow in the next 5 to 10 years?

Even though the metaverse concept has been around for a while, I would consider the actual establishment of the market right now. We can already expect metaverses to become quite a common thing in 5 years.

When we’re talking about graphics, it’s harder for me to predict, as it’s also related to the hardware where I have quite a limited knowledge. However, looking at the modern games and how the graphics has changed from the moment I played last time is quite impressive.

Mass adoption of metaverses will surely boost developments in the hardware section and we might also see more connectors between real-world and metaverses through AR technology.

What is your hope for the metaverse? Do you have any worries or does the concept pose any threats?

Being a tech person to my bones, I certainly hope (I would even say I’m sure) that metaverses will continue developing fast bridging new technologies and enabling more possibilities. I can only hope that everyone still remembers the real world, which is quite beautiful already without any technologies needed.

Thanks for your time! Any final words?

I definitely want to invite everyone to try out metaverses.

This article is part of The Gaming Metaverse Writing Contest hosted by HackerNoon in partnership with The Sandbox.

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