Since its conception, discussions around ‘the metaverse’ have evoked images of sprawling ecosystems of virtual experiences built and inhabited by multitudes of participants. Within the metaverse would be ultra-convenient and immersive pathways between the various services that we find most useful and fulfilling, be it for work, education, entertainment, commerce, healthcare, or explorations into the depths of user-made content. A truly open metaverse could be seen as a common layer of digital space emerging out of our physical one, where each of us can find or, indeed, manufacture possibilities for being ourselves, making our own choices, and interacting with one another, both as consumers and creators.
An open metaverse allows us to keep a persistent sense of ourselves as we transcend physical limitations and flow seamlessly between digital experiences, carrying unique memories, possessions and stories with us from one section of the metaverse to another as tangible identifiers of who we are, what we have done, and where we have been.
There is an immense value proposition in this for both businesses and individual users. An open metaverse ought to be engaging, convenient and open up possibilities for daily praxis that weren’t there before. For businesses, artists and content creators, the metaverse not only opens new ground for creativity and value creation, but also a powerful way to reach new people and benefit from the network effects instigated by converging various sought-after experiences into a shared space. The benefits of releasing one’s content into such a vibrant world of connected experiences are limitless. Opening up the metaverse is thus a priority to metaverse developers for economic reasons as well as idealist ones.
Fulfilling the promise of an open metaverse comes with a number of complex challenges which creators of the open metaverse will need to come together on:
- Interoperability: creating and agreeing upon common protocols for the interchange and storage of data and economic value.
- Accessibility: defining protocols for the kinds of hardware used to access the metaverse, as well as providing quality-of-life solutions for users with disabilities.
- Intelligibility: architecting the open metaverse in such a way that disparate and multifaceted virtual experiences can fit together both functionally and aesthetically.
- Security: ensuring that users feel safe, establishing means of accountability and ownership that protects every user’s basic rights to ownership, privacy and freedom from harm.
At Hadean, we have striven to build the foundation for expansive and high-performing metaverse worlds by making distributed computing simpler and breaking boundaries for scale and complexity in virtual worlds through our edge networking solutions and dynamic scaling technology. Our work with various metaverse developers has given us a first-hand understanding of the infrastructural necessities of the metaverse, as well as the potential pathways for opening up the metaverse.
Earlier this year, we partnered with Gamescoin.io to build a highly connected gaming metaverse, where thousands of players can come together in a single gaming hub to explore a wide variety of gaming experiences. The Gamescoin metaverse uses a pioneering play-to-own model, whereby players can take real ownership items in the form of NFTs, carry and use them across different games, and trade them in NFT marketplaces.
We have also recently partnered with Pixelynx, founded by Joel Zimmerman (AKA deadmau5) and Richie Hawtin (AKA Plastikman), to create a ‘music metaverse’ focused on allowing artists to increase the scope of their work by creating engaging virtual experiences for fans and sharing unique items.
Each of these partnerships has taught us about the potential of an open metaverse based on creativity, interactivity and ownership, and even more about our capabilities in bringing it into fruition. This is why we have launched the Hadean Metaverse Hub, a unique solution to bridging virtual experiences and fulfilling the promise of an open metaverse.
The Hadean Metaverse Hub addresses the 4 core challenges listed above.
- Make it easy to connect and share assets across connected worlds by using blockchain technologies as a means of verifying ownership and enabling user-led, decentralised economies.
- Leverage distributed computing and edge networking to make it easy to deploy and access the metaverse across various kinds of hardware.
- Achieve performance and reliability at massive scale, with millions of entities, huge environments, and complex systems that allow for creativity and spontaneity, as well as meeting the unique needs of every user.
- Protect the community through proof-of-humanity protocols that prevent bots and hacking as well as disincentivising harmful behaviours.
By laying the foundations for bringing people and services together in an immersive virtual environment, Hadean Metaverse Hub aims to create the infrastructure for a vibrant, multifunctional ecosystem of experiences that fulfils the promise of an open metaverse.