What is the metaverse ?

The term metaverse means different things depending on who you ask. Whilst originally coined by Neal Stephenson¹ in his 1992 novel “Snow Crash”, it symbolizes the emergence of a new internet to many. This is enabled by the presence of a strong social element in the design of the digital metaverse, i.e. the ability for you and/or your avatar to interact humanly by looking into each other’s eyes, perceive body language and maybe even shake hands.

It is enabled by a set of novel technologies; most importantly by augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) devices. And it is accelerated by Web 3.0, blockchains, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), 5G, digital twins and artificial intelligence (AI). It is important to understand that the metaverse could probably exist without most of these tech ingredients, but uptake and scale could not be achieved without them.