The open metaverse is an exciting concept, with boundless potential. With more than 33% of adults “curious” about the metaverse, and a reported 18% “excited” about it, there are limitless opportunities for those wanting to create new, connected experiences in a shared metaverse. And with global metaverse market revenue expected to top 1.5 Trillion by 2030, the question becomes who will own this vast digital realm?

In the physical world, when one company owns a property or a game, they have control over exactly how it’s used, and who can use it. The same is true of virtual worlds. To have a true, open metaverse, you must have a decentralized system that isn’t owned or controlled by any single entity, but rather by the community that utilizes it. An open metaverse is built from a foundation of interoperability and composability so that new updates, creations, and functions fit together seamlessly, like building blocks. Whatever you create in the metaverse, you should own and control. Your ideas and creations can’t be censored, restricted, misused, or destroyed by anyone, they belong to you.

Building Communities Through Ownership

When you take the time to design and build something from scratch, you should have ownership of it. The metaverse is, at its core, a collection of objects and experiences created by individuals that make up larger communities and worlds. If these worlds are made up of the creations of individuals, then it makes sense for those people to have a say in how that world is governed, as they will experience the outcomes of those decisions.

By placing the rules and structure of the metaverse in the hands of the very people who construct it, the open metaverse is free to become a community that is welcoming to all. What’s more, people are encouraged to contribute their own creations to the metaverse when they have a say in how those creations are used.

Virtual economies can thrive without the fear of a single company shutting down online servers after just a few years. All too often a game will decline in popularity, causing the publisher to pull the plug, deleting every character, object, and world in the blink of an eye. Without the fear of this happening, people are free to invest their time and energy into a universe where they’re rewarded for contributing.

Decentralized Metadata at the Heart of the Open Metaverse

One of the key concepts of an open metaverse is ownership of the things you build and contribute to it, and the ability to monetize them, should you choose. By sharing ownership of the metaverse and the virtual assets within it, an environment is created where communities can form and thrive. In order to ensure that ownership stays with the individuals, and not with any one entity, the open metaverse requires decentralized metadata.

Metadata is a set of information that describes any number of details about a virtual asset. This can be simple information like its creation date, relevant tags, associated objects or animations, and most importantly, establishing ownership of the object.

Decentralized metadata is the concept of storing metadata in a decentralized and standardized manner that can be easily accessed and utilized by anyone with the correct permissions. In the open metaverse, this means that all virtual assets use the same standardized metadata format, and the metadata is stored in a decentralized manner that allows the owner to access, modify, or transfer their virtual assets without requiring a centralized authority for authentication.

With decentralized metadata, virtual asset owners have true ownership over their creations and do not answer to any central authority regarding how they use them. Additionally, by utilizing a decentralized approach to metadata, you ensure that the virtual creations fit together with others, allowing these assets to be used across a wide range of platforms and experiences within the metaverse.

The Future is Open

The metaverse is a place where you’re unbound by the limitations of the physical world, and where you can create, explore, and connect with others. Creating an open metaverse is crucial to delivering these ideas in a way that allows everyone to participate in an equitable manner, without sacrificing control and ownership to a singular entity.

By creating an open metaverse where the people living inside of it have the opportunity to add their own contributions, and their voices, we invite the same spirit of wonder that we experienced as children, playing with our first building blocks. And keeping the metaverse open allows communities of people to come together to build incredible worlds and experiences that cannot be taken away, shut down, or censored.

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