Is the Metaverse the Next Version of the Internet? | European Blockchain Convention

foreign [Music] excellent I'm really pleased that people are still here at 4 4 15. it shows how important the Medifast topic is but we have a great panel today and I think this is a really important subject so I think I'd like to start by introducing myself David Palmer on blockchain and web 3D for Vodafone uh pleased to be here and if we could go around yeah my name is Leon I'm the CEO and co-founder of metaverse game Studio my name is Lucas I'm from darkverse I'm head of blockchain economy hello my name is Nicolas I'm the CCO and founder of algorithm and nice to meet you all I'm very happy to be here today and I'm very glad to be here so thank you for coming really interesting topic medevas I think last year was the uh the word of of the year what I'm reading this morning I was reading the financial times over from London and it said if you do a metaverse search now it's 80 down and what was all the fuss about um I'd like to to Really um say first of all that I'm very very honored to be with this panel because these guys are actually building stuff um and I'd also like to maybe maybe reiterate or reinforce the fact that stuff is still happening development's still happening in the metaverse so uh please just um describe the metaverse to me so if we stop with you Nicholas so for me the metaverse it's a virtual space where you can interact with other people and nowadays we are in a very changing world where the technology are changing and I think that the metaverse it's a new way for Express new things marketing you can express products you can you can see on 3D you can also play and you can do a lot of things in a real space so I think the metaverse is the future is the future in on the e-commerce is the future of gaming is the future of a lot of sectors so nowadays the metaverse it's a really important technology because we are changing the world I think the the virtual space with an avatar can can be very interesting for the community of the the brands and thank you Lucas okay hello so so maybe I will start from different approach I will say what metaverse isn't um for me I mean the what average player it's imagined such Real Player One it's something we are really far from so um metaverse is not such like World which we can be able quickly do everything we can imagine and which we really like to do virtually um metaverse for me is like kind of another layer it's some kind of like new medium actually which allows people to interact different way to create some kind of their own part of the world like much cheaper and easier than they will like build a house or build anything in the real world and interact with each other on like us Gamers as social creatures which we are and probably many much more layers which we still don't know yep so I think it's a bit maybe I can describe a bit more concise I think it's uh going to be a set of virtual worlds that will be so compelling that people will be able to be incentivized to yeah participate in in these worlds potentially more than in the real world they will be able to yeah work hang out and do most of the real world activities digitally and no matter the medium whether that's VR AR some other medium potentially in the future I uh it could even be mobile um I do think this uh yeah this this is what the metaverse will look like in the future I don't think there will be uh well that I might get ahead of myself go ahead no I think I think it's really interesting um McKinsey don't put their name on on much I I don't know if there's any fans here but uh they they forecast the 5 trillion US dollar Opportunity by 2030 for the mediverse Recently just last week I read another uh forecast which was looking at 4 trillion as an optimistic track so so if you look at GDP growth to Medicine domestic product um that is roughly nearly five percent of global GDP so that is not gaming that is not people just doing social media that's real you know that's a real chunk of things we do today so I wanted to really look at this because I think we've got a good section of uh sort of retail business gaming sorry social and gaming bit of gaming on both um what what do you think of that where do you see this opportunity being realized Leon um good question I I think that gaming or basically making gamified experiences fun will be the primary driver driving people towards these these Virtual Worlds um or in yeah there has to be a compelling experience whether that's you know on the social front with all your friends being able to hang out in a in a digital world and create our own items create our own um you know surroundings worlds whatever it might be could be the compelling driver that brings us forward um I yeah that's I think the primary focus of a lot of these these these benefits companies as well including ours so um that's my pick um okay um I won't be start I mean from some kind of like comparison because I was last year in conference which was related to 3D industry like animation mostly Studios like Pixar and there was vice president of Epic who said like let's say about metaverse that will be web 4 and like people like let's say what the hell and he just said about interoperability so like I think the future of like metaverse that now opportunity is to create something for nowadays players of fortnite Roblox Minecraft um the kids who playing and teenagers playing such games now they will be the first Native in metaverse they will expect something similar but let's say multiple adults um so like in my opinion we should create something for them like the next game for for this generation and this interoperability will be something that allows to us to exchange the assets between each other um between like engines or like thanks to crypto by the way but also about the like interoperability of 3D I think that's really interesting the five trillion US dollars is a very very significant amount you could argue that in web 3 maybe part of the failure is that we created Technologies and protocols which were looking for Solutions uh to realize five trillion you've got to be you know creating things that are going to replace things that are being done already in different ways Nicholas you're from the uh sort of business side the retail side yeah how how far do you think metaverse retail can go to replace or displace some of the e-commerce that we have okay so I think that for e-commerce it will be a very interesting thing for Brands because the community will interact more with the brand also the companies can have a more immersive way for interact with their community I think also that for the future I don't know but maybe um nowadays our platform is centralized maybe in the future when the tech will um great a bit I think um we will do more decentralized nowadays we are in web 2 but we can say with 2.5 because we are only also connecting wallets for blockchain technology for the payments you can also enter and pay with cryptos and it's interesting that on our metaverse and unlimited only with one one payment like crypto or credit card because if you link both I think it's interesting uh also I think that in the future the metaverse um you have to educate a lot the community and social network you have also to have more adoption for the people know how about metaverse and I think the metaverse is not only uh virtual glasses so you know all also with computer with phones with accessibility for everybody a really important point I just wanted to pick up on that but again 5 trillion yeah significant part of GDP um you know how are you gonna do that with glasses on right so so I think one of the big issues is uh the VR glasses and the fact that that's not really convenient for work or for business or anything that's not gaming so so how important guys is is access is that what we need to be working on is it do we need to be working on easier ways to access for example the smartphone yeah I think that if you can link um the e-commerce and gaming because gaming also have a very strong community I think that if you can link business and gaming and this is the metaverse I think access access okay um like I think this should be like similar to like um fortnite now so like you should be able to use it everywhere because the immersive storytelling can be happened everywhere I mean people actually playing the role on the game in their imagination like playing RPG games on paper like with dices so actually for me the like all tools should be able you know for different like experience at all so like if you're using VR glasses you have some kind of experience but in the phone you should also be able like at least like experience it enough and to like play and enjoy yourself whatever you like so that's for me all the tools possible are okay yeah that's Leon yeah I I think you're right I think most of these glasses are expensive and they're not really definitely not ready for Mass adoption I think that you know the largest part of the world lives in Asia and everybody has a smartphone so I definitely think in the short term these Virtual Worlds will grow on existing mediums um however I do think that the technology is making massive advancements with potentially Apple releasing some glasses this year and on a whole lot of companies investing billions into into this space to make a compelling Yeah medium to to access these these potential worlds um so I do think that's in the next five to ten years there will be new mediums coming out could be neuralink chips could be something else that that gives you a compelling experience and immerses you in a world in a um in a way that doesn't give you much friction like the glasses do currently so um I think it's still very early and I do think that the opportunity is still very large um so it's just a matter of seeing who captures the market share first I guess yeah exactly I mean I think one of the things unless we've been under a rock for the last uh sort of three months is that uh Mark Zuckerberg of meta formerly known as Facebook is getting a lot of stick uh from investors and the media about the investment in medevas um and the share price has not gone up since the name change um has he got it wrong Lucas um the question is the meta I mean like what they I talk about got it wrong to invest in medivas or has he got it wrong in terms of investing in in glasses and the types of experience I mean I think that Oculus is really good tool I mean many of my friends using it um they there is for example such application which is sitting in the theater I mean in cinema and you're watching movies with others and like people can introduce and host the movie to the people which even they own on the DVD and it's really social great tool like people really love um I was amazed actually when I hear from from people about it so I think the Oculus is really great when it comes to metaverse um like they have really big challenge because they are two for two billion people and access around the world with people with different type of Internet different tools to use it so like they need to like to make it let's say quality between like I mean yeah balance between the quality and and the actual performance so in my opinion it's uh like a good way but just for such huge company it will take time to make it proper way and we as Builders of something smaller can focus on like smaller group and which here makes us more flexible so okay one of the other um sort of big announcements over the last few months has been open AI so chat gbt has uh has been massive and um I think one of the reasons why people are excited is that it it gives immediate benefit people can resonate with it immediately and uh the CEO of uh of Microsoft um you know recently said that you know web3 and metaverse needs a open AI or chat GPT uh moment he would say that because they're investing in it but um how important is AI going to be to the metaverse well these Virtual Worlds will probably have you know non-player characters NPCs and the more compelling the experience in conversating with an NPC will be um the more likely players will stick around so well I would say that these will be run on AI they still are or they already are on existing games but the AI is currently really picking up the pace on in terms of how compelling their answers are so um I do definitely think that there will be a lot of AI in these worlds um to to entertain users Whenever there might not be somebody around in in their area or to Simply give them compelling instructions on what to do next um and uh yeah this will move away from the you know the decision tree based uh answers that that current games mostly employ so yeah I definitely think it's uh it's gonna be in there yeah I also want to say that the people are a bit scared about the word metaverse because they don't know how to enter or if you need the glasses or whatever and I think that I love the virtual space because I think metaverse is linked to meta and I think that metaverse have to be maybe a bit more realistic I don't know but for the community for the people interact more with the metaverse I think the realism is important and the cartoon are not really really important now because is true for gaming Roblox fortnite yes but maybe for business the people one realism so I think that's a good point um the the other key thing to the medivas is that we we all of a sudden have multiple identities which which we do now but but it's limited how much you can do with your alter egos or your or your identities in the virtual world the metaverse makes that real right and uh and and the ability to contract to have liability um you know it becomes ever more important and also the ability to or the importance of policing the medivas of having accountability um how important is digital Identity or interoperable digital identity to the metaverse Lucas okay so um like this is actually about connected questions to the previous one because like open Ai and I mean just chat GDP or any like generative AI they can actually help creators with this um interoperability I mean creating assets I'm from gaming industry so I know already like people in the industry using the generative art and other AI to like improve the work when it comes to creating storylines when it comes to like us like like was already said that about the dialogues of the NPCs and this creating of assets in the metaverses will be need to be much faster and cheaper so um like I will start from that point um and this interoperability is really important because everyone I think is driven by the different uh game different world like people nowadays playing um like so many games and they're driven by so many stories so actually like probably there will be no one metaverse which is for everyone there will be like kind of bubbles which people will jump someone like fantasy sometimes someone like realistic World someone will go for shopping crazy like in Dubai like such 3D 3D shopping mall and someone just you know want to like fly a dragon so this is I think that will be important and uh identity of people I think they also will switch them between many of others because people like to look different than in their like real world as well um so I would like to be maybe a cute girl like an anime or maybe some like Pokemon or whatever because like this is something I'm not in the real world so I want to see um yeah let's interesting Leon how important is interoperable decentralized digital identity yeah that's a whole lot of buzzwords in one sentence um no I I definitely think that yeah you're I agree with a lot of your points in terms of the the multiple bubbles the multiple worlds that that are currently already existing in multiple very large scale games that people hop between and there's also some sort of uh overlap in terms of these identities right there's epic games accounts there's steam accounts that are connected to well all of their avatars and all those games there's uh this this set of Social Circles that they have on on the steam platform or the epic games platform um and all the functionalities that come with that sort of uh yeah account level structure that the the platform um basically brings so I definitely think that's whatever we're sort of speculating on is already sort of existing but it will simply get more sophisticated um and there yeah there will be definitely more perks to to to doing it this way wherein you can have basically one level or one set of badges or or achievements connected to your game account that's that's viewable and accessible from all these different games um and yeah basically together make this this metaverse reality of many experiences that's how I see it have we got it wrong so there's a lot of emphasis on on the immersive experience isn't the metaverse ultimately a business right so so I'm going to ask you this Nicholas should we be focusing on how we get business into the metaverse how we get business and identity how we get businesses wallets how we get businesses transacting in the med of us uh okay um the identity I think your avatar in our platform or in general just in general so so more my point is that we we are focusing on avatars we are focusing on games we are focusing on people with glasses but if we're really going to get adoption and revenue and business in the med of us should we not be focusing on how we how we can set up a business in the metaverse how that business can trade how that business interacts with people in the med of us I think first is adoption and education about all the people nowadays the people don't know how is the metaverse or how we can enter on the metaverse so I think the the more important is adoption and education and you don't don't worry you are gaming platform a business platform I think for business platform like you say um you have to have a good roadmap like what do you are selling um the product is very important because finally you are selling something different in a very immersive virtual space and is very different but for the transaction I think that if you are the the the owner of all the transaction you do I don't know how to explain in English but um maybe if you are in a platform where you are you are a Security payment blockchain technology can trust take a traceability of all the transaction you are doing maybe you have the security of this platform and on the web 3 also exactly I mean that was going to be my next question so I just got some bullet points right so and then I think we gotta close off with the last questions um so so many of us web3 decentralized or centralized Neon um well definitely partly centralized I think well somebody has to pay for the server costs and um there's definitely often a team that fixes the bugs um in in any of these worlds so this nurse yeah you can also set up a community and and build something in a com yeah from the community side of things in terms of of this but I definitely think that's a centralized or partially centralized ways is is the most realistic way but I do think that a lot of the Assets in these worlds could be generally owned and use some standards that are accepted on well on the blockchain for instance and allow users to to try these assets all over the ecosystem in a decentral way we're in that centralized party cannot take them away from you or prevent you from from having them so I think it's a hybrid approach yeah Lucas um my heart say decentralized because we're building our metaverse on lv0 blockchain so like I really like want to do this way but my brain said actually there will be both because the adaptation of the technology is too slow players don't like the world metaverse they don't like nfts they are still not educated like Nicolas said so we need to actually do lots of work to like normal players like to convince normal players to to come to the metaverse so for first few years now we'll be both but I think that the direction is decentralized because if people understand how it's good and how they can benefit from it they will go this way so so final questions guys uh start with Nicholas where do you see the metaverse in the next 12 to 18 months so just answering the panel question is it the next version of the internet yeah so in the next 12 to 18 months what do you think I am agree with with Logan but also I I think that centralized nowadays all the platforms are centralized because I think the centralizer platform is is a bit um with the future technology maybe yes but now our platform are centralized but in the future also we want maybe decentralized um in the future I see the metaverse like um all the people um will interact with immersive community and build strong community on gaming on business and yes I think is a future of the technology of uh of the internet yes Lucas okay um like in next it's like 20 months I expect that um like companies working on metaverses it's basically those who are decentralized and they're on crypto they will like I mean they learn their lesson the new project learned the lesson of the previous like sandbox or the central ants and they actually will make it like different this is our approach we want we are focusing on first making game and storytelling and then at metaverse layers social social part um uh to actually allow players to do something which they like which is playing game um role playing so I expect better quality products and like much like different approaches than in this let's say first try of metaverses which happened in the last two years Beyond yeah I tend to agree I I definitely think next 12 to 18 months will make big waves there will be a lot of movers and shakers um when it comes to new releases of well um metaverse worlds games um also mediums with with new glasses and upgrades on that front moving quickly as well um so I don't think we'll have this fully fledged idealistic World in 18 months however I do think there will be inching ever closer to uh to a sort of yeah metaverse reality and the exact expression of this will will be become more and more clear over over the next two years you know I think the panel has been excellent we are on an evolutionary Journey not a revolutionary journey in my view and um I'm just excited that that aspects of that each aspect of that Evolution has been covered by this panel so I'd like to um I'd like if we could just give the panel a round of applause and uh yeah looking forward to the next discussion