Recently, Bence and I came across the McKinsey research paper about Value creation in the Metaverse. It features a lot of insights and aims to create a breakdown of what the Metaverse is going to consist of.

It’s a very dense paper but there are a few interesting takeaways:

• What society is trying to call “Metaverse” seems to combine multiple technologies:

  • VR/AR - Although the trend seems to move towards AR first and then a few years later into VR. After conducting extensive user research on Google Cardboard and DayDream, my friend and mentor Alex Kauffmann told me a few years ago:

  “People just don’t like technology intruding the human body. Companies are struggling to place a device in people’s apartments, how are they supposed to make people wear something on their face?”

  • Gaming elements seem to spread quickly. Play is a widespread activity, that not only people engage in, but that seems to be inherent to human psychology (Jaak Panksepp was a leading psychologist who dedicated his lifetime to explore this topic). And you can see a trend of games introducing in-game currency (even though it’s not blockchain-based yet).
  • Branded online experiences allow indirect monetization of content. Rather than annoying ads, brands are trying to explore online worlds to promote their work.
  • User ownership and governance of platforms and assets. People increasingly take ownership of their individual decisions and even if “owning” a JPEG has very little value, the ownership of something people care about, has subjective value. Making small decisions or contributing to larger ones (governance) will also become more prominent.

All these elements will have a direct impact on DAOs (how platforms should work), user interaction (facilitated by self-sovereign-identity and anonymity) and commercial applications, where users (as well as developers) can create content and earn currency through royalties.

As part of the Metaverse concept, the paper also puts web3 into context with the past:

• Web 1: Users consume content
• Web 2: Users generate content
• Web 3: Users own the content

All in all, I recommend looking into the paper as a guide for the future evolution of technology.