The digital world has been stirring for several months around a silent revolution that journalists call Web3 and which is polymorphic enough to take the form of the metaverse, the blockchain, NFTs, etc.
Before a brand can take advantage of it, it must first understand its essence. However, journalists are often too busy sensationalizing and experts get lost in the details. At the origin of this revolution was … the blockchain . To understand the concept, it suffices to know that the web has always been based on databases. Whether it's an eCommerce site, an ad portal, etc. all sites store their data in private databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, etc.). Impossible to have visibility on a third-party transaction. This seems normal and happy for privacy matters. But in some cases transparency seems handy. This is particularly the case for authenticating the owner of a work of art, the holder of a concert ticket or the traceability of food. This is how the blockchain was born. There are also many, the best known being Ethereum, Cardano, Tezos, etc.
It is then a question of talking about cryptocurrencies , which are today the first application of the blockchain. If you don't have one, that's certainly very good news as they have been experiencing an unprecedented crisis for several months. Bitcoin and Ethereum are the main ones. To buy it, you have to go through a specialized platform like Binance (the n°1 in the world market based in China) or Coinbase (the n°2 in the American market). The high volatility and the lack of regulatory supervision make them very risky assets.
To go further, we cannot fail to talk about NFTs . They have shaken up the art sector and known as cryptos a strong crisis. To buy one, the easiest way is to create a free Metamask wallet. The reference buy/sell platform is Opensea.io. In art, an interesting platform to know is Nifty Gateway. The best-known NFTs have spread often in the form of profile photos with CryptoPunks and Bored Ape whose price is a few hundred thousand euros. In sport, Sorare, which notably offers football and basketball player cards (of the “Panini” type), became Frenchtech’s biggest fundraiser in September 2021 with €680 million.
The extension of all this is the concept of Metaverse. The term became a buzzword on October 28, 2021 when Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook was renaming itself Meta and that the priority was to create a metaverse. The main reference on the subject was Spielberg's film "Ready Player One" released in 2018. Roblox (Nike and Gucci), The Sandbox (Adidas and Carrefour) and Decentraland (Sotheby's, etc.). But this generation of metaverse has nothing to do with what Meta announced (and in which it invested $10 billion). Indeed, these worlds are in 2 dimensions while Meta is in Virtual Reality (VR), accessible only with a headset like the Oculus Quest2 (Oculus having been acquired by Facebook in 2014).
Meta's metaverse is called Horizons. It has been available in France since August 2022 and integrates a social network (Horizons Words), an event platform (Horizons Venues) and a remote meeting system (Horizons Workroom). It is clear that today it would be totally inappropriate to speak of success or failure as the subject is new. The platform needs to keep improving. This is why in January 2022 Meta announced that it was building the most powerful computer in the world (called AI Research SuperCluster). Once this is in place, Meta will then be able to direct users of its various services (Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp) to Horizons. It is only then that it will be relevant to judge this extraordinary initiative. The other so-called “decentralized” initiatives, that is to say not managed by a commercial enterprise, have obvious advantages in terms of governance but an unparalleled capacity for execution. These metaverses could be where NFTs express themselves, each hanging virtual works in their home on Horizons.
These technologies must also be analyzed according to their societal and environmental impacts. Cryptocurrencies, for example, have unbalanced the electricity networks of several countries such as Kazakhstan, Kosovo or Malaysia, generating blackouts with very worrying human consequences. The technology is evolving with the Ethereum2 standard in particular, which reduced the impact on the environment by 99.5% in September 2022. The fact remains that, if one day the human being spends his days in a parallel world without leaving home, it is more humanity than the environment that risks being harmed...
In the end, the Web3 is for the moment globally more important for the general culture of the curious and technophiles than in the P&L of the brands. But the years to come could reverse the trend and give rise to applications whose scope we still do not know today. The brands that have invested in the older generation metaverses have certainly not obtained an immediate return on investment, but have geared up to seize possible future opportunities.