We hear it all the time: The Metaverse is going to take a decade to build. But why do we believe that this will happen?
First, consider what an ideal Metaverse would look like: millions of people on the same map, just like the real world, but where every action taken is irreversible and true to all – for example, if you were to paint a statue in the Metaverse. If you break it, it will be broken for everyone until someone fixes it. And finally, a player enjoys complete autonomy over their actions and can legally perform any action anywhere, by the rules of the Metaverse.
To achieve this, such a metaverse would need the power to combine 5G, AI, next-gen processors, quantum computing, edge computing, AR and VR all together. Right now, however, these technologies are not advanced enough to scale up extensively at an affordable price. Consequently, a ubiquitous immersive metaverse is a distant target.
Blockchain Trilemma
To understand the problem of scalability, we first need to delve deeper into another issue, the “blockchain trilemma”. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin was the first to use the term to explain transaction delays and high gas prices on the Ethereum blockchain.
Buterin’s Trilemma recognizes that there are three aspects to a Web3 solution—decentralization, scalability, and security—but that projects must sacrifice one in order to maintain the other two. In the case of Ethereum, they had to trade off scalability to maintain the integrity of the blockchain. One consequence is that, in congested blockchain networks such as Ethereum, validators prefer transactions with low gas-fee.
Blockchains are trying to solve this problem with solutions like POS (Proof-of-Stake), sharding, rollups, etc. Many L2 solutions are bridging this hurdle and for larger blockchains like Ethereum to transition to PoS mechanisms, it will take a little bit of time and work, but in the end, it will work.
Scaling solutions for the Metaverse platform will be tough, however, since the Metaverse doesn’t just end on transactions. Components of the Metaverse platform include in-character interactions, detailed maps, multiple character traits, in-platform features, and more.
For Metaverse to work smoothly, it would require a blockchain with multiple sidechains and L2s, with extremely high TPS (transactions per second), low gas fees, and strong IPFS integration for NFTs and cross-chains Have operational capability. And for now, no such technology exists.
Centralized metaverse and scalability
But what if a metaverse chooses to abandon one side of the blockchain trilemma—decentralization—in order to scale rapidly? While a centralized metaverse would not have to worry about consensus and a shared information ledger, it would still face a lot of obstacles.
Consider a centralized platform like Fortnite or Roblox. Sure, they can do something like host a virtual reality concert, but they should limit the characters’ actions to just walking and watching, not involve the players actively participating (like dancing) in the event. .
This is because both local and central game servers are unable to relay or receive much information in real time so that characters can interact live. For example, at the Fortnite Travis Scott concert, Fortnite released an update before the show, where they preloaded all the scenes used in the concert. So essentially, it was like watching a semi-recorded live presentation.
For us to actually attend a Metaverse concert with hundreds of other attendees, we have to fix a few constraints—bandwidth and latency are most important. ,Matthew Ball, his . in Metaverse Primerexplained the problem with bandwidth and latency and how it is preventing massive scaling for the metaverse).
In layman’s terms, bandwidth is the amount of data that can be released or processed in a unit of time. The ideal scenario with no bandwidth would be to have infinite bandwidth to process any amount of data in the shortest possible time window. For example, in a metaverse, you’ll want to look at the horizon in any direction and see every single graphic detail IRL in picture-perfect form.
But what happens is, in a metaverse like Fortnite or even Roblox, much of the information we see and interact with is preloaded into the local device and some is released as needed. This is because we do not have the infrastructure to handle that much bandwidth.
Similarly, latency is the time difference between you pressing a key and a command being executed on your screen. If you are playing a multi-player shooting game, you want your latency to be almost zero so that you can take action immediately.
Now imagine, your action being sent back to a central server around the world and coming back before you shoot, you’re already dead. So most games pre-load these functions into the device to prevent delay. But to perform similar seamless actions in real time in the metaverse, you’ll either have to load all possible actions in a certain scenario (which is nearly impossible) or rely on cloud-streaming information.
So even without the hassle of keeping the platform decentralized, a centralized metaverse platform has countless issues that will not be solved until we develop new, better technologies.
Outlook
But despite all these hurdles and constraints, there is no doubt that the metaverse is the next evolution of the Internet, as Web3 is a response to requirements such as transparency and traceability. So now the question is how to solve these problems.
The decentralized sector is investing heavily in functions of simpler forms of graphics to avoid creating network congestion. Similarly, many projects are cutting into real-time participation as a way of managing traffic.
Most of these approaches will let us do it for some time, but the ultimate solution is to harness the power of 5G, Wi-Fi 6, and edge computing to increase bandwidth limits and reduce latency. As a result, we are looking at a time frame of a decade or more to achieve the ideal Metaverse experience.
In the process, we’ll discover and eliminate many new ideas that fit the narrative for the time. However, with a globally focused force working towards a goal that has rarely happened in the history of technology, I can confidently say that the journey is getting better.
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