Exploring the Metaverse

The concept of the metaverse originally originated from the American science fiction novel "Avalanche" published in 1992. The book describes a network world parallel to the real world - Metaverse. All people in the real world have an Avatar in the Metaverse. Real-world people socialize and compete in the Metaverse to advance their status by controlling their doubles.

Metaverse consists of the words "meta" and "universe", which means beyond/metaverse. In March 2021, the sandbox game platform Roblox put the concept of "Metaverse" into its prospectus, which was called the first share of "Metaverse", and then Facebook changed its name to Meta, further triggering a wide range of capital markets and industries around the world. Discussion, the phenomenon of "metaverse" was formed. 2021 can be seen as the first year of the "metaverse". The Metaverse has gained widespread attention at this point in time.

On the one hand, thanks to the continuous development of various core technologies and hardware, some consumer-oriented products have been continuously improved and implemented. For example, since the launch of Oculus Quest 2 in 2020, the sales volume has exceeded 10 million units, a new generation of Quest is also in development. On the other hand, the outbreak of the new crown epidemic has greatly changed people's work and lifestyle, and rapidly promoted the popularization of online shopping, telecommuting, video conferencing, and online teaching. At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic has greatly accelerated the digital transformation of enterprises.

According to KPMG's survey of CEOs of large global companies, 80% of respondents said that the epidemic has accelerated the digital transformation of enterprises, and 30% of them said that the current progress has far exceeded previous expectations. Major social events often have multiple effects on economic development. For example, the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008 brought a global economic recession on the one hand, but on the other hand, people's income was affected by the economic crisis, which provided development opportunities for sharing economy companies. After the Internet economy has gone through the development stage of 1.0 and 2.0 marked by the mobile Internet, the growth rate of user dividends and time dividends has reached its peak. The huge business opportunities brought about by the changes in scenarios such as games, offices, etc. will bring endless imagination to the living environment and way of life of human beings in the future.