You must have heard, or read a lot about the metaverse as the next verse of in-depth social interaction and interconnectedness. The metaverse is opening us up for an immersive web and social media interaction with the integration of 4IR technologies like Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Mixed Reality, gaming, IoT and cryptocurrency.

In the metaverse, we will be transiting from the mainstream two-dimensional (2D) view of the Internet to a more engaging and immersive three-dimensional experience. This is to say that web content instead of displaying in 2D on our smart devices and PCs will be transformed into 3D. These amazing experiences will be enjoyed with the use of VR headsets. Click here to read in-depth about the metaverse.

Features Of The Metaverse
The metaverse will be characterised by many adoptions of technology and attributes that will support its success. We may have to deal with many a lot of changes from the traditional 2D internet experience as we advance to the next verse of meta 3D internet experience.
Some of the features of the metaverse are:

Social Immersion
If you have ever played a 3D game with a VR headset, you will, without doubt, agree with me that is very immersive and a near-reality experience. The Virtual, Mixed and Augmented Realities are indeed important in the proportion of the metaverse. However, a metaverse does not have to exist in VR/AR/MR. All that’s essential for a metaverse to exist is social immersion in its real sense. By social immersion, I mean that it will encourage people to remotely hang out, work together, mingle with and have fun online much as they do offline.

Decentralisation
Decentralization of the Internet space has been a topic on the front burner and a major threat to the Big Tech companies. By decentralization, we mean the internet resources will no longer be owned or operated by Big Tech companies or a few powerbrokers. Centralized platforms like Alphabet, Meta, Amazon and all others started friendly and cooperative to attract users and developers, only to end up becoming competitive, and extractive; often engaging in user rights abuses and de-platforming. Decentralized systems, on the other hand, will exhibit more equitable ownership among stakeholders, reduce censorship, and open the internet space to greater diversity.

Open Source
One of the benefits of why we all wait patiently for the complete transition to the metaverse is the open-source platform it promises to create.
open source as a principle is so essential to the development of a metaverse.

By open-source we mean making code freely available and able to be redistributed and modified at will. Regardless of degree or kind.
Open source will help ensure that codebases, algorithms, marketplaces, and protocols are transparent public goods, allowing developers and programmers to build more sophisticated, trustable experiences.

Openness or open source will lead to the creation of more secure software, making economic terms more relatable to all parties, thereby eliminating information asymmetries. This feature will create decent, more equitable systems that will align network participants.

Collective Ownership
Unlike the present-day digital space, where individuals and few persons own and control all of the internet and social interaction resources. In the metaverse, just anyone can purchase digital assets and resources.
Collective ownership means that participants — builders, creators, investors, and users will become stakeholders and strive for a common good. This is made possible with the advent of crypto and blockchains -through the ownership of tokens, the digital legal tender.

Property Rights
Today’s biggest tech platforms, like Meta and Alphabet, indiscriminately collect and collate users’ data to build their businesses: monitoring users’ online behaviour to develop models that create more target ads. This is only possible because these platforms have unhindered access to user data. However, in the metaverse, users will have the power to dictate and decide to whom they will grant access and for what purpose.

As I come to a close, these features of the metaverse make it a much-anticipated experience that will disrupt the norm and the age-long status quo. The metaverse is not without its pitfalls, but its benefits are worth the risks and the challenges that may come.