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A few months ago, during the last few weeks, the new project of Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, based on the concept of “metaverse” came to light.
This project, in theory, is about the consolidation of a large online commonwealth, with virtual reality solutions, starting from the data generated as a result of our interest and activity on social networks such as Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram.
But, once again, we make a call for attention, not because of digitalization itself, but because in short, Zuckerberg is an enemy of user privacy as well as an ally to impose “woke” theses. An example of this could be the famous censorship of Christian content or conservative and traditionalist ideology.
Blockchains as an “alternative technology”
Although there are several clusters (data and backup centers) of Zuckerberg’s technological infrastructure in various regions of the planet, what happens there does not cease to depend on what is developed in certain offices in Silicon Valley, without prejudice to considering the corresponding governmental and activist allies.
In other words, we are talking about a centralist project, contrary to the essence of the network of networks. What is more, Facebook does not see the centralized planning of the economy as a bad thing since it allows putting barriers to new spontaneous competitors—but also to reinforce its position of influence in the establishment (political collusion with other elites renouncing the social interest to be solved in the market).
However, we must not lose hope. It is not a matter of stating that the decentralized current of the Internet plays in our favor, in favor of the Misesian concept of economic democracy, as evidenced by the alternative social networks (Gab, Telegram, Parler, Gettr, among others).
This paradigm of distributed and decentralized dispersion of blockchains that responds to cryptography and is known as blockchain can play in our favor in the digitization of virtual communities, transcending the possibility of being a technical basis for cryptocurrencies.
Possibilities and practical uses of blockchain in the metaverse
The “revolution” that blockchain will bring will not be a mere utopia that only makes sense on paper (remember that saying according to which “paper holds everything”, come what may…). A niche is opening up in which we must focus our attention in order to demonstrate our ownership of goods of various kinds in an environment that is not tangible in itself (everything ultimately depends on combinations of zeros and ones, i.e. the unit of measurement of information known as bits): Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs).
NFTs are tokens that are based on smart contracts and allow us to credit ownership of assets such as works of art, stamp collections, tickets to cultural and sporting events, what is usually pigeonholed over the misnamed “intellectual property” and some real estate. They are not cryptocurrency assets of easy exchange.
There are other interesting examples that combine the metaverse with blockchain. One could be Roblox, an environment for video game developers (currently 9.5 million) where they can create new entertainment solutions, with tokens being the source of funding and income for these people.
Another one that is gaining interest is NextEarth, which completely digitizes, as a replica, the huge amount of terrestrial plots that exist on the globe. In other words, it makes it possible to digitize the acquisition of properties, by means of a digital currency called BNB. In fact, it considers Gibraltar and the Vatican to be among the territories with the highest quotation and value.
It is perhaps worth mentioning the Metaverse project, of an eponymous foundation, with concepts such as digital identification avatars based on the KILT protocol (designed to return control of personal data to their owners) and a series of token standards that make it possible to recognize non-fungible assets such as those mentioned above.
What is the main motivation for considering blockchain as an alternative?
We have already mentioned some practical examples of the use and implementation of blockchain with the aim of building a conception of virtual community completely different from that proposed by Mark Zuckerberg. Now, what is the main motivation?
The idea is to prevent all our information (which will be much greater in a virtual community of this caliber) from being completely monitored by a central unit such as Facebook, which can also engage in illegitimate commercial exchanges of data and collaborations with modern states that are increasingly suspicious of our privacy.
It is good that there is a diversity of alternatives (we believe in the freedom of the market, in natural and spontaneous competition), but it is also good that large volumes of data do not depend on a centralized node (such as a supervisory and planning body), but that there is a distributed dispersion of equipment, which respects to a greater extent the privacy that is intrinsic to the right to property and, consequently, a guarantee of freedom.
So, having said all this, perhaps it is worth noting that blockchains can serve as a dispersed and non-centralized challenge to a conception that transcends legitimate technological innovation, seeking to nurture a new relativistic and globalist worldview.
Ángel Manuel García Carmona es ingeniero de software, máster en Big Data Analyst, columnista y tradicionalista libertario // Ángel Manuel García Carmona is a software engineer, master in Big Data Analyst, columnist and libertarian traditionalist.