Metaverse Not The Endgame, But Rather ‘Ongoing Digital Transformation’: Davos 2023

Leaders in the Web3 space met up at the World Economic Forum in Davos to talk about first outputs from the “Characterizing and Building the Metaverse” initiative.

The metaverse has been a popular expression all around of the Web3 world throughout the past year. Additionally, development in the metaverse is something that has major areas of strength for remained to the overall turmoil of the decentralized space.

It is also a hot topic at the 2023 World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland. The WEF has been developing its own initiative, “Defining and Building the Metaverse,” with the participation of more than 120 participants, for which it held a press conference on Jan. 18.

The WEF board highlighted the initiative’s initial two papers, which cover interoperability, governance and the consumer’s role in the metaverse of the future.

Huda Al Hashimi, one of the panelists and the deputy minister of cabinet affairs for strategic affairs in the United Arab Emirates, outlined the future of the metaverse as a space to break societal obstructions and not recreate the same issues.

“We need to ask ourselves why we are still stuck in the spaces we need to get through. We accept that a cutting edge will occur.”

Particularly with regards to governmental bodies creating their presence in digital reality, Hashimi says the vision of the initiative has rethought the role of regulators.

“Regulators will be acting more like refs. That code of conduct will really take priority over formulating approaches.”

“There is tremendous economic and societal value in this. In any case, if it is unregulated, then, at that point, there may be some issues with privacy, safety and security.”

Li said that the metaverse should not be taken a gander at as an “end state” to the entirety of the work and developments in progress now. Rather it should be viewed as an “ongoing digital transformation” of human involvement with digital reality.

Notwithstanding ideas of governance, the panelists touched on interoperability and user data generation inside the metaverse.

Siu Yat, the co-founder and executive director of Animoca Brands, noted that digital property rights are key to the interoperability required in the following advancement of the metaverse.

“You can have digital freedom if you don’t have legal property rights. I feel that this lies at the foundation of making interoperability benefit everyone.”

Each of the three panelists had a five year vision of the metaverse that is more integrated into a great many people’s regular daily existence, alongside more clear governance structures set up. “The metaverse will be part of our lives regardless of whether we like it,” said Hashimi.

Yat closed by highlighting that a Metaverse sooner rather than later will also have generated new economies, which could be of a national scale.

“New national economies will spring out of the metaverse, similar to a virtual society that is genuine because of all the transaction value and all the commerce that’s occurring on it.”

He particularly focused on that with more robust digital properties, users can really have a stake in these new digital economies. Recently, McKinsey reported the metaverse to potentially create $5 trillion in value in the following seven years.