The Metaverse and NFTs are concepts that I was originally very sceptical about. Just like ICOs and SPACs, I think that they are a bunch of scams pretending to fleece the man in the street. My views have changed a bit this week though.
I attended a SmartNation event on the Metaverse and NFTs which our FinTech Prof had introduced to us. The 1.5 hours of presentations were chock full of information that opened my eyes to future possibilities. It also helped me to conceptualize my smart contract project which was incidentally due this week. I will elaborate on what I came up with later.
Actually, the concept of the Metaverse has been around us for a long time already. The many video games we play over our lifetimes will, like reading a fiction novel, transport us to strange new worlds where we are immortal beings conquering monsters to achieve a goal. Countless hours were wasted as we pretend to be something we will never be in real life to get that adrenaline high.
The Japanese developed Cosplay to further extend gaming into the real world where we will dress up and hide under the disguise. This cloak of invincibility can let us act out our deepest fantasies. I remember a number of fancy dress events I attended over the years. A few were memorable ones where my colleagues didn’t even know that I attended and asked why I missed such a great party the following week. No one knew that I was at the D&D undercover and it felt liberating to totally immerse into my character.
Many other examples abound. The 2018 movie “Ready Player One” was based on a book written in 2011 about the idea of full immersion into an alternate reality as the real world was in a depressive state. The game Second Life started in 2003 with the same idea and there were many others like SimCity.
With tech advances, the Metaverse is now ready to be taken to a whole new level and its possibilities are limitless. There is scalability and the sky is the limit as multiple worlds like Loki’s Marvel Multiverse alternatives. Having split personalities in the virtual world will be the norm. I can be a Wizard avatar in one and a raving psychopath character killing kittens in another. Living in the real world will be so boring in the near future if you can do everything in the virtual dimension.
NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) are another recent new asset craze that has griped the world by storm. We see looney prices being traded for non-existent objects that uses Blockchain to track ownership. As I read more, I begin to understand that they can evolve into many other uses we are only just beginning to discover.
The event I attended had a speaker who was young and very in tuned to the NFT world. He is helping others to find value in this space and imagining new and creative ways to leverage on this new phenomenon.
Anyone can create a unique NFT himself while the ownership is trackable on the Blockchain. Artists can create one of a kind work of art aka Beeple style and continue to receive commission/royalties everytime the ownership changes hand.
NFTs can become status symbols because of the uniqueness of ownership. You can be in an exclusive members only club where entry is only possible when you present your NFT membership card. It becomes a utility token with exclusivity rights, like early bird entry into NFT purchases before the public can get access.
Though we can be flooded with limitless NFTs, some may become much more valuable than the rest. Therein lies the magic. That this can happen makes the acquisition of rare ones even more exciting. Just rich nerds with their crypto riches can spurge on these one in a million NFTs that one one can have.
This leads me to my FinTech group project. How can I utilize Blockchain, Metaverse, Smart Contracts and NFTs to resolve a current process that is creating unneccessary bipartisan tension that has trust, transparency and fraud allegations? Can we have a solution that uses Tech to solve an age old problem?
I will try with my voting concept paper – how can we make it better with technology? Can there be a better way to do this? Can we maintain voter identity secrecy while making the process more transparent with almost zero risk of fraud? Is a fully trusted solution possible with Blockchain?
My proposal at the moment is basically a macro big picture concept and there may be finer details that needs to be iron out. We have available IT with Cloud Computing to address various parts of the process, to strengthen security and improve trunaround times. This will in turn make it extremely difficult for scammers to penetrate as the window of opportunity is tiny and results are in real time. We can have an election done within 24 hours using mobiles and virtual reality (VR) tools.
On the day of election, all elligible voters will be notified to immidiately log into a secured app that uses 3rd party verification to determine if they are who they are. This can be in the form of Google Authenticator, AI/Facial recognition or a SingPass equivalent.
Once that step is done, a unique individual NFT is auto generated for the individual. This NFT linking to the person is recorded in a private blockchain ledger run by a trusted 3rd party eg. the voting commission. This step is 2 fold: (1) to mask the identity of the voter as voting is secret, (2) to ensure that only authorized individuals can past this first test.
But we go one step further using NFTs. The unique NFT is now uses as a utility token for the voter to enter into a Metaverse environment of virtual polling stations. Only a verified NFT can trigger an avatar that will allow the individual to vote.
Once the vote is cast, the info will be recorded into another blockchain which has a public ledger of smart contracts linking the NFT to the vote. A real person has therefore voted. This blockchain will be subdivided by location/township and the results (votes for candidate A or B) will be tabulated in real time.
This creates another layer of identity masking to protect the voter. It also provide the greatest level of public transparency as anyone can see the results in real time. The risk of fraud is zero as every individual voter is using his own mobile to complete the initial step and a VR tool to vote.
Millions of voters will have only have a 24 hours window to vote as the process has been greatly simplified and user friendly. The results will be instantaneous and real time. The Public Blockchain ledger is accessible for all to see. No one can have the ability to alter or influence the votes as it is encoded and forward building.
Workable? Some fine tuning needed – how to provide enough VR sets for voting? Maybe dumb it down to a gaming screen on a PC or mobile? It is now harder to hack as there are at least 3 independent Factor Authentication (3FA) that combined NFTs with the Metaverse. My presentation will be on Wed. Let’s see how it goes 🙂
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