The metaverse retail gold rush is on. Each day, a new brand enters the metaverse, claiming to provide fully immersive shopping experiences and unimaginable wealth. Picture this—a future where you can digitally “try on” Gucci apparel from the comfort of your home. As well as exploring a digital Walmart with your smartphone, you can jump into Walmart using a VR headset! The market predictions are crazy – USD 1.5 TRILLION by 2034? Hold on a second. Beneath the shiny surface of this digital frontier lurks a harsh reality: metaverse retail, as it currently exists, is fundamentally flawed. It's a house built on sand, and without a serious foundation shift, it's destined to crumble.
Metaverse's Walls: No Interoperability
Imagine this – you’re out shopping around at different stores, but your credit card only works at one store. On the one hand, your loyalty points don’t work anywhere else, and you need to create a new profile in every store you go to. That's metaverse retail today. The prohibitive cost of entry due to lack of interoperability between platforms such as Decentraland, The Sandbox and even Roblox is a huge barrier. If you purchase the coolest digital shirt in one metaverse, it’s worthless in another. It’s similar to owning a VHS tape in a Blu-Ray environment. This fragmentation leads to a confusing, disconnected, and ineffectual experience for consumers. Who would like to create a digital closet that exists only in one metaverse? As of now, the promise of a seamless, interconnected metaverse shopping experience remains an empty one.
Blockchain is an abundant source for building standardized, interoperable digital assets. Picture this—NFTs that would provide proof of ownership for your clothing, accessories, or even your avatar. These NFTs could then be utilized anywhere—across any metaverse or digital platform that adopted the standard—allowing them to actually be interoperable in the spirit of the word. Consider it your global passport for your digital self and belongings. Problem solved.
Central Control: A Digital Dictatorship
As it stands today, the biggest metaverse platforms are digital dictatorships. Meta, Microsoft, Alibaba – they set the rules, they own the data, and they own the economics. Your virtual shopfront, your online assets, hell even your whole identity are all at their mercy. What if, for whatever reason, they choose to censor your shop because their corporate values don’t match up with your values? What do you do if they decide to alter their algorithms and your digital storefront then stops showing up in the search results? This level of centralized control makes for a dangerous and unfair marketplace for businesses and consumers. Facebook organic fiasco Remember when Facebook changed their algorithm and wiped out business’ organic reach? Metaverse platforms hold that same power.
Blockchain offers a path to decentralized governance. Envision a decentralized metaverse where it’s the members of the community, rather than one private, for-profit company setting all the policies and guidelines. DAOs, or Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, are another way to empower users of the metaverse. They empower the public to weigh in on how we maintain and evolve the talent ecosystem. This provides neutral criteria, transparency, and public accountability and avoids concentrating too much power in any one organization. Decentralization means freedom and resilience.
Insecurity: A Hacker's Paradise
The metaverse is a honeypot for hackers. Digital assets, digital identity, and digital cash — the digital world is a treasure chest. In short, they’re a goldmine just waiting to be mined! The truth is that the measures taken to protect users’ security on many metaverse platforms are woefully lacking. Privately, we’ve heard a long roll of NFT scams, hacks and frauds. Consider the ramifications when the first huge metaverse retail platform is hacked, and millions of users forfeit their digital assets. Are you ready to play roulette with your money on a platform that doesn’t even promise the safety of your funds?
Blockchain, with its trust by design approach, provides a far superior base for ensuring this security. Encrypted keys, distributed ledgers, and programmable contracts can help protect digital assets and transactions. Reducing fraud and identity theft, blockchain-based systems of identity management are key in eliminating the possibility of fraud and identity theft. Mark my words, no system is unhackable and no system is 100 percent secure. Blockchain offers a significantly greater degree of security than the current, centralized systems. It’s the difference between a bank vault and a cardboard box.
Scalability: Can It Handle the Crowd?
The metaverse retail market is predicted to skyrocket by more than $900 billion in the next 10 years. Is the existing infrastructure up to the task? In fact, most metaverse platforms are facing scalability challenges even now. Lag, glitches and 5-minute transaction times are not unusual. Imagine this—you’re all set for a virtual Black Friday sale. Out of nowhere, the software starts freezing every 5 minutes, cutting your shopping spree short! Who's going to stick around for that?
Blockchain, and in particular the technology’s infrastructure through Layer-2 scaling solutions such as sidechains and rollups, can help mitigate these scalability hurdles. With more efficient and user-friendly technologies for faster and cheaper transactions, the metaverse is set to become a more powerful engine of value creation. Just imagine it as building new highways whenever the old ones start to bottleneck.
No Ownership: You Only Rent It
This is maybe the most ironic, and most dangerous, flaw of all. You won’t truly own your digital assets. In most metaverse platforms, you’ll never really own your digital assets. You're essentially renting them from the platform. They are wholly owned by Google and can be removed from you at any time, for any reason. What happens if the platform goes bankrupt? What if they suddenly choose to ban you—as they are able to—for breaking their vague terms of service? Your digital possessions disappear into the ether. It is this lack of genuine ownership that gets to the heart of metaverse retail’s flawed premise.
Blockchain-based NFTs provide verifiable ownership and control. When you purchase an NFT, you purchase it outright. Your information is kept on a secure, decentralized blockchain. No one can revoke it except you when you decide to transfer ownership. Unlocking knowledge and skills builds confidence and a sense of agency, motivating users to invest in the metaverse ecosystem. It’s the difference between owning the title to your home, as opposed to merely having a rental agreement.
The metaverse retail revolution may be closer than you think, but it requires good infrastructure first. The future Blockchain technology provides the path to developing a more transparent, safe, and inclusive metaverse infrastructure. Developers, businesses, elected officials and government policymakers – the future is here, get on blockchain. Let’s create a metaverse where its users really own their digital lives. Otherwise, we’re just creating another walled garden of bosom buddies, which will eventually dry up and blow away. The future of metaverse retail rests on it.
