The Future of The Metaverse

Abstract

The Metaverse, although not a new concept, has had many developments recently. One of the core contributions for this is the current developments around blockchain technology and non-fungible tokens. Although it might be possible to create a metaverse on the blockchain, it would also be possible to create it on traditional technology, namely cloud computing. Regardless of the technology it will be built on, the space is expected to grow rapidly within the next few years, but still does not have any regulations attached to it within the EU. This thesis therefore looked into both technologies and compared them on 7 metrics: energy usage, security, scalability, governance, democratization, costs, and additional features. It was found that cloud computers are much more scalable and cost effective, while blockchain has more benefits when it comes to governance, democratization and additional features. Interviews were conducted with experts on blockchain, cloud computing, and policy advisors/strategist to investigate the most critical parts that must be regulated. The interviewee results showed that data privacy, IP rights, and governance & legal documentation were most important. Regulations and policies were then formulated with the help of the qualitative data obtained from the interviewees. These interviews yielded valuable solutions for the potential regulations, which the EU can use and