Why Christians should pay attention to the Metaverse and NFTs
I know, you’re thinking, Stephen, I’ve heard a lot about this lately between Zuckerberg and all the news articles. Why is this important for me as a Christian? It is, just hear me out.
A good primer to the metaverse can be found in TGC’s article How to Prepare for the Metaverse. I found this line insightful:
When Facebook debuted in 2004 and the iPhone released in 2007, we didn’t know what the future held. Fourteen years later, we know. And the church is just now catching up. We can’t catch up a decade after the metaverse reshapes culture. We must prepare disciples now, knowing the metaverse will only exacerbate the current problems created by a (believe it or not) less invasive internet.
They go on to say the metaverse is five to ten years away. However, considering that technology is constantly evolving, and at an ever-increasing rate, I suspect that in just a few years–maybe two or three–people will be working in, being productive in, and spending more time in the metaverse than real life. As Christians, dependent on the ordinary means of grace, we must consider our roles in our quickly-changing world, we need to be thinking about how we can respond to this massive incoming cultural shift.
But what is the metaverse?
In short, the metaverse allows you to live inside the internet just as you live in the real world, whereas until now we have been able only to view the internet. In the same way you are able to leave your physical house, drive in an open world to the store and then enter that store, you will be able to move from metaverse to metaverse. For example, your digital house, the open world you drive in, and the store would each be a different metaverse.
A silly but helpful picture of this comes from the movie Wreck-it-Ralph. The characters are able to move between different games, but they can also congregate outside of those games in an open, digital world. In fact, the metaverse is not just one location; there will be hundreds of thousands of metaverses.
The Multiverse and NFTs
The combination of all of these metaverses is sometimes called the multiverse and the underpinning of what makes this all valuable and worth pursuing is NFTs. NFT is an acronym for non-fungible token. In short, an NFT is proof of ownership that is verifiable by a public ledger of transactions–they make it possible to spot when something is real and when it is a forgery, like a knockoff piece of clothing that only imitates the original. This public ledger, called the blockchain, is the engine of the multiverse, by which all metaverses are built on and connected. As CEO of NFT Tech Mario Nawfall explains, the multiverse:
is a digital representation of the world we live in today. Gaming worlds [involving multiple locations] couldn’t exist without a central organization controlling it. NFT technology allows these worlds to exist without the centralized aspect. Think of earth, each building/company/government/park/etc. has their own rules. The same will be true in the multiverse.
NFTs (digital ownership) make buying and selling possible in metaverses. They eliminate fake transactions. But why would you want to buy and sell in a metaverse? Well, why do you buy and sell in the real world? Perhaps it is to impress friends (with clothes you might wear, an avatar you purchased, the car you drive). Perhaps you want to build a skyscraper and lease out units. Perhaps you simply enjoy a piece of artwork, and you want to see it in your home every day.
Now you might be thinking, this has been done before. You ask, “how is this different from The Sims video game or any other online game?” The answer is NFTs. As Nawfall says, “Gaming worlds couldn’t exist without a central organization controlling it. NFT technology allows these worlds to exist without the centralized aspect.” The character you had in The Sims, with the clothes, the house, the pool, and even the dog, was nothing more than that–just a component of a game. You couldn’t do anything with that character outside of the game, and it existed entirely in that centralized system of the game. Your Sims character had no value beyond The Sims game.
NFT–digital ownership–changes this. Until now, we have never been able to attach proof of ownership to anything online. With NFTs, we can.
It’s helpful to look at NFTs (digital ownership) in three different categories: (1) digital art (Christies), (2) collectibles (Bored Ape Yacht Club), and (3) digital property (The Sandbox Game). This technology combined with the advances of our own computer graphics has enabled a new world that was not possible before because it economizes the digital world. This is a digital world in which you can work and play, a world in which you can own a house but also rent or sell it, a world that is custom-tailored to whatever you want to create or do.
Why does this matter to Christians?
The multiverse, without question, will be the way the upcoming generations will interact with one another. If that sounds like hyperbole, consider that 97% of Gen Z is on social media, and on average they spend a whopping 4.5 hours of their day online even though they have school full-time.
As brands like Adidas, Facebook, and even Budweiser continue to take major stakes in the metaverse, it will evolve to be the primary way business is conducted. For example, owning adidas.com, the domain, is incredibly important for Adidas because that’s the way that consumers connect to the brand through Web 1, the phase of the internet before social media. Well, Adidas is now on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. because it’s important they connect their brand with their users in Web 2 (the advent of social media). Web 3 is here, and it’s going to be important for Adidas to enter this new space, and they have (they have bought at least one NFT from a collection called the Bored Ape Yacht Club, purchased land in The Sandbox [a metaverse game], and just look at their profile on Twitter). As the next generations explore this technology, it will be the way social groups are founded, and how friendships form.
This has major implications for Christians and it would be foolish for us to say it has nothing to do with us. Brands recognize the opportunity for a way to connect with their audience in a new way. Brands know that people will be most committed to their cause when they have a community built around their story. And that gets to the heart of it.
People are drawn to the multiverse space first and foremost because they long for community. NFTs and metaverses are built around community and communities rallying around a story.
This presents an opportunity for Christians to share our story in a whole new context. We, as Christians have the most important story. A story that has the power of life and death. A story that is truly meta in that it involves each and every one of us, regardless of the place on the earth or time in history that we live in. We all need a Savior, and the best story that we can ever bring to the multiverse is that our needs are met in Jesus Christ. Instead of ignoring it or assuming it is irrelevant, or even being afraid of it, let us explore the multiverse to come, and let us seize opportunities to share the greatest story anyone will ever hear.