Technological innovation at the intersection of decentralized public ledgers like Blockchain, and virtual reality systems, has over the last decade increasingly emerged as a new frontier of unexplored potential. While still in its infancy, applications derived from these technologies are already dramatically impact the gaming, teaching, and corporate world, as this article will detail.
A brief overview of the technology under examination here becomes relevant. Simply put, Blockchain refers to a distributed, decentralized, and immutable data ledger upon which a variety of applications can be built – chief among them, cryptocurrencies. 1 For the purposes of this paper, virtual reality systems can be defined as the hardware (goggles and headsets) and software that in tandem simulate three-dimensional environments.2 Often, the wearer can engage with their virtual environment using remote controls or wearable technology.
As the societal applications for Blockchain protocols and virtual reality systems have developed over the last decade, so too has increasing value been discovered at the intersection of these two innovations; that is, the uses of Blockchain ledgers as a value-exchange mechanism has complimented the development of virtual reality in significant ways. Chief among the pioneers of this movement, Project Decentraland seeks to build an entire virtual world that leverages cryptocurrency (predicated on Blockchain technology) as its primary method of value exchange. Through the power of virtual reality, users enter a digital “world” in which they can freely interact with other participants within that space and transact for virtual real estate or different services (to enter a VR game, for example) using an Ethereum-based mode of exchange called MANA. 3 In effect, participants in Decentraland become quasi-entrepreneurs within an artificial reality – buying “land” and developing environments and applications on that land that other users can then transact for. Thus, users can take advantage of the benefits conferred by cryptocurrency (faster transaction times, transparency of payment, etc.) when creating games or interacting with other players in the market.
In the realm of VR Development, crowdsourcing efforts like Render Token have greatly enhanced both the speed of VR rendering along with the aesthetic quality of those newly built environments. Typically, creating virtual reality content demands a significant amount of computing power and storage – often surpassing what non-commercial developers would have access too. Render Token solves this problem by leveraging Blockchain and ledger-based storage protocols to access to shared computing power and storage space across its platform.4 Developers can utilize blockchain-based payment and ledgers to access multiple CPU’s and storage spaces, exponentially decreasing the time-to-render VR games and applications. The anonymity and security afforded by blockchain payment technology makes such platforms widely appealing to the VR development community.
Harnessing innovative applications like Render Token has been particularly important in empowering everyday VR users to become developers themselves. Those users who see utility in VR as a training and educational tool, for example, are now no longer precluded from developing their own applications due to insufficient computing power. A surgeon in Canada who wishes to teach lifesaving procedures to doctors in developing countries can now develop and render an entire VR training module from the comfort of their own home. Teachers can develop immersive VR experiences to teach students curriculum ranging from history to geography using nothing more than their own laptops. By empowering VR users with the technological means to crowd share computing power and develop their own applications, knowledge from nearly every domain of study can be disseminated in new and creative ways.
The boundaries of blockchain’s uses within virtual reality are far from limited to internal transactions or rendering – for the next generation of VR headsets, blockchain protocols embedded into the hardware of VR goggles themselves may well be commonplace. Front and center in this technological union, virtual reality headset manufacturer Ceek utilizes Ethereum-based tokens to pay for and engage with livestreamed entertainment and sporting content. Ceek headsets stream concerts, NBA basketball games, and more and uses Blockchain-based token system to encourage viewers to engage with that content. The smart-contract technology underpinning that token issuance is meant to “allow token holders ability for flexible, tokenized ‘in-world’ interactions, rewards, voting, contests, virtual goods and more ‘in-world’ transactions utilizing CEEK Tokens.” 5 This level of virtual peer-to-peer engagement, built seamlessly into VR livestreams, has never been seen before and has significant (and largely untapped) implications in the gaming & entertainment, sports betting, and corporate advertising domains. The combination of token issuance in a virtual reality setting opens up new ways for viewers to engage with the content they watch, and the community that watches with them; and while this technology is still in its infancy, it holds much unexplored potential in shaping the entertainment industry.
Blockchain’s unique ability to create and assign ownership of non-fungible assets creates significant opportunity for retail businesses to fundamentally rediscover the way they think about customer interaction.6 Enter Mark Space, a blockchain-inspired VR program that allows businesses to develop “shops” in virtual reality that a customer could interact with. The development of such artificial “real estate” is secured by the Blockchain ledger on which it is written. And, while the technology is still evolving and requires some time to scale, customers of traditional brick and mortar shops could conceivably do little more than put on a pair of VR goggles to examine the latest fashion trends, mobile phones or TV’s. This application has huge implications into the way that companies worldwide think about retailing products.
Blockchain ledgers and virtual reality systems have already greatly impacted the technological landscape of the 21st century, influencing how we interact with the world around us in every domain – from how we play games, to how we transact value in a fast-paced, ever-evolving marketplace. The intersection of these two technologies has already produced significant breakthroughs – in rendering VR environments, interacting with livestreams, and gaming – and yet remains a largely unexplored frontier with limitless possibilities.
Bibliography
Strategy in the Age of Decentralization 