Anitya holds out the promise of a Metaverse 2.0 - where community is primary, and the digital maps to the natural
Anitya’s metaverse for Goethe-institut
We are as interested in the culture of possibility that Web3 swims in, as we are any of its characteristic software features (blockchains, cryptocurrencies, DAOs (decentralised autonomous organisations), NFT (non-fungible tokens) and the rest).
The two mesh together, ideally. One of our co-initators, Pat Kane, has recently written:
…A certain manner and scale of ambition is involved in the crypto and Web 3.0 furore. An ambition that such core technologies and institutions of our lives should be shaped by more than the usual accredited and reinforced elites.
Let me refresh my recently-expressed scepticism (as a long-time leftist) about the usefulness of “socialist”-sounding solutions to such problems. I wonder whether seeing the world as a zone of playing and games-making is actually the more radical vocabulary here. A zone where new groups have the opportunity to invent and experiment with the underlying rule-sets, or “game mechanics”, of our societal reality.
More here. As well as the scares about fleeting currencies and speculative scams, there is a lot of hope pinning on Web3 as turbo-charging communities, with strong software tools that allow them to decide what is a valuable asset for people. See this presentation below from Nathan Schneider on “Policy Proposals for Non Dystopian Crypto Protocols”:
We seem to have found the kind of thoughtful constructer of Web3 in the works of Newkinco, a digital consultancy who have launched what they call a “social, art, and gaming toolkit to create, gamify and tokenize your own metaverse”, named Anitya. More below:
At the core of Anitya’s philosophy are community and self expression. Your world, your rules.
Anitya assists you as a brand or influencer in transitioning your existing Web2 communities into the Web3 world.
Launch your own metaverse and expand your current audience with immersive environments.
Teleport your assets between worlds. Full interoperability to navigate the metaverse.
Govern by voting & Monetize by staking, renting, or leasing.
Collaborate with others & incentivize social value.
Build with our basic blocks, servers, chains, and all your privacy needs.
…We identified the need for a platform that reflects the demand for self-expression and community engagement in the new digital spaces, as well as surpasses the only game-oriented dynamics. Hence, inspired by the philosophical concept of impermanence, a constant state of transformation, Anitya was born.
There is a helpful and interesting White (or “Not-So-Lite”) Paper produced by Anitya. New to us is their distinction between Metaverse 1.0 and 2.0:
There is presently a lack of seamless interoperability for a user’s digital assets between different platforms and blockchains.
We call this the Metaverse 1.0 - the mainly disconnected collection of closed virtual worlds made from Web2 and early standards in blockchain and smart-contract technology.
…NFT 1.0 made possible the creation and connection of virtual spaces, avatars and objects that have verifiable uniqueness, scarcity and permanence.
These are immutably stored on the blockchain and are no longer tied to any one place, digital or analog. Immutable means that they will remain there in perpetuity, unchanged.
Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) technologies have enabled these digital items to not only be experienced in 3D but to co-exist in the physical world.
Unfortunately, the virtual worlds in the Metaverse 1.0 are predominantly intraconnected and therefore lack interoperability.
Digital assets cannot pass through or be utilized between more than one virtual world freely or easily.
The limited use-cases for these first-generation NFTs made them inadequate as a rich and accurate representation of our digital identities.
User experiences accessing the metaverse were both cumbersome and complicated.
The metaverse as described by Neal Stephenson in “Snow Crash” (1992) was until now impossible to fully realize. Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has a plan for the metaverse that is too eerily close to Stephenson’s dystopia.
Anitya is the panacea to these concepts of the metaverse.
The Metaverse 2.0 and NFT 2.0
Our products are being built with cutting-edge levels of interoperability and composability at their core, not as an afterthought.
Anitya envisions the Metaverse 2.0 as a universe of interconnected and interoperable digital spaces, assets and entities brought to life by the latest advancements in composable NFT technology we refer to as NFT 2.0
These technologies from pioneering projects such as RMRK and DRepublic enable NFTs to be used as pieces of Lego, making it possible for them to be disassembled, reassembled and combinable with one another.
These NFTs will also have an unlimited number of *dynamic* attributes. This modular system of NFT building blocks opens up new functionalities, limited only by our imagination.
Digital worlds, avatars, assets and their attributes are now programmable, to be able to change, evolve and/or devolve with the passage of time.
NFT 2.0 makes possible the existence of a new class of digital entities that have verifiable authenticity and impermanence.
For the first time, NFTs can live (and die).
They can not only respond to but also influence other objects in both the physical and digital realm.
For example, a flower in the metaverse can be programmed to bloom based on whether the sun is actually shining in the physical world. A flower can also wilt and perish if it is not receiving enough water, either from its virtual environment or from a lack of intervention from its human carer much like a Tamagotchi. This opens up limitless possibilities for a creator to design and program these interactions between an NFT and its digital and physical environment.
NFTs can also be trained using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. An avatar or object will not only improve its characteristics and abilities with every challenge accomplished, milestone reached, or data-set it is given, but will also self-determine new strategies to maximize its potential and success in the world it is a part of.
These innovations have brought the “meta” to NFTs and finally enabled a new type of metaverse.
The Metaverse 2.0 enables a higher level of shared experiences, immersion, user interaction, social connection and collaboration.
This new metaverse paradigm has unexplored dimensions of social networking and experience that mirrors and enhances the physical world.
Anitya is born out of these new and emerging possibilities and facilitates the exploration and discovery of new forms of connected experiences.
More here. We’re always aware that companies like Anitya/Newkinco are to some degree involved in a kind of land-grab of code, hoping to establish themselves as the standard protocol by which communities operate in these metaverse realms.
That granted, it’s fascinating to watch this techno-culture develop, struggling to reconcile their human idealism about creativity and connection with the battle for market viability. (We have enough examples of blockchain and Web3 in these pages who think in a “commoning” and pro-social way.)