Community Ownership Is The Key To A Utopian Metaverse

It is widely known that “The Metaverse” is one of many modern technological concepts that were first imagined in science fiction books and movies, but one thing that is talked about much less often is that all of these early depictions of the metaverse were quite dark and dystopian. 

In the most popular depictions of the metaverse, from Snow Crash to Ready Player One, virtual worlds were ruled by authoritarian corporations that extracted value from the masses who plugged in as an escape from their lives of struggle and poverty. 

As with many works of fiction, these depictions say much more about our world today than they do about our future, but they do give us some great examples of situations that we want to avoid in the creation of a modern metaverse. Instead of a dystopian metaverse that is heavily centralized and controlled, we can build a utopian virtual society that is owned and governed by its users, and where there are abundant opportunities for people to make their lives in the real world better. 

The Utopian Metaverse Vision

For a metaverse ecosystem to be truly beneficial for the world, it needs to be decentralized and governed by a community of users that have some kind of stake in the system. The future of corporate control that was depicted in science fiction is not unrealistic considering how economies have grown historically, so it’s important to build the metaverse in a way where decentralization and community ownership is a core component of the system.

A utopian metaverse would be mostly created by its users. Independent teams would help build the infrastructure, but the worlds and experiences would be mostly user generated, and unlike the user generated content that we see today on social media, it should be extremely easy for users to monetize their work. In fact, this is how most value should be exchanged in the metaverse, between the users and creators.

The Somnia Solution

Somnia was founded with this vision of a utopian metaverse in mind, and our blockchain and omni-chain protocols are being designed to enable this future. With Somnia, users will be able to generate high quality content and experiences that can potentially earn them an income. Users can earn directly through experiences that they created, but even more value will come from the micropayments that they receive when their content is reused and repurposed by others.

Users will also have a direct voice in how the network operates, and we are exploring innovative new ways to ensure that every voice matters, including quadratic voting and other fairness mechanisms. Somnia is building in a very intentional way to empower creators and set the foundation for a community-owned economy. 

Read our lightpaper to learn more about Somnia and what we’re building!