Somnia Prepares To Bring Millions of Users into The Metaverse

The metaverse has been a distant dream for decades, but the technology to make it possible is finally starting to come together. 

The brightest minds in the business have enabled massive events where thousands of people can share the same experience, bringing us closer than ever to the metaverse that many of us imagined. Now, the next step is to connect all of the fragmented worlds and platforms into a cohesive, community-owned virtual society.

The Virtual Society Foundation (VSF) launched Somnia with this goal in mind. Somnia is an L1 blockchain and set of omnichain protocols that will connect the metaverse into a unified virtual society that can support experiences filled with millions of users. 

A Blockchain For The Millions

No blockchain that exists today can support millions of transactions with the speed and affordability that is needed to operate a virtual society. The metaverse landscape has been fragmented, making it hard for users and creators to collaborate, and the accrued value goes to the metaverse holders rather than the creators.

Developed by the Virtual Society Foundation, an independent organization initiated by Improbable, Somnia’s Blockchain is evm-based, optimized for the metaverse. In early prototypes it has shown 100,000’s of transactions per second with sub-second finality. 

This is made possible by a unique architecture where the bytecode is optimized to native code, enabling millions of transactions per second on a single core. Innovative compression strategies and a custom data ingestion layer minimize the required bandwidth for transaction data, while specialized cache-friendly Merkle trees reduce storage overhead, making the platform efficient for validators and users. Transactions are also  batched together to make verifying transactions more efficient. These features, combined with a variety of other innovative solutions, will make Somnia far more efficient than traditional blockchains. 

A Set of Omnichain Protocols for a Unified Metaverse

Somnia provides protocols that creators can use to build worlds and enables assets, commerce, and avatars to move effortlessly across different experiences. Somnia is adopting the development and research from industry-leading partners like Improbable who have developed innovative technologies like MSquared.

Somnia’s protocols allow existing NFT collections to be upgraded and rendered as interoperable 3D objects that are compatible with metaverse experiences on the network, enhancing their value. Somnia’s Protocols have the potential to capture a large chunk of the total TVL from the blockchain gaming, metaverse, and NFT sectors, which combined is approaching 100 billion dollars and is expected to grow significantly in the coming years.

With Somnia, users can recompose content and build on the creations of others. For example, metaverse events could use components from previous events, like concert stages, light shows, firework displays and more, making it easier and more affordable to produce events. They can also remix the content, by changing the colors of the light shows and presentation of the fireworks, for example. The original creators of the components that are used can earn royalties through microtransactions, so everyone involved benefits. 

This unified and open style of metaverse that’s created on Somnia will lead to enhanced experiences, additional value for the NFT and gaming sectors, and countless new avenues for innovation.

What’s Next?

Somnia is giving away $100,000 in USD prizes and special community roles during the Road to Testnet.

Somnia’s upcoming protocol Betanet will be integrated into MSquared’s experience engine Origin. 

This will allow events for 10,000’s of participants across music, sport and gaming experiences. Somnia’s Betanet will allow users to create interoperable avatars and establish their identity in the metaverse thanks to a collaboration with Avaturn.

With their new avatar, users will be able to explore massive events and immersive experiences. Improbable and Msquared have produced huge metaverse events like an official virtual ballpark with MLB and Kpop album launch with TWICE. Similar attractions will bring the first users into Somnia, who will then be able to create their own events and experiences for others to enjoy.

Somnia’s launch will kickstart a new creator economy, with a network designed to incentivize builders to share and remix content. It will allow avatars and objects to be sold everywhere, across any blockchain. Value will be shared across all participants in the ecosystem, and everyone will have a voice. This is the start of a real virtual society where a new creator economy can thrive.

Read our Litepaper to learn more, and join the Somnia community to be part of The Metaverse Computer.