Closed world

The metaverse at this stage is still in the category of Web 2.0, and users still create or participate in virtual experiences in a closed ecology. If these worlds are all game-like creations, they will pay more attention to whether they are fun and interesting, rather than the digital economy that only exists in the decentralized world. A few good examples of web 2.0-based metaverses centered around games are Minecraft, Fortnite, and Roblox .

Today's metaverse is essentially a series of closed worlds or "walled gardens" in which content, business practices and consumer experiences can only exist within specific virtual environments and cannot be taken out of these virtual worlds .

For example, a player purchases a digital item in the game, but he cannot bring this digital item to other virtual environments. Likewise, the player cannot seamlessly enter other virtual environments from the game , just like you cannot seamlessly switch between Netflix and YouTube with the same account and the same user interface. In this sense, a true metaverse, an intertwined virtual world in which content, conversation and commerce can flow seamlessly and universally, is not yet fully realized, although it seems close at hand .

Most of the "closed" worlds were created in Web 2.0 and started to adopt some features of web 3.0 to upgrade their platforms. Although not quite web 3.0 yet, they are still marked as part of the metaverse because they already share some of the characteristics of the metaverse. How far are we from a truly decentralized and open Metaverse ? Much closer than most people think.