philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

8 Circuit Studios will use blockchain to build the Metaverse

8 Circuit Studios hopes to use blockchain, cryptocurrency, and other collaboration tools to build the Metaverse, the digital universe envisioned in novels by William Gibson and Neal Stephenson and featured in movies Ready Player One, TRON, and The Matrix.

That’s a very ambitious mission. But 8 Circuit Studios  (named after a theory about the human nervous system) in Seattle has a lot of veterans from games, and it hopes to develop a new ecosystem where all participants — gamers, developers and publishers — could collaborate and work together to bring about the Metaverse sooner than we might think is possible. The company is developing two games that will show off the tech in the coming months.

8 Circuit Studios wants to build the foundation for eliminating the barriers between game worlds, while also creating a platform to make entry easy for both gamers and developers. Players will experience the opportunity to truly own their stuff, while game developers and publishers will find new and profitable methods to develop even more highly immersive games.

“It may feel like a long road to get to cross-platform avatars, but it’s shorter than you might think,” Mayo said.

Mayo believes that you can leverage the power of blockchains — which are immutable ledgers that are transparent and secure — and cryptocurrency, game developers will be able to create the first step toward a functional Metaverse. The blockchains can provide truth telling and enforcement for digital objects — an idea shared by the likes of Philip Rosedale, who is incorporating blockchain into his High Fidelity open-source virtual reality platform.

Mayo said the first step is to make blockchains easy to use. The second is to make them fun, and the third is to show people how to actually own their digital stuff in a completely new way.

With blockchains, players will never have to ask permission from a central authority to give, trade, or sell their digital assets. 8 Circuit Studios will use the Ethereum cryptocurrency to create, attribute and safeguard digital assets — based on Smart Game Objects — that you can own and store, along with your cryptocurrency, in a virtual wallet.

See the full story here: https://venturebeat.com/2018/04/18/8-circuit-studios-will-use-blockchain-to-build-the-metaverse/