BeInCrypto spoke to Marvin Tong, the CEO of Phala, at the BlockDown conference in Croatia. Phala is one of Polkadot’s sidechains and is developing decentralized cloud computing technology for the new Web 3.
As Web 3 and the metaverse evolve, the question arises as to what role DeFi will play in this. But what really is a metaverse? For Marvin Tong, one thing is clear: The metaverse and DeFi are inextricably linked. In his opinion, most people have a wrong idea of what the metaverse actually is. Metaversen is essentially about digital property rights. He explained to us why.
“The first point is who created the content. If the games or the architecture, the 3D models are created by the game studios or the platform owners, it is not a metaverse. In the Metaverse, all the content should be created by the players, by the people. Even if the developers can be players in the Metaverse, do the players really develop the game?”
“The second principle is: who controls the service? It’s about who controls the rules in this metaverse. If it is controlled by the DAO, it is a metaverse, but if not, then not…“
“The third principle is: can the service be turned off? This is quite tricky, for example, players could build roadblocks or something else. Every content in the world is built by gamers and all this is quite dynamic. However, the services can be shut down because they belong to a company, and if the company goes bankrupt, then the services are gone, right?”
“So the fourth and final principle is: Is it 100% open source? Unfortunately, I think that maybe only decentralized systems are 100% open source. However, metaversen is not, because in the gaming industry the competition is quite fierce. So game developers don’t really like open source and they have to put these frameworks above the others. Otherwise, they are afraid of companies like Tencent or Chinese developers who simply copy-paste code. That’s why they don’t like open source. But without open source code, I can not understand what the services do with the data and whether the rules of the game can be changed or not.”
Metaverse: A picture of BeInCrypto.com
“And if you want to test whether and how the four principles work, then just apply the four principles to DeFi and Exchanges. Let’s go over it again. The first is who develops, who controls the money, right? The Metaverse is about who creates the content and DeFi is about who owns the money. So DeFi is about my address, my priority key, the exchanges are about finances, the control of money, right? So, who controls the content?”
“The second point is who controls the service. With DeFi, it’s the DAO, right? Uniswap has a Garner’s token, Sushi has a Garner’s token. Each DeFi protocol has Garner’s tokens with snapshots to make decisions. So it’s actually the DAO that controls the services and exchanges that control the service, right? And can the service be turned off? No and yes. However, more decentralized systems can be 100% open source.”
“So if you make a comparison with DeFi, then the principle is clear. So the next question is: Why should we have a Web 3 Metaverse? Is it necessary? Isn’t it just good that we have a VR experience world where people can create content? I think it’s good, but it’s not good enough to live in.”
