By Joshua Tobkin, CEO and co-founder SupraOracles
The metaverse will create customized, tailored experiences bridging the gaps between our digital and physical environments. In order to maximize those experiences and create truly innovative hybrid environments, blockchain-based metaverses, which are traditionally closed loop systems, may require Oracles to deliver on the promise of user owned meta-environment.
Oracles retrieve and verify external data for blockchains and smart contracts through methods such as Websockets, APIs or market data feeds. Oracles are the middleware connecting the real world to blockchains and blockchains to each other.
Bridging the gap
Oracles act as a bridge that can digest and securely transport external information into a format that blockchains are able to understand in order for smart contracts to trustlessly execute upon specific conditions being met. This allows for oracles to provide specific functionality to enhance the metaverse such as decentralized data feeds, off-chain computation, and powering cross-chain connectivity.
Creating an open source, decentralized metaverse economy will require high-throughput decentralized data feeds as well as cross-chain and cross-game communication. The user-owned metaverse cannot be unlocked without a true economy which requires a variety of financial tools such as lending and borrowing.
This will require decentralized finance protocols, price feeds, and Web2 and Web3 communication pathways to fulfill this vision. Similarly, know your customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) practices have increased amongst a variety of Web2 projects that are adding a Web3 component.
Towards mainstream adoption
In order to achieve mainstream adoption, many metaverse projects and games may require some sort of KYC, which decentralized oracles can play a seminal role in order to build out real economies in the metaverse.
Data feeds for in-game assets, token prices, verifiable randomness, weather data, sports data, and more are all pieces that will make a user-owned metaverse experiences that much more meaningful and thus valuable.
Off-chain computation is a massive opportunity for oracles to help bridge the gaps in metaverse applications that will create more innovative experiences. Blockchains are notorious for an inability to offer random number generation (RNG) functions. Being closed loop systems, blockchains very rarely offer verifiable randomness natively.
Lotteries, loot boxes and more
Oracles can provide massive value-add in the ability to offer verifiable randomness to unlock tools for decentralized applications such as lotteries, loot boxes, randomized NFT projects, play-to-earn games, raffles and more. The ability to offer these services in a truly autonomous, trustless, decentralized process will help create more robust and fair metaverse experiences.
Cross-chain connectivity is one of the holy grails of the Web3 economy. Many different metaverse applications are being developed with different characteristics that have different requirements. As a result, many of these different applications are being built on a variety of different blockchain platforms. Oracles can unlock the multi-chain thesis and allow users to travel, safely, between different metaverse applications on different computational fabrics creating a new, open, digital world that is easily navigable.
Combining off-chain data with on-chain experiences is the key to unlocking the metaverse thesis that is powered by decentralized smart contracts. Creating truly unique, differentiated experiences in the metaverse will require decentralized financial primitives that compose with a series of smart contracts that can be orders of magnitude more expressive with the aid of secure and fast Oracles.
Metaverse plus
The non-corporate owned metaverse is no longer an unattainable vision. With the aid of blockchain and Web3 protocols, key infrastructure pieces are emerging that will help create the next generation of truly immersive, digitally native experiences that are imbued with meaning and value. It is this author’s hope that these technologies help bring forth a more fair world in which everyone feels more closely connected.
Author bio
Joshua Tobkin is the CEO and co-founder of SupraOracles, a blockchain organization striving to bridge the gap between traditional capital markets and the Web3.0 ecosystem. He is the architect of the Supra BFT Consensus Algorithm, a blockchain designer & developer, and a lateral thinker. Previously to SupraOracles, Josh was building SaaS companies for over 10 years and now looks to use his experience to empower the developer community with a novel oracle toolset so that they may conveniently create, deploy, and manage data applications with superior performance, robustness, and agility.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.