A Hitchhiker’s Manifesto to Building Immutable Miniverses
10/1/2023
Part I: Web3 and the Metaverse Need New Directions
On the verge of the 15th anniversary of the Bitcoin network, we the hitchhikers in the Metaverse have been facing a treacherous industry landscape that is shifting under our feet as we continue building its future.
As market regulators continue to root out cheaters whose unscrupulous actions have taken advantages of the general public, the possibility of over-correction has clearly dulled the momentum of the sector. The masses are legitimately questioning whether the final form of Web3 and the Metaverse can benefit everyone equitably and can be achieved through a decentralized approach.
At the center of this discussion is the use of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to digitize a person’s intellectual or real properties immutably. In the eyes of consumers, the utility and advantages of many OG NFT projects are poorly defined and difficult to understand. Some NFT projects addressed this problem by tying their NFTs with established company products such as a happy meal or a fashion product.
But for those decentralized projects that lack conventional markets or product relationships, (re)inventing new utility after the fact could bring the wrath of market regulators to label these NFTs as securities. It seems decentralized NFT projects are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Part II: Immutable Miniverse Format — A New Breed of Decentralized Metaverse on Blockchain
We the hitchhikers, to build a flourishing Web3 community, call for a brand-new approach to integrate immutable NFTs with the decentralized metaverse. In traditional NFT projects, whether a non-fungible token has digitized a pet animal, a parcel of land, or a piece of game equipment, the utility of the token is still subject to arbitrary interpretation post-minting. Without a (centralized) entity to instantiate such interpretation, its utility would have been meaningless to the masses.
We will tackle these challenges and call for the adoption of a new form of NFTs called the Immutable Miniverse Format (IMF), which includes at least the following features:
- Each NFT includes a piece of immutable code embedded as part of the token;
- The immutable code together with traditional NFT artwork or other digitized information is the only explicit utility of the token defined at its creation;
- The immutable code embedding in the NFT is compatible with and will survive the distribution of the NFT on most social media operating on Web1 and Web2 levels;
- Anyone can realize the utility of the NFT by merely executing the immutable code, that is, the utility of the NFT does not depend on any identifiable third party;
- Once the NFT is minted on-chain following the IMF standards, no further effort is needed by any third party to interpret, maintain, or improve the utility of the NFT.
Part III: Where Can We Go from Here?
We the hitchhikers shall follow the preaching of the open source and blockchain communities that “code is law.” Hence, a digital token whose utility is not defined by an immutable code may be deemed “lawless.”
Looking back from the future, a code created by humans this year, in 2023, may have surpassed the Turing Test in many areas when compared with human intelligence. The future of NFTs may very well be to codify the intelligence itself whether it is generated by humans or by machine. If we believe intelligence shouldn’t be dictated by any one ruler or one government, then a thriving future of decentralized human society will become the reality.
See our first IMF project to create 1000 Immutable Miniverses on Gourmet Cuisines at: https://www.hitch1999.com/
