It seems the virtual world High Fidelity is hosting interesting events, like this salon about blockchain with Philip Rosedale (High Fideltiy, founding father of Second Life) and  Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam. I think it’s a good idea to organize these salons, they remind me of the Metanomics series in Second Life – years ago – where we discussed economics, anthropology and all things virtual worlds.
The look and feel of the avatars does not appeal to everyone, but then again this is a very young virtual world, still being born, using fancy stuff such as virtual reality headsets, hand- and face-trackers.
The discussion itself is pretty fascinating as it touches the philosophical – and increasingly also practical – question of what is “real”. Let’s not forget that Rosedale also is very knowledgeable about virtual currencies since the whole Second Life economy works in Linden dollars which are exchangeable in American dollars. One could easily imagine that virtual worlds use virtual currencies such as bitcoin or ethereum or even other currencies specifically created for those worlds and communities.
Those worlds could run their own monetary policy and economy – but the same could be done by communities in the physical world. The blockchain technology could also be used to identify each and very object in a virtual world, but also in the physical world. The blockchain technology enables a shared reality through a distributed ledger which stores transactions in such a way that the records can not be tampered with. This could be of utmost importance for managing identities, not only of objects, but also of people.
Having a central company such as Facebook controlling the databases with identities, posts and pictures is maybe not too terrible as people use Facebook but do not actually live in it, while the ambition of virtual worlds creators such as Rosedale is that people work, study and ultimately pass a substantial part of their lives in those environments – so the issue of who controls the databases becomes of existential importance. Hence the importance of distributed, tamper-proof solutions.
More about this subject:
VR is a Killer App for Blockchains by Ehrsam
Metaverse Identity on the Blockchain by Rosedale
Blockphase To Test Its Ethereum-based Virtual Reality Content Distribution Platform
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