The year 2022 drew to a close, and the metaverse has spent a tough year. The year 2021 was put on a pedestal, and when it came to the year 2022, the metaverse track returned to rational construction from the stage of frenzied hype.

The AB Side of the Metaverse

This year, the global economy was in a cold winter under the influence of a combination of politics, epidemics, and other factors, but the metaverse industry achieved growth in all indicators. It’s estimated that in 2022, 704 financing rounds occurred in the global metaverse industry with a total amount of ￥86.867 billion. According to the statistics of the HR market platform, more than 80% of the respondents expressed their willingness to engage in metaverse-related careers. There were still many users interested in the metaverse track, and everyone wanted to enter the market as early as possible to occupy a place in the "new promising industry".

But some of the giants in the industry are also facing a deeply troubled situation. For example, Meta with a high profile has already lost $10 billion in the metaverse in 2022, which resulted in laying off 11,000 employees. Roblox and Unity, are called the "Three Musketeers of the Metaverse" together with Meta, whose share price has dropped 72.93% and 80% respectively in 2022.

The metaverse, full of opportunities and turbulent currents, is a rose born in a thorny bush, which everyone wants but hesitates for fear of being pricked. After several waves of unexpected events, the metaverse was supposed to weaken, but when I reviewed the attempts and explorations of major companies and governments in the metaverse in 2022, I found that the metaverse had become more pervasive, from personal virtual identity to the development of digital economy, social, games, high-tech hardware and technology. Let's go back to the beginning of 2022 and look back to the top 10 events worth remembering in this year's metaverse.

1.Microsoft acquired Blizzard, launching the "the almighty dollar" to lay out the metaverse industry

On 18 January, Microsoft announced that it will acquire American game developer and publisher Activision Blizzard for a total of about $68.7 billion (about more than ￥400 billion), the largest deal Microsoft has ever made. Microsoft will also overtake Nintendo to become the world's third-largest game company, after Sony and Tencent. Activision Blizzard is known for making games with metaverse components, in which players spend hundreds of hours building communities. Microsoft said the acquisition helps strengthen Xbox Game Pass subscription rates while accelerating Microsoft's entry into the metaverse. Microsoft's chairman and CEO Satya Nadella said, "Games will play a key role in the development of the metaverse platform."

But the acquisition process was fraught with resistance. The UK Competition and Markets Authority(CMA) said Microsoft's deal to buy Activision Blizzard could lead to a significant weakening of market competition and tried to call off the acquisition. But Microsoft remains confident that the acquisition of Activision Blizzard will be completed in June 2023. Can Microsoft's plan, sitting on the global gaming thrones of the "big three" be realized? We'll see.

2.Decentraland's first Metaverse Fashion Week, virtual fashion drives the identity expression

From 24 to 27 March, Decentraland, a metaverse platform that sold a piece of virtual land for ￥15.48 million, entered the fashion industry and held the world's first Metaverse Fashion Week. According to the official website of MVFW, it has been the world's largest so far and completely digital fashion week, attracting over 60 luxury fashion brands and digital companies to exhibit and showcase over 500 looks. In the metaverse world, the user can switch any image he wants for personal identity expression. This fashion week showed the world the creativity and influence of virtual fashion and was a developmental milestone in the metaverse fashion field.

In addition to participating in the event, many brands purchased virtual land in Decentraland to permanently reside in the metaverse, launched wearable NFTs, and opened flagship stores, opening up new thoughts for fashion brands to explore the metaverse market. The success of this fashion week was obvious to all, and I have to say, Decentraland, is kind of masterful!

3.Nike changed to sell NFT? Earn $185 million in Web3

Most people think of Nike as a classic brand of running shoes, but they don't know that it has already come into the Web3 virtual market, and earned a large amount of money! According to the statistics of Dune Analytics, Nike earned at least $185 million on Web3 products, comparing Adidas' $11 million and Puma's $1.3 million, it is also the most profitable brand in the area of NFT sales.

On 23 April, RTFKT acquired by Nike officially launched a mystery box named "MNLTH", in which the hidden "RTFKT x Nike Dunk Genesis CryptoKicks" shoes finally appeared in sight. According to the rarity of the shoes' Skin Vial, the rarest "ALIEN" has been sold for up to 150ETH, about $180,000. As the number of transactions of the series of items on OpenSea continues to increase, more and more people were starting to join this NFT project, and people who have purchased this NFT are excited to show their 1OF1 customization on social media platforms.

At present, in the same type of brand virtual market competition, Nike has absolutely been the winner, I believe that Nike will have big action happen in the future, continuing to break new ground in the virtual market.

4.Otherside land sale causes deal war as ETH burns $180 million gas

Yuga Labs, the parent company of the famous NFT project Bored Ape (BAYC), launched a sale of the digital land NFT "Otherdeeds" on 1 May 2022, after the success of the BAYC project. 55,000 Otherdeeds digital land NFTs were available at a price of 305 ApeCoin (APE) each. APE tokens were valued at $19, so buyers were expected to spend over $5,800 per NFT, including the processing fee. Within just a few hours of the sale, ETH Gas fee rose rapidly, even over 8,000 Gwei, and normally, Gas fee was only 30-50 Gwei. Thus, it triggered a nearly three-hour battle for Gas fees. As Otherdeeds digital land NFT was a hot project with high transaction demand, and users hoped to finish the transaction as soon as possible, there was a crazy soar of Gas fee, which also greatly increased the burden on the chain and caused the Ethereum network to crash. Yuga Labs eventually pocketed nearly $300 million, while Ethereum was down for nearly three hours, with about 64,219 ETH being burned as Gas fee, worth $180 million at that time.

Although Ethereum paid the price for this Gas war, it precisely reflected the enthusiasm and positive response of users to Web3 projects, and it’s believed that project proponents would prefer to see such a phenomenon than little known. To offer users a better trading experience, but also to protect the platform, exchange platforms and project proponents are supposed to pull out all the stops to avoid another Gas fee war.

5.Metaverse Standards Forum was announced, whether was able to accelerate Metaverse Era

Since the year 2021 has been called "the first year of Metaverse", the concept has been discussed in both academia and industry, but no unified standard has been set for metaverse yet. The Metaverse Standards Forum (MSF) was announced on 21 June 2022. In the establishment statement, the Metaverse Standards Forum said that the forum's participants include 36 technology giants in the field of the metaverse, such as Meta, Microsoft, Epic, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Sony, etc., covering chip makers, game companies, and veteran standard-setting organizations such as the World Wide Web Consortium. Among them, Huawei and Alibaba DAMO Academy from China were also on the list of founding members.

The Metaverse Standards Forum plans to establish industry standards for metaverse, AR/VR, etc., and emerging digital worlds pushed by these companies have compatibility with each other. Does it mean that major giants and companies will promote mutual communication and cooperation, that differences and obstacles on the way to metaverse construction will be eliminated and that the pace of industry development will increase significantly?

6.Nano Labs, the first stock in the Web3 Metaverse, has successfully gone public in the metaverse

Since the birth of the metaverse concept, various global bigwigs have shown great interest in it. Under the background of metaverse heated abroad, however, Nano Labs, a technology company founded by the Chinese, successfully held the world's first metaverse public listing ceremony.

On 12 July 2022, Nano Labs’ launch of Metaverse became a sort of cause celebre in the crypto. The founder, Jack Kong, brought his avatars, some bored apes, and Web2 partners on board the "Satoshi Nakamoto Starship" to spend a fantasy journey in the world of Metaverse. The launch ceremony was held simultaneously on Decentraland, iPollo, and other Web3 platforms, attracting hundreds of thousands of meta-natives to participate. The event triggered a lively discussion in the related field and attracted widespread global interest in Nano Labs.

It is understood that the company is a distributed chip developer, committed to providing high-bandwidth, high-performance dedicated processor chips and solutions for distributed computing, core networks, artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, video codecs, and other fields based on the metaverse. Founded in 2017, Nano Labs spent five years developing the chip market in multiple countries and regions, and successfully listed on NASDAQ, full of potential. It’s expected that more aspirant teams like Nano Labs to join the construction of the metaverse, so that Web3 fanatics will reach the promised land in the metaverse soon!

7.ETH Merge was a success, grieving over the stop of Ethereum Mining

On 15 September, Ethereum successfully completed "The Merge", which means the mainnet has merged with Beacon Chain. Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, tweeted, "We finalized!" and said they have been preparing for this for six years, which is a big moment for the Ethereum ecosystem. It is said that the transition from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS) on the Ethernet mainnet is called the "merge". It also means the end of the era of large-scale graphics card mining. It is the biggest update in the Ethereum ecosystem, for users no longer need to purchase hardware such as graphics cards and mining machines as before, but only need to pledge ETH in the software layer to participate in Ethereum mining.

For this upgrade, many users have the opposite view: PoS is not necessarily a good choice. As the side of losing benefits, PoW users believe that the Ethereum merge violates the spirit of the blockchain. The dispute between PoS and PoW started here, which is not only a battle of interests, but also a battle of beliefs. What do you think about this?

8.With mass layoffs of 10,000 employees, Meta becomes a money-burning black hole

On 9 November, the largest layoffs in the history of tech giant Meta began, with Meta CEO Zuckerberg confirming the size of the whole layoffs in an open letter, announcing that 11,000 staff members would be laid off, or about 13% of the team. Zuckerberg said that it was the toughest decision Meta has made since its founding, and he wanted to take charge of it.

Since Meta announced staking all of its chips in the metaverse, the company has lost 10 billion dollars for one year, becoming a money-burning black hole. Under pressure, Meta had to reduce the team size and announced that it would raise the price of its latest VR device Quest Pro by 100 dollars.

However, this heavy blow didn’t shake Meta's determination, and after that, it released an article "Why we still believe in the future", saying that although it was in difficult times, Meta refused to be short-sighted. Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth wrote in a blog post that Meta will continue to devote about 20% of its overall costs and expenses to its VR division, Reality Labs in 2023, which is an integral part of their metaverse plan. Although Meta's achievements in the metaverse have been less than satisfactory over the past year, and even created a perfect storm of skepticism about the investments they’re making, the emergence of new things always requires such a group of people with faith to persevere and build, so that there will be the possibility of progress and development. Meta has paid for its decision in 2022, and bless Meta’s dream come true in the new year!

9.The Hong Kong government issued a declaration to build HK Web3 Hub

On 31 October, Hong Kong released the "Policy Statement on Development of Virtual Assets in Hong Kong", stating that it has an open and inclusive attitude towards global innovators, and will demonstrate Hong Kong's vision of developing into an international virtual asset center to the global industry, as well as its commitment and determination to explore financial innovation together with the global asset industry. This action is full of strong meaning of "declaration of war", which shows Hong Kong will focus on promoting the development of NFT, Web3, and metaverse markets and vow to compete for the global crypto financial center and virtual asset center, which undoubtedly gives a fillip to Web3 entrepreneurs.

Previously, Hong Kong had maintained its leading financial position in the world, but due to the uncertainty of related policies, Web3 entrepreneurs could only relocate their companies to more friendly places like Singapore. After the release of the Hong Kong Declaration, it is good news for Hong Kong, entrepreneurs, and Web3's future development prospects. It is believed that a large number of Web3 entrepreneurs will choose to migrate to Hong Kong, opening up the "Crypto Era" for Hong Kong.

10.Achieving the real-time rendering for over 10,000 people on the same screen, iPollo rendering public chain is kind of awesome

Metaverse development is still in its early stage, and most of the metaverse platforms are still young and far from the described "perfect scene". For example, Roblox's platform content presents in pixel style; Horizon Workroom looks grainy, and even some platforms have to join a queue for entering, which is not the way of "metaverse". But on 21 December, a metaverse public chain named iPollo drew worldwide attention! As it completed the test of the ultra-clear metaverse scene of 15,000 people continuously online for 2 hours on the same screen, iPollo redefined the presentation of the metaverse!

It is understood that iPollo is the world's first metaverse public chain that achieves real-time rendering for over 10,000 people on the same screen, which is an infrastructure-level open blockchain specifically built for the metaverse and decentralized digital world, providing the necessary technical preparation and underlying development platform for metaverse developers, and also pioneering SRT (Standard Rendering Task), Meta Computing, MetaFi, and other metaverse concepts to bring users a better immersive experience. It is worth mentioning that iPollo will host a metaverse New Year fireworks show, which is expected to reach one million digital people to participate, which will be another big explosion in the meta world! It’s unbelievable that the "new" metaverse public chain, born only one year ago, can bring so many surprises. What a rising star with a promising future!

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The above lists the representative top 10 events of the metaverse in 2022. Although the epidemic was raging and the economy was down in the real world, metaverse events were happening every moment in the past year. The year 2022 is destined to be a year worthy of being recorded in the history of the metaverse.