This is derivative content from Ming Guo’s “DAC Economy: The Metis Way” white paper discussing about the possibility of DACmos.
I. The Simulation Hypothesis
What is reality?
Droplets of rain pinging onto the sidewalk, the saltiness emitting from the beach, the aroma of steaming hot coffee, the warm cascading rays of sunlight — all of these stimulating senses blend into a single mixture forming life as we see it today.
But what about immersive dreams, psychedelic-induced experiences, and alternative realities enabled by VR? What can these instances be classified as? Most crucially, how can we distinguish what’s real from what’s not?
Increasing technological advances especially in the areas of AI, virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR) and robotics, leading to a broader ability to mimic human behavior and intelligence opens up the idea of simulated reality. A simulated reality implies the possibility that our reality is simulated to the extent where it is indistinguishable from “true” reality.
At the moment, we are able to distinguish between actual reality and artificial falsity. With the example of virtual reality, we have the capability of immediately snapping back to the present moment even with the “immersiveness” of realistic images and sensations within the program. Haptic technologies that give the experience of touch as well as AI that can assist in numerous applications — facial recognition, voice-enabled navigation, content analysis, speech processing — to name a few, only add to the degree of immersiveness in our present virtual worlds.
Soon the lines between “digital” and “real” will blur and we may eventually be able to accurately simulate homes, cities, the world, and the universe to the degree where they mirror what we currently see. But how do we know that we’re not in a simulation right now? If we ever reach this point, it will be recurring- a simulation within a simulation.
Technology has essentially brought entirely new depths into the concept of reality. We can now see the possibility of reality as a mere projection of the mind projected through technological mediums such as an Ocular headset.
If you’d like to read more about the possibility of us living in a simulation, read this short article I wrote a couple years back that dives deeper into Zhuangzi’s Dreaming Hypothesis, Bostrom’s Simulation Argument, Plato’s Cave, and Cellular Automaton: https://aliceliu2004.medium.com/is-this-real-life-is-this-just-fantasy-b8fea6462e90
Whether or not you believe we are living in a simulation is entirely up to you- the main point is that we are going off of the assumption that reality stems from a creator. The creator can be God, a more advanced civilization, The Architect from the Matrix- anything really. Just a single entity.
What is our progress so far for developing our own simulation? What is our role as “creators”?
II. Current Realities & Drawbacks
Our digital world first came in the form of the Internet where we are able to interact and communicate through search engines and websites with countless sources of information embedded.
The digital world became slightly more immersive with the addition of VR / AR where programs of information are projected into 3D representations that resemble real life. But even with VR, we can still distinguish between the base reality of the real world and the alternative reality of the programmed world. Could we make this even more immersive?
Metaverse — Bridging the Digital and the Real
The Metaverse isn’t a specific technology or application- rather, it’s a concept. It’s a way to describe how the world will interact with technology as it evolves in a non-static environment.
This is a world where time and space = nothing. Where we partially exist and function in a virtual world.
How we currently interact with technology is done through a relatively static environment. We do this through physical input devices such as tapping on keyboards, swiping on screens, pushing buttons, etc. These have limited functionalities as a physical reach for these devices is still necessary.
In the Metaverse, we are able to interact with the environment using all five of our senses: sight, touch, taste, smell, and hear. We won’t have to learn a new set of input methods- it would be just like the real world.
Aperture has a perfect comparison for this. Right now, our digital existence comes in the form of social media accounts. Each account is different from the other where our digital existence comes in separate identities- one in Facebook, one in Twitter, a third in Youtube, etc. But with the Metaverse, the goal is to create one virtual avatar that serves as a single identity to be used across all platforms involving social media, school classes, work meetings, concerts, etc.
Developments in Space:
For the past few centuries, humans have been working intently on optimizing and bending space to make the world smaller than it actually is. This means getting from one point to another as efficiently as possible, making communication seamless (as we’ve seen from letter writing leading to phone calls to video calls and to virtual interaction), and creating ways to be present even if we aren’t there physically.
We’re at that point where almost instantaneous communication exists even between people across the world from each other. Through the Metaverse, we’ll be able to instantly travel anywhere through the universe we built.
Developments in Time:
Our journey with shaping time hasn’t been as successful as bending space, unfortunately. We can’t freeze time, travel through time, or get back lost time. Through the Metaverse, though we may not be able to physically travel through time (ie. teleport our bodies from one place to another), we’ll be able to experience events, live through different ages, and be with once living people. We’ll essentially be able to simulate different time periods with the same events and the same people.
Metaverse Challenges
The Metaverse gives us the possibility of writing our own universe, and in turn, recreating a simulation. It is something quite astounding but also quite concerning.
Confirmation bias is one main foreseeable challenge with the Metaverse. If misinformation, particularly in the form of fake news, exists in our current Internet, will it get to the point where we’re not able to distinguish what’s real from what’s not?
This leads to the problem of providing identity- bots and other malicious actors can easily mimic one’s data and personality as individuals are traversing the Metaverse through their avatars. With identity comes the concern of privacy and data security.
Data breaches are extremely prevalent today, specifically targeted to systems storing PPIs including names, addresses, social security numbers, etc. The Metaverse will store other types of information such as our behaviors. The Metaverse also being a centralized server will also lead to greater susceptibility to breaches.
Safety is an additional concern that can be branched from breaches. Proper legislation to regulate the environment is essential to create a safe space for the users. But who is making the decisions for the rules? How do we ensure that we can incorporate the needs of everyone and enable fairness? How do we avoid corruption and biases?
The idea of DACmos, a decentralized version of the Metaverse, might help address that.
III. DACmos — A Decentralized Metaverse:
Decentralized autonomous corporations (DAC), is a subclass of DAO, which is defined as an entity that lives on the Internet and exists autonomously, but also heavily relies on hiring individuals to perform certain tasks. At Metis, the DAC model is a governance structure that both 1) manages and 2) incentivizes decentralized communities on Metis Layer 2.
Our goal is to effectively model DAC to mimic the life ecosystem. This DAC model, modeling off from the definition, will optimize for both automation and individual effort by incorporating the consciousness of human minds and greater intelligence enabled by AI, computing, circuitry, etc. The backbone of DAC is a blockchain system with adaptive liveness in order to simulate a self-sustained human-machine system.
By placing the DAC model into an ecosystem, we are led to DACmos, a decentralized Metaverse. Both the Metaverse and DACmos deal with creating alternative realities, but the Metaverse has a centralized regime base while DACmos is decentralized.
DACmos will ideally be an open universe filled with digital worlds and ecosystems that provide users with a collaborative, immersive experience. Within the DACmos will be a functioning DAC economy where individuals can buy, sell, invest and build.
Going back to the simulation hypothesis, under the assumption that reality originates from a creator, also accompanied by unexplainable questions on why we’re here, what happened before birth / what happens after death, etc., we can infer that the present environment we were shaped in wasn’t under our control. The Metaverse is similar in that once built, it is essentially an external reality that is forced upon us. This external reality is a centralized reality that is under the control of the creators, not the players.
To this point in history, every simulated reality that we created is centralized. We are hosts that are placed in this “simulation.” We’re the chess pieces, tin soldiers and marionettes while the associated chess board, battlefield and dollhouse are created environments. This can be life around us, a VR experience or the Metaverse.
In DACmos however, this new reality will be of our own making. The players can act as the part of the creators where the ecosystem is fundamentally decentralized.
Decentralization brings aspects of accountability, transparency and trust- our new digital world can rid itself of coercion, corruption and exploitation that exists in current central realities such as the Internet and early Metaverse. In the DACmos, anyone will be able to interact and build with content without the need for third-party authority.
DACmos in this case, originates from the individual self of each player and reaches out to others while keeping a self-governed and self-sustained environment. The DACmos mechanism model contains many individual-centric realities reaching out to form one consensual reality framework. This is the opposite of the conventional approach (used by Metaverse and the Internet) of one entity branching out to many individuals. In this case, there are distributed roles of power and responsibility.
In this system, where does Metis come into play?
IV. Metis’ Role & Implications
As of today, many companies are thinking of using DAOs to act as operating systems for the Metaverse. This will enable decentralized communities to vote on Web3 platforms without the need for an intermediary. However, DAOs are only limited to functions of voting and governance.
Metis is leveraging the next generation of DAOs: DACs, to implement to the Metaverse for a full-scale DACmos. DACs compared to DAos are more scalable, allowing for horizontal expansion as the ecosystem grows. In addition, DACs can enable more enhanced interactions with implemented permissions and roles such as implementing corporate management in a decentralized manner.
All of these individual-centric realities in DACmos can be clustered into different lineages or groups to enforce a decentralized consensus. Each individual-centric lineage can be implemented onto its own Metis sidechain. In the decision-making process, the DACmos rules are negotiated through the consensus process with the sidechains, where the rules are decided by individual voices.
Metis today is working on a Layer 2 solution to minimize gas costs on the Ethereum. As an optimistic rollup solution, Metis addresses 1) scalability 2) security and 3) decentralization by gathering transactions sent on Ethereum (layer 1) then processing them together on their Layer 2 Andromeda network. In this case, Metis ensures the security and decentralization enabled from Layer 1 while also providing cheaper and faster executions for the transactions.
The Metis DAC model, building off from its fundamental Layer 2 solution, will allow for companies to fully operate on decentralized ecosystems by completing tasks such as payroll, insurance, marketing, messaging, in addition to governance and voting that is enabled with DAO. Metis can very well serve as an initial entry point for the integration of Metaverse with blockchain to form the DACmos.
We’ve come a long way in a journey with building our own simulated, digital universe where we can one day create an exact, or even better replica of the one we are currently living in. DACmos will be an essential component for evolving into this ideal digital world and Metis will be the first step to reaching it.
