Bengaluru’s first Metaverse meet-up tomorrow

Metaverse Central hopes to bring together builders and artists with VCs and start up founders to build a community of Metaversers

To the uninitiated, the Metaverse is a hypothetical iteration of the Internet as a single, universal and immersive virtual world that is facilitated by the use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) headsets. Which means the metaverse is a network of 3D virtual worlds focused on social connection.

Even though it is at an early stage of development, its popularity inspired Facebook to even change its name to Meta and some might say that it is the future of the internet with Web3. Bengaluru has become a hotspot in the space so it is only fitting that The Blockchain Village are organising their very first meet-up, Metaverse Central here this weekend.

Rohan Kulshreshtha, who is one of the organisers, says, “We want to host a mixer for people working in the Metaverse, from Builders to Artists, Developers, Game Designers, and VC’s. So far there has been no concerted effort to do this from any of the Web3 events, so you could say this is the first meet-up that primarily focuses on the Metaverse aspect.”

“We are trying to build a community for 100-200 Headset owners and once we’ve hit that milestone we can start doing VR picnics on a monthly or fortnightly basis where we explore different platforms,” he says.

With people working virtually we already live in a textual metaverse according to Rohan, and as technology proceeds we won’t even notice when we have AR and VR integration everywhere. When the Dot Com boom happened it was limited to the Silicon Valley, but Bengaluru is becoming the global hub of the Metaverse as the blockchain is decentralized and anyone with a good internet connection can start building on it. But is the metaverse a bubble that might burst at any time?

“People are going to pump and dump, we aren’t going to escape that. But even after the Dot Com bubble burst, it is still there, bigger than ever and we all use it and it is here to stay,” explains Rohan. The next step according to him is when governments start issuing digital currencies and we can start writing smart contracts with the use of that. But it is believed to be a very volatile space.

“If you notice a lot of the platforms that have gone down have been because of human errors. All the platforms were codified and running on smart contracts was fine. In Bengaluru there are at least 15 events related to crypto including Etherium India. The market sentiments and builder sentiments are inversely proportional. The lower the market is, the cheaper it is to build and more is being built every day,” Rohan concludes.

Where: Walkin Studios, JP Nagar

When: Nov 26, 5-9 pm

Registration: lu.ma/ MetaverseCentral