The term “metaverse” was first used by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 cyberpunk novel Snow Crash. It describes a virtual world that can be explored using avatars, offering players a completely immersive experience. Today, we see similar worlds in massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) such as Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite, Second Life, and others, but these games are still nowhere close to the immersive experience described in Snow Crash.

The modern metaverse concept consists of multiple independent and connected virtual spaces. As such, it is impossible for a single company to build the entire metaverse on its own. An optimistic estimate would be that the full-fledged metaverse is five to ten years away from complete deployment. However, in the next three to five years, we expect the market to see more metaverse-like applications. Some, such as Decentraland and Crypto Voxels, as well as games like Minecraft and Second Life, already exist.