"Metaverse" is a multitude of things

• A virtual realm that can be an exact replica of the real physical world or a brand-new immersive environment with its own landscape and forms of creative expression.
• An independent digital consumer-to-consumer economy enabled by digital currencies and non-fungible tokens.
• It is a set of technologies that alter the very notion of place.
• When we visit a website or load an app on our mobile devices, we don't get a feeling of actually going anywhere.

Technology-wise, the extended reality is the cornerstone of metaverse applications.

Other technologies, such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things also provide a foundation for virtual content creation, content mapping, and life-like interactions between users.

The metaverse could fuel the creation of new business models:

• Buying digital land
• Purchasing outfits and accessories for 3D avatars
• Interacting with digital humans for employee onboarding, customer service, sales, etc.
• Participating in virtual social experiences.

• Selling digital products is one of the key metaverse business opportunities. To facilitate this activity, content creators and buyers need to protect virtual assets.
• Blockchain solutions in general, and non-fungible tokens in particular, come into play.
• A NFT is an asset (image, video, audio clip, virtual real estate, or event tickets) that has been created using digital media. These assets bear marks of uniqueness, which can be recorded in an NFT card driven by blockchain technology.

• The metaverse concept does not revolve around ditching reality in favor of a unicorn-populated world. It is an opportunity to escape the real world’s boundaries and enhance certain activities we perform online.
• Benefits of metaverse include a more engaging and realistic online shopping experience, futuristic digital marketing, and risk-free modeling of business processes and operations.

Governments and prominent tech vendors alike should address the following issues:

• Ensuring a single point of entry to the global metaverse created by different companies.
• Enforcing a set of metaverse implementation and content creation standards to provide a seamless user experience.
• Regulating metaverses to avoid online toxicity, unauthorized personal data usage, and cybercrime.
• Minimizing the metaverse's environmental impact.