The Metaverse broke onto the tech scene in 1992’s Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash – a sci-fi novel that featured humans as programmable avatars interacting with each other and with software agents in a virtual space filled with objects and concepts resembling the physical world resemble, interact.
Since then, it has successfully grown into a multi-billion dollar industry that is slowly gaining interest from individuals and large corporations around the world.
In fact, Metaverse’s market cap is already over $38.5 billion this year and is expected to grow further as more users are expected to engage in various projects or programs that leverage this emerging technological innovation.
As of 2022, there are an average of around 400 million monthly users for this burgeoning industry, and a larger majority of that number have agreed to spend up to $1,000 on advanced virtual reality (VR) gear.
While online shopping, gaming and social media and content creation are the leading applications dominating Metaverse, law enforcement is trying their luck with the vast digital ecosystem made available by Dubai Police.
The Dubai police want to benefit from Metaverse
Gitex Technology Week became a historic event when the Ajman Police Headquarters in Dubai unveiled the Request for Sponsorship, an innovative service designed to allow the public to contact authorities remotely.
The new intelligent application, which allows the police to set up another communication channel through the virtual domain and aims to solve societal problems, is pre-installed with 70 designed service workers.
It supports seven languages namely Arabic, English, Chinese, Russian, French, German and Spanish.
Image: Crypto News
Maj-Gen Khalid Naseer Al Razooqi, Director of Artificial Intelligence for Dubai Police, said the smart device used for this Metaverse project stores an individual’s information and transactions.
It also saves traffic violations and other offenses committed by the user.
This development advances the UAE’s goal of being a metaverse hub to achieve the aspired fully digital economy.
Metaverse in 2022: In Numbers
The survey, conducted by Ipsos for the May 2022 World Economic Forum, found that more than half of adults in 29 countries surveyed said they were familiar with the Metaverse.
That’s a little surprising given that 51% of registered users are 13 or younger, likely due to Roblox, which happens to be the largest virtual world in the Metaverse.
The number of users has also increased tremendously as there are an estimated 1.07 billion users this year. That number is expected to increase to 1.40 billion in 2023 and 1.73 billion in 2024.
Meanwhile, electronic gaming (250 million users) surpassed global cryptocurrency (220 million) in terms of top areas using Metaverse.
Blockchain games (2.3 million), non-fungible tokens or NFTs (412,578), and Web 3.0 (50,000) rounded out the top five fields.
Crypto total market cap at $890 million on the daily chart | Featured image from Khaleej Times, Chart: TradingView.com
