Metaverse is sometimes termed as the future of human interaction, an ongoing digital world where individuals can work, play and interact. However, what is the creation of these immense online worlds? It is not a one act creation, but resembles the very building blocks of life itself: mitosis. The Metaverse and its numerous ecosystems are created and filled in a similar way as one cell in the body, which is split and replicated to create a complex organism.
Mitosis is in essence the replication of DNA inside a cell that results in the formation of two identical daughter cells. The notion is relevant to the design of all types of items in the Metaverse, such as new virtual worlds and land parcels, avatars, and digital assets. It is an excellent metaphor of the way the Metaverse grows and becomes broad, leaving behind the centralized and single-server idea and turning to a huge and interconnected digital reality.
The Genesis Cell: The Prototypical Virtual World.
In each Metaverse, there is a genesis cell which can be called a starting point of all the other elements. It may be a fundamental blockchain, a founding piece of virtual land or the original code to a virtual world. This genesis cell contains the code of the Metaverse the essential rules, economic structure, and its primary resources.
The Sandbox and Decentraland are the finest examples of projects. The genesis cells were their first production of virtual pieces of land and the basis of tokenomics. Any further land sale, any additional experience created by a user is a kind of digital mitosis. The parent cell is the original piece of land and when the parent cell is subdivided/developed to create new creations, it produces new individual and unique digital cells, which multiply and form part of the bigger organism.
The Replication: Digital Property and Avatars.
The most direct variant of mitosis in the Metaverse is the production of new digital assets. The user, when he/she develops a new NFT (Non-Fungible Token), in-game object, or a wearable by his/her avatar, is basically recreating a digital template and affixing a unique identifier. The DNA of the parent cell is the original smart contract, and a new minted NFT is a daughter cell, a distinct entity that is becoming a part of the digital economy.
There is also a mitosis of avatars. A basic avatar is able to be upgraded with new dresses, accessories and capabilities. These additions are commonly designed as new digital objects that are added on top of the original avatar, and these allow the avatar to grow and to specialize in a manner that resembles cellular differentiation. One, simplistic avatar can grow into a very singular and very specialized one through the addition of new digital DNA layers.
The Division: Developing New Worlds and Ecosystems.
Mitosis in the Metaverse is not limited to individual items but extends to the formation of new worlds and ecosystems in the Metaverse. The parent world (e.g., a central hub in a game) may be forked or built up by other developers and communities. Another developer can also make a spin-off to the core code of a successful virtual world, a new daughter world with different rules and appearance.
This is specifically applicable to Web3 gaming where the basic assets of a game can be utilized by other creators to develop new experiences. As an example, one of the most popular game characters can be used to make a new game of a different genre essentially a new organism, made out of the DNA of the previous one. This creative division and replication process enables a quick and community-based growth as compared to traditional gaming where a firm retains all of its power in a single central control.
The Perils of Unregulated Mitosis: Digital Sprawl and Asset Flooding.
The same thing can happen with the Metaverse: unregulated mitosis results in digital sprawl and asset flooding in the same way that unregulated mitosis results in cancer. This happens when a certain surplus of bad or the same assets is produced and this undermines the whole ecosystem. The cost of the digital real estate and assets may decrease significantly in case new lands are developed that do not have any utility or when the market is overrun with the same NFTs.
To become a sustainable and valuable ecosystem, the digital mitosis process needs to be controlled in the Metaverse. Here the governance models, scarcity ensured by smart contracts and community based curation come in to play. They are the so-called cellular regulators that promote the healthy, valuable, and purposeful growth of the cell instead of the chaotic and inflationary one.
A Multicellular Future
Finally, the future of the Metaverse is never a single, monolithic world but a multi-cellular organism that consists of a lot of interconnected digital ecosystems. This growth will be driven by the process of digital mitosis, where creators and communities will be able to create, replicate, divide, and specialize to fulfill new demands continuously.
This biological perspective of the Metaverse would help us view the Metaverse not as a group of games and virtual world, but as a living organism in its development. It is a creature constructed at the base level by the consistent, controlled subdivision of digital assets, worlds, and notions, resulting in a multifaceted and changing digital reality that will keep expanding and enlarging in a few years to come.