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There is no doubt that discussions about a future built on Web3 and the emergence of a metaverse will intensify in the coming years. With that comes the urgency around developing sustainable initiatives.
The potential of the metaverse is enormous. Experts talk about a new reality that exists in a purely digital space. This Web3 structure will pave the way for collaboration, communication, and socialization in ways that are still difficult to fully imagine.
The core of this new technological revolution will be big data. The sheer volume of data that users will generate in the Web3 era means intelligent insights won’t be far off. Crucially, the growth of big data may also help solve some of the world’s biggest sustainability problems.
Before we look at how Web3 can help achieve sustainable development, it’s worth speculating about how the environment might be affected by the metaverse. As large numbers of people around the world choose to spend most of their time connecting to the digital world, we may see a drop in fuel usage as fewer people need to travel. However, the sheer computing power required to fully immerse users in a virtual world will be enormous, with Intel claiming that computers would need to be 1,000 times more powerful than today to meet the additional requirements.
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As the metaverse emerges, this will inevitably bring environmental issues to the fore. But can the rise of Web3 and big data help alleviate sustainability issues, or even help improve the world’s green credentials? Let’s take a deeper look at how big data can pave the way for a greener future in the Web3 era:
Fine-tuned Product Lifecycle Assessment
One way companies are already leveraging big data analytics as a One means of improving their green credentials is by developing product life cycle assessments to assess the overall environmental impact of their production lines, product use and subsequent disposal.
These assessments help clarify the timeline of the product in a transparent manner, thereby ensuring accountability. Factors such as the extraction of materials from the environment, the production process, the stages of use, and what happens after a product’s life cycle ends can all be taxing on the environment, but big data can provide clear information at each stage.
In a Web3 environment, this in-depth data analysis may seem burdensome in terms of the processing power used to run these comprehensive assessments. However, as businesses move away from local disks, cloud-based data storage can help alleviate this problem.
According to Ernst & Young, while internet traffic and the number of data centers have increased by 16.9 times and 9.4 times, respectively, between 2010 and 2020, data center energy efficiency has only improved by 1.1 times for the same time period scope.
This presents an opportunity for the data center industry to become greener, cloud computing offers lower cost per gigabyte and higher data redundancy – driving further cloud expansion Adapting to data in the Web3 era.
As businesses turn to innovation and focus more on sustainability, advanced lifecycle impact assessments can help create balanced strategies that are fully functional in the cloud.
One of the biggest challenges facing corporate sustainability is the wider impact of a corporate carbon footprint. Take the carbon footprint of the multinational pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline as an example. Only 20% of the carbon footprint belongs to the company itself, of which 80% comes from indirect emissions, such as the use of its products.
Big data will help illuminate this more transparent aspect of sustainability by revealing more nuanced aspects of the business world’s relationship with the environment.
As the Web3 transformation takes center stage, we may see big data platforms providing insight into how existing physical products replicate in the digital world as well as rich usage data from customers online Feedback as you live, work and socialise will help clarify how your business is truly helping to protect the environment.
The natural world is an extremely complex place, and big data in the Web3 era will inform how ESG-conscious companies adapt their existing goods and services to an immersive digital environment as a means of enhancing their environmental credentials.
Gamification Sustainability
Big data can also help build a more sustainable focus among the billions of users who are eventually expected to embrace the metaverse user group.
This could be an important step in tackling climate change, as a recent study of 2 billion social media posts found that one of the biggest barriers to a sustainable future is behavior. These conditions may become easier to ignore as users become more willing to normalize climatic conditions.
Big data can correct this mindset by helping to develop immersive Web3 experiences that predict our behavioral deficits and create virtual reality learning opportunities that put audiences on a sustainable journey A journey of development, leading to a strong desire to raise awareness, more environmentally conscious buying habits and avoid bad habits in terms of recycling and energy consumption.
Gaming will be the central focus of the virtual world, and we are already seeing gamified sustainable solutions being developed to help the environment.
There is probably no better example of gamification sustainability than Alóki The Jungle. Alóki founders Maurycy Krzastek and Bartek Lechowski bought the real-world land that would become Costa Rica’s Alóki Sanctuary for $30 million, and now user actions in the game can help in the 750-acre jungle.
Using big data to help companies understand users’ perceptions of sustainable development based on their behavior in the virtual world, helping users learn to become immersive and gamified Much easier.
While the transition to life in the metaverse will be a long process, the foundations are being laid now. For a prosperous future, big data and sustainability must be at the heart of developing this brave new digital frontier.
Dmytro Spilka is Solvid’s chief wizard.
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