When Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers hands down the budget on 14 May, the pressing need for fiscal responsibility is likely to trump spending programs.
In an era of fake news, it’s getting more difficult to separate fact from fiction. Yet it’s imperative we do so because the consequences for being deceived can be enormous.
NFTs, the metaverse and Web3: what do they all mean?
Blockchain is probably the biggest trend of this era. It’s hot right now and its exciting. Blockchain is the technology that underpins all cryptocurrency. It’s the digitally distributed, decentralised, public ledger that exists across a network. But Blockchain is no longer only relevant to cryptocurrency and can be used across a number of services. These include:
- Payments processing and money transfers
- Monitoring supply chains
- Royalty rewards points
- Digital IDs
- Data sharing
- Copyright and royalty protection
- Digital voting
- Real estate and land transfers
- Food safety
- Data backup
- Tax, regulation and compliance
- Workers’ rights
- Medical recordkeeping
- Weapons trading
- Wills
- Equity trading
- Managing Internet of Things
- Energy and commodities futures trading
- Securing access to belongings
- Tracking prescription drugs
As you can see, the Blockchain technology has the potential to solve many problems around online trust and security, and isn’t restricted to just Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. Its potential uses encompasses digital “smart” contracts. These are programs stored on a blockchain that run when predetermined conditions are met. DeFi (Decentralised finance) use cryptocurrencies and smart contracts to provide services that don’t need intermediaries.
- Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) – The the hottest thing right now are NFTs, a non-interchangeable unit of data stored on a blockchain. NFTs are tokens that can be used to represent ownership of unique items. They let us tokenise things like art, collectibles, even real estate.
- Metaverse – Part of the internet, on which virtual reality and virtual worlds filled with entertainment venues, workplaces, and retail stores start to fill up with digital versions of everything in the real world. A metaverse allows users to showcase digital forms of NFTs. The big tech giants are betting big on the metaverse with Facebook committing $10bn into the technology. It even renamed itself as Meta Platforms.
- Web 3.0 – Is the third version of the Internet, and a huge improvement over the current Web 2.0 Internet. It provides a far more personalised browsing experience and websites can customise themselves to best fit our requirements. The foundation for the metaverse is built on blockchain-enabled decentralised applications that support an economy of user-owned crypto assets and data.
While it’s hard to predict what will come next, in the way of Blockchain the possibilities are endless. The year 2022 is expected to be the “year of the NFT,” with many adopting Blockchain to achieve radical transformation. Blockchain will be as transformative as what the internet was back in the 1990s.
