Gartner Research

Web3 and the Metaverse: Incomplete but Complementary Visions of the Future Internet

Published: 26 April 2022

Summary

Web3 and the metaverse are greatly overhyped, being described as the future of the internet and cyberspace. To exploit their underlying capabilities, enterprise architecture and technology innovation leaders and CTOs must analyze how these concepts could relate to, and build on, each other.

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Overview

Impacts
  • The emergence of Web3 won’t replace the internet, but will extend some of its web components in a decentralized direction.

  • As the metaverse evolves, it won’t replace the internet or the web, but will build on them to create virtually enhanced and immersive digital (e.g., 3D rendering, AR/VR) and physical (e.g., ambient computing, human augmentation) spaces.

  • Web3 and the metaverse are complementary concepts evolving in parallel, and organizations will be able to exploit them independently or together. Although there is only one internet (with some exceptions due to increased geopolitical fragmentation), there will be multiple implementations of metaverses, potentially building on

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