FAQs

+ What is a virtual society ?

Virtual Societies are digital worlds with economies, systems of power that encourage conformity around a shared culture and history; populated by avatars of human beings and potentially avatars of virtual beings too.

+ What are examples of virtual societies?

They can be centralized but with strong creator economies - like Roblox - or decentralized - like Decentraland.

They can reflect our friendship circle (Fortnite) or our work colleagues (Gather.Town - though that doesn’t have an economy yet).

They can be visual, like Somnium, or Eve Online, or live on text and Discord, like Whaleshark and Friends With Benefits.

They can be cryptocurrency based like social tokens or with economies based on Fiat currency.

+ Is a virtual society a crypto idea?

Humans are, today, inescapably economic beings so currency, trade finance, credit, a central bank or vault do seem like important factors. Rather than exclude the much larger centralized virtual societies like Roblox and Rec Room, it seems better to share ideas and learnings together without having to decide now “this is only a cryptocurrency idea!” or “crypto is tangential to this idea!” These are the early days. 

+ Are there any full virtual societies today?

We don’t believe so, which is great - there’s a long way to go before a virtual society allows the rich infinite possibility of the real world - game mechanic limitations, ruler limitations, server limitations, immature finance, lack of real-world physical consequences mean that virtual societies as they exist are still a shadow of the unlimited possibility, infinite terror and risk and hope of the real world. But we can change that!

+ How do items bought in one virtual society show up in another - won’t they look different?

There are different teams working on this - including Enjin.

If you buy a t-shirt in Paris it doesn’t look completely different when you go to London. But virtual societies usually have their own aesthetics reflective of their creators (for now) - some are considering a multiverse, where traits of assets are carried over from society to society while still respecting the different aesthetic. Early days though.

+ How do virtual beings fit into virtual societies?

Some believe they don’t. Some believe they do. To get a feel for a future virtual society where all avatars represent humans-only read or watch Ready Player One. To get a feels for one where beings in the virtual society are both humans and virtual beings — try Westworld or Iain Banks’ The Culture novels. It certainly seems possible that the majority of entities in virtual societies will be virtual beings rather than humans. The Culture novels represent a guardedly optimistic vision of how AI virtual beings and humans could work and live together.  

+ Is a virtual society a decentralized idea? 

It is hard to imagine that an ultimate virtual society will be one that is run by a company and CEO. As powerful as a president is, even a president for life (!), they aren’t able to change the laws of physics in the world, take away all your possessions (wait, are they?), make everything red in the world green, and remove you from existence on personal whim (?). A decentralized future world seems more realistic as a path to unleashing people’s inner creativity, political hopes, economic drives. However, whether the system of government of the leading virtual societies will be a chaotic DAO or a CEO-dictatorship, it’s too early to say. 

+ Won’t governments step in to shut down virtual societies once their economies outgrow the size of real nation states. 

That outcome certainly is possible. 

+ Is a Virtual Society a virtual reality idea? 

Many draw inspiration from virtual reality but almost all are accessible through a browser or app on phone. Cryptovoxels for example is available on VR but can also be immediately booted from a browser. 

+ What is the difference between a virtual community and a virtual society ?

Virtual communities become Virtual Societies when they add complex economics and power structures.

1. Complex economics with incentives and disincentives designed to create cultural cohesion and conformity.

2. Power structures so that members of the society can strategically influence the society - a virtual community around a game for example is at a strategic level dependent on the game, and therefore on the CEO of the game studio - a virtual society with its own economy and power structures can make its own decisions. Most virtual communities in game metaverses are ultimately unable to change the game in any meaningful way and are a bit pre-society.

Economically most decentralized virtual societies today have or are building - FWB, Whaleshark, Decentraland, Cryptovoxels - some kind of vault or treasury that ‘belong’ to the society - which may well have the effect of helping people feel less like members of a community and more like citizens of a society. 

+ Will virtual societies have their own currencies, Central Banks, Federal Reserves and money supply management? 

That is already happening in many virtual societies today. Currencies backed by assets owned by the community (and in some cases entirely managed by the community) are the system of trade. A lot of the people creating virtual societies are well versed in both economic theory and money supply management and inflation through years of crypto work but also more recently with the rise of NFTs in the psychology of nation-building, legend-printing, and credibility creating for their currencies with cultural artifacts - think the Romans or the Medicis ‘backing’ currency power with cultural artifacts that give a sense of permanence and stability to the currency. Whaleshark for example talks about his vault of NFTs in terms of the gold standard that backed all major world currencies in different forms for centuries. Much of this is comprised in the term tokenomics - and are different for each virtual society based often of the guesses, mathwork and vision of the founding teams.

+ Virtual Societies built around videogame worlds or around celebrities or creators’ canvases are amazing but what about improving societies in the real world? 

Few of us would have imagined the use of Signal, Instagram, Instagram for planning protests, marches etc., but also consider power for people who in the past would have been respected by powerful unions. Perhaps a social token for a global union of workers - with benefits for members; decentralized finance for dues management; transparency and a DAO structure for pension management. Unions have struggled to truly grow beyond nation unions of unions (like the AFL-CIO) and build global unions for worker power to challenge perhaps a virtual society of working people to challenge established power could use social tokens?