Thoughts on  High Fidelity &  crypto currencies

When I first came to know about second life  in 2008, I was so happy that to know the fact that virtual reality  is possible. At the same time pissed off that it had been there since 2003 and how I was so ignorant!!. Been a good second life visitors since then, had lots of fun and watched how the economy had grown to half a billion US$, virtual reality is so interesting.

Yes there were issues, especially network latency, poor subscription implementation services that has so far successfully kept people from countries like India and those who cant afford credit cards away from second life.

These problems are passing clouds, buts whats around the corner is the man behind the second life, Philip Rosedale is geared up for the next big thing called High fidelity. At the same time the virtual reality ecosystem is evolving with lots of promising stuff, I could see everybody so busy working. There are bunch of people along with  icons like John carmack working to create the Occulus rift(a VR headgear ,4G wireless with high speed data services rolling out affordable in countries like India, toys like the Omni treadmill, Microsoft kinect all give us a promising hope in the near future.


On the rendering side, with companies like Nvidia rolling out GRID, the cloud computed 3d rendering, one can imagine the awesome richness and detail with which a virtual world could be created. In short i could have my smartphone with the high fidelity client running connected with very high speed data, wear a sun glass like evolved Occulus rift, high quality earphones and whoosh I can be in a life like virtual world.

Being subscribed for their alpha and participating in their surveys, its a great feeling. But i really have concerns about the economy of High fidelity. When second life was created there was no crypto currencies but now we have hundreds of them, and I wonder what will be the future of currency like linden in a virtual reality world built in 2015. Sure there are problems with regulation, misuse and others but crypto currencies may overcome all those and evolve and its impossible to imagine people without any cryptocurrency business or transactions inside High fidelity.


So whats High fidelity going to be like? Is it gonna be friendly towards cryptocurrencies or else!!

From their website and talks given by Philip, available on youtube , High fidelity is going to be a world built upon by people sharing the processing power of smartphones and laptops, here is where I see a great opportunity for  High fidelity. For people who see a lot of news about crypto currencies,  should have heard about Ripple payment system, developed by Jed Mccaleb, the founder of Mt.Gox(oh he sold it and he is not responsible for the fiasco).

 The native currency of Ripple the XRP which is actually given away to people who participate in world community grid developed by IBM for various good reasons from alternate energy to fighting Aids. Ripple labs organizes a team called COMPUTING FOR GOOD where people participate in the grid and dedicate their processing power and get paid in ripples(their native currency). Within days, Ripple labs has become number one team team with 20,000 people sharing their processing power for building a better future.

                                              

So the concept seems to be a double win for High fidelity, it would be ridiculous to put a  centrally controlled virtual currency like linden in high fidelity, but rather a cryptocurrency like ripple which is the default currency of the high fidelity world and people get paid when they share their processing power to build that world, Seems very interesting.

Statistics of Ripple labs team @ WCG

But the recent terms and conditions update for second life effectively removes any sort of cryptocurrency transactions in second life. So how High fidelity gonna be?..that's a question a lot of people are interested in.

we will know answers in coming days..