There is a lot of buzz and noise around Web3, the Metaverse, and WebAssembly. During our recent company offsite in Valencia, Spain, the Wasmer team took it upon themselves to demystify life's greatest mysteries.

What is Web3?

What is the Metaverse?

What does WebAssembly have to do with it?

I can't guarantee it, but I'll do my best to keep the answers as real and straightforward as possible.

Make sure you read to the end to find out about PitPet, Wasmer's first step towards the Metaverse. Trust me; it'll be worth it!

Here we go.

Web3

Photo by Shubham Dhage on Unsplash — so fancy.

There's a common theme. Like Web 1.0 and then Web 2.0, the core premise around Web3 is decentralized Internet control. A peer-to-peer system to democratize the infrastructure, applications, and data currently under the centralized management of large corporations like Meta (who are we kidding, it's still and forever Facebook), Google, Microsoft, etc. With each iteration of the Web, the community of creators and the powers that be, have built new tools and protocols to take us all to the promised land, total anarchy decentralized control over our digital footprint, and the ability to self-govern.

Ownership and Governance

Decentralized ownership and governance are two defining characteristics of Web3. The community is working feverishly on solutions that include Blockchains for immutable public ledgers to keep track of interactions between various stakeholders. Cryptocurrencies and tokens built on Blockchains enable the exchange of value or a stake in the decentralized system. The best use case, in my opinion, might be the DeFi use case. Essentially, DeFi, or decentralized finance, is the idea that banks and their systems are old, charge excessive fees, and have too much control over money and our financial system. DeFi aims to end the stranglehold big banks have on our finances using Blockchains and Cryptocurrencies. Notwithstanding tech, Web3 solutions should be community-owned and governed. People, not big companies, should have control over their data and should have the means to exchange value without an intermediary.

Metaverse

Thank you, Mark. We know who you are!

It all started as fun and games. Augmented reality glasses from Google and Snap, some virtual reality headsets from Microsoft, Sony, and Facebook, and before we knew it, we were in the Metaverse. The Metaverse is essentially a virtual environment where you go to have virtual experiences because real life is just too hard because that's what the kids are doing these days.

TL;DR;

So what does the Metaverse have to do with Web3 and WebAssembly?

Still with me? Okay, good. Wasmer is a WebAssembly company. We power smart contracts for some of the biggest Blockchain and Web3 companies on the planet. During our recent company offsite, we wanted to figure out the meaning of life and showcase what's possible with WebAssembly. The most brilliant minds in the company thought it would be a good idea to create two teams and compete in a company Hackathon.

Trillion Dollar Ideas

The rules were simple.

1. Both teams needed to create a business plan that capitalized on multi-trillion markets.
2. The app should have something to do with puppies and kittens.
3. Blockchains are needed.
4. Use WebAssembly for as many functions as possible. (Wasmer flew everyone out and paid for the whole thing, so it makes sense.)
5. The whole thing should run on AWS Lambda (Engineering blog and learnings coming soon)

The battle was epic. Both teams worked tirelessly. We only stopped for lunch, a walk to the beach, dinner, and drinks. After a hard-fought battle, we presented our business plans and demoed our ideas to each other, and declared a winner. We all won! In the end, we merged our concepts into PitPet, a Web3 Metaverse experience with your pets! Check out the links below for more information!

Business Plan - PitPet Pitch Deck

Demo Site - PitPet WebSite

WAPM - PitPet Namespace

GitHub - PitPet Org

How to use PitPet

1. Create an account on the PitPet WebSite
2. Upload photos and videos of your pets
3. Happy by petting, feeding, and walking them
4. Keep them alive and share a new photo or video every 3-days!

Stay tuned for our engineering blog(s) that details the trials and tribulations of deploying WebAssembly apps to AWS Lambda. It was challenging but also a lot of fun! We intend to follow the Web3 model for ownership and governance of PitPet. For now, you can view, use, and contribute the open-source code on GitHub.

About Wasmer

Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Wasmer Inc. is behind the popular open-source WebAssembly runtime Wasmer. In addition to the Wasmer runtime, the company has made significant investments in WAPM, the WebAssembly Package Manager, and many other open-source projects in the WebAssembly ecosystem.

Our mission is to make software universally available. We are committed to the open-source community and strive to contribute to developers and companies worldwide to help make Wasmer and WebAssembly a universal standard.