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Making sense of the metaverse

In September 2022, DBS announced a partnership with The Sandbox, one of the top decentralised gaming virtual worlds and a subsidiary of Animoca Brands, to create an interactive metaverse experience for collaborators and communities to jointly shape a blueprint for a better world.
DBS BetterWorld, a concept to demonstrate how the metaverse can be leveraged as a force for good, was unveiled in August 2023. Through gamified elements in a fantasy setting, for a start, the bank will highlight the global food waste challenge and what Businesses for Impact supported by the DBS Foundation are doing to address the issue.
DBS BetterWorld was opened to the public for four weeks in Oct/Nov 2023, along with coordinated activations at the Singapore Fintech Festival and Hong Kong Fintech Week, with overwhelmingly positive response:
  • 93% found BetterWorld to be “a meaningful way to learn about sustainability”
  • 81% said that after playing BetterWorld, they would “want to find out more about what DBS and Businesses for Impact supported by the DBS Foundation are doing to combat food waste”
  • On a 5-point scale of enjoyability, 87% rated BetterWorld as either 4 or 5
  • On average, people spent 21 minutes on BetterWorld, 30% higher than the time spent on similar experiences on The Sandbox.
At DBS, we believe that the metaverse is inevitable and the possibilities are only just unfolding. We continue to prepare ourselves by building our capabilities so that we can move quickly when promising opportunities emerge.
On the technology front, we continue to modernise our already cutting-edge technology stack, and we are running experiments in areas such as blockchain, digital asset and asset tokenisation. We are also gaining experience in immersive technologies such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality.
On the people front, we are investing in skills for relevant technology fields such as those mentioned above, as well as adjacent skills in legal, compliance, and marketing. Importantly, we are studying how financial services can add value.

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Quick take

Exploring the multiverse of metaverses

While it’s easy to assume that there is just one definition of the metaverse, the reality is there are multiple interpretations.

One view sees the metaverse as an extension of social and workplace collaboration. This is a view most famously pushed by Zuckerberg and Meta, and you will find many players in the social media space sharing similar perspectives.

Another view sees the metaverse as a product of the Web 3.0 revolution – that is, everything will be powered by blockchain, digital ledger technologies, tokenisation, and digital assets.

Yet another view understands the metaverse as escapist worlds built around coherent and engaging storylines and lore. Many in the video game community, especially those engaged in MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft, Runescape, or Genshin Impact take this view.

We don’t actually agree on what the metaverse means?

These are all equally valid perspectives, but DBS wants to inject another point of view to the conversation, and that is human centricity...

Much of the conversation has been around the technological opportunities in the metaverse. What is lacking is a discussion around what this means for us as humans and humanity.

When we look at the metaverse from a human-centred lens, we ask a different question. We are basically saying that this digital reality speaks to something very compelling about the human psyche. After all, everybody dreams of becoming something bigger than who we already are in the physical world, and this is an expression of the fundamental human desire.

So, where does DBS see the metaverse heading?

We fundamentally believe that the metaverse is inevitable, partly because of how compelling the vision is, in offering humanity a way to live, play and work differently in a digital reality, which we discussed above...

But there’s also a broader trend which we will call “demographic gravity”.

Over the past couple of years, the workspace has permanently changed with the widespread adoption of hybrid work and virtual meetings. Short-format video has supplanted long-form video in social media. NFTs and play-to-earn models have emerged. Travis Scott and Ariana Grande have conducted online experiential concerts to a far larger audience than would be possible in a physical venue, and even ABBA has energised an entirely new fanbase by launching an album in the metaverse.

Underpinning this has been the continued development of hardware and software powering the metaverse, all of which we are familiar with, and many of our children will natively adopt. Our children’s children will – inevitably – unconsciously embrace these trends.

In other words, there is an inevitability associated with each successive generation increasingly living, playing, and working in an alternate digital reality. And that’s why we believe that demographics will eventually make the metaverse inevitable.