MetaWeek 2022 Dubai: Featuring top projects in the Metaverse and facing social impact challenges

The MetaWeek conference, held on Sept. 11 to 14, 2022, has covered exclusive insights and define current and future trends for Metaverse development in the Middle East and globally.

Organized by NexChange Group, MetaWeek was held from Sept. 11 to 14, 2022 in Dubai. Industry professionals, business owners, investors, corporate players and government officials convened at the Grand Hyatt Dubai hotel for the week’s core event, MetaWeek Summit, on Sept. 12 to 13. Over the course of two days, the conference covered the most-discussed digital topics of the year: Metaverse development and design, gamification and investment strategies, social impact and deliverables for sustainable development goals through blockchain and Web3, digital asset market and management, security and accessibility, media brands’ paradigm shift and more.

Dubai has embarked upon a mission to become the global hub for Web3 and Metaverse development and conquer new economic frontiers, with big industry players from banking to city development tapping into the Metaverse space. The Dubai Metaverse Strategy has picked up at a rapid pace, aiming at putting the city in the top 10 Metaverse economies of the world, supporting more than 40,000 virtual jobs by 2030, and adding $4 billion to Dubai’s economy in five years.

Yousof Alsatom, senior manager of emerging technology consulting at Bosch, said: “There will be more demand and expectations from end customers to get digital services and product experience through the Metaverse. Companies must be prepared and adapt their products and services to be compatible with the Metaverse. Web3 can help to create a trusted network to achieve more transparency and traceability for product manufacturing. Web3 adoption is moving slowly, but it is increasing over time.”

But the Metaverse doesn’t only affect the way people work and transform their business — it also engages with their mental health and spiritual needs and challenges. For several generations now, communities all over the world are undergoing a prominent reality check with the evolution of a new, sophisticated virtual realm.

“The virtual world is an area that can be analogous to the spiritual world, where it is difficult to understand, to touch, smell, eat and mold physically, yet it exists,” said Elie Abadie, senior rabbi at Jewish Council of the Emirates and a rabbi at Association of Gulf Jewish Communities. “It is only those minds and high intellects that can fathom such a reality, such a world that it only exists in the proverbial twilight zone. It is certainly a higher level of existence, a level where the power of our intellect can create it, mold it, transform it and give it eternal life. Thus the transition zone between mind and body, matter and spirit, lies within our own awareness.”

Serge Ajamian, venture partner at Centauri Digital Assets and co-founder of Jpeg Culture: “The Metaverse is not an open-world VR version of Zoom. It is a fictionalized hyper-simulation of life, where everything has a value and everyone has a purpose.”

One of the benefits of the Metaverse for people and companies is its highly increased social impact, bringing in “technology for good” and changing people’s lives and even the environment.

Mihaela Ulieru, strategic impact leader at IOHK: “The Metaverse to me is a means to restart economics with the values that matter today: humans flourishing and caring for the planet.”

Apart from the exciting on-site experiences at the summit, MetaWeek participants and attendees also enjoyed high-level networking during the week’s side events: Investor dinners, business breakfasts, networking cocktails were all included in the week’s schedule.

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About MetaWeek 2022

Metaverse, an avant-garde creation of the blockchain development world, even though being in its early innings, promises to deliver a trailblazing experience for millions of users and shake the world’s economy and innovative landscape. The market opportunity for launching the Metaverse may bring an annual revenue of over $1 trillion. Web 2.0 companies, tech giants like Facebook, have already picked up the Metaverse stance, raising questions on whether they will become centralisation proponents for Web 3.0 or not.

Breaking barriers between digital and physical space, Metaverse is best described as a virtual world with highly sophisticated visual and art experience and crypto based DeFi backbone, filled with self-governed communities, and powered by interoperable blockchain networks. Inside a Metaverse, users can share and store an unlimited amount of data, use self-sovereign IDs, play games and earn & trade digital assets, create limitless digital art pieces and play with NFTs and virtual goods, launch marketplaces – you name it.

Dubai has been accumulating regional efforts in the digital economy development and Metaverse adoption, with the implementation of the Dubai Metaverse Strategy and The Higher Committee for Future Technology and Digital Economy launched just recently. The strategy aims to increase the contribution of the Metaverse sector to the Emirate’s economy to $4 billion and to create 40,000 virtual jobs by 2030. With Web 3.0 leaders and up-and-coming start-ups moving to Dubai, the city is also attracting the brightest global talent in this field. Dubai is also the world’s first and only jurisdiction with the foresight to set up a dedicated virtual assets regulator.

Alongside Metaverse, essential financial and non-financial applications of blockchain will be covered during MetaWeek, a week-long event with a core 2-day conference and rich schedule of side events. Empowering other technologies, blockchain creates a vibrant symbiosis of advanced tech. From a buzzword to a global financial and industrial game changer — it has undisputedly become part of everyday life. Transparency, immutability, security, privacy — all the benefits of blockchain & crypto are on high demand, and are constantly discussed both at a developer’s desk and at a regulator’s office.

Blockchain masterminds, NFT creators, DeFi spearheads, AI forerunners, artists, gaming tycoons, data analysts, Metaverse instigators and other experts interested in creating and nurturing the Web 3.0 world will converge to Dubai for major MetaWeek event, which will combine high-level offline networking and content and all-around metaverse experience. Blockchain and its computing power is the main pillar for global digital transformation, so the current state of blockchain industry and the variety of protocols and solutions for FinTech, enterprise, logistics, entertainment, asset tokenisation, IoT and AI will also become part of the 2-day conference agenda.