Metaverse Use Cases: 15 Real-Life Examples Across Industries

The metaverse hype is over, but the industry is not standing still. Dozens of metaverse startups like Futureverse raised millions of dollars when the metaverse was no longer making waves. While Zuckerberg’s corporate metaverse turned out to be a disaster and a source of countless memes, other companies found more reasonable niches with a real interest in this innovative technology.

To back our claims that the metaverse is very much alive, we curated an extensive list of metaverse examples in real life. We combined our expertise as a metaverse development company with profound market research to show you a broad spectrum of metaverse applications across industries.

In this article, we’ll explain the metaverse in simple terms, describe how big names are experimenting with it, and what services are emerging around it. Let’s go!

What is metaverse?

The metaverse is a concept of a 3D virtual world that allows people to self-express themselves, explore, and co-create this space full of different real-life and truly digital experiences like shopping, learning, playing video games, socializing, collaborating, watching streamed content, and earning.

The metaverse is still taking shape, so it’s difficult to define it clearly. Ideally, it has to be an interoperable network of different 3D worlds where thousands of people can interact simultaneously.

What we have now looks more like early metaverse prototypes existing separately. For example, we have Decentraland, Axie Infinity, The Sandbox, and Fortnite Creative. All these are different metaverse games that are not connected.

However, Decentarland has already made the first steps towards interoperability, allowing its players to add external NFT collections as linked wearables. Being an NFT owner is way more exciting when you can actually wear it and show it off right in the game.

Another distinctive feature of the metaverse is that it is always on. No matter when you join the virtual world, multiple things are happening there concurrently.

The metaverse is also often associated with virtual reality (VR) headsets or augmented reality (AR) goggles because these devices help provide more immersive experiences. At the same time, present-day metaverse projects do not necessarily require VR/AR support.

The metaverse is often regarded as the next iteration of the internet. That’s why modern metaverse platforms are usually built on web3 technology. Still, web2 metaverse products are being developed, too. Let’s look at the difference between them.