As Meta grows its services centered around the metaverse, the platform is planning to introduce a digital currency called ‘Zuck Bucks’ to be used in its family of apps.

Revenue rates for Meta have declined as users are being drawn to new competitors such as TikTok. Its main social networks Facebook and Instagram have seen a drop in popularity. Since February 2nd, Meta’s shares have dropped by 30% and remained down, in part because the company revealed that spending on the metaverse had caused a decline in its fourth-quarter profit. The possible new virtual currency of Meta, a digital token that can only be spent on its platforms, may be what the company thinks it needs in order to create a new attraction to its applications.

Instead of a cryptocurrency per-se, ‘Zuck Bucks’ will most likely be in-app tokens. The tokens will be centrally controlled by the company, similar in comparison to those used in gaming apps like the currency Robux from the favored kids gaming platform Roblox.

To provide incentives for its users, Meta is also aiming to produce “social tokens” or “reputation tokens.” These would be issued as rewards for worthwhile Facebook group contributions. For the Instagram influencers, the company is working on creating “creator coins.”

Meta is further arranging to integrate non-fungible tokens (NFTs) with Facebook. Users will be able to create their own NFTs and use them as a gateway to memberships within Facebook groups. Ways to monetize NFTs via “fees and/or ads” is being explored as well.

This is not the first time Meta has attempted to dive into the world of cryptocurrency. In 2019 Facebook announced Libra – a cryptocurrency to be backed by several government currencies – that immediately faced criticism from politicians and central bankers that it would undermine existing currencies. Libra was then renamed as Diem in late 2020 after several partners aborted the project. Diem pegged the virtual currency to the US dollar but it was scrapped this past January.

In crypto’s continued effort to create niche blockchains in competition against Ethereum and Solana, Peer Inc. has launched web3’s first metaverse-inspired distributed ledger. According to the company, this blockchain will “boast” high security and zero fees. These are major claims by Peer, as these are qualities that legacy blockchains have never been able to brag about.

“The sooner we deliver a complete suite of blockchain products, services, and resources to make it easier for builders and creators to contribute to the metaverse and earn from it, the sooner we will have an actual metaverse,” said Heath Abbate, Chief Operating Officer of Peer.

“All the raw materials will be accessible to anyone who wants to participate,” Abbate continued. “The metaverse, like the web before it, needs contributors and collaborators to grow.”

This all begs the question, how exactly will Peer’s blockchain will actually help the metaverse? The company claims that aside from an infrastructure that can support millions of transactions per second, Peer uses “nominated” Proof-of-Stake to deliver cross-chain compatibility in order to promote wide scale transactions.

The company also plans on allowing apps to be built on top of the ledger, a telltale sign of a legitimate blockchain. In the initial stages, the open-source system software company Rust will support the application development process on Peer’s ledger.

“At present, there is no coherent vision of the metaverse, and no foundational technology framework exists to enable its construction. We are building that framework now,”said Tony Tran, Peer’s Founder and CEO.

According to Tran,  the metaverse is a “three-dimensional fabric” that  acts as a digital bridge between the tangible and digital realms. This fabric, which he calls the ‘Orthogonal Fabric’, will be driven by blockchain applications and accessed through the new next-gen infrastructures.

The Peer blockchain is still in its infancy. According to the company, it was deployed on February 22  with a pre-mined total supply of 2.1 billion Peers while using the ticker symbol $PMC. Peer’s tokens will serve as a utility, store of value, and unit of exchange in the metaverse.

This idea of creating niche financial products in an attempt to prevent an overhaul or big tech takeover of an industry is new to web3, but currently a major component in the crypto’s close cousin, fintech. 

“Peer is making it possible for the world to become a super user interface,” said Tran. “Technology is about to change faster than anyone can predict and bigger than anyone can imagine.”