Travessia: Globo soap opera written by Gloria Perez will explore technology and metaverse

Increasingly linked to current themes, soap operas bring the most varied topics to Brazilian homes. The theme of the time na  novel  Travessia is the metaverse. With its premiere scheduled for prime time this Monday, 10th, the 9 o'clock telenovela will portray the construction of a shopping center no  metaverse .

Following the story of the character Talita, played by Dandara Mariana, the telenovela intends to show the female leadership in search of innovation in the real estate sector. The character, attuned to new trends in technology, will lead the construction of a shopping center by the construction company Guerra, character of Humberto Martins.

“Talita is a woman who is super tuned in to the new, to trends. He is in the company with a new project, which is to make the mall in the metaverse”, said actress Dandara Mariana to Gshow.

- (Mynt/Disclosure)

 

 

The metaverse was first portrayed in the fictional work Snow Crash, by author Neal Stephenson in 1992. While not a relatively new concept, the metaverse became a worldwide topic in 2021 when Facebook changed its name to Meta.

Since then, large companies such as Samsung, JPMorgan, Dolce & Gabanna, Adidas, Prada, among others, have announced their entry into the sector, which promises to break down the barriers between physical and digital.

Through a combination of blockchain, augmented reality and virtual reality technologies,  the metaverse intends to become a viable reality  for the mass population in the future. Relevant names such as Mark Zuckerberg e  Bill Gates, believe that meetings , parties and get-togethers can be done remotely in the virtual environment, for example.

However, the plot space of the novel Travessia may come at a good time for the metaverse, which shows difficulty in maintaining significant levels of adoption today.

According to data from DappRadar, the top two blockchain metaverse platforms receive alarming numbers of daily active users. Decentraland and The Sandbox received, in the last 24 hours, 43 and 2 active users, respectively.

"Today, we can already see metaverses being built as it is in the case of games like Decentraland and The Sandbox, but the adoption is still very restricted to the community that already has knowledge about Web 3. The boom in the exploration of the metaverse theme happened because of the interest of Mark Zuckerberg in the matter", pointed out Leonardo Carvalho, CEO and co-founder of NFTFY, in an interview with EXAME.

An active user, according to DappRadar, is defined as the interaction of a unique wallet address with the platform's smart contract. For example, when you log into The Sandbox or Decentraland to make a purchase with your native cryptocurrencies, you will be an “active user”.

This means that DappRadar's compilation of daily active users doesn't account for people who log in and roam a metaverse platform or briefly appear at an event such as a virtual fashion week. To Coindesk, Decentraland reported receiving around 8,000 “ordinary” users daily.

In Brazil, the metaverse Xepa.World stood out when it received an NFT originating from a burnt painting by the artist Pablo Picasso for a virtual exhibition. However, Jonas Davanço, CEO of Xepa.World, reported that the question he most often heard was “what is the metaverse” and, therefore, in addition to the company's educational initiatives, the approach in a prime-time soap opera will be very well coming to bring the concept to the Brazilian population.

"We believe that today, with the insertion of the theme in a product of such visibility as Globo's telenovela, we will certainly see a new wave of acceptance both of the technology and the concepts involved with the metaverse, transforming our market again and opening new doors ", said Jonas Davanço, in an interview with EXAME.

"The virtual environment will bring a multitude of other communication tools that will increase our experience with the internet in a much more immersive way. It is without a doubt a transformative event that we are following with great optimism", added Jonas.

In the metaverse, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are protagonists. They are responsible for bringing avatars, clothes and the most varied items to life in digital reality. Therefore, this sector can also benefit from the visibility generated by the 9 o'clock soap opera.

"I believe that the first step towards popularizing the metaverse is to provide education and visibility of the concept to large masses, and nothing like a soap opera on the country's largest television station to make this contribution. We can't forget the power of soap operas in the construction of Brazilian culture , having the metaverse and all its possibilities better analyzed on open television could be the starting point for popularizing the concept among the population most distant from the technology sector", said Leonardo Carvalho, from NFTFY. The company specializes in fractionalizing NFTs, making them more accessible to the general public.

In addition to Dandara Mariana and Humberto Martins, Travessia will feature a heavy cast from Globo, such as Giovanna Antonelli reviving the delegate "Helô", Rodrigo Lombardi, Chay Suede, Alexandre Nero, Drica Moraes, Marcos Caruso, Ailton Graça and Alessandra Negrini. Blogger and former BBB Jade Picon has also been confirmed for her TV debut as Chiara.

"This tendency to create parallel realities and to live in worlds that are not physical interests me a lot. This is part of a new way of perceiving reality," writer Gloria Perez told GShow about the decision to include the theme in the plot.