Museums in the metaverse: How Web3 technology can help historical sites

Choi said, “In the metaverse, we can upload guns and recreate wars for historical teaching purposes.” Historical reenactments with reconstructed weapons happen all over the world, including in the United States, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and Italy, and there may be many future teachable moments in the metaverse.

“Under no circumstance do I want to experience things I can experience in the real world,” said Donatus. “The Metaverse can recreate and preserve the past.” He said one could create a “tennis match in a ballroom in the Palace of Versailles as a great tourist drawcard.”

Historical storytelling and experiences can also be augmented to create surreal and impossible scenarios.

DAOs are not constrained by borders, and this can create network effects for new models of tourism. “A sort of PleasrDAO for castles,” said Donatus. “They will include decentralized access/stewardship to castles, and castle hackathons — as castles are a cool place for meetups.”

Donatus said he foresees a launching DAO treasury for renovations, akin to a “people’s UNESCO” — a reference to the United Nations agency tasked with protecting sites of cultural and historical significance.

Scindia is convinced that the metaverse is the future, as “A person usually visits a museum once,” but they can visit multiple times in the metaverse. She says that in India, especially, museums are not the first destination people think to go to for entertainment. Private museums in small towns can be taken for granted, especially when compared wi... See more

“Travel will be augmented as a teaching tool. In the past, tourism meant visiting a place. Photos were 2D, but 3D travel then emerged with virtual headsets. 4D time experimentation is now possible. Now, we can mesh different time periods. There’s a teaching angle.”

The metaverse tourism model was expedited by downturns in tourism brought about by COVID-19, but the industry may have already been heading that way.