The metaverse should connect us to reality—not replace it
The word metaverse is often associated with virtual-reality headsets, avatars, digital land and speculative tokens.
That is not the direction I want to take with MyZubster.
The MyZubster metaverse is envisioned as a navigable digital environment for understanding real projects, verified observations, circular material flows and international pilot proposals.
Its purpose would be to connect:
- Physical locations
- Environmental observations
- Circular-economy projects
- Research documents
- Companies and institutions
- Artificial intelligence
- Digital twins
- Human verification
- Transparent rewards
The 3D world would be the interface.
The real value would remain in the evidence behind it.
Project links
The public project resources currently include:
- MyZubster platform
- Main MyZubster ecosystem repository
- MyZubster AI MVP repository
- Local RAG implementation — Pull Request #10
- Merged RAG implementation commit
MyZubster is open source and still under active development.
The metaverse described in this article is a roadmap, not a claim that a complete immersive platform has already been released.
What is a metaverse?
A metaverse is a persistent digital environment in which people can enter with an identity, interact with information and other users, and perform actions that affect the environment.
It does not necessarily require a VR headset.
A metaverse can be accessed through:
- A web browser
- A desktop application
- A smartphone
- A game console
- A VR headset
- An augmented-reality device
A useful metaverse combines several technical layers:
User interface
↓
Identity and permissions
↓
Persistent application state
↓
Real-time communication
↓
Data and media storage
↓
AI and semantic search
↓
Connections to real-world systems
The quality of the 3D graphics matters less than the usefulness and reliability of these layers.
The MyZubster concept
The proposed MyZubster metaverse would organize projects into navigable virtual spaces.
An initial version could contain:
- A central MyZubster hub
- A Circular Care laboratory
- An Industrial Hemp laboratory
- A Japan project area
- A Singapore Smart Urban Farm
- A circular marketplace
- An environmental observation map
- An AI assistant
- A public evidence room
Each area would connect visual content to real project information.
Instead of presenting sustainability through a static report, users could explore the relevant locations, material flows, documents and observations.
What already works today
The project does not yet have a complete metaverse, but several underlying components are operational.
1. The MyZubster platform
The public MyZubster platform is available at:
The wider ecosystem includes marketplace, community and project-development components.
The main repository is available through the MyZubster Ecosystem GitHub organization.
2. A working observation API
The MyZubster AI MVP can store and retrieve structured observations.
An observation contains information such as:
{
"description": "Recyclable packaging observed in the marketplace",
"coordinates": {
"lat": 44.0678,
"lng": 12.5695
},
"timestamp": "2026-09-02T15:19:37Z",
"media_hash": ""
}
The API currently exposes:
POST /api/observation
GET /api/observations
This provides the beginning of an evidence layer.
A future metaverse could represent each observation as an interactive object, marker or location.
3. A working local AI stack
The local development environment includes:
- Flask
- Docker Compose
- Ollama
- Mistral
nomic-embed-text- Qdrant
- Open WebUI
The services communicate through this workflow:
User question
↓
MyZubster API
↓
Embedding generated by Ollama
↓
Semantic retrieval from Qdrant
↓
Relevant MyZubster observations
↓
Answer generated by Mistral
The implementation is public in Pull Request #10, which was tested and merged.
4. A working RAG endpoint
The API now exposes:
POST /api/ai/ask
Example request:
{
"question": "What was observed in the marketplace?"
}
A real local test returned an answer equivalent to:
{
"answer": "Recyclable packaging was observed in the marketplace.",
"embedding_model": "nomic-embed-text",
"model": "mistral:latest",
"sources": [
{
"description": "Recyclable packaging observed in the marketplace"
}
]
}
This proves that the current system can:
- Receive a question.
- Generate an embedding.
- Search application data in Qdrant.
- Retrieve relevant observations.
- Generate a grounded answer with Mistral.
- Return the sources used.
This AI assistant could eventually become a guide inside the MyZubster metaverse.
5. Dockerized development infrastructure
The working local Docker environment contains:
- The MyZubster API
- Qdrant
- Open WebUI
Ollama runs on the Windows host and is available to the containers through:
http://host.docker.internal:11434
The local services are currently exposed at:
MyZubster API: http://localhost:5000
Open WebUI: http://localhost:3001
Qdrant: http://localhost:6333
Ollama: http://localhost:11434
These are development addresses, not public production endpoints.
6. Automated tests and GitHub workflow
The AI endpoint includes tests for:
- Invalid JSON
- Missing questions
- Successful grounded responses
- Retrieved sources
- Interaction between retrieval and generation
The GitHub workflow passed before the implementation was merged.
What the metaverse could look like
The central hub
Users would enter through a central MyZubster space.
From there, they could access:
- Active projects
- Public observations
- Circular-economy laboratories
- The marketplace
- Documentation
- Community areas
- An AI assistant
The first version does not need photorealistic graphics. A lightweight browser-based environment would be more accessible and easier to test.
Circular Care Lab
The Circular Care Lab would focus on absorbent hygiene products such as:
- Baby diapers
- Adult incontinence products
- Sanitary pads
- Related personal-care materials
Users could inspect a virtual product and explore:
- Its material layers
- Absorbent components
- Packaging
- Manufacturing information
- Collection challenges
- Recovery options
- Available evidence
- Environmental indicators
MyZubster has sent exploratory pilot proposals to organizations including Kao, Unicharm, Fater Group and the EMBRACED project.
These contacts do not represent confirmed partnerships.
Industrial Hemp Lab
The Industrial Hemp Lab would explain how hemp moves through a possible circular value chain:
Cultivation
↓
Harvesting
↓
Fiber processing
↓
Material development
↓
Product application
↓
Collection
↓
Recovery or safe end of life
Organizations and institutions contacted regarding exploratory hemp or biomaterial work include:
- Libeco
- Hemp4Circularity
- KU Leuven
- SSUCHY-Next
- CREA
- Open Fields
- Azienda Agraria Sperimentale Stuard
- Comune di Capannori
Again, outreach should not be confused with confirmed participation.
Japan Circular Care Hub
A Japan-focused area could present:
- Absorbent hygiene-product research
- Material-flow models
- Demographic and care challenges
- Product concepts
- Pilot documentation
- Multilingual project communication
Kao and Unicharm have received exploratory proposals concerning a Japan-focused AHP pilot.
Their names should be presented as organizations contacted, not as MyZubster partners.
Singapore Smart Urban Farm
A virtual urban farm could display:
- Temperature
- Humidity
- Water consumption
- Plant conditions
- Human observations
- IoT sensor events
- AI-assisted recommendations
- Verified environmental indicators
MyZubster sent pilot proposals to:
- NUS Enterprise
- NUS Agritech Centre
- Republic Polytechnic
- Urban Agriculture Centre of Innovation, or UACOI
No formal collaboration is claimed.
Circular marketplace
A future marketplace experience could let users inspect the history behind products and services.
Each listing could show:
- Producer
- Origin
- Materials
- Documents
- Relevant observations
- Verification status
- Claimed impact
- Verified impact
- End-of-life instructions
The goal would not be to make every product an NFT.
The goal would be to make evidence understandable.
Digital twins
A digital twin is a digital representation of a physical place, asset or process.
In MyZubster, a digital twin could represent:
- An urban farm
- A recycling facility
- A hemp field
- A material batch
- A product
- A collection route
- A pilot territory
The virtual representation could receive information from:
- Human observations
- IoT sensors
- APIs
- Photographs
- Documents
- Laboratory results
- Logistics records
A digital twin becomes valuable when it stays connected to real information.
Without that connection, it is only a 3D model.
Identity and roles
A metaverse needs more than avatars. It needs access control.
Possible MyZubster roles include:
- Visitor
- Citizen
- Researcher
- Company representative
- Public authority
- Verifier
- Project manager
- Developer
- Moderator
Different roles should receive different permissions.
For example:
- A visitor could access public evidence.
- A company could update only its own project data.
- A researcher could submit results.
- A verifier could approve or reject specific evidence.
- A moderator could manage community content.
The system should always separate public information from confidential project data.
Tokens are not required
A metaverse does not need a blockchain or token to function.
MyZubster can build:
- Accounts
- Avatars
- Virtual environments
- Observations
- AI search
- Project dashboards
- Digital twins
without issuing any token.
A token should be considered only if it represents a meaningful and verified event.
Examples might include:
- A material batch documented
- A laboratory test completed
- A kilogram of material collected
- An environmental outcome verified
- A participant completing an approved task
The principle should be:
No evidence, no reward.
A token must not be promoted as an investment without legal classification, regulatory analysis, governance and all necessary approvals.
Banco BPM and traditional finance
Banco BPM is my personal banking reference.
It is not currently a declared MyZubster partner, project financier or metaverse participant.
A traditional bank could potentially support future activities such as:
- Business accounts
- Payments
- Working capital
- Project finance
- International transactions
- Financial controls
Any involvement would require a formal proposal, due diligence and a written agreement.
A personal banking relationship is not an institutional partnership.
What we do not have yet
The following components are not currently complete:
No public 3D world
MyZubster does not yet have a released browser-based or VR metaverse.
No complete avatar system
Users do not yet have persistent 3D avatars that move between project environments.
No real-time multiplayer layer
The project still needs WebSocket or multiplayer infrastructure for synchronizing users and events.
No deployed digital twins
The Circular Care Lab, Hemp Lab, Japan Hub and Singapore Smart Urban Farm are proposed environments, not finished digital twins.
No live IoT integration
The platform does not yet receive continuous production data from farms, factories or recycling systems.
No confirmed metaverse partners
The companies and institutions named in the pilot portfolio have been contacted, but their participation is not automatically confirmed.
No public token
MyZubster has not launched a public investment token through this project.
Any reward or token system requires further technical, economic and legal work.
No Banco BPM integration
There is no current banking API, financing agreement or project partnership with Banco BPM.
No production deployment of the local RAG stack
The Ollama, Qdrant and Mistral pipeline currently works in the local development environment. It still requires security, scaling and operational work before public production use.
No independent impact verification
The platform can record evidence, but the proposed circular-economy outcomes still need real pilots and independent validation.
Proposed development roadmap
A realistic roadmap would be:
Phase 1 — Evidence portal
Build a browser interface for:
- Observations
- Projects
- Maps
- Sources
- AI-assisted search
Phase 2 — Visual project spaces
Add lightweight 3D environments for the principal pilot areas.
Phase 3 — Identity and collaboration
Introduce:
- Persistent profiles
- Avatars
- Roles
- Permissions
- Real-time communication
Phase 4 — Digital twins
Connect selected project spaces to real observations and sensor data.
Phase 5 — Verification
Add structured review, audit histories and evidence status.
Phase 6 — Rewards
Test non-speculative rewards for verified contributions.
Phase 7 — Immersive access
Evaluate VR and augmented reality only after the browser experience provides clear value.
A realistic MVP
The first MyZubster metaverse MVP could contain:
- A browser-based central hub
- Three project rooms
- A simple avatar
- Interactive evidence panels
- Observation markers
- The existing RAG assistant
- Links to source documents
- Basic user roles
- A public project-status page
The most important test would not be graphical quality.
It would be:
Does the virtual environment help people understand verified project information better than an ordinary website?
If it does not, the 3D layer should be redesigned.
Open-source development
The project is being developed publicly.
Developers can currently inspect:
The next contributions could focus on:
- A browser-based 3D prototype
- Secure authentication
- Real-time collaboration
- Geospatial visualization
- Digital-twin schemas
- IoT ingestion
- Source citations
- Multilingual AI
- Privacy controls
- Accessibility
Conclusion
The MyZubster metaverse is not a finished product.
It is a technical and social roadmap built on components that are beginning to work.
Today we have:
- A public platform
- Open-source repositories
- An observation API
- Dockerized AI infrastructure
- Local semantic search
- A working RAG endpoint
- Mistral-generated answers with sources
- Automated tests
- Circular-economy pilot outreach
We do not yet have:
- A released 3D world
- Persistent avatars
- Real-time multiplayer
- Deployed digital twins
- Live pilot data
- Confirmed metaverse partners
- A regulated token system
- Banking integration
- Production-ready public AI infrastructure
This distinction is important.
A credible metaverse should not begin with promises about virtual land or token prices.
It should begin with real users, useful data and verifiable outcomes.
For MyZubster, the metaverse is intended to become an interface connecting digital collaboration with physical evidence.
The world may be virtual.
The responsibility must remain real.
Project links
Disclosure: MyZubster is an open-source project under active development. The metaverse environments described in this article are proposed features. Organizations contacted about pilot projects are not necessarily confirmed partners. This article is not an investment offer or an announcement of regulatory approval.
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