From Metaverse to Blockchain: The Emerging Technology Convergence Shaping a New Digital Economy by 2025

As of November 2025, the global tech industry is witnessing a new paradigm created by the triangular convergence of the metaverse, blockchain, and artificial intelligence. Beyond the mere advancement of individual technologies, these technologies are synergizing to construct an entirely new form of digital economy. Notably, this convergence has moved beyond the experimental phase and is now generating tangible revenue models and business opportunities. Industry analysis supports this, indicating that the global metaverse market size is expected to grow from $74 billion in 2024 to an estimated $120 billion in 2025, with approximately 35% of this linked to blockchain-based economic activities.

The movement in the Korean market is particularly prominent. Seoul-based Naver’s ZEPETO surpassed 400 million monthly active users by the third quarter of 2025, with about 200 million of them owning blockchain-based NFT items. More importantly, Naver announced that virtual asset transactions within ZEPETO amounted to approximately 150 billion won in the first half of 2025 alone, a 280% increase compared to the same period last year. This demonstrates that economic activities within the metaverse have evolved beyond simple gaming into a substantial economic ecosystem. ZEPETO’s success is significant, especially as Generation Z and Alpha users naturally embrace economic activities in virtual spaces.

Meta (headquartered in Menlo Park, California) is taking a somewhat different approach. In 2025, Meta’s Horizon Worlds significantly enhanced its AI-based content creation capabilities, allowing users to create more sophisticated virtual environments and experiences with AI assistance. According to Meta’s third-quarter 2025 earnings report, the Reality Labs division recorded quarterly revenue of $3.8 billion, a 45% increase compared to the same period last year. Notably, while Meta is cautious in adopting blockchain technology, it is stimulating economic activities within the metaverse through its proprietary digital currency system. This approach is interpreted as a strategy to minimize regulatory risks while maximizing user experience.

The development of blockchain technology is also intriguing. While Ethereum-based Decentraland and The Sandbox continue to lead the blockchain-based metaverse, more practical and user-friendly platforms are emerging in 2025. Particularly, new metaverse platforms based on the Polygon network are gaining attention, offering over 90% reduced transaction fees and faster transaction speeds compared to existing platforms. Polygon’s transaction volume in 2025 surpassed 1.5 million daily, with approximately 40% related to metaverse transactions.

The Synergy of AI and Blockchain: The Birth of a New Creative Economy

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence technology is bringing revolutionary changes to the metaverse and blockchain ecosystems. Especially with the development of generative AI, ordinary users can easily create high-quality 3D content, avatars, and virtual environments. San Francisco-based OpenAI’s DALL-E 3D, launched in September 2025, offers the ability to generate complete 3D environments from text descriptions, and integration with major metaverse platforms is already underway. This technological progress significantly lowers the entry barriers to content creation, enabling more creators to participate in the metaverse economy.

Korea’s Kakao (headquartered in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province) is actively leveraging these trends. Kakao’s AI-based metaverse platform ‘Kakao World’ has shown rapid growth since its launch in the first half of 2025, particularly by introducing a system that transparently manages the ownership and revenue distribution of AI-generated content using blockchain technology. In Kakao World, even if content is generated by AI, if it is created through the user’s creative input and curation, clear ownership is granted to the user, and it can be issued as an NFT. This approach is regarded as an important attempt to redefine the role and value of humans in the creative economy of the AI era.

Similar movements are also appearing in the Chinese market. Tencent (headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province) has introduced a large number of AI-based content creation tools to its metaverse platform in the latter half of 2025, with the transaction volume of generated content surpassing 500 million yuan per month. Notably, Tencent operates separate marketplaces for AI-generated content and human-created content, a strategy aimed at maximizing the advantages of AI technology while alleviating creators’ concerns, which is gaining attention as a model in the industry.

The advancement of blockchain technology is also accelerating this convergence. Particularly, new consensus mechanisms emerging in 2025 have reduced energy consumption by over 95% compared to existing ones while processing over 100,000 transactions per second. With the development of Ethereum’s upgraded sharding technology and Layer 2 solutions, real-time transactions within the metaverse have become technically feasible. Industry experts analyze that these technological advancements are key factors enabling the substantial leap of the metaverse economy.

Global Market Trends and Changes in Investment Patterns

Examining the global investment patterns of 2025 reveals a sharp increase in investments in the metaverse-blockchain-AI convergence sector. According to PwC’s latest report, a total of $28 billion in venture investments flowed into this sector in the first half of 2025 alone, a 165% increase compared to the same period last year. Notably, the regional distribution of investments is changing. Moving away from the traditional investment patterns led by the US and Europe, the share of the Asian region has significantly increased. The Asian region, centered around Korea, Japan, and Singapore, accounts for 42% of total investments, the highest level in history.

The Korean government’s policy support is also backing this trend. The Ministry of Science and ICT announced the ‘K-Metaverse 2.0’ plan for 2025, pledging to invest 1.2 trillion won over the next three years to support the development of metaverse-blockchain convergence technology. The core of this plan is not just technology development but also creating practical business models and securing global competitiveness. Particularly, K-Metaverse 2.0 presents an ambitious goal of establishing a transparent blockchain-based economic system, positioning Korea as a hub of the global metaverse economy.

Japan’s approach is also intriguing. Tokyo-based SoftBank has established a $5 billion dedicated fund for the metaverse-AI convergence sector in 2025 and has already completed investments in 15 startups. Notably, SoftBank’s investment strategy focuses not only on evaluating technological capabilities but also on companies with actual user bases and revenue models. This is interpreted as a shift from past technology-centric investments to pursuing more practical and sustainable business models.

Winds of change are also blowing in the European market. Particularly, the European Union, centered around Germany and the Netherlands, announced the ‘Digital Asset Regulatory Framework (MiCA) 2.0’ in the latter half of 2025, providing clear guidelines for economic activities within the metaverse. This regulatory framework is designed to enhance user protection without hindering innovation, leading many companies to consider Europe as a base for metaverse business. In fact, Amsterdam-based metaverse startups attracted a total of 1.2 billion euros in investments in 2025, a 320% increase compared to the previous year.

However, alongside this growth, new challenges are emerging. One of the biggest concerns is the deepening inequality of economic activities within the metaverse. A phenomenon is occurring where early investors and tech-savvy users monopolize most of the profits, which is far from the democratic and open economic ecosystem that the metaverse aims for. Additionally, the copyright and ownership issues of AI-generated content are causing complex legal disputes. To address these issues, the industry is exploring new governance models and distribution mechanisms, which are expected to be key factors determining the sustainability of the metaverse economy in the future.

Looking towards the end of 2025, the metaverse-blockchain-AI convergence ecosystem is expected to maintain its rapid growth. Particularly, innovations and experiments in the Asian market are likely to lead global trends, with the role of Korean companies becoming increasingly important. However, to truly realize a digital economic revolution, challenges such as technological completeness, the quality of user experience, and the establishment of sustainable economic models must be resolved. Industry experts view 2026 as a turning point for the popularization of these convergent technologies, with current investment and development efforts determining their success.

This analysis is based on market trends and publicly available information as of November 22, 2025, and should not be used as a basis for investment decisions. Due to the rapid changes in the technology market, some information may change quickly.