We inhabit many worlds, each with their own customs, rules, history, and accepted truths. Some worlds are serious, and others are playful. Think of the world of your favorite science fiction novel, the world of any major religion, or even the World of Warcraft. Enter one of these worlds, and it feels undeniably real. There are many different kinds of worlds, each with their own sets of self-consistent rules and entities.

These worlds feel alive. If a world is successful, millions of people will care about them, inhabit them, and integrate them into their everyday existence, creating drama and other sparks of life.

Worlds come alive in different mediums. Mediums can be found in anything from films and sci-fi conventions, the Bible and places of worship, to Blizzard’s video game servers.

These worlds also have owners. Authorities, authors, institutions, and more who ultimately determine the rules of the game. Owners attest to the history of the world; they also determine what is and isn’t possible within a world. Owners are trusted.

Owners can also break trust, and make up the rules as they go along. Especially in the digital world, where owners of a server can rewrite actions, delete achievements, or destroy history.

What if we could create this same feeling of “aliveness” in a world that isn’t owned by anyone? What kind of emergence and creativity could we find in a world where anyone can build on top of it?

Some games and online spaces take on a life of their own. They develop lore, history, and culture so deep, they feel as if they have always existed. We believe these digital worlds can be just as meaningful, consequential, and resonant as the real world. We call these digital spaces “Autonomous Worlds.”

Autonomous Worlds introduce a possibility for realities that exist without owners. They are viable in the digital realm — and find particularly welcoming mediums on blockchains. Blockchains guarantee the longevity and autonomy of these worlds. They also open up creation beyond their original designers by surfacing up their internal logic while enforcing them.

The “autonomy” part of Autonomous Worlds doesn’t refer to a lack of humans or participants. Rather, it refers to the fact that the World doesn’t rely on any particular individual or institution in order to exist. Without owners, and without institutions, anyone is free to build on top of an Autonomous World.

Blockchains, where Autonomous Worlds can come alive, introduce a new kind of trust: instead of needing to believe in institutions, world inhabitants (or really anyone who cares) can run consensus algorithms, and can use computers to automatically agree on a World’s history. There is no need for owners to say what is or isn’t part of the universe.

Blockchains are also highly composable and moddable — allowing anyone to deploy code that can interact with other parts of the world as long as they respect the rules: pieces on a chess board can move in a finite number of ways (but a game has millions of possible positions).

While worlds with owners feel like theme parks — highly controlled, fabricated environments — Autonomous Worlds feel more like a constantly-evolving metropolis, where anyone can introduce a new custom, culture, political system, or economic layer, and feel its impact reverberate across the world. They might be a little messy, but they are self-consistent.

Because they are built on a blockchain substrate, its inhabitants can be confident that their actions and modifications will be felt forever.

Underlying every Autonomous World is a form of digital physics: immutable laws that enforce limits. Perhaps counterintuitively, these limits are what lead to creativity on the part of a worlds’ inhabitants. Rules that are simple and fixed give people the space to build original, inventive things on top.

Autonomous Worlds, powered by new forms of computation, enable persistent, multi-author virtual realms that evolve collaboratively and expand beyond traditional experiences in digital spaces.

At Lattice, we’re interested in the emergent, unforeseeable behavior that can materialize in the digital realm. We build infrastructure and tools for developers, creatives, storytellers, and disruptors to realize Autonomous Worlds.