---
title: "Digital twin — REG-020, The Register"
canonical: https://metaversegroup.com/encyclopedia/digital-twin/
site: metaversegroup.com
owns: "The definition of a digital twin"
updated: 2026-08-28
kind: reference
---

# Digital twin — REG-020, The Register

A digital twin is a virtual model of a specific physical thing — a building, a machine, a city block — kept in correspondence with the real one. In an industrial context the correspondence is maintained by sensors; in a commercial-world context it is usually maintained by nothing, which is where …

A digital twin is a virtual model of a specific physical thing — a building, a machine, a city block — kept in correspondence with the real one. In an industrial context the correspondence is maintained by sensors; in a commercial-world context it is usually maintained by nothing, which is where the term is misused.

## The distinction that is routinely lost

A twin is defined by the live correspondence, not by the resemblance. A 3D replica of a shop that does not know the shop's stock, hours or occupancy is a model. Calling it a twin borrows credibility from industrial practice where the data link is the entire product.

## Where it becomes commercially real

When the virtual copy carries state the physical one also has — stock, availability, price — a customer can transact in either and the two stay consistent. That is a genuine capability and a considerably harder engineering problem than building the replica.

The Block — Meta reductions and token collapse

## See also

Related entries in the Register. Every see-also is reciprocal — if this entry points there, that entry points back.

Metaverse Group, The Register , REG-020 Digital twin, as at 2026-08-28. https://metaversegroup.com/encyclopedia/digital-twin/

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