About virology, there is no doubt that the first RNA molecule was a virus.
All the popular presentations about the "RNA world" are either incomplete and/or logically inconsistent.
There certainly was a RNA world, in the sense of a world where there was no DNA, but only RNA.
However, there must have existed 2 stages of the RNA world, the later stage, when protein synthesis based on translation from RNA existed, like today, and also an earlier stage, when only RNA replication existed, but RNA did not perform any useful function for its host living being, but it was only a virus that was replicated using energy and molecular components from its host.
The fact that there are RNA molecules that can have a catalytic effect like enzymes, as mentioned in the article is completely irrelevant. If such catalytic RNA molecules had ever existed before the apparition of RNA replication, they would have immediately disappeared without living any descendants.
Only from the moment when some self-replicating RNA molecules has appeared, i.e. the first virus, we have some chain of nucleic acid replications, which has continued until today and all the existing nucleic acid molecules must be descendants of the first virus.
The first replicating RNA molecule required for its synthesis energy and molecular components, in the form of ATP and free nucleotides, which can condense into RNA.
So there must have already existed an equivalent of a bacteria, with metabolism using energy from the environment (i.e. dihydrogen with carbon dioxide and ionic gradients), which was already able to make ATP, which would have been needed to synthesize the polymers made by condensation, e.g. peptides. The apparition of the first RNA virus was an initially undesirable side-effect of using ATP to perform polymer condensations.
Because any memory molecule, like RNA, needs an already existing living being for its first replication, there must have been a stage prior to the RNA world, when there were self-replicating living beings, but without memory molecules.
The self-replication of a system does not need a memory, it can be "hard-wired", where there is a closed chain of chemical reactions where each reaction synthesizes a new component based on previous components and eventually the first component is synthesized from the last components.
However such a self-replicating system without a memory had extremely low chances of evolution, because any random change was almost certain to break the self-replication cycle, leading to death without descendants.
Only after the apparition of RNA, and especially after the later appearance of the RNA to protein translation mechanism, it became possible for mutations to accumulate and eventually create a variety of living beings.
While the first RNA must have been a virus, because diverting ATP and other useful internal components to the production of RNA molecules could not have been of any good for the host, some time after the apparition of RNA-based protein synthesis, some form of symbiosis between a host and some DNA virus must have created the ancestors of bacteria.