Here’s everything that I’ve thought about in the past week regarding the metaverse.
Decentralized Topic — The crypto metaverse is boring
I don’t really care about the decentralized metaverse, at least for what it is right now. Pick your poison, you’re either getting Pokémon with NFT’s, Sims with NFT’s, or a worse Minecraft (with NFT rug pulls)
Even though they’re mostly just a bunch of sub-par games with a marketplace attached to them, I actually do respect the crypto metaverse. Enjin was basically my primer for understanding all things metaverse, and my appreciation of the space comes from the idea that they really started from nothing and are building towards the goal line.
Centralized tech is either trying to pivot their massive incumbent technologies to fit the new trend, or redefine what the goal line looks like all-together (It’s hard for a big tech company to embrace the idea of interoperability when their entire revenue model is built around the concept of exclusivity and blue text boxes) So I think it’s at least admirable to see metaverse blockchain projects utilizing a new technology to try and work towards the future. They may not have birthed the central principles of things like interoperability, but they’re definitely one of the first sectors to actually work towards it. That being said, it’s all dog crap.
Now I’m not gonna do a deep dive on the crypto metaverse today, but listening to the “Into the Metaverse” podcast got me thinking about this. Anyone intelligent looking at the space pretty much feels the same way about this topic; the blockchain may have a PART in the metaverse, but in no way does it have to define it.
All the Web3 maxis will sit there with a straight face and try to tell you that the future of the internet is a decentralized one, but in literally all of human history, there has never been a system or entity that has not grown MORE centralized as it aged forward. When you have a product existing at scale with a seemingly infinite number of unknowns at play at all times (like the internet), letting it exist in a decentralized way is just wishful thinking.
I know it sounds like I’m just another crypto hater, but in reality, I am.
I’m not, but I couldn’t resist the set up.
Centralized Topic — Facebook and Meta are getting a divorce
Well they aren’t, but they should. Maybe.
This was actually an interesting point that I had never thought about until I heard Mathew talking about it on “Into the Metaverse”. With the recent news of Meta (along with the rest of the tech sector) cutting back on hiring for the near future, it got me thinking about Meta’s decision on building towards the metaverse.
Right now it feels like Meta is in a bit of a mess because of Zuckerberg’s gamble, but honestly, I think the guy just got a little unlucky. At first I agreed with the idea that it doesn’t make much sense for Meta’s metaverse division to be housed under the same roof as their social media divisions. They have completely different revenue models: data driven advertisements vs. hardware sales/whatever “experience tax” Horizon will inevitably enact. Why not just create separate companies like our boy Elon does? If Tesla, a car company, started making rocket ships, I wouldn’t…actually that’d be kinda dope, but not for investors. When you invest in Tesla, you’re making a bet on electric vehicles. When you invest in SpaceX, you’re making a bet on rocket science. Right now, people don’t really know what kind of bet they’re making with Meta.
At least that’s what I originally thought, but then I remembered one of the GOATs of the American tech sector, good ol Billy Gates. Well not really Bill himself, but just Microsoft. They have a ton of different verticals all sitting under the Microsoft umbrella. Just off the top of my head there’s Xbox, Windows, Microsoft Edge, Azure, Microsoft Office, Skype, and last but not least, probably one of the most well respected and beloved products in the world, Bing. Within this list, there are definitely strong connections between each division (e.g., Microsoft Edge’s main search engine is Bing which relies on data management from Azure), but I won’t pretend that all of them play nice together (Xbox and PowerPoint?)
I’m not really making the argument that Meta should or shouldn’t separate its metaverse divisions from the rest of the company, but I just think it’s too easy right now to say Zuckerberg was wrong on his gamble. We’re literally headed into a recession that’s causing everyone to rethink how they’re moving forward. Meta just looks really dumb right now because they already openly stated that Reality Labs is going to be a massive cash burner for the next decade. So instead of doubling down on a long term investment that hopefully pays off, they decided to slow that burn rate by slashing their hiring for engineers by around 30%. This will definitely push timelines back, but making it to the finish line is really all that matters here.
In the meantime, all we can do is sit back and watch our ninja overlord try to create the future.
Whatever else I wanna talk about…Topic — Metaverse UN
The Metaverse Standards Forum (MSF). Wow. Did not see that one coming.
For anyone that’s not aware, the basic premise of the MSF is to make the interoperability article I wrote a month ago completely useless. It took 150 of the largest tech companies in the world joining forces to make a smug 25 year old look stupid for almost missing a vacation weekend trying to “solve” interoperability in the metaverse all by himself.
In my article, I write about what interoperability in the metaverse looks like and how that goal can be achieved with a number of different solutions. None of which included anything about giant tech companies playing nice with each other and deciding to play by the same rules.
The ringleader behind this massive alliance is a non-profit tech company that likes to work behind-the-scenes, Khronos Group. Their main functions are to develop and manage open standards across different kinds of technology (3D graphics, parallel computation, machine learning, etc.).
The forum’s main goal is to institute collaborative project-based-testing that will lead to the development of a robust suite of open-source tools. The idea is that if they start this process now, it will lead to an acceleration in development, while simultaneously reducing duplicated efforts across the space.
Looking at the list of members for this forum, some key names are missing: Apple (expected), ByteDance (China?), Roblox (lol), and every decentralized metaverse project in the universe. Now I’m not gonna go on a deep dive as to why I think each of these companies made that decision (or maybe they just didn’t get the invite…), but my one comment will be that a company that is able to make money off of the “idea” of the metaverse today, really doesn’t need to waste its time joining this thing.
All in all, I like the idea of the forum. The forum itself isn’t a new Standards Development Organization (SDO) that will build new standards used across the industry, rather, they’re here to facilitate existing SDO’s to coordinate and create new requirements. This makes perfect sense since the Metaverse is the culmination of a lot of different technologies working together in harmony. Someone has to be in the middle organizing everyone’s efforts, or at least, try to.
I had no idea groups like this existed. On the surface they make sense, but how effective/democratic they are is the real question. I’m gonna be keeping my eyes on them so that I can see for myself how this thing plays out.
Thanks for reading
