Vitalik: Metaverse 'Will Happen, but Meta 'Will misfire'

According to Ethereum's founder, business efforts in the metaverse will fail because "it's far too early to know what consumers genuinely want."

According to Ethereum developer Vitalik Buterin, Meta's attempt to corner the metaverse will "misfire" because no one can agree on what the phrase actually means.

He directly addressed Meta, the internet behemoth built and operated by Mark Zuckerberg, in a Twitter conversation about how the metaverse will appear, invoking the company's former moniker.

"We don't really know what 'the metaverse' means yet; it's far too early to know what people genuinely want," Buterin remarked in a tweet. "As a result, anything Facebook creates now will misfire."

The metaverse is frequently described as an evolution of today's internet, centred on immersive 3D worlds and online communities where people interact through virtual reality headsets and augmented reality.

While Buterin isn't convinced of how companies see the metaverse, he does see its establishment as an inevitable stage in the evolution of today's technology.

"The'metaverse' will happen," Buterin added. "However, I don't think any of the current corporate efforts to purposefully develop the metaverse will be successful."

There is conflict between the centralised authority of businesses and the decentralised forms of ownership afforded by blockchain technology in determining how the metaverse will be created. Recently, a group of Web3 businesses launched a separate association with the objective of defining standards for the metaverse, including Microsoft, Meta, and Sony.

The Sandbox is one of the most prominent Web3 metaverse projects right now, featuring virtual plots of land linked to NFT ownership. Yuga Labs, which built the Bored Ape Yacht Club, is also developing its own metaverse game project, the Otherside, and recently hosted a first-look tech demo of that virtual environment.

The phrase "metaverse" originally appeared in Neal Stephenson's 1992 science fiction novel "Snow Crash." The word used to describe a "computer-generated cosmos" communicated to a character via goggles and earbuds.

Meta's official quest for the metaverse began in October, when the firm changed its name from Facebook to Meta. The rebranding came after the business paid $2 billion for Oculus, a startup that makes VR gear with a focus on gaming.

Last year, Zuckerberg stated, "I believe the metaverse is the next chapter for the internet." "Today, we're viewed as a social networking firm, but our DNA is that we build metaverse is the next frontier in technology for connecting people."

In the company's most recent earnings report, Meta revealed that its metaverse-specific branch, Facebook Reality Labs (FRL), lost $2.81 billion in the second quarter. In addition, the corporation lost $10.2 billion last year while developing software, technology, and content for the metaverse.

"This will obviously be a very expensive endeavour over the next several years," Zuckerberg said. "However, as the metaverse becomes increasingly important in every part of how we live... I'm confident we'll be proud to have played a role in its development."