The co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain, Vitalik Buterin, has said that it is too early for projects planning to offer metaverse products and services to know what people want. Buterin also predicted that Meta’s attempt at the metaverse would fail because there is no clear description of the term metaverse.
Buterin posted a Twitter thread that provided an overview of the metaverse. He said that the current corporate metaverse initiatives are not promising. He also criticized Meta, formerly Facebook, which is actively pursuing the metaverse.
Buterin said that no one knew the exact definition of the metaverse, and it was too early to know what people wanted. Therefore, anything that Meta will create at this stage “will misfire.”
The metaverse has been at the center of the web 3.0 debate. It is the next stage of the internet, where people can interact in 3D worlds and online communities using virtual reality headsets and augmented reality.
Buterin is also pessimistic about how large companies view the metaverse. He acknowledged that the metaverse would be the next stage in technology development. However, none of the corporate attempts to venture into the metaverse succeeded because it was too early.
The metaverse is already taking shape. The Sandbox is currently one of the most popular Web3 metaverse projects offering virtual plots of land. The other popular metaverse platform is Decentraland.
Meta’s venture into the metaverse
Meta started exploring the metaverse towards the end of 2021 after rebranding from Facebook to Meta. The rebranding was enabled by the acquisition of Oculus, a company that offers VR headsets focused on gaming. The acquisition was finalized for $2 billion.
Last year the CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, said that he believed the metaverse would be the next stage of the internet. As a company that provides technology that connects people, the metaverse would be Meta’s next frontier.
However, Meta’s metaverse division, Facebook Reality Labs, has not performed well. In the latest earnings report, the social media company reported a loss of $2.81 billion in Q2 2022. In 2021, the company also reported a loss of $10.2 billion in developing the software, technology, and content needed for the metaverse. However, Zuckerberg said that despite the expensive move, he was confident that Meta was playing a critical role in enabling this.
