The term “METAVERSE” was coined by visionary author Neal
Stephenson in his 1992 novel Snow Crash.

The definitive definition of the Metaverse comes from Matthew Ball in his seminal 2022 work “The Metaverse”:
“A massively scaled and interoperable network of realtime rendered 3D virtual worlds that can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users with an individual sense of presence, and with continuity of data, such as identity, history, entitlements, objects, communications,and payments.”

Simply put, the Metaverse is the latest evolution of the Mobile Internet, that can be experienced spatially.

Since Facebook rebranded as Meta in 2021, there has been a growing power struggle for  ownership and control of the Metaverse that will determine whether it will be an open or a closed system. There is a historical precedent to this power struggle that occurred at the birth of the Internet (Web 1), where a number of corporate entities (AOL, Compuserve, etc) built “walled gardens” that created a closed internet that demanded a subscription fee to access. As we know, these walled gardens soon collapsed, to be replaced with what we know as the Internet. 

We believe that we are in the midst of a similar struggle for the ownership of the Metaverse (and Web 3), and it is our firm belief that the Metaverse - like the Internet - needs to be open and not owned by the centralized entities of Web2 (yes, we are talking about you Zuck!).

In order to achieve this vision, we will need to help build a community of like-minded folks that will create this Open Metaverse.

Metaverse interoperability is the ability for the existing “walled garden” Metaverse platforms to interact with each other. This means users can effortlessly traverse platforms as well as upload NFT content and experiences with them. 

The creation of the ØRB System [0S] is our first step toward building the bridges to connect these existing Metaverse platforms into an Open Metaverse.

To answer this question, we need to look back once more at the birth of the internet (Web 1). The 1st iteration of the internet was Text-based, or “read-only” as it is now fondly remembered. 

Web 2 added “multimedia” content, with images and video enabling a richer user experience. 

A key consideration here is that to access these Web 1 and 2 websites - much like the early games - forces the user to scroll up or down, or left to right.  

Web 3 Spatial content - like contemporary gaming - allows the user to BECOME IMMERSED IN the experience. 

In art terms, this is the difference between a traditional art gallery with 2d frames on a wall housing 2D artworks, to a visionary gallery such as https://www.superblue.com that allows the visitor to experience and move around within a large-scale immersive art installation.

We want to translate this kind of powerful, immersive experience into the Metaverse and in order to do this, we needed to create a device that would allow the user to experience SPATIAL 360° content. 

The existing “walled garden” Metaverses allow the user to connect their wallet and hang their 2D artworks in a frame (simulating the archaic traditional museum concept). 

Like Superblue, we want to evolve the experience and eliminate “walled gardens” and introduce a new Metaverse category of Spatial Artwork called 360 art.  This device is the beginning of a next generation immersive artistic expression. 

If you would like to take a deeper dive into the Metaverse, here is an all you can eat glossary provided by our friends at the Open Metaverse

https://www.openmv.org/metaverse-glossary/

Our friend from Lamina1 Tony Parisi’s ‘7 Rules of The Metaverse’ is also essential reading. Please visit his Medium post here

Jon Radoff’s Metaverse-Value Chain is another essential read for those wanting to understand what The Metaverse can offer them. Have a read of his Medium post here.

And another article worth perusing is this announcement of the Open Meta Dao from our advisor Ryan Gill.