Pave the Way, ‘Father of Metaverse’ is Launching Blockchain

The man who gave the Metaverse its name is launching a blockchain project to realize its potential.

Neal Stephenson, a man who brought the concept of Metaverse close to the people through his book Snow Crash, is all set to launch a blockchain project. It's been thirty years since this man first mentioned Metaverse and now he is supporting Lamina1's vision for a blockchain protocol equal to Metaverse's original promise. Described as a base-level blockchain protocol equal to the technical, economic, and philosophical origins of the Metaverse idea itself – an open and expansive virtual universe – Lamina1 is a Layer-1 blockchain technology designed for the Metaverse with Web3 principles in mind.

He has also revised his vision for the Metaverse stating the experience is likely to be geared more toward flat 2D screens rather than virtual reality or augmented reality tech such as headsets and lenses, as in the model posited by Meta and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT).

Neal Stephenson's new company is called Lamina. Most recently he was Magic Leap's chief futurist (2014 – 2020). This week he announced he's teaming up with Crypto entrepreneur Peter Vessenes to make his original vision of the metaverse a reality. Tony Parisi, co-creator of the VRML programming language, until recently who was an SVP at Unity, is joining them as chief strategy officer. Vessenes wrote in a blog post on the Lamina1.com website. He thinks of Lumina as "the base layer for the Open Metaverse: a place to build something a bit closer to Neal's vision — one that privileges creators, technical and artistic, one that provides support, spatial computing tech, and a community to support those who are building out the Metaverse." The company hinted that more will be revealed when Stephenson keynotes Consensus this Saturday.

Later this year, the company will launch a testnet and a subsequent betanet. Beyond 2022, the co-founders plan to seed a new immersive environment inspired by Stephenson's million-selling novel Snow Crash, building infrastructure and releasing tools to support the work of third-party creators who want to build Open Metaverse experiences at scale.

Stephenson's thoughts on Metaverse

Stephenson's vision for the metaverse in Snow Crash was a hyper-capitalist dystopia, which critics of NFTs—which are touted as a cornerstone of the Web3 metaverse. The critics have pointed to the carbon footprint of the Ethereum blockchain and have questioned whether most artists behind NFT collections are really getting their due.

Vessenes

Vessenes is known in the cryptocurrency industry for a series of firsts, namely launching the first VC-backed Bitcoin company (2011) and forming the Bitcoin Foundation (2012) – today a blueprint for the way the now US$1 trillion+ blockchain industry engages communities and manages and creates cryptocurrencies.

Joining the team is Metaverse pioneer Tony Parisi, former head of AR/VR at Unity. He was also an early leader in Web3D and virtual reality, the inventor of VRML (the original standard for 3D graphics on the web), and co-creator of glTF, the open file format that today powers millions of 3D objects. Rounding out the Lamina1 leadership team is advisor Rony Abovitz, founder of Sun and Thunder, Magic Leap, and MAKO Surgical.

Initial Investors in Lamina1 include Rony Abovitz, Geoff Entress, Jeremy Giffon, Bing Gordon, James Haft, Reid Hoffman, David Johnston, Joseph Lubin, Patrick Murck, Matthew Roszak, Tihan Seale, Peter Vessenes, and Wu Ying.

Metaverse: Future of technologies

The internet has evolved over the years, and the outcome of this evolution is metaverse. We exist in a time where a significant change in the history of humanity is going on, and our real lives are bound to spill over to the metaverse. Already some metaverse NFT vendors have enabled their NFTs to be usable in some metaverse games such as clothing and footwear and more are planning to venture into the domain.

An increasing number of NFT enthusiasts are also sensing opportunities to invest in virtual lands on such games and sell or rent them for a price. People with no actual interest in the metaverse, but who look at them as a financially yielding domain could invest in equities of the firms working on the concept.

The future metaverse can also be a huge contributing factor to the growth of the virtual economy, which depends on video games and virtual worlds where disruptions are almost nil.

The metaverse of the future also pivots on the idea of running openly, almost without any interruption from a single community or company, as the participation of creators will be from across the world as more brands are looking to open their outlets on the broader metaverse just like on the internet of the current times (although the internet is centralized by search engine providers).