Decentraland
It was opened to the public in February 2020,[2] and is overseen by the nonprofit Decentraland Foundation. In 2017, the platform raised $26 million in its initial coin offering (ICO);[1] by 2022 indy100 reported that it had a $1.2 billion market evaluation.[8] While DappRadar found that as few as 38 users performed currency transactions in a single day, Decentraland claimed that 8,000 people per day used the platform in 2022.[9]
Decentraland has received widespread criticism by technology and video game journalists for its technical bugs and mostly empty virtual world
In April 2021, during a surge in popularity for NFTs, parcels sold for between $6,000 and $100,000.[14] Because of the relatively small pool of mana, the currency is volatile, spiking to as high as $5.79 after events like Facebook's rebrand to Meta.[5][15]
In November 2021 a virtual real-estate company purchased a plot of land in Decentraland for $2.43 million.[16]
Users have minted NFTs of avatars with slurs in their names, and at one point the name "Jew" was for sale for $362,000.[5] In November 2021 the community held a vote on whether to add "Hitler" to the banned names list, but there were not enough votes for the decentralized autonomous organization's (DAO) smart contract to execute.[5]
In late 2021 and early 2022, major brands appeared in Decentraland or bought "properties" in it. These include Samsung, Adidas, Atari, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Miller Lite. Sotheby's held its first metaverse auction, and in March 2022, Decentraland hosted Metaverse Fashion Week in which major fashion brands appeared, including Dolce & Gabbana, Tommy Hilfiger, Elie Saab, Nicholas Kirkwood, Perry Ellis, Imitation of Christ, and Estée Lauder.[17][18][19][20][21] Music artists including Deadmau5 and Grimes held concerts in the platform.[22][23]
In October 2022, indy100 reported that Decentraland had a market valuation of $1.2 billion.[8]
In October 2022 the DappRadar tracking site reported that the Decentraland platform was seeing fewer than 1,000 users performing currency transactions on the site each day, with one particular 24-hour period having only 38 such users.[9] Decentraland later claimed that "active users" were only users that had unique blockchain wallet addresses that interact with its system, and that users that did not have wallet addresses weren't counted.[24] Sam Hamilton, Creative Director at Decentraland, said by their own metrics the platform was used by an average of 8,000 people per day.[9] The Verge compared this number unfavorably with the 2009 PC game Left 4 Dead 2, which had 18,000 active users playing the game at one point during the same month
In March 2020, Luke Winkie, writing for PC Gamer, described the game as "rickety", noting numerous bugs and the game's "brutally long loading times", as well as hard-locks related to the game's cryptocurrency-based authentication process. Winkie described the platform as having a strongly libertarian political bent, saying "Decentraland is a truly fascinating concept. It peels back like an onion, revealing a Randian fever-dream built with Roblox textures".[13]
According to Eric Ravenscraft of Wired, activity on the platform is unclear, with the world mostly empty and with a number of concurrent users of around 1,600 in 2021, a figure that might include inactive users who remain logged on.[5] Ravenscraft wrote that Decentraland was buggy with poor moderation, and said that it felt reminiscent of an early access game.[5]
In January 2022, Zachariah Kelly, writing for Gizmodo, reviewed a virtual version of Melbourne Park created in Decentraland to promote the Australian Open. Kelly praised the 3D models created for the project, as well as the platform's ability to run in a browser, but poor draw distance and other issues made it feel "clunky" and lacking in activity. Kelly was also skeptical of the necessity for blockchain and NFTs.[29] Kelly Revisited Decentraland's Australian Open space several days later, to review the closing concert. He said his experience was plagued by technical issues, and that footage of the event taken by others were unfavorably compared to online concerts held on other platforms, such as Fortnite.[10]
In April 2022, Business Insider review, Lisa Han praised the world's architecture and minigames, though criticized the emptiness of the world and its glitches and technical issues along with the game's removal of a quest log feature and the limitations of user interaction with Decentraland's architecture
Metaverse
The metaverse is a loosely defined term referring to virtual worlds in which users represented by avatars interact,[1] usually in 3D and usually focused on social and economic connection
The term metaverse originated in the 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash as a portmanteau of "meta" and "universe".[6][7] In Snow Crash, the metaverse is envisioned as a hypothetical iteration of the Internet as a single, universal, and immersive virtual world that is facilitated by the use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) headsets.[8][2]
The term "metaverse" is often linked to virtual reality technology,[9][10] and beginning in the early 2020s, with Web3.[11][12] The term has been used as a buzzword by companies[8][13] to exaggerate the development progress of various related technologies and projects for public relations purposes.[14] Information privacy, user addiction, and user safety are concerns within the metaverse, stemming from challenges facing the social media and video game industries as a whole
Implementations
Components of metaverse technology have already been developed within online video games.[17] The 2003 virtual world platform Second Life is often described as the first metaverse,[18][19] as it incorporated many aspects of social media into a persistent three-dimensional world with the user represented as an avatar, but historical claims of metaverse development started soon after the term was coined. Early projects included Active Worlds[20] and The Palace.
Popular games described as part of the metaverse include Habbo Hotel,[9] World of Warcraft,[21] Minecraft,[9] Fortnite,[22] VRChat,[23][24] and game creation platform Roblox[25][26][27][28] In a January 2022 interview with Wired, Second Life creator Philip Rosedale described metaverses as a three-dimensional Internet that is populated with live people.[29] Social interaction and 3D virtual worlds are often an integral feature in many massively multiplayer online games.
In 2017, Microsoft acquired the VR company AltspaceVR,[30] and has since implemented virtual avatars and meetings held in virtual reality into Microsoft Teams.[31]
In 2019, the social network company Facebook launched a social VR world called Facebook Horizon.[32] In 2021, the company was renamed "Meta Platforms" and its chairman Mark Zuckerberg[33] declared a company commitment to developing a metaverse.[34] Many of the virtual reality technologies advertised by Meta Platforms remain to be developed.[35][36][37] Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen criticised the move, adding that Meta Platforms' continued focus on growth-oriented projects is largely done to the detriment of ensuring safety on their platforms.[38] Meta Platforms has also faced user safety criticism regarding Horizon Worlds due to sexual harassment occurring on the platform.[39][40][41] In 2021, Meta made a loss of over $10 billion on its metaverse development department, with Mark Zuckerberg saying he expected operating losses to "increase meaningfully" in 2022.[42] In February 2023, Zuckerberg wrote a Facebook post announcing the company's pivot away from the metaverse to focus on AI.[43]
Some metaverse implementations rely on digital currencies, and often cryptocurrency. Assets within the metaverse are sometimes traded as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and track ownership using blockchain technology.[44]
Proposed applications for metaverse technology include improving work productivity,[31][45] interactive learning environments,[15] e-commerce,[15][46] mass-audience interaction,[47] healthcare and [48][49] real estate
Technology
Hardware
Access points for the metaverse includes general-purpose computers and smartphones, augmented reality, mixed reality, and virtual reality.[3]
Dependence on VR technology has limited metaverse development and wide-scale adoption.[10] Limitations of portable hardware and the need to balance cost and design have caused a lack of high-quality graphics and mobility.[50] Lightweight wireless headsets have struggled to achieve retina display pixel density needed for visual immersion.[50] Another issue for wide-scale adoption of the technology is cost, with consumer VR headsets ranging in price from $300 to $3500 as of 2022.[9][4]
Current hardware development is focused on overcoming limitations of VR headsets, sensors, and increasing immersion with haptic technology
Software
There has been no wide-scale adoption of a standardized technical specification for metaverse implementations, and existing implementations rely primarily on proprietary technology. Interoperability is a major concern in metaverse development, stemming from concerns about transparency and privacy.[52] There have been several virtual environment standardization projects.[53][54][55][56][57]
Universal Scene Description is a specification for 3D computer graphics interchange created by Pixar and supported by Blender, Apple's SceneKit and Autodesk 3ds Max. The technology company NVIDIA announced in 2021 they would adopt USD for their metaverse development tools.[58]
glTF is a specification for the efficient transmission and loading of 3D scenes and models by engines and applications created by the Khronos Group, an industry consortium developing royalty free open standards. In August 2022 it was announced that glTF 2.0 had been released as the ISO/IEC 12113:2022 International Standard.[59]
OpenXR is an open standard for access to virtual and augmented reality devices and experiences. It has been adopted by Microsoft for HoloLens 2,[60] Meta Platforms for the Oculus Quest,[61] HTC for the HTC Vive,[62] Qualcomm for the Snapdragon Spaces XR Developer Platform,[63] and Valve for SteamVR
Criticism and concerns
Definition
The definition of the metaverse is currently ambiguous, with no commonly agreed-upon meaning. While the term is often associated with virtual reality and immersive social experiences utilizing avatars and blockchain technology, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has argued that the metaverse is in fact "...poorly defined and often seen more as a brand name than a product
Feasibility
In a February 2022 article for The New York Times, Lauren Jackson argued that the metaverse is "stalled from achieving scale by a lack of infrastructure for both hardware and software, a monopolistic approach to platform development, and a lack of clear governance standards."[67]
In December 2021, Raja Koduri, senior vice president of Intel, claimed that "Truly persistent and immersive computing, at scale and accessible by billions of humans in real time, will require even more: a 1,000-times increase in computational efficiency from today's state of the art."[68]
In an article for The New York Times on October 26, 2022, Ryan Mac, a technology reporter, claimed that for the past year, Mark Zuckerberg has struggled to find the best way to achieve the metaverse. He has yet to succeed.[69]
Privacy
Information privacy is an area of concern for the metaverse because related companies will likely collect users' personal information through interactions and biometric data from wearable virtual and augmented reality devices.[70] Meta Platforms (previously Facebook) is planning on employing targeted advertising within their metaverse, raising further worries related to the spread of misinformation and loss of personal privacy.[8] In 2021, David Reid of Liverpool Hope University argued the amount of data collection in the metaverse would be greater than that on the internet stating "If you think about the amount of data a company could collect on the World Wide Web right now, compared to what it could collect with the metaverse, there is just no comparison."[71] In fact, the current metaverse technology is very immature. Abdulsattar Jaber, a professor at Iraq's Middle Technical University, found that the new technology used by the metaverse may cause many problems related to the security and privacy of system users
Lack of adoption
As of 2023, there has been little adoption of Metaverse technology, with Decentraland, a platform claiming to be the metaverse, reporting that it had 8,000 daily users or fewer.[86] Ed Zitron of Business Insider and Marc Olinga of The Street declared the Metaverse a fad that was "dead", having been displaced by artificial intelligence as the current hot new trend in computing
