Will all parts of the Metaverse work with each other ?
Although Sir Timothy Berners-Lee marked Connectivity & Ubiquity as a core principle of Web3, we believe there will be three kinds of Metaverses which are currently being created: Open Metaverses, Closed Metaverses and those in between.
What is an Open Metaverse?
An open source, transparent and decentralized collective of companies and digital products, services and experiences built using open source Web 3.0 Toolkits that permit individuals to exchange services based off autonomous smart contracts and/or earn digital currencies (tokens) or assets (NFTs), which can be freely exchanged and utilized in all other verses within the Metaverse.
This notion of freely exchanged and universal utility was Berner's Lee's original vision for the internet when it launched in CERN (1990) and could be a key differentiator of the current status quo in a sector like Social Media where you currently cannot freely transfer messages or groups created or received on a platform like Facebook Messenger to What's App or Telegram.
This perceived friction demonstrates a clear purpose, value and demand for open decentralized messaging services.
What is a Closed Metaverse?
A company that builds digital products, services or experiences using Web3.0 technology which is not open source or transparent and which does not allow for connectivity across all the different verses within the Metaverse.
Closed metaverses like this could arise where exclusive groups want to create value which is limited to a small collective of people; which seek to only to co-exist with another specific group or groups within verses of the Metaverse.
An example of an existing closed verse is Facebook Horizon Worlds, which allows any users to experience a virtual world but its code and architecture is guarded and cannot be configured or added to.