The co-founder of the world’s leading smart contract platform is skeptical that the first wave of the metaverse can succeed.
Ethereum (ETH) creator Vitalik Buterin tells his 4.1 million Twitter followers that while the concept of an online virtual world will eventually come to fruition, he thinks that current corporate visions for the metaverse are likely to fail.
“The ‘metaverse’ is going to happen, but I don’t think any of the existing corporate attempts to intentionally create the metaverse are going anywhere.”
The blockchain pioneer adds perspective to his initial comment by explaining that the world doesn’t have a clear picture of what the metaverse needs to be, highlighting that its creation will be more of a conceptual process rather than one company defeating another to achieve market dominance.
“My critique is deeper than ‘Metaverse Wikipedia will beat Metaverse Encyclopedia Britannica.’
It’s that we don’t really know the definition of ‘the metaverse’ yet. It’s far too early to know what people actually want.
So anything Facebook creates now will misfire.”
Buterin’s comments come after news broke that Meta, the rebranded version of social media giant Facebook, intends to abandon its Novi crypto wallet on September 1st.
Novi initially launched last October in the United States and Guatemala with users able to trade the dollar-pegged stablecoin Pax Dollar (USDP). Users have been advised to withdraw their funds as soon as possible.
Although Meta is scrapping its digital wallet protocol, the tech giant says it plans to use Novi’s technology in future products such as its metaverse project, according to a company spokesperson cited by Bloomberg.
“We are already leveraging the years spent on building capabilities for Meta overall on blockchain and introducing new products, such as digital collectibles.
You can expect to see more from us in the Web 3.0 space because we are very optimistic about the value these technologies can bring to people and businesses in the metaverse.”
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