The “father” of the Metaverse, Neal Stephenson, launches the Metaverse Blockchain
Neal Stephenson, the author who coined the term “Metaverse” 30 years ago, is launching a blockchain project focused on the Metaverse called LAMINA1.
At LAMINA1, Neal Stephenson will focus on “helping artists and other value creators get paid for their work, help the environment […] and see how a truly open Metaverse is being built,” said co-founder Peter Vessenes.
Stephenson also revised his vision for the Metaverse, stating that the experience is likely to focus more on flat 2D screens rather than virtual or augmented reality technologies such as headsets and lenses, as in the model proposed by Meta and Microsoft.
Neal Stephenson is a popular science fiction writer who explored the concept of a virtual reality world called the Metaverse in his 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash. In addition to writing, the 62-year-old also served as chief futurist for an augmented reality (AR) project called Magic between 2014 and 2020.
According to an announcement on June 8 by early crypto investors and former Bitcoin Foundation chairman Peter Vessenes, Stephenson and he have co-founded a new Layer 1 blockchain called LAMINA1, which they hope will be “the base layer for the Open Metaverse.”
“A place to create something that’s a little closer to Neil’s vision — a place that privileges creators, technical and artistic, a place that provides support, spatial computing technology, and a community to support those building the Metaverse,” Wessen wrote. adding that the network is “likely” to be carbon negative.
Specific details about the project are scarce at this stage, but Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin notes a prominent name on the list of the project’s early investors.
Commenting on the roles of the LAMINA1 co-founders, Vessenes stated:
“Neil brings his vision, wisdom, experience and some basic goals: to help artists and other value creators get paid for their work, help the environment […] and see how a truly Open Metaverse is being built, instead of seeing how the ideas of the Metaverse are co-opted by the monopolies.”
Vessenes noted that he will be focused on getting the blockchain up and running quickly as he works to create “the necessary governance, technology, node operators, celebrity partners, artists, business partners, and fund donors.”
Stephenson’s 1992 novel depicts the Metaverse as a virtual urban environment accessed through a worldwide fiber optic network and virtual reality headsets. The novel raises themes of social inequality, centralized control and constant advertising, as well as the concept of virtual real estate.
Stephenson shared some of his thoughts on the Metaverse on Twitter today, where he predicted that most of the Metaverse will be built for screens, not VR headsets.
“The suggestion that the Metaverse is primarily AR/VR is not crazy. In my book, it’s all VR. And I worked for an augmented reality company, one of several that are putting billions of dollars into headsets. But…”.
Stevenson noted that when he first wrote about it three decades ago, he did not foresee high-quality video games being available to consumers on a massive scale in the future.
“Thanks to gaming, billions of people can now comfortably navigate 3D environments on 2D flat screens. The interfaces they have mastered (eg WASD + mouse) are not what most science fiction writers predicted. But that’s how path dependency works in technology.”
The author went on to add that modern game development is still screen-centric for both the developer and the consumer, and that, if anything, there will be a hybrid approach to the Metaverse that spans both 2D screens and AR/VR technologies. And not pure VR.
“We move freely and interact with an extremely rich 3D environment using keyboards designed for mechanical typewriters. This is real steampunk. A metaverse that left behind those users and developers who create these experiences would start on the wrong foot,” he said.
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