The Metaverse Canon: Reading Guide

This is a collection of my favorite articles — including those I’ve written myself and people have found helpful — but many others that have inspired me to think about the convergence of many social and technological trends that will power the metaverse.

Image Credit: Susan Q Yin

If you’re coming up to speed on the metaverse and you’d like to do a deep dive, then scan over the following article links. And if you have others you’d like me to include, I’d love to hear from you.

Main Concepts — Defining the Metaverse

• What we Talk About when We Talk About the Metaverse. How the concept of the metaverse has grown since it was invented in Snow Crash.
• Framework for the Metaverse, by Matthew Ball, a description of an interoperable set of systems for the metaverse.
• Defining the Metaverse Today, by Cathy Hackl. Definitions from 20 professionals involved in building the metaverse.
• The Metaverse: A brave, new (virtual) world, by Micaela Mantegna. Describes some of the features, with a particular focus on digital embodiment and the potential impact on wellbeing.
• Experiences of the Metaverse. What will people actually do with the metaverse?

Creator Economy

• Legitimacy Lost by Li Jin and Katie Parrott. How critical it is to have agency and autonomy for creators in the metaverse.
• Evolution of the Creator Economy. How creative technologies tend to follow consistent patterns as they go from highly technical to creator-centered.
• Thoughts at the Intersection of Web3 and Creative Culture by Richard Kim. The connection between community, culture and creators — and how Web3 technologies may help.

Games and Gamification

• Game Economics, Part 1: The Attention Economy
• Game Development Trends in 2021, discussing the solo-to-social trend; technologists-to-artists; and games-to-economies.
• Introduction to Game Thinking by Amy Jo Kim. Explains the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivators and how to utilize both of them.
• Games and the Four Keys to Fun by Nicole Lazzaro. Using emotion to motivate behavior.
• The Metaverse is Real Gamification. Not just points and badges — but emotion, storytelling and human connection.
• Types of Virtual Items. Overview of the main types and how they’re valued by players.
• Types of game currencies in mobile free-to-play by Javier Barnes. Although focused on mobile games, the description of currencies applies to any platform.
• A Closer Look into the 12 Gamer Motivations by Nick Yee, an analysis of game playing psychology.
• Harvard International Review 4-part review on Esports.
• How Virtual Worlds Work, a multi-part series by Raph Koster, one of the leading innovators of MMOs.
• The Virtual Economy, by John Egan, good compare/contrast of closed centralized economies (Fortnite), open centralized (Minecraft) and open decentralized (Decentraland).
• 12 PC Games with the Most Active Modding Communities

Virtual Identity and Avatars

• When the Virtual Became Real. How digital identity and virtual property are becoming more important than ever.
• Stay for Who You Can Be by Rex Woodbury. Overview of avatar systems and virtual property.
• How Brands Can Thrive in the Direct to Avatar Economy by Cathy Hackl. Discussion of digital fashion and how brands may participate.
• Self-Sovereign Identity in a Globalized World: Credentials-Based Identity Systems as a Driver for Economic Inclusion, description of how blockchain and digital wallets (along with potential biometric technology) could be used to power a system where you own your own identity.
• Zero Knowledge Proof: Explain it Like I’m 5 — description of how online systems could be designed to disclose only the specific information you’re willing to disclose.

NFTs, Digital Collectibles & Play-to-Earn

• Game Economics, Part 2: NFTs and Digital Collectibles
• Why do play-to-earn games work when real money trading in games has (mostly) not worked? — Twitter thread by a16z partner Jon Lai.
• How to Approach the Generative Art Boom by William Peaster. Almost everything you need to set you on your journey to understanding the world of generative art.
• Into the Void: where Crypto Meets the Metaverse by Piers Kicks. Making the case for interoperable assets in the metaverse based on NFTs.
• NFTs and a Thousand True Fans by Chris Dixon, emphasizing the importance of the community-to-content connection.
• What the Hell is an NFT?

Business and Industry

• The Metaverse Value-Chain. Identifies 7 layers including experience, creator economy, discovery, spatial computing, human interface, decentralization and infrastructure.
• Market Map of the Metaverse. Organizes 200+ companies across the 7 layers of the metaverse value-chain, with some specific comparisons of Roblox, Unity and Epic.
• Jobs of the Metaverse. Six types of jobs that are being created by the metaverse.
• Metaverses by Ben Thompson. Discusses Microsoft and Facebook’s steps into the metaverse market, and the author’s skepticism that there will be “one metaverse to rule them all.”
• What You Need to Know About the Metaverse — and Why It Matters for Your Bottom Line by Cathy Hackl, focusing on the future of work.
• Facebook as a Metaverse Company: analysis of Facebook’s rebranding to Meta and the categories of investments they’re making in the metaverse.

Blockchain and Decentralized Finance

• Web3, Interoperability and the Metaverse. Introduction to the key innovations of Web3, and how it relates directly the unbundling-rebundling cycles.
• Money, Blockchains and Social Scalability, by Nick Szabo. Explains how the trustless nature of blockchain enhances and enables more widespread participation.
• Proof-of-Work vs. Proof-of-Stake. How PoS is enabling energy efficient and low-cost transactions on blockchain.
• Smart Contracts: the Ultimate Guide for Beginners by Hasib Anwar. Comprehensive guide to the revolutionary technology of smart contracts, which enable programmatic value exchange without central authorities.
• A DeFi Stream of Consciousness and the opportunity for “trustless games” by Richard Kim.
• What is an Oracle in DeFi and Why does it matter? The role of a technology that makes it possible to trigger smart contracts based on specified conditions.
• Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), a video presentation on blockchain-based governance from Stanford.
• DAOs — the New Frontier in Coordination, a comprehensive report and survey of DAOs, practices and creators.
• Blockchain Governance, from Guy at Coin Bureau, covering the distinction between on-chain vs. off-chain governance, DAOs, lock-up voting multipliers, DAO treasuries, quadratic funding, and relationship to decentralized digital identity.
• Introduction to Web3 and blockchain core concepts

Walled Gardens vs. Open Platforms

• The Permissionless Metaverse. Discusses the advantages of decentralized development platforms and open source.
• So You Want to Compete with Roblox, by Lars Ducet. The advantages and disadvantages of “company town” (Ducet’s term for a walled garden) content creation, such as found in Roblox.
• Why Decentralization Matters by Chris Dixon.
• Decentralization, Counter-Decentralization, and Redecentralization, a Twitter thread by Balaji Srinivasan.

Network Effects

• Network Effects in the Metaverse. Compares and contrasts centralized platforms vs. those that allow for open, emergent innovation; hub-and-spoke network models vs. scale-free networks; Metcalfe’s and Reed’s Law.
• The Moat Map, by Ben Thompson. Distinguishes the types of network effects that result from different business models (internalized like Facebook, externalized like Microsoft).
• The Network Effects Manual: 13 Different Network Effects (and counting) by James Currier. Catalogs some of the specific types of networks and how they generate value.
• The Blockchain Effect: Network Effects without Market Power Costs by Cathy Barrera.
• Emergence, an NPR Radiolab special on the complex behaviors that can emerge from leaderless systems.

Graphics Technology and Spatial Computing

• History of the Modern Graphics Processor by Graham Singer. From the Atari 2600 to the bleeding-edge GPUs of today.
• How Games Engines Work! by TheHappieCat — good and short introductory video explaining what a 3D Engine does.
• xR, AR, VR, MR: What’s the Difference in Reality? Introductory explanation of the main differences between augmented and virtual reality and similar terms.
• Spatial Computing by Simon Greenwold, defining the continuum of putting the human into the computer, and computing into objects.
• The Physics of Light and Rendering, talk by John Carmack, for people who want a more advanced explanation of how graphics rendering works.
• Light Field Technology by Javier Elizalde, describing the potential next generation beyond screens.
• Geospatial Information Visualization and Extended Reality Displays, a detailed introduction to using geographical and spatial maps to create a digital twin of the Earth.
• OpenXR, an open platform for developing 3D, VR and mixed-reality applications.
• What is a Digital Twin? by Matterport.

Machine Intelligence

• The Metaverse and Artificial Intelligence. Covers GPT-3, virtual beings and applications to creativity.
• The Rise of the Virtual Being. WIRED podcast in which a virtual being is interviewed.
• Deep Learning in 5 Minutes, a quick video explaining how the latest major innovation in artificial intelligence works.
• Meet GPT-3. It Has Learned to Code (and Blog and Argue). Explanation of Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3, an engine for interpreting and expressing natural language.

Software, Servers and Networking

• No-code/low-code: Why you should be paying attention. Explanation of how these tools are opening up the world of application development to non-engineers.
• What is Serverless? from Gitlab. Explains how serverless actually does have servers — you just don’t need to think about them much, and how that is transforming cloud-based software development.
• From 5G to 6G: What could it look like? Explanation of the advantages and future trajectory of wireless technology.
• WebAssembly (WASM), a standard for the delivery of binary applications via web browsers.
• Microservices by James Lewis, an architectural pattern that allows serverless logic to be deployed in a highly distributed, highly scalable way.
• The Internet of Everything, an evolution of the concept of Internet of Things (IoT) involving the real-time delivery of data about people, processes and sensors.
• Virtual Economy Technology Radar, a good overview of the many technological building blocks contributing to the metaverse.

Inspiration from Science Fiction

• Television Shows about the Metaverse
• Books about the Metaverse
• Movies about the Metaverse