“Gathering” | Chapter 2 of the Outpost Story
A gathering of Web 3.0 pioneers in New York City leads to a new collaboration.
After Mark Zuckerberg announced his vision for a massive metaverse project, in November 2021 people from all over the world gathered at ICONIC in New York City to discuss future Web 3.0 projects, verified digital assets, and the need for a decentralized, open metaverse project to bring it all together.
While in NYC, team members from Cipher Proxy and Creative Northern met at dinner for the first time, after connecting in the Polkadot Reddit community earlier that spring.
Key topics at dinner included:
- The nightmare we all face with Big Tech in control
- The need for a cohesive Web 3.0 revolution
- How the Internet Computer seems ideal for building what is needed
- Serious issues witnessed while trying to collaborate in the past
Values aligned, but both groups were already busy supporting other Web 3.0 projects. It was agreed to keep in touch and seek ways to collaborate in the future.
The future arrived quicker than expected, as both teams met again virtually in December 2021 and decided to form an exploratory group to consider if a new project was needed and feasible.
After more discussion, research, and testing, a larger group of 10 people from both teams met in January 2022 and a council of six people was formed to dream together on ways to move forward. The Cipher Proxy team would contribute their passion towards helping lead technology, AI, open metaverse standards, and the developer community. The Creative Northern team would utilize its experience with community-based project building, 3D design, branding, strategy, and visual storytelling to help bring it all together in a collaborative, beautiful, and effective way.
Throughout the winter & spring of 2022, this council met weekly to discuss potential technology stacks, visual concepts, vital collaborations, and more.
The dream stage began.
Along the way, the initial core contributors found consensus on values and began the formative stages of building a decentralized project. From a foundation of collaboration, shared/decentralized governance, open standards, and care for our digital neighbors, the Outpost project was born.
Outpost will be a home for digital refugees, looking for something better than giant multi-national tech companies curating their future. The logo design reflects the structure of what we’ll build together. The four-pointed “North Star” icon symbolizes our values and the four specialized guilds that will serve as the balanced foundation for our community in the future. It resembles a simple compass rose as we navigate away from this broken world and towards somewhere safer, more open, and more collaborative.
As we began having early conversations to test initial reactions, we met others who share the same passion and a few more pioneers woke up in the Outpost. We shared research together, collaborated on building new tools, and began assembling an open metaverse accelerator on the Internet Computer to fuel up for what’s ahead.
Next? Sharing the dreams we’ve seen. Listening and learning how we can build the future together.
“A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.”
― John Lennon
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