Metaverse Weekly: 30 Years and $13T Later, Neal Stephenson Returns to His Metaverse

In 1992, Neal Stephenson’s “Snow Crash” rocketed him to fame in sci-fi’s then-fledgling cyberpunk genre by imagining a dystopian world in which people escape by plugging into an immersive, 3D fantasy world in which they weren’t living in shipping container developments.

He called it The Metaverse, and 30 years later his vision has convinced brands from Samsung to McDonald’s to Facebook — rechristened Meta — to pour time and money into a digital virtual reality that’s barely entering beta in the actual reality.

Such is the hype that less than a month after Meta President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg predicted it would be a $3 trillion economy, Citi analysts doubled down on an earlier prediction that it would be worth $13 trillion — a total addressable market value they arrived at by the eyebrow-raising decision to add all of the current “internet-related revenue to that of the physical-world activities being displaced.”

Read more: Meta Says Metaverse Will Be Worth $3T

Morgan Stanley said much the same thing in February, highlighting a prediction that “advertising and e-commerce represent an $8.3 trillion opportunity to monetize U.S. consumer spending on an everything from games and music, to apparel, automobiles and real estate,” while tossing in another “potential” $5 trillion from “new, more immersive experiences” like test-driving cars — to buy in real life — or attending concerts in the metaverse.

So, it kind of makes sense that Stephenson would want a piece of the action. Or, more charitably and perhaps more fairly, to help push it in a direction he feels will be more likely to be “one that privileges creators, technical and artistic, one that provides support, spatial computing tech, and a community to support those who are building out the Metaverse,” according to Stephenson’s partner, crypto pioneer and Bitcoin Foundation co-founder Peter Vessenes.

Their firm, Lamina1, is planning to build a blockchain for open metaverse and has attracted investors like Ethereum co-founder and ConsenSys CEO Joe Lubin.

Stephenson, for his part, told CoinDesk that while the real-life concept of the metaverse “had been building for some time,” the inflection point was Facebook changing its name to Meta.

“While big companies like Microsoft became interested, what also happened was lots of smaller players became interested, too,” he said. “There are a lot of people who want to get in on the metaverse and build their dreams, build their ideas, realize their creative notions or their commercial ambitions.”

Metaverse Game’s Payments Partner Bypasses

Metaverse design firm Star Atlas recently announced a partnership with MoonPay, a blockchain-based payments infrastructure firm, to allow customers to buy in-game non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and its native cryptocurrency token, ATLAS, directly with credit cards — rather than going through an exchange, which is a stumbling block for people who might be technophobic or just uninterested in the cryptocurrency market.

Related: Star Atlas, MoonPay Team on Crypto-Based Metaverse In-Game Payments

“We want Star Atlas to be available to the global population, and MoonPay is helping us realize this goal,” said Michael Wagner, co-founder and CEO of ATMTA, the studio behind Star Atlas, which is built on the Solana blockchain. “Being able to purchase Web3 assets with a credit or debit card opens the doors of the metaverse to everyday people around the world.”

The direct fiat on-ramp is designed to provide “a seamless way for everyday people to buy and sell cryptocurrencies and NFTs … making in-game digital assets more accessible than ever — especially to those who are non-crypto native,” the game company said.

Blockchain Metaverses’ Dismal User Numbers

Blockchain-based metaverses may have a lot of hype, but when it comes to feet on the (virtual) ground, they have more than a little way to go.

In a June report, the U.S. crypto exchange Kraken’s Intelligence unit said “user activity in the metaverse … remains notably nascent.”

See also: Behind the Hype, Metaverse Marketing Offers Dismal ROI

That’s something of an understatement. In March, the number of active daily users in Decentraland was 978 and The Sandbox’s was 1,180, according to CoinDesk. Decentraland’s MANA token has a market capitalization of $1.8 billion and The Sandbox’s is $1.6 billion.

Compare that to some of the more established, non-blockchain projects like Roblox, an 18-year-old metaverse/game world that’s been flying under the marketing radar: It had more than 200 million average monthly users for more than a year.

Fortnite — which is really a massively multiplayer online (MMO) game that’s essentially a huge battle royal world that’s been adding some non-game lands on its way to transforming into a metaverse with a big game — reports 350 million registered users, and 15 million average players online concurrently. That explains how rapper Travis Scott and Ariana Grande each pulled 10 million fans to metaverse concerts there.