However, Meta's "Will Misfire," according to Vitalik.

According to Ethereum developer Vitalik Buterin, Meta's attempt to monopolize the metaverse would "misfire" partly because no one has been able to define what the phrase actually means.

He claimed that ongoing corporate projects don't seem promising in a Twitter thread about the potential design of the metaverse. He specifically criticized Meta, the tech giant founded and led by Mark Zuckerberg, using the company's previous name.

Buterin stated in a tweet that "we don't really know the definition of 'the metaverse' yet, it's way too early to know what people genuinely want. Therefore, anything Facebook produces right now will fail.

The metaverse, which is built around immersive 3D worlds and online communities where people engage utilizing virtual reality headsets and augmented forms of reality, is frequently referred to as an evolution of the current internet.

Buterin described the creation of the metaverse as a relatively inevitable stage in the development of current technology, even though he isn't quite sold on how companies see it.

The "metaverse" will materialize, said Buterin. However, I don't believe any of the current corporate initiatives to consciously construct the metaverse will succeed.

The centralized control of companies and the decentralized forms of ownership that blockchain technology enables are at odds over how the metaverse will be shaped. Recently, a group of Web3 businesses launched a separate partnership, with the support of Microsoft, Meta, and Sony, with the aim of creating standards for the metaverse.

One of the most well-known Web3 metaverse projects at the moment is The Sandbox, which links NFT ownership to virtual land parcels. The Bored Ape Yacht Club's developer, Yuga Labs, is also in the early stages of developing its own metaverse game project, the Otherside, which recently hosted a first-look tech demo.

In Neal Stephenson's science fiction book "Snow Crash," which was published in 1992, the phrase "metaverse" first debuted. The phrase described a "computer-generated cosmos" that a character experienced via a pair of goggles and earphones.

After switching from Facebook to Meta in October, Meta formally launched its quest for the metaverse. The company rebranded after spending $2 billion to purchase Oculus, a maker of VR headsets with a focus on gaming, in 2014.

Zuckerberg asserted last year that "I think the metaverse is the next step for the internet." Although the metaverse is the next frontier, we are a firm that produces technology to connect people, despite the fact that we are currently viewed as a social network company.

In its most recent earnings report, Meta revealed that its division dedicated to the metaverse, Facebook Reality Labs (FRL), had a $2.81 billion loss in the second quarter. Additionally, the business lost $10.2 billion in 2017 while creating content, technology, and software for the metaverse.

In the next years, this project will undoubtedly be highly expensive, according to Zuckerberg. "But when the metaverse grows increasingly significant in every aspect of how we live, I'm convinced that we'll look back and be delighted we contributed significantly to its creation."