Join us weekly for Meet the Metaverse, our new Twitter space every Tuesday at noon EST, where we demystify, unpack, and explore the people, places, and concepts that make up the open metaverse.

Cover image: courtesy of Luis Fernandez

The kickoff space this week focused on the conditions necessary for the metaverse to be a success:

Moderator: Jonathan Brun, co-founder & CEO of Lighthouse

Guests: Faraz Mobin, game developer and metaverse architect, Fatemeh Monfared, co-founder of architect and design collective SpacesDAO, Kirk Finkel, lead metaverse architect at the Museum of Crypto Art, Luis Fernandez, hybrid creative

Please enjoy the recording, and join us again next week on Tuesday, September 13 for Succeeding in Decentraland: Tools, Tips & Tricks From the Pros, a conversation with Jonathan Ayerbe from MetagameHub and Corey Kovnats aka GrizzledGatsby, founder and team principal at ParcelParties.

Fashion designer and virtual architect Luis Fernandez often receives confused looks when he tries to explain the metaverse to his potential clients and former industry peers. He can tell they are curious, but it seems as if their perception of the metaverse is clouded by skepticism.

“You know, let’s forget that term metaverse. Let’s think of it as the future 3D iteration of the internet,” Fernandez often tells them.

And then it clicks. “The minute you say that, their faces just light up.”

The theme of how metaverse ecosystems and creators could expand accessibility came up often in our Meet the Metaverse kickoff event, which drew just shy of 300 listeners to the hourlong Twitter space.

(P.S. We actually had to go over an hour because the conversation was flowing and the vibes were 🔥.)

The panelists spoke about the critical need to improve overall user experience for both creators and explorers, and how the noisiness of the metaverse was making it difficult for people to find their place in the emergent space. To reach broader adoption among creators as well as regular users, more experienced metaverse leaders and builders will have to make concerted efforts towards a more approachable, navigable, and user-friendly ecosystem.

SpacesDAO co-founder Fatemeh Monfared said it was initially easy for her to learn one platform’s tools as a new creator. However, the creation process became trickier as she grew more experienced and tried navigating the different metaverse worlds.

“Each of them have their own ways of uploading your files, bringing your designs onto their platform,” Monfared said. “Understanding what works best on each platform – that was the part that took more time.”

Key to expanding the metaverse will be improving external legibility, a fact that holds true for any product niche looking to onboard the next generation of users — not just the spatial internet. Indeed, growth has been limited by the perception that the metaverse – and crypto in general – are only accessible to insiders. This prevents the entire industry from growing and keeps creators from finding their audiences.

To foster broader understanding, metaverse leaders should stress tangible examples of how the spatial web can enrich people’s lives. For instance, this can mean sharing space with a loved one virtually regardless of distance or experiencing a fully immersive movie that engages all of the senses.

Fernandez stressed that building a common nomenclature for describing virtual worlds could help make the metaverse more externally legible to those who aren’t as familiar with it yet.

“What we’re naming and labeling things doesn’t make it easier to understand,” Fernandez said, but “the more people start to see how this can solve a problem or really better efficiencies in their daily life, that adoption will come.”

The metaverse has evolved drastically since Brooklyn-based artist Kirk Finkel entered it five years ago. One of the biggest differences? While there are a lot more opportunities, there are also a lot more distractions.

“It’s a really interesting challenge for a designer to navigate, because it’s such a noisy space,” said Finkel, the Lead Metaverse Architect at the Museum of Crypto Art. “It’s incredibly important to have platforms that, like Lighthouse, connect people and help figure out how to navigate and orient yourself.”

Cutting through that noise will only get more difficult as new ecosystems emerge, which is why Finkel said it will be especially important for tools to help users know what is going on and where, such as a shared calendar that aggregates events and information across the metaverse.

He also believes that interoperability will help create a more resilient, easy-to-use, and accessible metaverse — one where creations can live on even when specific ecosystems falter.

“Over the years, I’ve seen so many platforms be created and then collapse, and incredible artwork or projects just get lost in the process,” he said. “Interoperability is one of the incredibly important secret sauces to make this more sustainable for a work or a medium to really exist over time.”

Finkel credited the Webaverse as one ecosystem that is encouraging interoperability by using open source code. Webaverse’s open source approach enhances transparency and accessibility by making it possible for anyone to examine, use, fork, improve, and compose open the platform.

At Lighthouse, we heartily agree, which is why we work with organizations like the Open Metaverse Interoperability Group and the Metaverse Standards Forum to collaborate on common standards and technologies that will help facilitate the transfer of people and their assets across virtual worlds.

Monfared echoed that a more open metaverse will be welcome. In particular, she noted that accessibility takes many forms, and offered the Spatial world as an ideal: “It’s very accessible. You can get to it through your mobile phone, by web, and also through VR.”

Developer kits for creators are also getting simpler and more accessible, expanding what can be done and built across ecosystems. Better tools have made for a “super easy transition” from building games to building metaverse worlds, said Faraz Mobin, an award-winning developer who believes the metaverse must prioritize user experience.

“It all comes down to performance,” Mobin said. “In the end, if it’s not going to work on your laptop or your PC, then I really don’t care.”

For Mobin, continued improvements in hardware will be key to driving mass adoption because casual users won’t have to purchase expensive equipment: “It’s going to be as simple as you having a VR headset, and it doesn’t have any processor in it — it just streams everything from the cloud.”

When Fernandez started, his habit was to tell people that he wasn’t building on any specific platform, but was “metaverse agnostic.” While that approach was uncommon two years ago, it’s increasingly becoming the norm as creators have more tools that allow them to experiment privately before releasing assets that can live across worlds.

“Everything is changing very quickly. All of the parameters are becoming easier and easier,” said Fernandez, who recently partnered with 3D NFT marketplace MetaMundo to mint a seafront villa NFT that is usable across ten different metaverse worlds.

As opportunities expand in the metaverse, being able to easily traverse it will become even more critical. “The idea is to make this a more approachable space for all of us,” said Lighthouse co-founder and CEO Jonathan Brun.

The open Metaverse is a big place. Our weekly Twitter space, Meet the Metaverse, will hopefully make it a little smaller, a little more navigable, and a little more intimate. We’re building a community for everyone, from the newly metaverse-curious to seasoned creators.

Join us on Twitter spaces again next week, and every week, as we demystify, explore, and unpack the ideas and people building the spatial web.