Did you know ? The metaverse was first named in 1992, in the sci-fi novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson where he described a dystopian future world. Dystopia became reality and it is not that bad! We even now have two types of metaverse.
“An open metaverse is a virtual world that anyone can access and build upon, while a closed metaverse is a virtual world that is only accessible to those who have been given permission”, as Beatrice Mastropietro, a cryptocurrency journalist states in her “Open vs Closed Metaverse” guide (1).
When I interviewed Sebastien Borget, co-founder and COO of The Sandbox and President of the Blockchain Game Alliance, last July 10, I discovered the worlds of the metaverse and I decided to take a deep dive into understanding their drivers (2).
In this article, I will first come back to the origins of the metaverse before describing the pros and cons of both worlds.