Who will be in Facebook Meta blockchain consortium?

Facebook has recently renamed itself Meta because it envisions that metaverses are the next digital business evolution. There are already existing metaverses like Decentraland. Unlike Facebook, Decentraland isn't controlled and powered by a centralized company but by a community of users. Those users are independent of each other but they are incentivized to provide computing resources, time, and effort to maintain a 24/7 virtual world as well as vote for its governance thanks to a new type of economy built around a new crypto token called MANA. For example, visiting the world is free but getting a unique nickname or wearing special cloth requires spending MANA. MANA is also required to buy some LAND in the virtual world where buildings and games can be built. The number of LAND available is limited to further incentivize users to buy, keep, or trade LAND. Sotheby's has bought some LAND to build its headquarter in Decentraland. That kind of decentralized application is part of the next evolution of the Web called the decentralized Web or Web 3.0. If you want to learn more about such token economics called tokenomics.

So do you really think that Facebook Meta will keep an obsolete Web 2.0 approach for its metaverse?

Facebook is already experienced in building blockchain consortiums thanks to its Libra / Diem stablecoin initiative. Libra was launched in 2019 and was supposed to be a stablecoin worth 1$ per token governed by a consortium of companies and not-for-profit organizations. As underlined in one of my previous trust studies here https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/facebook-coin-amazon-trust-based-answers-2100-jean-marc-seigneur/, Facebook was the least trustworthy of the GAFAM. Hence it was a clever mover for Facebook from a trust point of view to associate its stablecoin initiative with other more trustworthy entities. Unfortunately, Facebook didn't continue its thinking on how to improve social trust in Libra. Libra blockchain technology was great: I know because Facebook Calibra experts taught as part of the blockchain Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) that I lead at the University of Geneva (and it is likely that they teach again for the new metaverse courses of this blockchain certificate, registration is open on the CAS Website ;-). However, although Libra technical trust was very sound, it failed at the social trust level: its communication launch, which can be qualified as too bragging and arrogant, was a trust disaster that led governments and regulators worldwide to fight the project. It is a pity for them because they had already the marketing in place with more than 2 billion users available from day one. Anyway, it is an interesting case study for my Master students in communication at the Medi@LAB where I'm delighted to teach a new course on metaverse culture next year. I often say that both technical trust and social trust are needed but few understand on both sides ;-)

Meta blockchain experts can easily redo a consortium-based blockchain for Facebook metaverse and they once again should in order to increase social trust!

Now that it seems clear that Facebook has all cards in hands to build a metaverse based on a consortium of major and more trustworthy stakeholders. Who could be the first companies joining Meta consortium? Disney could bring magic ;-) Sony could bring games; Balenciaga fashion thanks its new metaverse department; Nike for sport gears after its recent acquisition of the RTFKT NFT studio; Rolex for luxury watch wearables... Existing members of Libra/Diem may also be easily integrated as they are already technically experienced in this field. Who else?

However, even if Facebook is investing billions of $ in its consortium-based blockchain metaverse and Messari insightful crypto theses for 2022 envision that Facebook will eventually beat fully decentralized metaverses because of those billions of investments, fully decentralized metaverses like Decentraland can still win in the long term because full decentralization, thanks to Bitcoin, has managed to threaten the centralized financial world, so why not the metaverse?

Those were my bold predictions for 2022 and beyond ;-), Happy New Year 2022!

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