Building the Open Metaverse: Going Beyond Ready Player One

"The term ‘the Metaverse’ is re-emerging from its roots in 1980s science fiction to describe a part of the human experience today, where we as a society are spending more time and money in virtual worlds than ever before– be that Fortnite, Decentraland, Roblox or Oculus VR. But what exactly is the Metaverse and why should we care? Jamie Burke, the CEO of Outlier Ventures and one of the authors of the Open Metaverse thesis, explains that the Metaverse is not some future destination, but a live process which increasingly echoes the dystopian future imagined in books and films like Snowcraft and Ready Player One. This process of capture and control led by a handful of corporations that control these closed virtual economies can be remedied by the adoption of Web3 technologies, which can serve as an operating system for the Open Metaverse based on open source protocols and principles of sovereign identity, data and wealth. Jamie will provide an overview of the Open Metaverse and how he sees the convergence of the new use cases defining blockchain adoption over the next decade. An early investor in Bitcoin and Ethereum, Jamie founded Outlier Ventures to catalyze the adoption of Web3 and support the startups that are creating new use cases for blockchain technology in virtual worlds, gaming, NFTs and dCommerce. To date, Outlier Ventures has worked with 70 startups and helped raise over $100m, culminating in a combined valuation of over $1bn. Outlier Ventures is currently accepting applications for its first-ever collaboration cohort, the Filecoin Base Camp Accelerator. "