Facebook’s Metaverse “Will Misfire”: Ethereum Co-founder Vitalik Buterin

Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin today, July 31, said that corporate attempts at the metaverse will be unsuccessful. More specifically, he added that Facebook’s metaverse will “misfire”. He was responding to the tweets by blockchain auditor, Dean Eigenmann. Let’s take a closer look at what Vitalik Buterin said about corporate attempts at building metaverses. 

What did Vitalik Buterin say about corporate attempts at the metaverse?

Last day, Eigenmann tweeted that they were “struggling” to formulate their thoughts on the metaverse. “All the ideas on concepts make sense…but I still do not believe it will happen in the ways VCs are currently funding.”

“I’d rather hang out in world of warcraft than half of this “metaverse” crap,” Eigenmann added.

In response, Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin wrote, “The “metaverse” is going to happen but I don’t think any of the existing corporate attempts to intentionally create the metaverse are going anywhere.”

“My critique is deeper than “Metaverse Wikipedia will beat Metaverse Encyclopedia Britannica””, he further tweeted. “It’s that we don’t really know the definition of “the metaverse” yet, it’s far too early to know what people actually want. So anything Facebook creates now will misfire.”

Corporates and the metaverse

Since early last year, a slew of corporate organizations has hopped on the metaverse bandwagon. Facebook, for instance, rebranded itself to Meta to build a metaverse in October 2021. Soon after, Microsoft revealed its metaverse plans. What’s more, NFTs are now available on Facebook and Instagram. Unfortunately, Reality Labs, Facebook’s metaverse unit, lost $2.8 billion in Q2 2022.

As Vitalik Buterin wrote, there’s still a lot of confusion about what exactly a metaverse is. While several community members agreed with his metaverse views, several others disagreed. 

“The “wrong” step is a necessary milestone on the path to a better metaverse,” tweeted Ser Jeff Garzik.