Welcoming new technologies involve high anticipation, new opportunities, and of course, excitement.
The same goes when welcoming metaverse, as the future of internet-based services.
With so many projects coming to fruition, there needs to be a stronger focus on interconnecting the virtual worlds, as society doesn’t need more individual, egotistical, and siloed ecosystems.
Because this "new world" many tech companies are developing involves a multitude of developers, big and small, there needs to be a broader understanding of the metaverse ecosystem.
While companies can indeed compete or supplement others inside the metaverse, there needs to be a solid way of attracting newcomers.
This is the reason it needs a standard.
And this is why the Metaverse Standards Forum matters.
The group includes representation from most of the big players in the 3D internet. Founding members include:
0xSenses, Academy Software Foundation, Adobe, Alibaba, Autodesk, Avataar, Blackshark.ai, CalConnect, Cesium, Daly Realism, Disguise, the Enosema Foundation, Epic Games, the Express Language Foundation, Huawei, IKEA, John Peddie Research, Khronos, Lamina1, Maxon, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, OpenAR Cloud, the Open Geospatial Consortium, Otoy, Perey Research and Consulting, Qualcomm Technologies, Ribose, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Spatial Web Foundation, Unity, VerseMaker, Wayfair, the Web3D Consortium, the World Wide Web Consortium, and the XR Association (XRA).
They are brought together in cooperation and coordination between a constellation of international standards organizations, including the Khronos Group.
The idea of this Metaverse Standards Forum is due to the lack of interoperability during Web3, where things running on the blockchain technology are often very limited in how each projects can communicate, and how restrictive entities and data can flow in and out of the ecosystem.
In the metaverse, where things should be connected, there needs to be a way to "connect" these different worlds.
And this founders club is meant to create the standards to benefit everyone involved, as well as creating the interoperability.
When organization like the W3C is for the web standards, the Metaverse Standards Forum, or MSF, is for the metaverse.
The MSF is meant to help coordinate everyone involved in the metaverse.
It's worth noting though, that the MSF is not being a standards body. What it aims, is to only solve the interoperability conundrum for the metaverse industry.
Through the club, tech companies racing to build the emerging metaverse concept can foster the development of the industry standards that would make the the nascent digital worlds compatible with each other.
According to Neil Trevett, President of Khronos and also VP Developer Ecosystems at Nvidia, the MSF is trying to coordinate everything when comes to involve with the metaverse.
"We are bringing together the standards organizations in one place, where we can coordinate between each other but also have good close relationships with the industry that [is] trying to use our standards," he said.
"Who wants to wake up in a metaverse future dominated by a few corporations? We envision this club to be a space for an optimist and collaborative future where we hopefully together are able to build critical infrastructure to make sure the metaverse stays open, accessible and playful," said Anitya.space CEO Pedro Jardim.
In short, the MSF is to optimize user experience, said Metametaverse CEO Joel Dietz.
The MSF, members of the Metaverse Founders Club, shall meet up every quarter to organize cross-metaverse games and events.
Additionally, there shall be monthly consortiums to propose new ideas, evolve bylaws, and vote on anything that requires voting. To be included in this club and forum, one must either represent a metaverse or related technology or by partaking in the virtual scavenger hunt’s puzzles.
"Membership is free and open to any organization," the MSF wrote on its announcement.
"I like to say we’re baking up interoperability bricks," Trevett said.
"We’re not trying to design or build the cathedral right yet. We don’t know quite what the cathedral is going to be, but we know we’re going to need some bricks. So we can do that in the short term and accelerate that process with things like hackathons and interoperability projects."