The notion of interoperability—users being able to port their NFTs between metaverse platforms—has long been one of the Web3 metaverse's distinctive selling factors. However, there hasn't been much collaboration amongst metaverse platforms up to this point.
That might soon change, as founder of the Bored Ape Yacht Club Greg Solano, alias Garga, revealed:
“We’re going to be publishing our object standards as they become available; some are coming very soon, and others will be coming over the course of the next year.”
According to Solano, such object standards will be open standards that anyone may use and develop upon.
The concept is that a creator may "just as easily take it to another metaverse" after creating a 3D character model for BAYC's Otherside metaverse (or metaverse-a).
The creators of the Otherside metaverse, Yuga Labs, who operate the Bored Ape Yacht Club, aim to create a "fully interoperable" metaverse that "will allow for you to be able to play as whatever persona it is that you are." Yuga Labs CEO Nicole Muniz also iterated:
“Maybe you're an ape. Maybe you’re not; maybe you’re not a Yuga property, that’s okay. The goal is ultimately to create an open world in which, everyone is able to have a shared fun experience."
Creating a Creator Economy in the Metaverse
According to Muniz, Otherside differs from other metaverse projects in that:
“It's rooted in the mythology, in the lore—which will lead to gameplay and other shared experiences that our community have.”
According to Solano, "real ownership" is another benefit of an open metaverse over a Web2-style "walled garden" like Roblox or Fortnite. He claimed that over the previous 20 years, modding groups had produced some of the best advancements in the game industry. Some of the most popular games ever created were initially created by unidentified developers built on top of another platform.
He explained that the open metaverse gives such authors a way to monetize their work rather than by pleading for Patreon donations or YouTube subscriptions.
"If there was a native incentive system, where they could own assets and provenance there, then perhaps we'd be able to establish the creator economy, which actually drives value back to creators by virtue of the current incentive structure."
The Open Metaverse Alliance Asserts that it Won't Permit Meta to Determine the Direction of the Internet
There are more metaverse businesses promoting open standards than Yuga Labs.
The Open Metaverse Alliance (OMA3) was established earlier this month with the goal of ensuring that the metaverse "remains open and becomes truly user-owned," a goal that includes forming an interoperability standards working group.
However, although Yuga Labs was first declared as an OMA3 member business, it was later made clear that the company's membership has not yet been finalized.
