The legendary science-fiction author Neal Stephenson defined the word “metaverse” in his 1992 novel ‘Snow Crash.’ He’s now partnering with crypto pioneer Peter Vessenes to actually explore his idea even more by unveiling metaverse-focused LAMINA1 Blockchain.
“Cryptocurrency pioneer Peter Vessenes and renowned futurist Neal Stephenson are announcing Lamina1, a new Layer-1 blockchain technology designed for the Metaverse with Web3 principles in mind,” the announcement reads.
The Metaverse is a virtual urban environment that can be accessed by a worldwide fiber-optic network and virtual reality headsets, as depicted in Stephenson’s novel Snow Crash celebrating its 30th anniversary this year.
The former Bitcoin Foundation chairman Vessenes will be Lamian1’s CEO while Stephenson will serve as the chairman of the platform.
They both intend to launch a new immersive environment based on Snow Crash, as well as construct infrastructure and release tools to help third-party producers create Open Metaverse experiences at scale.
Vessenes describes Lamina1 as “a place to build something a bit closer to Neal’s vision — one that privileges creators, technical and artistic, one that provides support, spatial computing tech, and a community to support those who are building out the Metaverse.”
Lamina1 will serve as a base layer for the Open Metaverse. The blockchain plans to deploy a testnet and then a betanet later this year.
Neal wants to help creators get paid fairly for their work, aid the environment, and see a truly Open Metaverse emerge rather than the Metaverse vision being put forward by monopolies.
The reportedly carbon negative Lamina1 chain will have large transaction volume and an economic architecture with new reward mechanisms to assist innovators and entrepreneurs in creating ideal economies.
Vessenes hopes to contribute economic and technological design to Neal’s vision that will allow Lamina1 to be developed sustainably and to deploy Lamina1 quickly as the processes to make it happen come together.
Tony Parisi, the former head of AR/VR at Unity, and Advisor Rony Abovitz, founder of Sun and Thunder also joined the Lamina1 team along with Stephenson and Vessenes.
Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin, Rony Abovitz, Geoff Entress, Jeremy Giffon, Bing Gordon, James Haft, Reid Hoffman, David Johnston, Joseph Lubin, Patrick Murck, Matthew Roszak, Tihan Seale, Peter Vessenes and Wu Ying are among the project’s initial investors.
Stephenson also shared a few tidbits about Metaverse via Twitter. He believes that the current game development is still centered on screens for both the developer and the user, and that in the Metaverse, a hybrid method that includes both 2D screens and AR/VR technology, rather than just VR, will be used.
‘We fluently navigate and interact with extremely rich 3D environments using keyboards that were designed for mechanical typewriters. It’s steampunk made real. A Metaverse that left behind those users and the devs who build those experiences would be getting off on the wrong foot,” he tweeted.
Subscribe to The Crypto Times for more Metaverse Updates!!
