Web3 Is Broken. Can Neal Stephenson’s Blockchain for Creators Fix It?

READ MORE: Enter the Open Metaverse Economy (Lamina1)

Author and visionary futurist Neal Stephenson coined the term “metaverse” and now he’s chief architect of a new project to see it realized. While his depiction of the future internet in Snow Crash three decades ago was dystopian, Stephenson wants to rescue the metaverse from the clutches of Big Tech and self-interested venture capital and secure an open environment for us all.

While his pitch in a new white paper is unashamedly written in powerful purple prose, this is no fiction. His new blockchain project, called Lamina1, has the backing of some serious technology players. It is in beta and represents a blueprint for how Web3, and by extension the Metaverse, can become “a creative community that is free to innovate and transact” to give rise to a thriving economy.

His vision is also — and this cannot be coincidental coming from a novelist — highly focused on how content creators can be served if the internet’s third age goes according to plan.

It’s worth quoting Stephenson’s argument in full:

“Makers have long relied upon financiers, platform owners and publishers to grant their ideas oxygen and provide a pathway to broad distribution and monetization. Though the introduction of new software and tools has allowed more amateur makers to enter the market, it has not tipped the model toward creators. This is squarely what we’re interested in –– building a home with more favorable economics for those who create the content we voraciously consume.

“Today, storytellers, deep-thinkers and designers pitch and hustle in search of funding –– in games, music, film, and fashion –– only to hand over 30-70% of their revenue, oft post-recoupment, to lenders and middlemen. By acquiring the work of creators, the platform owner expands the portfolio with subscriptions, ad revenue and insights, none of which is shared with those who bring the platform such success.

“Lamina1 lights a new path forward.”

Stephenson is far from the first to view Web3 as a once-in-a-generation (or lifetime) opportunity to redistribute power and wealth for the good of all, rather than retained in the hands of a few.

He’s also not unique in calling out existing Web3 applications, payment mechanisms and organizational structures as essentially Web2 in the emperor’s new clothes.

He makes this explicit, again, in the context of creators:

“Inexorable economic forces drive investors to pay artists as little as possible while steering their creative output in the directions that involve the least financial risk.”

There’s a groundswell of opinion that Web3 is broken — crypto crashes in recent months prove this — and that a better (more robust, interoperable, decentralized) version needs to be got off the ground.

“We march waving the pirate flag at the front of the cultural movement, asking both creators and consumers to join the fight for greater agency and ownership –– the fight for an economy that is imagined, produced and owned by its creators. It’s going to be hard and it’s going to take heart, but the upside of providing a maker direct access to their market is staggering.”

— Neal Stephenson

So what is Lamina1?

Well it is currently a theory, a set of ideas “under active early-stage development.” But Stephenson and Lamina1 co-founder Peter Vessenes (founding chairman of the board of the Bitcoin Foundation) have a plan.

The roadmap calls for a game engine/web SDK and payment system to be in beta as soon as January, which is also when original game pre-production is scheduled to begin. Lamina1 itself is set for launch Q2-Q3 2023.

Bones of the Project

Lamina1’s goal is to deliver a blockchain, interoperating tools and decentralized services optimized for the Open Metaverse –– “providing communities with infrastructure, not gatekeepers to build a more immersive internet.”

Since no blockchain has been expressly designed to support the unique needs of the metaverse or that of creative communities, they argue, that’s what Lamina1 will be.

Lamina1 will be the foundation for an Open Metaverse.

The Open Metaverse, as envisioned by Stephenson, will benefit from open protocols for payments and data, and a set of interoperating decentralized services to support virtual worlds.

“Our mission is to be the rallying point for an ecosystem of open source tools, open standards and enabling technologies conceived and co-developed with a community of creators.”

Payment

Lamina1 is reportedly in the early stages of building out “a highly performant, high-scale payment mechanism which, when launched, will allow users to easily create a rights payment group of hundreds of thousands of recipients, safely pay them, and allow these recipients to cheaply receive their payments.”

Users will be able to pay for digital goods using “any tokens they wish.”

Rights payment support on-chain is a critical need for creators, especially those deploying work created by large groups or with complex ownership/rights structures.

“Rights payments support is a common request creators have of blockchains and making this cheap and fast on Lamina1 is an area of active research.”

Metaverse-as-a-Service

Lamina1 hopes to foster — with “heavy participation from the ecosystem” — the creation of a set of interoperating decentralized services to support virtual worlds.

It calls this Metaverse-as-a-Service (“MaaS”).

This is to enable the friction-free navigation of digital goods as well as personal avatars passing from verse to verse.

Walled gardens of the current Web2 internet will be consigned to history in this metaverse.

“State changes must be synchronized among all participants and serialized to some kind of storage. A combination of on-chain and other decentralized services can achieve this.”

There is more detail in the paper about using cloud computing and what appears to be a form of local peer-to-peer storage to render the pixels necessary to power the 3D internet.

Game Engine & Web Integration

Among the key tech participants that Lamina1 is working with are game engine developers Unity and Unreal Engine, from Epic Games. That’s because the vast majority of today’s immersive metaverse experiences are powered by game engines, with these two being the most popular.

Lamina1 will provide software development kits for these engines to make it as easy as possible for developers to “get started and be successful in integrating our blockchain into games, immersive worlds, digital twins, simulations and other content.”

Lamina1 will also provide the same feature set to web developers, making it simpler to connect immersive web experiences.

It also wants to create a new web browser, one that is “metaverse-enabled.”

Lamina1 will explore this area by instrumenting browser and wallet tech that will push the user experience (UX) of blockchains forward. This includes rendering 3D content for avatars, objects and scenes (versus just static or video thumbnails), as well as creating fun utilities and widgets that enhance the user experience.

Standards

Lamina1 is committed to driving open specifications for the Open Metaverse and is a founding member of the Metaverse Standards Forum. Other open standards entities it admires include W3C, IEEE and Open Meta DAO.

Its Layer 1 Blockchain will be customized to support the needs of content creators “providing provenance for creatorship and enabling attributive and behavioral characteristics of an object to be minted, customized and composed on-chain.”

It is also intended to be carbon neutral by being powered (eventually, but not at launch) entirely by renewable energy.

Rebel with a Cause

This is actually a call to arms more than anything. There’s a hint of pleading with the creator community as well as developer that they need to get on board — or risk everyone’s future.

“As this new digital economy crystallizes, so does the potential to reimagine the financial systems and foundational structures that fuel it. In its early stages, the success of this movement depends on the conviction of companies, creators and consumers to demand something different.”

Stephenson knows he is up against the might of VCs who want to control capital as well as Big Tech companies like Meta and Alphabet.

“Inexorable economic forces drive investors to pay artists as little as possible while steering their creative output in the directions that involve the least financial risk.”

— Neal Stephenson

He is pitching Lamina1 as the Skywalker Jedi Master that will wrest power from the Empire, and has enlisted Wired colleague Stephen Levy for a quote:

“None of this works unless developers ignore the lure of working with well-funded giants and sign up to a rebel effort devoted to an open metaverse.”

Stephenson himself ends on a note that would make even Karl Marx proud.

“We march waving the pirate flag at the front of the cultural movement, asking both creators and consumers to join the fight for greater agency and ownership –– the fight for an economy that is imagined, produced and owned by its creators. It’s going to be hard and it’s going to take heart, but the upside of providing a maker direct access to their market is staggering.”

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