Meta’s layoffs and the challenges facing Big Tech

When it comes to the Metaverse, everyone seems to be asking the same question: ‘Where did Meta go wrong?’

In the business sense, were there miscalculations and a misreading of continued market appetite for video-based social distancing technologies? Yes. Mark Zuckerburg said as much in his message to the bright technologists he and the company let go.

Oh, there are the typical ‘megacompany’ woes of unmet goals, exorbitant development costs, quasi-competing product offerings, competitor market gains, lack of incentive for creators, and difficult barriers to entry for programmers. Still, those things are not uncommon in any business venture. All that said, these kinds of setbacks are not unique to Meta’s Metaverse play.

There were stiff challenges that Meta’s Metaverse product came up against. Still, even the cumulative, practical business aspects compounding the failure should not be taken as a broader commentary on the Metaverse as a whole but rather as a narrow commentary on the business practices of a single company. Therein lies the root of the problem: centralisation.

Beyond Meta’s lack of certain technologies required to ever support a secure, hyper-real, interactive Metaverse on a fundamental level, there is an overarching premise here that has been side-lined. There’s a reason why you see Web3 and Metaverse almost inextricably woven together in word and in deed: decentralisation is required for any truly successful Metaverse.

As mentioned before, outside of what we at QDEx Labs have created for a new fundamental digital infrastructure called the QNTYM Railway, there is no viable option for fundamental requirements for what people have in their minds as a ‘Ready Player One-type’ ‘Metaverse.’ Beyond this, a centralised network will never be able to support a Metaverse of any serious size or quality, because of the topographical dynamics required, much less any other of the litany of technological reasons involved.

Path forward

So what is the path forward when discussing the future of the Metaverse… what does that actually look like? We’ll get to that shortly; I will tell you what it doesn’t look like: a technocratic ruler imposing a low-quality, previously leg-less, VR world on a community that is expected to bend to the will of the platform with little room for tools, microtransactions, and the community-driven guidance required to prevent user fatigue.

The only path forward must be predicated on a completely decentralised network infrastructure, not only technologically but also ideologically. Within these two components lies the future. As I have said, many times on social media, podcasts, and meetings with everyone from community members to thought leaders: ‘… the Metaverse can only be truly successful when it is right where it belongs: in the hands of the people.’

The previous statement isn’t just some snappy slogan/ vision statement given to incite a movement based on trope; by inserting real, usable technology into the formula (as it is in the case of QDEx Labs as a major contributor to the QDEx Community-owned, decentralised TSSYRQ Network), the ideological quickly turns to the practical cumulatively. Then, and only then, can a web2 world successfully transition to web3.

There’s no doubt that the proper, infrastructural, digital network architecture provides the framework to support the demands of the Metaverse, but it, by nature, carries a mutually exclusive, binitarian relationship with a community-focused and driven narrative as a necessary construct. In every venue, industry, or application, what decentralisation and its inseparable ideological, socioeconomic positioning (centered on sovereignty), brings to the practical Metaverse will be an experientially individualistic enhancement to every day, ‘real life in a community-driven digital economy on every level from user interaction and layered development to professional development with new job market verticals.

From my view as an inventor, builder, and significant contributor to the decentralised network that will redefine the space completely, the future of the Metaverse isn’t just bright. It’s radiant … it just doesn’t look like anything we’ve seen so far in the real world… legs included or not.

With this in mind, and based on the chosen path, I believe the right question, in regards to the Metaverse, always was: Did Meta ever have a chance of truly succeeding in the first place?