The Open Metaverse — Crucible. Today I sat down with Ryan Gill, the…
By: Alex Steinberg
Tags: Developer Tools, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Metaverse, Crypto

Today I sat down with Ryan Gill, the co-founder of Crucible, to talk about the Open Metaverse, DAOs, Direct-to-Avatar, the Emergence SDK, web3, Self Sovereign Identity, and more.

Crucible believes in the inevitability of an Open Metaverse, and works to build tools and communities to bring it to reality the right way.

The Open Metaverse

Alex: How do you define the Metaverse, and why is it so important for there to be an open Metaverse?

Ryan: So the clear, simple definition is: the internet up until this point has been developed and architected by web developers, and the Metaverse is just saying that it’s going to start being built by game developers. So the internet over the next 10 years will start to feel more and more like a game. And that’s the Metaverse.

The level to which the Metaverse is going to be important to the lives of the people on Earth is immense, and the influence it will have is far too great for one company, or a couple of companies, to own in the same sort of consolidated way that other markets have. So we need to embrace more open standards and protocols.

Alex: And this is all based on decentralized technology like blockchain, right?

Ryan: Yes. I would say that the only way to web3 is through decentralization. Now you could push back if you’re somebody who just cares about shareholder value, but when you really get into the reality of the situation, no one wants to live in a world where one company owns the whole Metaverse.

Is Fortnite in the Metaverse?

Alex: Yes, so, I think people have a hard time understanding what the Metaverse is. Games like Fortnite are being called a part of the Metaverse, but they are not based on decentralized technology. With that said, you have someone like Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic Games, talking about the importance of an open Metaverse. Where do games like Fortnite fit into the Metaverse ecosystem?

Ryan: I think that we have seen an arc in gaming. Gaming started with single-player sequential levels with bosses. Then, we evolved into the next phase of gaming, which was much more centered around multiplayer internet-based games. And then we got MMOs. Fortnite is the next evolution and started to prove that cross platform gaming works and that games are more than just games but are worlds. These aren’t so much games anymore as much as they are worlds that are alive. They are spaces that are persistently there. Sometimes they have games like Battle Royale in them, but most of them have economies in them.

Alex: So do you see these games as a stepping stone to the Metaverse?

Ryan: Yes, I do look at cross-platform as almost a half measure to interoperability. I think Epic’s role so far has been beyond the shadow of a doubt to prove that companies can make roughly 40% more revenue if they go cross-platform — and you don’t have to sell the game. You can sell skins and make billions. This would have never happened with a company like Activision. Activision is a corporation that matches patterns, and there is very little innovation. And I do believe what we’re seeing is that this cross-platform experiment was just to prove that there is something much bigger coming, but we need to decentralize and create something interoperable to get there.

Alex: Would you say that cross-platform is a form of decentralization?

Ryan: It’s not so much decentralization, more that it’s a stepping stone.

Self Sovereign Identity

Alex: Can you talk a little bit about Self Sovereign Identity and how it relates to the Metaverse?

Ryan: Yes. Self Sovereign Identity is just the name of a standard that has been shaped over the span of the entire internet. It is the gold standard for the way digital identity works. In the real world, SSI has really gotten its foothold in many industries like government and banking, but we are the first people to bring it to gaming. We prove our identity in the world through credentials, and typically on the internet, that is your email. You log in everywhere with your email, and now what we’re saying is that Self Sovereign Identity is just a blockchain based credential that proves your identity without that. It’s the perfect use case for avatars and the way that digital identity is really becoming this cultural movement about expression.

Alex: Do you envision the Metaverse as somewhere that a user can take one avatar into every online world, or do you see it as users having one Self Sovereign Identity with multiple avatars attached to it?

Ryan: The best way you can think of it is that it’s a single sign on. The blockchain credential is your identity. It’s “Alex,” not the avatar itself. And then as an extension of that identity, you can manage all of your different personas and avatars.

Direct-to-Avatar

Alex: Can you explain what direct-to-avatar is?

Ryan: Over the past several years, I’ve really been on a storytelling journey. I shaped my Open Metaverse thesis after working in innovation for years in LA and working with people like Peter Diamandis. It is what I think the future will look like, and it takes time to get different stakeholders to wrap their head around this idea.

Usually when people hear new ideas, they need to draw a parallel to something that they understand. And so I looked at direct-to-consumer as the shift in web2 and how the internet changed the supply chain with platforms like Shopify. I wanted to create a term for the next evolution of that in web3. And so the idea is that now that the whole supply chain has been digitized, and you’re having products directly sent to avatars. This is something that skins in games have proven. You have companies like Genies that are going to try to break that out of the game world and into the world of social media.

I wanted to just create a term that people could really wrap their head around and could use to understand that this is not just marketing. This is a complete shift in the supply chain of business and the way that brands should be thinking about things.

Emergence SDK

Alex: Can you explain how developers are going to be able to take advantage of the Emergence SDK?

Ryan: So Emergence is a suite of products, which is the action plan for the entire vision that Crucible stands for, which is the Open Metaverse. You can think of Emergence as the interface moment.

The SDK exists on game engines like Unity and Unreal, and there is also a mobile app and a browser extension. So it’s a personal stack that you have with you that allows you to manage your personas securely. You can create a digital decentralized network of avatars that are all based on Self Sovereign Identity.

Something I find myself repeating a lot is “in-engine, on-chain.” I want to bring on-chain development and decentralized technology into game development engines. There are 10 million developers that use these engines to build incredible photorealistic games, huge worlds with billions of players, and nothing exists to elegantly bring on-chain development to them.

I think the problem is that the web3 world of crypto doesn’t understand game developers. But these are two separate worlds: crypto and gaming. And it’s one thing to go create crypto games on blockchains, but this needs to be driven by game developers. And, back to my definition, if the Metaverse is the internet created by game developers, then what we need to do is create this web3 development environment and bring it into the engine so that developers can build that way.

Alex: I completely agree with you. Something I’ve seen a lot too is that many people who are making blockchain games come from the crypto world, not the gaming world. So they put crypto first, not gaming first.

Ryan: There are certainly a lot of examples of crypto games that are just crypto with a thin layer of gaming painted over it. It’s still also very complicated with keys, wallets, and everything else, which are massive barriers to entry for most gamers.

Alex: Even downloading and using simple crypto wallets like Metamask is still a huge barrier for most people.

Ryan: It is, and to some extent web3 requires an up-skilling and greater understanding of certain concepts. But what we have in crypto is a complex product set for a complex market. And some people like complexity, right? They get off on it. But outside of that bubble, which is still really small, we need to create simple products for wider markets.

And gaming is interesting because, take League of Legends. It’s pretty complex, but the game is fun. Players are okay with the complexity. And I have these ideas around applying this to design and think that if we start to design web3 products like games, we can keep some of the complexity. We don’t want to simplify to the point where it becomes ineffective.

DAOs

Alex: What do you think the role of DAOs will be in the Metaverse?

Ryan: Well, a DAO is just a term for an organization that is decentralized. It is a way of bringing people together and letting them make decisions without creating a central authority. I am in the early stages of creating a DAO that is really meant to be the heartbeat community of this Open Metaverse movement and vision. In gaming, you have certain important milestones like the ESRB ratings which was a self measure the industry created internally to regulate themselves. There are also government regulations that games have had to face. This pales in comparison to what we’re up against when it comes to the next 10 years of introducing Play-to-Earn. We have so many ethical dilemmas that we need to discuss, and I think DAOs are the perfect way to create a council and a consortium around that.

Alex: So your DAO is trying to democratize this new world that we’re building.

Ryan: Yes, so just to set the stage, Crucible is a for-profit company, but Open Meta, the DAO, is an association in Switzerland, that will be minted in January. And it will move forward to become a community-driven engine for all of this. We have a table, and everybody has a seat. If you really care about what we’re doing and share the vision, then you have a seat, but if you want to bring your voice to the table, then you’re a part of the DAO.

If you want to be a part of decision-making proposals, you can be. It’s not based off of how much money you have or what kind of role that you have in the industry. You are a stakeholder who has a voice here.

Ethical Concerns

Alex: What are some of the ethical concerns surrounding the Metaverse that you hope to discuss?

Ryan: That list is long, and there are certainly financial concerns like the ability to earn things. There are also technological concerts. For example, when you talk about identity and the ability to track brainwaves through computer interfacing. Valve as a company is moving to brain-computer interfacing pretty quickly.

Alex: Valve, as in “Steam.” The Valve that made Portal?

Ryan: Yes, like Gabe Newell. He’s all about it and has been doing a lot of research. Luckily he is partnered with OpenBCI and is prioritizing the open source side of this stuff, but the truth is that we have a company like Valve that exists in a state where account security is so poor.

Alex: My steam account was hacked pretty recently by someone in China.

Ryan: Exactly, and we’re moving directly into connecting games to our brains. Self Sovereign Identity will pose a lot of solutions to these problems, but if we are going to be interfacing with games like that, we need to think a little bit more clearly about account security.

A lot of data represents people and is essentially people in disguise. And, there’s a big step that we’re missing before rushing into all this cool Sci-Fi innovation. And that’s what Crucible really exists for.

Closing Words

Alex: Thank you for taking the time to speak with me! Any closing words?

Ryan: Thanks for having me! I’ve spent about three years now planting the seeds for this movement that has now taken on a life of its own. So, the plan is that in January of 2022 we will have Emergence season one. It will be something that people can grab onto and play. But, we’re not going to build in silence or in a vacuum. We’re going to build in public. I practice something I call open plotting. So, if you’re interested in this stuff, come join our community at t.me/openmetaverse. Our telegram channel has really become the heartbeat for this word. It really is a movement.

Saying that this is “a movement” has become a buzzword, and I understand cynicism to some extent, but there’s something behind this, and it’s important and will touch every person on Earth over the next sort of decade. So, just come join. We’re a very open community, and I plan to build the product in an open way where the community can be a part of it.

Importance of an Open Metaverse

Tim Sweeney of Epic Games famously said, “This Metaverse is going to be far more pervasive and powerful than anything else. If one central company gains control of this, they will become more powerful than any government and be a god on Earth.” The work being done by Ryan and others at Crucible to ensure that the Metaverse remains decentralized is going to be integral, not only to the future of the internet, but to the future of commerce, politics, and yes, even gaming.