As the idea of the metaverse moves closer to reality, it’s clear that it will be a massive undertaking. The biggest companies may try to pull it off themselves and maintain their tradition of walled gardens. Do we want to build the metaverse, as an open and inclusive landscape like the Web, or as a bunch of mini-verses: parallel propriety metaverses with no real commerce among them? Achieving a metaverse for all will require unprecedented cooperation among companies, standards development organizations, open-source projects, and scholars to produce a set of industry standards enabling an open and inclusive metaverse. This panel brings together experts in the field to discuss the importance of establishing standards for the open metaverse, the progress being made today, and how it could evolve. The panelists will explore the challenges of creating a unified system that can facilitate seamless interaction between different virtual worlds, the importance of privacy and security in a shared digital space, and the ethical considerations that must considered.
