Early adopters of the virtual worlds known as the metaverse criticised Facebook's rebranding as an attempt to capitalise on growing buzz over a concept that it did not create.
The term metaverse has become a tech buzzword this year, with companies and investors keen to be a part of the next big thing. But users have for years been spending time in these fast-growing but obscure virtual worlds.
"I think Facebook has made this early name change to essentially secure the new trademark legally as soon as possible as more brands become interested," said a UK-based crypto investor known as Pranksy, who said he first bought virtual world real estate around early 2020. "People who want to determine the future of the virtual worlds they inhabit, maintain ownership of their creative output and move freely between them will choose the decentralised version," he said, describing Decentraland's metaverse environment as decentralised and Facebook's plan as likely centralised.
Many existing metaverse platforms are based on blockchain technology that makes central control impossible. Blockchain is the distributed-ledger architecture that underlies cryptocurrencies. In these virtual worlds, people use cryptocurrencies to buy land and other digital objects in the form of non-fungible tokens .However, the reaction from early metaverse adopters was not all negative.
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