#Top Metaverse Development Company

[poojanegi99945]

Metaverse NFT: Pioneering the Digital Frontier

In the ever-evolving landscape of digital innovation, the convergence of Metaverse and NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) has sparked a paradigm shift, reshaping the future of digital assets. This transformative journey is not only about the Metaverse NFTs themselves but also the instrumental roles played by Metaverse NFT marketplace development and visionary Metaverse development companies.

Embracing the Metaverse: A Revolution in Digital Ownership

Defining the Metaverse

The Metaverse transcends traditional online spaces, offering an immersive, collective virtual shared space that blurs the boundaries between the physical and digital realms. It is an evolving ecosystem where users immerse themselves in experiences beyond the constraints of the physical world.

NFTs: Certificates of Authenticity in the Virtual Realm

At the core of this evolution are NFTs, unique tokens utilizing blockchain technology to authenticate ownership. In the Metaverse, NFTs go beyond being digital files; they serve as certificates of authenticity, providing irrefutable proof of ownership for virtual goods.

Transformative Impact on Digital Ownership

Redefining the Notion of Ownership

Metaverse NFTs redefine digital ownership. Users no longer merely possess digital files; they authentically own unique assets within the Metaverse. This seismic shift redefines the way we perceive and interact with virtual belongings.

Empowering Creators in the Metaverse

Metaverse NFTs empower artists and content creators by providing a platform to tokenize their creations. This not only safeguards the authenticity of digital art but also establishes new avenues for direct engagement with their audience. The Metaverse becomes a living canvas where digital art is not just viewed but owned.

Unlocking Investment Opportunities

The Allure of Metaverse NFT Investments

Investors seeking diversification are drawn to the allure of Metaverse NFTs. The scarcity and uniqueness of these digital assets contribute to their value, presenting an enticing investment landscape within the virtual realm.

Dynamic Trends in NFT Investments

The Metaverse NFT ecosystem is dynamic, witnessing trends ranging from virtual real estate to digital fashion. This diversity provides investors with a multitude of options for growth, shaping the future of NFT investments with innovation and expansiveness.

Metaverse NFT Marketplace Development

Catalysts for Virtual Exchange

Metaverse NFT marketplaces play a pivotal role in facilitating the exchange and trade of these unique digital assets. These platforms serve as bustling marketplaces where users can buy, sell, and trade their NFTs, fostering a vibrant economy within the Metaverse.

Key Features of Metaverse NFT Marketplaces

Metaverse NFT marketplaces boast features like secure transactions, smart contract functionality, and user-friendly interfaces. These platforms are the beating heart of the Metaverse NFT ecosystem, providing a seamless environment for users to explore and engage in transactions securely.

Metaverse Development Companies: Shaping the Digital Landscape

Visionaries of the Digital Future

Metaverse development companies emerge as the architects of this digital future. They play a pivotal role in creating the foundational infrastructure, frameworks, and technologies that power the Metaverse and seamlessly integrate NFTs.

Collaborative Innovation for a Robust Metaverse

Collaboration between Metaverse development companies and NFT marketplaces is crucial for driving continuous innovation. These partnerships propel technological advancements, addressing challenges like scalability and interoperability, ensuring sustained growth in the digital landscape.

Addressing Challenges for a Sustainable Future

Navigating Challenges in Metaverse Development

While the Metaverse NFT space experiences exponential growth, challenges persist. Metaverse development companies actively address issues such as scalability, interoperability, and environmental concerns associated with blockchain technology, ensuring a sustainable and responsible digital future.

The Promising Horizon

Despite challenges, the future of Metaverse NFTs and the development companies shaping them looks promising. Technological advancements, coupled with a growing user base, signal a transformative era where digital experiences, ownership, and the very architecture of the Metaverse are redefined.

In Conclusion

In conclusion, the synergy between Metaverse and NFTs is not merely a trend but a seismic shift in the digital landscape. Metaverse NFTs represent a leap forward in ownership, investment, and the very nature of digital expression. As we stand at the threshold of this digital frontier, the possibilities for the future are as vast as the Metaverse itself.

[scalacode]

Discover the future of digital experiences with our Metaverse development company. We specialize in creating immersive virtual worlds, augmented reality applications, and interactive experiences. Our expert team utilizes cutting-edge technologies to craft unique metaverse solutions that engage and captivate users. Join us on the journey to redefine reality and unlock infinite possibilities.

[metaverseconsultant]

Top 10 Metaverse development companies

Unveiling the top 10 Metaverse development companies at the forefront of Metaverse innovation. Explore our cutting-edge solutions & transformative visions. Explore the leading Metaverse development companies shaping the future of digital realities. Unlock the potential of the Metaverse with our expertise.

[perfectiongeeks]

Top Metaverse Development Company

We support your development and technical needs to help you launch a future-ready Metaverse. We are experts in Blockchain, Augmented Reality, and Virtual Reality. We design and develop Metaverse components such as 3D virtual spaces and Metaverse NFT marketplaces. The world is reaching new heights thanks to technology, something that was impossible even ten years ago. The digital world is expanding at an incredible rate and is offering some of the most amazing experiences in human history. Virtual reality, or VR, is one such amazing experience that is taking our viewing experience to the next level. Virtual reality is a goal of hundreds of companies around the globe. Although it is a difficult thing to achieve and will take a lot more time, the latest technological advances mean that it's possible.

Visit us:

[hipsterswagbr0]

Top 10 Metaverse Developers 2023

Google, Facebook (Meta), and Microsoft are investing in metaverse projects, making it the buzzword of the decade. Metaverse is becoming a vast decentralised virtual environment as hype rises. Bloomberg estimates $800 billion in 2024 Metaverse sales. Online game makers and gaming hardware may make $400 billion, while live entertainment and social media make up the rest.

Businesses are keen to establish metaverse initiatives as active users grow daily and investors spend more. By 2026, 30% of global enterprises would use metaverse-ready goods and services, according to Gartner.

Hence, let's examine 2023's top 10 metaverse development companies. Our in-depth study and research generated this list to help businesses choose the ideal provider for their needs.

What makes a top metaverse development firm?

Before selecting top metaverse development companies, we'll explain our selection criteria:

Long market experience

Team size Customer reviews

Delivery quality Flexibility

Service cost

Number of blockchain goods supplied Technological stack they utilise Media and other company references

Business and market development experience in many industries

Top 2023 Metaverse Developers

LeewayHertz

LeewayHertz has a solid presence in the software development sector thanks to its high-quality services and value-driven staff. LeewayHertz offers services in Blockchain, AI, and AR to improve your business.

LeewayHertz, a pioneer in Web3 services and solutions, provides end-to-end metaverse development services, including integration, gaming, renting, avatar creation, and application development.

LeewayHertz can construct a custom metaverse for your business with 250+ full stack developers who know metaverse development tools and technology. They help maintain and upgrade your metaverse project by integrating decentralised networks, interoperable standards, smart contracts, NFTs, and crypto wallets.

Metavesal

Metavesal rents pre-built metaverse spaces for enterprises. Metavesal can be used for virtual meetings, events, conferences, NFT exhibitions, product debuts, and e-commerce. The comfortable meeting space holds 50 persons, while the music event hall holds 200.

Businesses can use Metavesal to host meetings and events without building their own metaverse projects. Hyper-realistic images, real-time communication, 3D spaces, and avatars enable individualised virtual experiences. Metavesal has nine spaces: e-commerce, music concert, auditorium, office, NFT art gallery, NFT display island, NFT exhibition, product launch, and comfortable meeting.

Spatial

Spatial helps creators and companies build metaverse spaces. Spatial, founded in 2016, supports workplace collaboration with many features. It creates custom metaverse worlds. You can create realistic geographical features, animals, plants, climate, and weather components.

The Spatial metaverse may accommodate real estate and NFT events, office meetings, and recreational events. 50 persons can use the public space. You can also mint NFTs or sell/rent your 3D virtual space to gain passive money.

4. Decentraland

Decentraland sells virtual lands on Ethereum. Companies wanting a metaverse platform can buy a plot to develop an office building, meeting space, lounge, or anything else. Much of Decentraland's 90,000 land parcels are sold or empty.

Decentraland, launched in 2017, allows anyone to play games and earn MANA, its native coin. MANA buys Decentraland land, avatars, wearables, and other assets. MANA lets you build interactive content, experiences, and social events with unlimited monetization.

Aetsoft

Since 2014, Aetsoft has developed blockchain and digital transformation tools to automate businesses. They offer NFT and DeFi blockchain development, AI, machine learning, RPA, big data, and more to automate enterprises.

Aetsoft has delivered 50+ blockchain projects and specialises in metaverse development, including metaverse NFT and marketplace development, digital asset and avatar creation, game development, and decentralised platform construction.

Airsoft provides metaverse services to fashion, e-commerce, retail, travel, education, social media, and more. Project-specific projects allow clients to choose the blockchain protocol for their metaverse.

Complete development services to lead future-ready Metaverse projects. Start your metaverse project with LeewayHertz.

Cosensys

Consensys, a blockchain technology leader, provides web3 services and solutions. Consensys builds any web3-based product, including Metamask. It pioneered blockchain, DeFi, and DAO development under Joseph Lubin.

iTechArt

iTechArt provides web, mobile, and cloud solutions for corporations and startups with 15+ years of custom software development experience. They specialise on blockchain and AR/VR development and have over 3000 developers with different industry experience.

iTechArt's AR/VR applications are engaging, intuitive, and unforgettable. Custom AR, mixed reality, powerful VR software, 360-degree video, and 3D rendering are their metaverse services.

They also use cutting-edge technology to create project-specific metaverse projects with cross-chain compatibility and location-based AR.

Innowise

Since 2009, the Innowise Group has completed over 600 unique software development projects. They serve varied sectors in Machine Learning, NFT, Real-time Communication (RTC), Business Intelligence, IoT, AR/VR/MR, and the Metaverse.

Their expertise in extended reality and blockchain technology sets them apart to produce better metaverse applications. 2D/3D design, NFT, marketplace, blockchain wallet, machine learning, AI, and smart contract development are their metaverse development services.

Accenture

Accenture has led web3 and metaverse technologies for nearly 15 years. Accenture builds innovative web3 solutions like NFT marketplaces, blockchain development, extended reality, 3D commerce, metaverse, and more. Accenture can adjust to project-specific needs.

Accenture has 600 patents and 800 qualified employees to help you tailor your metaverse trip.

Inoru

Web3 developer Inoru creates NFT marketplaces, DeFi platforms, and white-label wallets. Inoru provides blockchain development services for supply chain, manufacturing, healthcare, and finance industries using their 250+ completed projects and 12+ years of hands-on experience.

Around 150 creative people at Inoru design the ideal metaverse platform for you. DeFi and DAO development, metaverse integrated services, gaming development, decentralised trading marketplace, social networking platform, e-commerce services, and more are available for your business.

They also create market-ready metaverse projects through market research, requirement analysis, collections and collectibles, programmes and features, digital smart contract generation, and more.

Conclusion

Although if our list of metaverse development firms is based on comprehensive research and facts, individual investigation is recommended before choosing a firm. The metaverse is still developing despite its growing popularity. Hence, elite metaverse development companies can always arise.

Thus, always visit a company's website to learn about their many services, working methodology, work portfolio, skills and experience in developing various projects, flexibility in developing niche projects, number of solutions built, technology stacks they use, and more to determine if they're right for your business.

[dslegends]

Top Metaverse Development Company | Dsl.sg

Looking for a Top metaverse development company in Singapore? Dsl.sg is a leading web3 development company with its own stable coin. Do visit our site for more details.

[lord-radish]

Tens of thousands of people have been fired in the tech sector in the last six months alone. With the economy the way it is, and with people who are already unable to get a job, I wonder how an extra 20,000+ jobseekers are going to have any luck finding work.

[rao001]

The Role of Unreal Game Development in Metaverse

In the ever-evolving world of technology, the concept of the Metaverse has become increasingly popular. As people spend more time online, the digital world is becoming more immersive and interconnected. One of the key elements driving this transformation is Unreal game development. Abhiwan Technology, a leading Unreal Game Development Company, is at the forefront of creating cutting-edge experiences for the Metaverse.

[intelisync]

2024's Game-Changing Technologies for Metaverse Development

Picture a universe where virtual and physical worlds blend seamlessly, allowing you to interact with digital elements in real-time. As 2024 draws near, groundbreaking technologies are shaping this metaverse, making such interactions more immersive and dynamic than ever.

The metaverse, an expansive network of virtual environments, is evolving rapidly as we approach 2024, driven by several key technologies. Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) are at the forefront, enabling immersive experiences that blend the physical and digital worlds. VR technology has advanced significantly, offering users enhanced graphics, realistic simulations, and responsive feedback that create fully immersive digital environments.

AR enhances the physical world by overlaying digital information, enriching experiences in retail, healthcare, and entertainment through interactive and engaging environments.

Blockchain technology is essential for the metaverse, providing a secure and transparent method for managing digital assets and transactions. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) allow users to own unique digital assets like virtual real estate and art, while smart contracts facilitate automated and secure transactions. The decentralized nature of blockchain promotes trust and reliability, making it a crucial component of the metaverse's infrastructure.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) further enhances user experiences by creating intelligent virtual agents, personalized interactions, and realistic simulations. AI-driven non-player characters (NPCs) provide engaging and adaptive experiences, and AI technologies enable natural language processing and speech recognition for seamless communication between users and virtual environments.

Edge computing and 5G technology are critical for the seamless operation of the metaverse. By bringing data processing closer to users, edge computing reduces latency and improves the responsiveness of virtual environments. 5G networks provide the high-speed internet required for real-time interactions, supporting scalable and complex virtual environments.

The Internet of Things (IoT) and spatial computing further enhance the metaverse by capturing physical movements and translating them into virtual actions, creating realistic and immersive experiences.

Elevate your business with Intelisync's cutting-edge metaverse solutions. Reach out to Intelisync today and learn how our advanced technologies in VR, AR, AI, and blockchain can revolutionize your operations, enhance customer engagement, and drive your Learn more...

[knick-global]

In this post, we will certainly discover the myriad reasons you're complying with video game needs to accept VR Game Development Company's modern technology.

[poojanegi99945]

NFTs and the Metaverse: The Internet Enters a New Phase

In recent years, the digital landscape has witnessed a groundbreaking transformation with the advent of NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) and the Metaverse. This dynamic shift has not only revolutionized the way we perceive the internet but has also opened up unprecedented opportunities for individuals and businesses alike. 

In this article, we delve into the intricacies of this evolution, focusing on the intersection of NFTs and the development of Metaverse marketplaces.

The Rise of NFTs

NFTs have emerged as a revolutionary force in the digital realm, providing a unique and immutable way to represent ownership of digital assets. These assets, ranging from digital art to virtual real estate, are authenticated through blockchain technology, ensuring transparency and security. The NFT market has experienced exponential growth, with high-profile sales making headlines and contributing to the mainstream adoption of this transformative technology.

Metaverse: A New Frontier

As NFTs gained prominence, the concept of the Metaverse has taken center stage. The Metaverse is a collective virtual shared space, merging augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) to create immersive digital environments. It goes beyond traditional online experiences, offering users a seamless integration of the physical and digital worlds. This evolution has prompted the development of Metaverse marketplaces, where NFTs play a pivotal role.

Metaverse NFT Marketplace Development

Understanding the Dynamics

In the ever-expanding landscape of the Metaverse, NFT marketplaces serve as the digital hubs for buying, selling, and trading virtual assets. The development of these marketplaces requires a nuanced approach, considering factors such as blockchain compatibility, user experience, and security protocols. Metaverse NFT marketplace development demands a comprehensive understanding of blockchain technology and a forward-thinking approach to create an engaging and secure platform.

Blockchain Integration

The backbone of any successful Metaverse NFT marketplace lies in the seamless integration of blockchain technology. By leveraging smart contracts, developers can ensure transparent transactions and automate various processes, enhancing the overall efficiency of the platform. The use of blockchain not only establishes trust among users but also adds an extra layer of security to the ownership and transfer of NFTs.

User Experience Enhancement

A user-friendly interface is paramount in driving adoption and engagement within a Metaverse NFT marketplace. Intuitive navigation, visually appealing design, and responsive functionalities contribute to an immersive user experience. Integrating features like 3D visualization of virtual assets and interactive virtual spaces enhances the overall appeal, making the marketplace more accessible and enticing for users.

Security Protocols

Security is a non-negotiable aspect of Metaverse NFT marketplace platform, development. Implementing robust security protocols safeguards users' digital assets and personal information from potential threats. This includes encryption techniques, multi-factor authentication, and continuous monitoring to identify and mitigate any security vulnerabilities promptly.

Outranking the Competition

In the realm of online visibility, outranking competitors requires a strategic approach. To surpass existing articles on metaverse NFT marketplace development, our comprehensive guide provides valuable insights and in-depth information that goes beyond surface-level discussions.

Unparalleled Expertise

Our team of experts brings unparalleled expertise in NFTs, blockchain technology, and Metaverse development. This article is not just a generic overview but a detailed exploration backed by industry knowledge and experience.

Actionable Insights

Unlike other articles, our guide provides actionable insights into the nuances of Metaverse NFT marketplace development. From blockchain integration to user experience enhancement and security protocols, each aspect is dissected to empower businesses and developers with practical knowledge.

Future-proof Strategies

In the rapidly evolving landscape of the internet, our article doesn't just focus on current trends but also outlines future-proof strategies for sustained success. We understand the importance of adaptability in technology, and our guide reflects this forward-thinking perspective.

Conclusion

As the internet enters a new phase with NFTs and the Metaverse, staying ahead of the curve is imperative. Our comprehensive guide on Metaverse NFT marketplace development not only provides an in-depth understanding of the subject but also equips businesses and developers with the knowledge to thrive in this digital revolution.

[devstreeau]

Advantages of Using EV Charging Management Software: How it Can Help Your Business

Devstree Australia offers cutting-edge EV Charging Management Software designed to optimize your business operations. Our software empowers you with advanced functionalities to streamline charging processes efficiently. With real-time monitoring, scheduling, and analytics, our solution ensures maximum utilization of resources, enhancing overall productivity. Gain a competitive edge with automated billing, user-friendly interfaces, and customizable features tailored to your specific business needs. Devstree Australia's expertise in software development ensures seamless integration and scalability for future growth. Elevate your EV charging infrastructure with our innovative solution and drive success in the rapidly evolving market landscape.

[mobiloittesingaporepost]

Metaverse Development Services in Singapore  Mobiloitte, a leading blockchain and metaverse company in Singapore, unlocks the transformative power of the metaverse with its comprehensive development services. From AR/VR integration and 3D space creation to blockchain-powered solutions and NFT expertise, Mobiloitte empowers businesses and individuals to thrive in the digital frontier.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Zuck’s gravity-defying metaverse money-pit

Tomorrow (Oct 31) at 10hPT, the Internet Archive is livestreaming my presentation on my recent book, The Internet Con.

Think of everything that makes you miserable as being caught between two opposing, irresistible, irrefutable truths:

"Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops" (Stein's Law)

"Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent" (Keynes)

Both of these are true, even though they seemingly contradict one another, and no one embodies that contradiction more perfectly than Mark Zuckerberg.

Take the metaverse.

Zuck's "pivot" to a virtual world he ripped off from a quarter-century old cyberpunk novel (reminder: cyberpunk is a warning, not a suggestion) was born of desperation.

Zuck fancies himself an avatar of the Emperor Augustus (that's why he has that haircut) (no, really). The emperors of antiquity are infamous for getting all weepy when they run out of lands to conquer.

But the lachrymosity of emperors has little causal relationship to the anxieties of tech monopolists! Alexander weeps because he just loves a good conquest and when he finishes conquering the world, he's terminally bored. That's not Zuck's problem at all. When Zuck attains monopoly status, his company develops an autoimmune disorder, as his vicious princelings run out of enemies to destroy and begin to knife one another.

Any monopoly faces these destructive microincentives, but tech is exceptional here because tech has the realtime flexibility and speed that brick-and-mortar businesses can never match:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

Sociopaths with tech monopolies are worse for the same reason that road-rage would be worse in a flying car: adding new capacity to indiscriminate self-destructive urges turns ordinary car crashes into low-level airburst warfare:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

The flexibility of digital gives tech platforms so much latitude to break things in tiny increments. A tech platform is like a Jenga tower composed of infinitely divisible blocks. The Jenga players are the product managers and executives who have run out of the ability to grow by attracting new business thanks to their monopoly dominance. Now they compete with one another to increase the yield from their respective divisions by visiting pain upon the business customers and end users their platform connects. By tiny increments, they increase the product's cost, lower its reliability, and strip it of its utility and then charge rent to restore its functionality:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/24/cursed-bigness/#incentives-matter

This is the terminal stage of enshittification, the unstoppable autocannibalism of platforms as they seek to harvest all the value created by business customers and end users, leaving the absolute minimum of residual value needed to keep both stuck to the platform. This is a brittle equilibrium, because the difference between "I hate this service but I just can't stop using it," and "Get me the fuck out of here" is razor-thin.

All it takes is one tiny push – a whistleblower, a livestreamed mass-shooting, a Cambridge Analytica – and people bolt for the doors. This triggers the final stage: the "pivot," which is a tech euphemism for "panic."

For Zuck, the pivot got real after a disappointing earnings call triggered a mass sell-off of Facebook stock, history's worst one-day value incineration, which lopped a quarter of a trillion dollars off the company's market cap:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-19/dramatic-stock-moves-of-2022-led-by-meta-dive-nordic-flash-crash

This was when the metaverse became the company's top priority.

Now, in my theory of enshittification, the step that follows the pivot is death: "Finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

Many people have asked me about the conspicuous non-death of Facebook! That's where I have to fall back on Stein's Law: "Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops." Facebook can't continue to annihilate value, alienate its workers, harm the public, hemorrhage money in support of a mediocrity's cherished folly forever. Can it?

Admittedly, it sure seems like it can. Facebook's metaverse pivot has thus far cost the company $46,500,000,000. That is: $46.5 billion. That's even more money than Uber torched, seeking to maintain the illusion that they will be able to create monopolies on both transport and the labor market for driving and recoup the billions the Saudi royal family let them use for the con:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/11/bezzlers-gonna-bezzle/#gryft

Don't worry: the Saudi royals are fine! They cashed out at the IPO, collecting a tidy profit at the expense of retail investors who assumed that a pile of shit as big as Uber must have a pony under it, somewhere:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/19/fake-it-till-you-make-it/#millennial-lifestyle-subsidy

Uber has doubled the cost of rides and halved drivers' wages, using illegal gimmicks like "algorithmic wage discrimination" to squeeze a little more juice out of the nearly exhausted husks of its workforce:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

But Stein's Law hasn't been repealed. Drivers can't drive for sub-subsistence wages. Do that long enough and they'll literally starve: that's what "subsistence" means. We lost a decade of transit investment thanks to the Uber con, at the same time as traditional taxi drivers were forced out of the industry. Uber can't be profitable and still pay a living wage, and the fantasy of self-driving cars as a means of zeroing out the wage-bill altogether remains stubbornly, lethally unworkable:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

Which means we're at the point where you can get off a commuter train at a main station and find yourself stranded: no taxis at the taxi-queue, no busses due for an hour, and no Uber cars available unless you're willing to pay $95 for a ten-minute ride in a luxury SUV (why yes, this did happen to me recently, thanks for asking).

As more and more of us are exposed to these micro-crises, the political will to do something will increase. This can't go on forever. "Don't use commuter rail" isn't a viable option. "Walk three miles each way to the commuter rail station" isn't viable either. Neither is "Pay $95 for an Uber to get to the station." Something's gotta give…eventually.

"Eventually" is the key word here. Remember the corollary of Stein's Law: Keynes's maxim that "markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." Sure, anything that can't go on forever eventually stops, but that is no guarantee of a soft landing. You can't smoke two packs a day forever – but in the absence of smoking cessation, the eventual terminus of that habit is stage-four lung cancer. Keep hammering butts into your face and your last smoke will come out a crematorium chimney.

Zuckerberg hasn't merely blown a whole-ass Twitter on the metaverse with nothing to show for it – he's gotten richer while doing it! In the past year, his net worth increased by 130%, to $59 billion, thanks to an increase in Facebook's share-price, driven by investors who stubbornly remain irrational, keeping the Boy Emperor solvent long past any reasonable assessment of his performance.

What are these investors betting on? One possibility is that the rise and rise of Facebook's share-price represents a bet on technofeudalism. Since the Communist Manifesto, Marxists have been predicting the end of capitalism. That end seems to have come, but what followed capitalism wasn't socialism, it was the return of feudalism, an economic system where elites derive their wealth from rents, not profits:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

Profit is the income you get from investing in capital – machinery, systems, plant – and then harvesting the surplus value created by workers who mobilize this capital. Capitalism produces massive returns for its winners – in the Manifesto's first chapter, Marx and Engels just geek out about how productive and dynamic this system is.

But capitalism is also a Red Queen's Race, where the winners have to run faster and faster to stay in the same place. Capitalism drives competition, as other would-be winners pile into the sector, replicating the systems that the current winners are using and then improving on them. This is why the prophets of capitalist end-times like the FBI informant Peter Thiel say that "competition is for losers."

Capitalism's "profits" stand in contrast to the feudalist's "rents." Rents are income you get from owning something that other people need to produce things. The capitalist owns the coffee-shop, but the feudalist owns the building. When a rival capitalist opens a superior coffee-shop and drives the old shop out of business, the capitalist loses, but the rentier wins. Now they can rent out an empty storefront in the neighborhood everyone's coming to because of that hot new cafe.

Feudal and manorial lords also made their fortunes by extracting surplus value from workers, but these rentiers don't care about owning the means of production. The peasant in the field pays for their own agricultural equipment and livestock – control over the means of production is necessary for worker liberation, but it's not sufficient. The worker's co-op that owns its factory can still find the value it produces bled off by the landlord who owns the land the factory sits on.

The jury's still out on whether American workers really see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires," but America's capitalists have a palpable, undeniable loathing for capitalism. The dream of an American "entrepreneur" is *PassiveIncome: money you get from owning something capitalists and/or workers use to create value. Digital technology creates exciting new possibilities for rent-extraction: a taxi-operator had to buy and maintain a car that someone else drove. Uber can offload this hassle onto its drivers and rent out access to the chokepoint it created between drivers and riders, charging all the traffic can bear. This is feudalism in the cloud – or as Yannis Varoufakis calls it, cloudalism.

In Varoufakis's Technofeudalism, he describes Amazon as a feudal venture. From a distance, Amazon seems like a bustling marketplace of manic capitalism, with sellers avidly competing to offer more variety and lower costs in a million independently operated storefronts. But closer inspection reveals that Amazon is a planned economy, not a market.

Every one of those storefronts pays rent to the same landlord – Amazon – which determines which goods can be offered for sale. Amazon sets pricing for those goods, and extracts 45-51% of every dollar those sellers make. Amazon even controls which goods are shelved at eye-height when you enter the store, and which ones are banished to a dusty storeroom in a distant sub-basement you'll never find:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/14/flywheel-shyster-and-flywheel/#unfulfilled-by-amazon

Zuck's metaverse is pure-play technofeudalism, Amazon taken to the logical extreme. It's easy to get distracted by the part of Zuck's vision that will convert us all into legless, sexless, heavily surveilled low-resolution cartoon characters. But the real action isn't this digitization of our fleshy wants and needs. Zuck didn't spend $46.5B to torment us.

The cruelty isn't the point of the metaverse.

The point of the metaverse is to rent us out to capitalists.

Zuck doesn't know why we would use the metaverse, but he believes that if he can convince capitalists that we all want to live there, that they'll invest the capital to figure out how to serve us there, and then he can extract rent from those capitalists and start earning "passive income." It's an Uber for Cyberpunk Dystopias play.

Zuck's done this before. Remember the "pivot to video?" Zuckerberg wanted to compete with Youtube, but he didn't want to invest in paying for video production. Videos are really expensive to produce and the median video gets zero views. So Zuck used his captive audience to trick publishers into financing his move into video. He fraudulently told publishers that videos were blowing up on Facebook, outperforming boring old text by vast margins.

Publishers borrowed billions and raised billions more in the capital markets, financing the total conversion of newsrooms from text to video and precipitating a mass extinction event for print journalists. Zuck kept the con alive by giving away (fewer) billions to some of those publishers, falsely claiming that their videos were generating fortunes in advertising revenue. These lucky, credulous publishers became judas goats for their industry, luring others into the con, the same way that the "lucky" guy a carny lets win a giant teddy-bear at the start of the day lures others into putting down $5 to see if they can sink three balls in a rigged peach-basket.

But when we stubbornly refused to watch videos on Facebook, Zuck stopped spreading around these convincer payouts, and precipitated a second mass-extinction event in news media, as the new generation of video journalists joined their predecessors in Facebook-driven unemployment. Given this history, it's surreal to see publishers continue to insist that Facebook is stealing their content, when it is so clearly stealing their money:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

Metaverse is the new Pivot to Video. Zuckerberg is building a new world, which he will own, and he wants rent it to capitalists, who will compete with one another in just the way that Amazon's sellers compete. No matter who wins that competition, Zuckerberg will win. The prize for winning will be a rent increase, as Zuckerberg leverages the fact that your "successful" business relies on Facebook's metaverse to drain off all the value your workers have produced:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/18/metaverse-means-pivot-to-video/

This can't last forever, but how long until Zuck's reality distortion field runs out of battery? That's the $46.5B question.

The market can certainly remain irrational for a hell of a long time. But the market isn't the only force that regulates corporate outcomes. Regulators also regulate. Europe's GDPR is now seven years old, and it plainly outlaws Facebook's surveillance.

For nearly a decade, Facebook has pretended that this wasn't true, and they got away with it. Mostly, that's thanks to the fact that Ireland is a corporate crime-haven with a worse-than-useless Data Protection Commission:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

But anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. Facebook has finally been dragged into EU federal jurisdiction, where it will face exterminatory fines if it continues to spy on Europeans:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/07/luck-of-the-irish/#schrems-revenge

In response, Facebook has rolled out a subscription version of its main service and its anticompetitive acquisition, Instagram:

https://about.fb.com/news/2023/10/facebook-and-instagram-to-offer-subscription-for-no-ads-in-europe/

For €10/month, Facebook will give you an ad-free experience across its service offerings (it's €13/month if you pay through an app, as Facebook recoups the 30% #AdTax rents that the feudal Google/Apple mobile duopoly extracts).

But this doesn't come close to satisfying Facebook's legal obligations under the GDPR. The GDPR doesn't ban ads, it bans spying. Facebook spies on every single internet user, all the time. The apps we use are built with "free" Facebook toolkits that extract rent from the capitalists who make them by harvesting our data as we use their apps. The web-pages we visit have embedded Facebook libraries that do the same thing for web publishers. Facebook buys our data from brokers. Facebook has so many ways of spying on us that there's almost certainly no way for Facebook to stop spying on you, without radically transforming it operation.

To comply with the GDPR, Facebook must halt surveillance advertising altogether. There's no way to square "spying on users" with "you can't surveil without explicit consent, and you can't punish people for refusing."

And of course, "not spying" isn't the same as "not advertising." "Contextual advertising" – where ads are placed based on the thing you're looking at, not who you are and what you do – is hundreds of years old. Context ads underperform surveillance ads by a slim margin – about 5% – but they're vastly more profitable for publishers. That's because surveillance ads are feudal, controlled by rentiers like Facebook, who own vast troves of the surveillance data needed to run these ads. Traditional ad intermediaries (agencies, brokers) took 10-15% out of the total advertising market. Ad-tech companies – the Google/Facebook duopoly – take 51% out of every ad dollar spent.

Eliminate surveillance ads and you torch their feudal estates. Facebook will always know more about someone reading a news article than the publisher – but the publisher will always know more about the article than Facebook does:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising

There are rents under capitalism, just as there are profits under feudalism. The defining characteristic of a system is what happens when rents and profits come into conflict. If profits win – for example, if productive companies beat patent trolls, or if news publishers escape Facebook's rent-extraction – then the system is capitalist. If rents win – if investors continue to bet large on the metaverse as its losses pass $50 billion and head for the $100 billion mark – then the system is feudal.

Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. The question isn't whether the platforms will eventually become so enshittified that they die – the question is whether they will go down in an all-consuming fireball, or whether they'll go down in a controlled demolition that lets us evacuate the people they've trapped inside them first:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/09/let-the-platforms-burn/

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/30/markets-remaining-irrational/#steins-law

Image: Diego Delso (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Puente_de_las_cataratas_Victoria,_Zambia-Zimbabue,_2018-07-27,_DD_10.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/