Published on: 07/11/2022
OMA3 created to maintain interoperability of metaverse, founders say
Speaking at a press conference at WebSummit in Lisbon, The Sandbox co-founder Sébastien Borget and Dacoco CEO Sarojini McKenna said that the Open Metaverse Alliance (OMA3) was founded to maintain the interoperability of the metaverse.
The founding board members of the OMA3 include the founders and chiefs of Animoca Brands, Dapper Labs, Voxels, The Sandbox, Unstoppable Domains and Decentraland. In total, the Web3 firm consortium comprises 50 people.
The OMA3 aims to maintain the interoperability and transparency of digital assets, ideas and services. Its mission is to create a community-run, decentralized and indexable open metaverse. It envisions a space where users own and use their digital assets, identities and personal data across multiple platforms. It is also where users, not platform owners, control their assets.
The association is where concepts and services are assembled on decentralization and interoperability principles to achieve maximum individual freedom and social and economic long-term results.
McKenna, chair of the OMA3 Ecosystem Working Group, said that “we are standardizing open collaboration for metaverses” to guarantee that “users are at the core of the construction of their platform and the application” to regulate their identity, account and owned assets.
”OMA3 will produce technical standards, open source code, documentation on best practices, external advocacy, and ecosystem liaison to support that purpose,” she continued.
Objectives of OMA3
During the press conference, the media asked Borget how the OMA3 would measure success and whether objectives would be measured using statistics.
“We will quantify the success in two ways,” Borget answered. “First of all, the number of technical papers that are officially published from the board members. Second, adding to the market and consumer adoption.
“At the end of the day, it all boils down to what the user experience will be, and by contributing to the technical standards, users will seamlessly benefit from that.”
The OMA3 is now open for membership to Web3 organizations, with plans to expand to individuals and DAOs soon. The membership system comprises two tiers. The first is the membership for creators, which is readily accessible to both for-profit and non-profit Web3 builders. Prospective investors can also join through the second tier, sponsor memberships.
The OMA3 reported it had begun forming working groups to build standards for metaverse platforms and researching legal protections in Web3.
Metaverse Standards Forum
The OMA3 is not the first organization to attempt to develop metaverse standards. On June 21, the Metaverse Standards Forum (MSF), comprising 35 titans tech firms such as Microsoft, Meta, Epic Games, Adobe and Nvidia, was introduced with the same goal. Borget claimed that none of the OMA3 member companies had been invited to participate in the MSF.
Many in the Web3 space are skeptical that these companies can create a user-owned metaverse where NFT assets can freely move between platforms. Dirk Lueth, co-founder and co-CEO of the metaverse real estate game Upland, is among those doubters.
“Everything which touches blockchain, and everything which touches tokenization and smart contracts, we did not see represented in the MSF,” he said. “They’re working on a different technology foundation.”
