Snow Crash Author Neal Stephenson Launches Metaverse Blockchain

Neal Stephenson, the "father" of the metaverse who coined this term in his science fiction novel Snow Crash, recently revealed his plan to build a carbon-neutral metaverse based on open Web3 protocols.

Together with crypto entrepreneur and co-founder of the Bitcoin Foundation Peter Vessenes, he co-founded a new Layer-1 blockchain called Lamina1. Vessenes and Stephenson will serve as Lamina1’s chief executive officer and chairman, respectively.

Tony Parisi, co-creator of the VRML programming language, who previously served as head of AR/VR at Unity, is joining them as chief strategy officer. The leadership team also includes the advisor Rony Abovitz, founder of Sun and Thunder, Magic Leap, and MAKO Surgical.

The creators of the new blockchain technology shared that they hope it will act as the base layer for a "truly Open Metaverse."

"The 30th anniversary of Snow Crash, and recent interest in actually building the Metaverse, has got me thinking about how to do it in a way that’s true to the original concept," Stephenson shared. "That means creative ferment rooted in a strong base layer of open source tech that provides key services to creators while making sure that they get paid. The purpose of Lamina1 is to provide that, using the best and most up-to-date ideas from the industry."

Speaking to Decrypt, Vessenes noted that the team is going to have "all the facilities of a full layer one [blockchain] to help support and encourage the creators who want to build with [Lamina1]." "That is my and Neal's strategy – align everything around getting the best thing built and getting everybody all the tools they need to build what they want," he said.

Initial Investors in Lamina1 include Rony Abovitz, Geoff Entress, Jeremy Giffon, Bing Gordon, James Haft, Reid Hoffman, David Johnston, Joseph Lubin, Patrick Murck, Matthew Roszak, Tihan Seale, Peter Vessenes, and Wu Ying.

Currently, Lamina1 is looking to expand its team and seeking engineers, technologists, business development people, and spatial industry veterans to work on the technology.

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