Industry excitement around the metaverse reached a fever pitch in 2021 and early 2022 as technologists scrambled to build it, brands sought to promote themselves on it, and employers sought to collaborate virtually within it. But the conversation was saturated with an irrational exuberance. For starters, the metaverse doesn’t even exist yet. Less than half of today’s online consumers say they are likely to ever become users of the metaverse. Metaverse proponent Meta has lost billions of dollars in each of the past few quarters at its Reality Labs division. And NFTs aren’t doing much better: NFT transaction volume fell 97% in nine quarters. months, and the value proposition driving the hype may never live up to the promises of the NFT cheerleaders.

Does this mean that all is lost? Not quite. The metaverse will be…