It’s been a rough couple of months for those of us on a mission to build understanding and excitement around the metaverse.

From cryptocurrency crashes to declining Decentraland and Sandbox users and NFT prices starting to slide back from their soaring glory days, recent news doesn’t exactly paint the most encouraging picture. The “world firsts” that capture public relations are beginning to fade; some say the bubble is bursting on the metaverse hype.

It is true that cryptocurrencies and NFTs are firmly established in the world of Web3 and blockchain technology, and that these are, in fact, elements of the metaverse.

But they don’t fully represent it, nor are they early indicators of the success of the metaverse itself. The promise of the metaverse is that it will transform the way we…