Recently, Jeffrey Zirlin, Co-Founder and Growth Lead at Sky Mavis, the developer of Ethereum-powered NFT-based game Axie Infinity ($AXS), made known how he feels about the entry of Facebook (now “Meta”) into the metaverse market.

As you may already know, in an open letter published on October 28, Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said:

“The next platform will be even more immersive — an embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it. We call this the metaverse, and it will touch every product we build… The defining quality of the metaverse will be a feeling of presence — like you are right there with another person or in another place…

“To reflect who we are and the future we hope to build, I’m proud to share that our company is now Meta… From now on, we will be metaverse-first, not Facebook-first.“

Despite the monumental announcement, some crypto fans view the move as an attempt by Meta to bring further centralization to the internet.

Last Tuesday (November 30), while speaking at a crypto gaming panel at the NFT BZL conference in Miami, Jeff “Jiho” Zirlin was asked his opinion of Facebook’s vision for the metaverse. Zirlin joked that Meta had “copied” their logo.

As Andrew Hayward reported (on December 2) for Decrypt, Zirlin said: 

I think we are entering a battle for the future of the internet. But I think that we have a lot of trends on our side. We’re starting to see that grassroots internet communities are having incredible power in the physical world as well.

Despite Facebook claiming that it will work to build the metaverse responsibly, Zirlin said that the stakes are going to get “larger and larger” in the face of “more powerful enemies.”

He continued:

They’re going to try to squash this beautiful thing that we built because it threatens them—it threatens their business model, their way of life, and their philosophy.

Yat Siu, founder and executive chairman of game studio and venture capital company Animoca Brands previously told Decrypt that Facebook and Chinese tech giant Tencent are a “threat” to an open metaverse. 

Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed by the author, or any people mentioned in this article, are for informational purposes only, and they do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading cryptoassets comes with a risk of financial loss.

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