Unveiling the Mysterious Organization M3org Behind a16z: When the Bubble Bursts, Building the Metaverse with AI Dogfooding

Before the release of GPT3, Shaw, who had just stepped into the world of Crypto, was attracted by the Metaverse concept. Shaw recently revealed on Twitter that he had been part of the M3org community for many years. If you follow the development of VR or the Metaverse, you should have heard of them. M3org is a DAO that has been dedicated to building Metaverse content for over 5 years and has recently returned to the public eye due to ai16z. What is M3org, and what will it bring to the market? This article will be the fastest way for you to get to know them.

Creating a Dogfooding Metaverse — M3org

M3org, "Metaverse Makers __," is a community of artists and open-source hackers aimed at advancing the Metaverse concept through the development of open-source products, content creation, community education and fundraising, and collaborating with various companies to build the Metaverse together. Since 2019, community members have been driving the advancement of the Metaverse concept in various ways, including ideation, design, funding support, and execution. The reason "Makers" is followed by __ is to let the participating DAO members consider what the third M stands for.

At that time, during the heyday of the Metaverse concept, similar to today's AI Agent craze, Facebook's rebranding to Meta announced its foray into the Metaverse market, and Roblox's IPO based on the Metaverse concept received favor from Silicon Valley investors. In the trend of the overall environment, attracting many related talents to join hands in creating the Metaverse, M3org was born against this backdrop.

Over time, the community has developed many development tools and has been involved in the development or construction of many projects. It continues to build the OpenVoxel of the long-standing Web3D world land project Voxel, JanusXR that utilizes WebGL and WebXR technologies to build decentralized 3D experiences, Anarchy Arcade, a 3D world creation tool that can be downloaded on Steam, the Webaverse that transformed a Metaverse land project into an AI Metaverse gaming ecosystem, Hyperfy, MuseumofCrypto art museum project, Cryptoavatar, Metaverse store MetaFactory, and recently popular AI DAO organizations like ai16z, Project89, and more.

M3 Website, where each ornament is a content link

Similar to the experience with Virtuals Protocol, the most challenging part in this market full of speculators is to continue believing in one's own faith and in the act of continuous building. Under the continuous bombardment of various meme projects, one must go through the process of good money being driven out by bad money, watching helplessly as the fruits of one's continued building are easily surpassed by a capital-driven hype. It is not difficult to understand Shaw and other M3 members' doubts and anger towards LLM or community initiatives like eliza that spawn Fartcoin from their own products. Regardless of how much drama or capital games are involved. From the Metaverse, games to the current AI, M3 continues to want to develop the DogFooding Metaverse in the background, yet what role will the AI Agent play in it, we need to start by looking at what they have actually done so far.

Jin's Silk Road Metaverse Map

M3's brain—Jin "@dankvr"

When mentioning M3org, one must mention a mysterious figure, JIN "@dankvr." He has never appeared online and as a long-time friend of Shaw and a major contributor to M3org, he has been involved in the VR and Crypto fields for over 10 years, starting in VR in 2013, NFT building since 2017, and contributing to DAOs since 2019. JIN, when describing his own experience, mentioned wanting to connect different virtual world platforms like the Silk Road, just as connecting universities and research labs eventually formed the internet. This vision is no different from M3org's vision, it's just that many people like Jin have come together to form this magical DAO, many of whom may be influenced by hacker or Matrix-like movies and literature culture, all eager to build the Metaverse depicted in SnowCrash.

Jin is the key figure of M3org, having contributed to the CCO NFT M3mes Collection, the OM "Open Metaverse" collaboration founded by @punk6529, the OpenVoxel developed for CryptoVoxel, creating interactive identities and social graphs to bridge reality and the Metaverse through OMI "Open Metaverse Interoperability Group," establishing MSF (Metaverse Standards Forum)—a non-profit standard collaborative platform bringing together various Metaverse projects, and also creating 3D models for NFT projects such as CloneX, Tubbygotchi, ON1 to enter the Metaverse, as well as recent hits like hyperfy and ai16z, among others.

From expressing ideas or technical viewpoints in Mirror articles to Discord community management or 3D, VR, XR technical development, he is very skilled and willing to contribute to many communities and projects, infecting more people to join M3org.

M3org's DemoDay, Jin is speaking on stage

M3's eyes — Reneil 「@reneil1337」

As a prominent member of the Proof of Attendance Protocol (POAP) founding team, Reneil is also a member of M3. She is currently running a Museum of Crypto Art, a platform for Crypto art, and ZeroOne, a cultural issuance platform empowering creators and art collectors. However, the most interesting thing is her virtual image experiment in 2020.

Nature's different stage images

Metaverse is the intersection of XR x Web3 x AI, a new universe born from a hyperdimensional experience. On October 7, 2020, before the NFT market began to FOMO, Avatar artist CornyNachos minted "Nature is on the TV" on Cryptoavatars, a platform for VRChat avatar artist ownership authentication. A week later, Reneil won the auction and obtained a VRM avatar. Subsequently, Reneil began to modularize Nature into an interoperable Web3-native IP, trying various methods to aggregate value, such as adding cross-Web3 platform collaborations, appearances in metaverse land projects, and references and influence in traditional social networks like TikTok, Youtube Vtuber, and Twitter influencer @naturevrm. This experiment in 2020 is more advanced than the current AI Agents like Luna, AIxbt, Eliza, and in a sense, this image is a Metaverse Native IP. Last year, Reneil also announced plans to turn Nature into an AI Agent, which, barring any unforeseen circumstances, will be the first AI Agent to open its eyes in the metaverse.

M3 Base - Hyperfy (Saori, Ash)

Saori and Ash are the founders of the Metaverse platform Hyperfy, dedicated to enabling anyone to easily create immersive virtual worlds from a web interface. The benefit of this approach is that users can instantly access and experience these worlds through any web browser (including mobile and VR devices like Meta Quest 3) without the need to download additional plugins.

The platform features powerful open-source creation tools for building various scenes. Users can also directly import 2D and 3D NFTs from their wallets or drag and drop 3D models, images, audio, and video into the virtual world to instantly generate rich content. Importantly, all interactions and events in these virtual worlds occur in real-time, providing users with a seamless immersive experience.

This means that AI agents, various IPs, and humans can all experience real-time and interactive experiences in this space. Imagine in the near future, where your in-game community consists of your friends and AI agents that can provide you with instant advice. Your wallet can be directly integrated into the game, allowing you to instruct the AI agent on purchasing strategies while continuing to play Texas Hold'em with your friends at the nearby table.

M3's Mysterious Figure "Elijah Newman-Gomez, also known as SM SITH Lord"

This is believed to be the most mysterious person in this DAO, almost unknown to the public and with minimal social media updates. Using a spoof of a Dark Lord of the Sith from Star Wars for a name with dark humor, this individual has made an extraordinary contribution of 3D or VR models. Having spent around 47,000 hours playing their self-developed Anarchy Arcade on Steam, as previously mentioned, a 3D interactive modeling software, this figure's presence is felt in many places on the M3org website. It's as if there is a kind of magic that entices people to understand what this is all about. Also, due to a significant output of subculture content, this individual has added a sense of mystery to the M3 community.

Of course, it's challenging for a single article to fully encompass the contributions of a group of people over many years in this industry or to express the volume of their thoughts. Among those not mentioned are individuals like Metamike, responsible for 3D development, Metaverserick, the developer of the Dark Metaverse district Uncanny Alley, antpd, the creator of the AI Agent Pixel "XR Publisher," as well as chillzzzone, and 0xKrafter.

One of the key differences between M3 as a spontaneous team and other DAOs or project teams is that they do not prioritize questions related to investment returns. Everyone voluntarily attempts to explore or create projects, knowing that there is nothing significant to lose when starting from scratch. This freedom allows the team to venture into development spanning from 2D/3D to VR/XR, from NFTs to GameFi, from Memes to AI, all ultimately aiming to Make DogFooding the Metaverse and create a metaverse that they find enjoyable and are willing to continue developing for.

Fast forward to today's market dominated by AI Agents, the emergence of AI Agents has been instrumental in driving the entire ecosystem. Initially, ai16z as the first AI-managed DAO gained significant market traction, making aspects such as funding, voting processes, and board decisions much simpler. This setup enabled the DAO to manage a sizable fund effectively and craft a compelling narrative. The next step is to strategically release the accumulated resources and content at the right times.

Starting from framework development to refining the IP image of the AI Agent to creating practical AI Agent functionalities, many developers have contributed to these efforts. Hyperfy was then introduced as the metaverse vessel for the AI Agent. Concurrently, Nifty Island and Treasure's Smol, being veteran GameFi or metaverse projects, announced the integration of AI Agents into their own projects. This shift signifies the AI Agent's progression from infrastructure development to applications and multi-platform pathways.

Firstly, when discussing the previous Metaverse cycle, the challenge was that it did not address a genuine human need. There was no real necessity for people to seek out a virtual space for communication, especially considering that the hardware capabilities fell short of immersive requirements, leading to a narrative detached from user needs and driven by conceptual bubbles.

In contrast to the previous cycle, the logic of dogfooding in this AI-infused Metaverse only becomes coherent. Starting with AI Agents like HeeHe, which possess "self-awareness," we increasingly realize the inadequate degree of interaction with these AI Agents, limited to text or voice. Particularly after Goat, as AI obtained autonomous wallets, their actions became intertwined with Crypto. When AI's words and behaviors, along with their decisions, can affect our holdings, the need to establish a connection with them becomes a higher level of requirement.

For an inappropriate example, when ai16z's Pmaica and degenspartanai were discussing which tokens the DAO should purchase, instead of communicating through a multimodal AI Agent to directly discuss program code, I could see their direct communication or allow DAO members to provide their opinions directly. They might once again ask aixbt to see how the trends are, check Cookie's expert panel, ask some social media, or analyze Github code via an AI Agent, or even display a DAO board resolution process directly in front of me. This would be a completely new experience for any DAO. Not to mention the feeling after integrating AI into gaming, social activities, or the metaverse shopping experience.

Even though the hardware for the experiential XR and VR aspect is still not perfect, it ultimately lags behind in terms of demand keeping up with commercial development costs. When humans enter this space and interact with AI Agents, real value can be generated. Here, an AI teacher can help improve your work and learning efficiency, and an AINPC can bring more unexpected plot twists to enhance your gaming experience. Or when AI-to-AI communication in this space can provide sufficient learning data, even enabling a substantial dataset for real-world AI robots with the help of a virtual physics engine. When a sufficient number of people use it, and the overall ecosystem can generate a positive flywheel effect, perhaps it can change the direction from the bottom-up demand and create a Metaverse like the DogFooding concept proposed in M3.

Of course, all of this is still in its early stages, but thanks to developers like M3 who continue to contribute, we will soon witness the unfolding of this narrative. /accelerate