Legitimacy in the Metaverse: The Case of Decentraland

Abstract

The internet has long inspired visions of fostering new shared sociality, enabling people to communicate, play, learn, assemble and engage with one another beyond borders, physical limitations or material boundaries. The metaverse, a term coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 science fiction novel, Snow Crash, represents an expansive form of such visions. Yet, as these new ‘virtual worlds’ are being developed by Big Tech companies such as Meta (formerly Facebook, which re-branded itself as a ‘metaverse company’ in 2021), concerns are growing that the metaverse will exacerbate issues currently faced in other digital social spaces such as on social media or in online games. Here, users see themselves subjected to unilateral decision making from platform operators without access to meaningful recourse (the many changes made to the social media platform X following its acquisition by Elon Musk in 2022, serve as an evocative example). They have limited control over their online profiles and associated virtual assets and data (e.g., when a user decides to exit a social media platform or online game, they lose their data, followers or in-game loot). In short, the legitimacy of large technology companies operating proprietary metaverses is called into question.

In response to such concerns, various projects and companies have begun building open-source metaverses, underpinned by blockchain technology and which give users governance rights concerning the policies and future development of the metaverse. While such approaches promise to overcome the legitimacy concerns raised in centrally-owned and -governed metaverses, in this paper we argue that paradoxically, the ability to seamlessly fork a project brings the question of legitimacy to the forefront in different ways. We situate forking in the context of Hirschman's framework of exit, voice and loyalty to show that, in the context of open and decentralised platforms which can be forked at virtually no cost, the ‘exit and loss’ logic that is characteristic of traditional centralised platforms becomes less relevant. However, with low exit costs, any degree of dissatisfaction with the governance of an online platform could lead to an exodus of the user base towards alternative platforms, including through the creation of forked platforms. Consequently, we hypothesise that legitimacy serves as an important precondition for the adoption and maintenance of open, distributed metaverses over time.

We explore this hypothesis by focusing on the case of Decentraland, a blockchain based metaverse where no single operator can impose any decision upon the user base. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted through participant observation, gathering publicly available material concerning the governance of Decentraland (in documentation, governance forums and public chat groups) as well as three focus groups with Decentraland participants, we show how the Decentraland Foundation, the Decentraland DAO and Decentraland’s Security Advisory Board—three centres of decision making among Decentraland’s polycentric governance structure—are grappling to establish endogenous legitimacy. Furthermore, we identify the emergence of new social institutions such as Decentraland’s Wearables Curation Committee, as a means to establish and maintain Decentraland’s legitimacy externally, for instance to avoid copyright infringement claims by third parties.