Meta, formerly Facebook, announced last week that it would start selling virtual clothing made by DRESSX in its Avatar Store.
The news marked a watershed moment for digital fashion houses. Until last week, only three brands (Prada, Balenciaga and Thom Browne, all historical brands of the physical realm) had been invited by the social media giant to create digital clothing for avatars of the metaverse. For the first time, a digitally native fashion company had a seat at the table, a table built by the most colossal corporation operating in the metaverse, no less.
There is no doubt that the association of DRESSX with Meta is remarkable. Why that is, however, beginning to be controversial.
For some, the move is a huge step forward for digital fashion in general: soon, billions of Facebook, Instagram and Messenger users will have access to digital outfits for the first time.
Yet for others in the world of digital fashion, the movement represents nothing less than a Game of Thrones-caliber betrayal: the leap from a supposed ally of decentralization into the camp of the cause’s greatest enemy, just as the final lines are being drawn in what some industry leaders have called the “The battle for the future of the Internet”.
With us or against us
When Facebook changed its name to Meta last fall, the move marked the entire reorientation of the $450 billion company toward a single goal: domination of the metaverse. Almost immediately, the first metaverse builders denounced the developmentarguing that it jeopardized the online utopia they were trying to build.
That “open metaverse” was envisioned as a constellation of independently managed digital neighborhoods, between which a user’s private data and digital goods could flow freely. Meta’s critics worried that because the giant’s business model hinges on control of user data and analytics, the company would establish a massive, closed fiefdom smack in the middle of its borderless world, within which Meta could retain ownership of user data.
In such a digital world, digital assets would not be able to flow freely between platforms: a digital dress purchased on the Meta platform, for example, would be trapped behind the company’s impenetrable, proprietary walls.
So the implications of this great “battle” were inevitable for the burgeoning digital fashion industry: You are creating digital outfits for either a borderless or a bordered metaverse.
‘digital cage’
These issues were for a long time the fodder of theoretical arguments. Now, as the metaverse begins to take shape and the agreements are documented, they begin to have real implications.
For some in the intimate digital fashion ecosystem, DRESSX’s association with Meta is a very real betrayal of the potential of an “open metaverse.”
“Zuckerberg, Facebook, they have made it very clear that they don’t want a free, decentralized, open metaverse,” Emma-Jane MacKinnon-Lee, founder of the digital fashion startup. digatalaxsaying decipher. “They want one that is tightly controlled…where they are the main bottleneck. And DRESSX partnered with them.”
For MacKinnon-Lee, the fact that DRESSX teamed up with Meta on this one is not incidental, but rather a demonstration of the startup’s true loyalties.
“What this association has just shown is that they are not in favor of an open, decentralized metaverse,” MacKinnon-Lee said. “They are very supportive of building a digital cage.”
Digital outfits offered in the Meta Avatar Store, including those manufactured by DRESSX, are only compatible with the company’s platforms and cannot be removed from them.
“If you mint on a blockchain, that doesn’t automatically mean you’re upholding the principles of decentralization, self-sovereignty, freedom and freedom for everyone who interacts with that network,” added MacKinnon-Lee. “Facebook controls what goes in and out of the network, who can do what. It is the antithesis of Web3”.
The outfits for sale in Meta’s Avatar store aren’t even built on the blockchain. Unlike NFTs, tokens that live on the blockchain and prove ownership of an item, and can exist independently of any centralized platform, Meta pools are “off-chain,” meaning they live and they die on the company’s platforms, similar to a purchased asset. inside a video game.
For others in the digital fashion space, however, that fact is not an issue, and instead highlights the seemingly semantic but crucial difference between “Web3 fashion,” which MacKinnon-Lee advocates, and “digital fashion.” , which creates DRESSX.
“[DRESSX’s] The mission is to increase the adoption of digital fashion as a medium and, I suppose, to break down the barriers for creators and consumers around price or freedom of expression”, said Dani Loftus, founder of the digital fashion platform. Draup. “Instead of his mandate focusing on the Web3 spirit of decentralization.”
DRESSX was founded in August 2020, making it one of the oldest brands in digital fashion. At first, the company sold digital handheld devices that were not integrated into the chain. They then transitioned to selling NFTs and now sell digital handheld devices on-chain and off-chain. Their Meta wearables are priced from $2.99 to $8.99.
For Megan Kaspar, a member of prominent digital fashion collective Red DAO, that breadth speaks to DRESSX’s versatility, as does its pact with Meta.
“The partnership is a powerful move for DRESSX,” Kaspar told decipher. “The company is now the only digital fashion platform offering on-chain and off-chain products and services for centralized and decentralized ‘blue chip’ platforms.”
For MacKinnon-Lee, DRESSX adopting Web2 and Web3 products, cultures and companies in the last two years is false.
“They started out as Web2 and then jumped on the NFT, the decentralization hype train,” MacKinnon-Lee said. “They pretended to be Web3 in the advertising. And now, as the markets calm down, they’re wondering, OK, where are they going to move next?”
‘Question for the Meta team’
For the founders of DRESSX, the startup’s deal with Meta, the culmination of more than six months of talks, is a proud achievement, one with the potential to bring digital wearable devices into the digital closets of the billions who they interact daily with the Meta platforms.
“DRESSX wants a future where every person in the world has a digital wardrobe,” said the startup’s co-founder, Daria Shapovalova. decipher. “And the opportunity to work with companies like Meta, especially if they believe in the metaverse concept, can definitely help us scale faster.”
For co-founder Natalia Modenova, the deal fit perfectly with the spirit of DRESSX. “Our vision is that every technology company in the world should embrace the digital craze,” she said. decipher.
As for issues related to interoperability, or whether digital equipment can travel freely between platforms, Modenova dismissed any concern that the Meta association would restrict clients’ property rights. “I’d say it’s interoperable between Meta platforms,” Modenova said. “On, for example, Facebook and Instagram. They have already built a great ecosystem.”
When asked if DRESSX had any issues with Meta’s vision for the metaverse, both Shapovalova and Modenova declined to answer, saying only that that was “one more question for the Meta team.”
Last month, Meta made a public promise to build an “open and inclusive metaverse,” but many denounced the move as a vague and hollow public relations stunt it was intended to obfuscate the fact that the megacorporation has not committed to refrain from controlling users’ digital assets and data.
When asked if the company has any plans to allow digital assets, such as digital equipment, to freely flow in and out of Meta-owned platforms, a Meta representative said Decipher: “Our goal is to make it easier for people to take their Meta avatar to more places.” The representative cited the current ability of Meta avatars to travel between Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and the apps that make up the Meta Quest VR ecosystem.
However, the spokesperson did not detail any future intentions to allow external digital assets on Meta platforms, nor allow assets purchased within Meta platforms to move outside of them. Meta’s representative also declined to answer a question about the company’s control over user data in its ecosystem.
The metaverse has been promised for years. Only now is this virtual world imagined by so many taking shape. And as tens of billions of dollars pour into an expected space will soon be worth billionsdistinctions that were once arcane—between borderless and bordered virtual worlds, between public and proprietary control of user data, between, perhaps, the Web3 craze and the digital craze—may soon have far-reaching financial and cultural implications. real.
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Source: decrypt.co