Somnia Looks to Community Governance and Open Standards to Shape Future of Virtual Worlds

Paul Thomas, founder of Somnia, discusses the platform's innovative approach to creating a unified metaverse, including its high-performance blockchain and interoperable digital asset protocol. He shares insights on Somnia's development, its unique metaverse browser, and vision for fostering an open virtual society that empowers users and creators alike.

Ishan Pandey: Hello Paul, It's a pleasure to welcome you to our 'Behind the Startup' series. With your experience at unicorn companies like Improbable and investment banks like Goldman Sachs, how has your journey influenced your approach to founding Somnia?

Paul Thomas: There are so many things I could mention from my past that influence how I work today. Will mention a couple that stand out that may be useful for reader.

You can have the best product in the market but if no one knows about it you will not succeed. This is something that really hit home to me early in my startup career. I used to think as a technologist that the product was the only thing that matter. Through a great product people would use it refer others and you can be successful. What I’ve realised is this is more nuanced. You need a great product but depending on the market you also need a great go to market, a great customer experience and brand awareness to succeed. This is all “the product” in my mind now and working to move all the pieces forwards is essential for success.

I’ve also learnt that you have to meet the customer where they are rather than where you think they should be. This seems obvious in retrospect but a lot of startups do this. To be more concrete early on we created technology that allowed game developers to create MMO games. The product was good but we forced developers to use a programming language they had never used before. This lead to a lot of friction and ultimately poor adoption. Pivoting to allow developers to program in the environment they where used to lead to much more success.

Ishan Pandey: Somnia is described as a metaverse browser for Web3 exploration. What sets Somnia apart from other projects in the Web3 and metaverse space?

Paul Thomas: The metaverse browser is one of the products we are developing that aims to solve the UX problem in Web3. It essentially allows a user to interact with all the Dapps and experiences on Somnia without needing Web3 expertise. It also does many of the elements a crypto wallet would do for you behind the scenes, making the experience seamless. The two major parts of Somnia are our protocol for interoperability and our high-performance blockchain optimized for the metaverse.

The protocol connects all the current and future metaverse and gaming experiences, allowing users to seamlessly move themselves and all their things between experiences, aka interoperability of digital assets. This is essentially the purpose of creating the true vision of the metaverse—one without barriers where users and businesses are free to move seamlessly between platforms.

The other part of what we are building is our blockchain. This blockchain's main differentiator is it’s really fast. Current benchmarks have it at 300k to 400k transactions per second, all based on the EVM. That’s around 100 times faster than current EVM blockchains. We built this because you need high performance to support real-time applications. As a gamer, you don’t want to wait seconds to minutes to purchase and use an item. You want it instantly. We also have a vision of moving the logic of objects off-chain on-chain. This would enable that logic to be interoperable and composable. This will enable more people to create and build on each other's work to innovate in the metaverse space and ultimately find new killer user applications for the metaverse.

Outside of tech, Somnia is trying to promote an open, unified virtual society. This is different from other projects, which either create walled gardens where content is controlled or impose odd economic restrictions like land and a token for currency. We have a much more open system that allows creators to create their own economics. You need this to create metaverse businesses that can grow and be invested in.

Ishan Pandey: How does Somnia plan to foster a vibrant community, and what role do users play in shaping the evolution of the Somnia platform?

Paul Thomas: Ultimately, community is at the heart of what we are trying to achieve with Somnia. We envision a future where online spaces are controlled and governed by decentralized communities, so we are always building with the community in mind. For example, we are launching programs to onboard users and creators into the world of metaversal content, as well as programs to push development of content, which creates a strong culture of community empowerment.

Eventually, Somnia will become DAO-controlled. This means the community will own and control it. This won’t be the traditional DAO where one token equals one vote. We don’t think this works as it creates a plutocracy where those with the most wealth have the most control. We hope that participants with vested interests help shape different elements of our system. For example, someone who owns a metaverse would have an essential say in the moderation rules and technology roadmap of the system.

Ishan Pandey: Developing a unified metaverse involves complex technological and conceptual challenges. What are Somnia's most significant hurdles in its development, and how have you addressed or planned to address them?

Paul Thomas: The major problem we have focused on so far is the technical and standardazation problem. You need to have a high-performance shared compute environment to enable logic to move between experiences. This is one of the reasons we created the Somnia blockchain.

The standards we have been growing like MML allow users to define an object once and then it can be used in many places, be that another metaverse, a web browser or a game engine. This standard enables interoperability. The third major problem space, which we haven’t created solutions for yet, is more social. It’s around the rules and value-sharing mechanisms you make that incentivise unification. So for example, are there moderation rules that say this metaverse only allows child-friendly content? How are those enforced? We have started working on AI-based algorithms to categorize objects and tag them with metadata. Still, the ruleset needs to be agreed upon by all the participants in the metaverse (e.g., what adult content is, what violent content is, etc.). The other side is value-sharing mechanisms.

We have spoken about systems which, when you allow other people's objects into your world or use other people's components, will enable royalty-style systems to share value between the originators of content. So, for example, if you used a microphone to enable your music metaverse, the creator of the microphone logic would get some value from that. You need these systems to incentivize people to share content and create a unified metaverse. We have ideas here using blockchains and tokens as mechanisms, but the thinking is early.

Ishan Pandey: What strategies is Somnia employing to attract users and developers to its platform, and how does it plan to differentiate itself in a competitive market of virtual worlds and metaverse projects?

Paul Thomas: We are focusing on the users first, and then we believe developers will want to create for the ecosystem. This is similar to the iPhone, where because lots of people had one, people wanted to make apps for it. We are still growing a bottom-up developer community, but the focus is on end consumers.

To do this, we have partnered with MSquared and Improbable. These folks have really strong development capabilities and amazing tech that can have thousands of people in the same digital space at the same time. Their focus is acquiring large brands with established audiences, and they are already working with people like Major League Baseball, Twice, and Yuga Labs.

I think users will ultimately come to Somnia because the experiences we offer give them something they can not find on other platforms due to our partnerships and technology. Developers will also come for this and ultimately want to develop for a large end-user community.

Ishan Pandey: Beyond technology, how does Somnia see its role in shaping societal interactions and cultural trends in a unified metaverse?

Paul Thomas: I’ve already spoken about this in the challenges for an open, unified metaverse. The key thing to do this is to create and agree on the rules and regulations of the metaverse. I see it playing out like the internet did with walled gardens like AOL with very strict controls and content and more open systems like ours, which get refined and added to over time. I believe in the vision of the open metaverse as it has to be a better place for business to be created and innovation to occur.

User safety is also a big area that will require innovation. We need people to be able to interact safely online, especially for minors. We will work with partners to help enable metaverses to moderate their experiences (if that’s needed).

I believe that the metaverse is a way to level the playing field in society. It doesn’t matter who you are. As long as you have an internet connection, you can participate in the metaverse. I believe this will create a more connected world that enables new jobs and economic opportunities that don’t exist today.

Ishan Pandey: Finally, where do you see the future of new technologies such as blockchain heading, and what strategies do you believe are crucial to promoting widespread adoption?

Paul Thomas: I split my thoughts on this into two parts: one that I’m relatively confident about and one that is more belief-based.

We have already seen blockchain as a great solution for solving many problems in finance, be that lack of transparency, increasing speed of settlement or removal/reduction of counterparty risk. There have already been a lot of transactions of financial applications, and you can now see larger players entering the ecosystem. This, for me, just gives a sense of the inevitability of it being the future of financial rails for at least certain assets.

What I would like is for blockchain to fulfill its true potential as an open “world computer”. This would run all current web2 applications in a more open, composable way, causing a mass increase in innovation. This would range from social networks, where the users have more controls and creators have more agency to games, where the user base has true choice and the ability to change the game's rules. This open version of the current public internet resonates with me, but there are large improvements in performance, user experience and consumer applications to enable this. I hope Somnia moves the ball forward here so the space can live up to its true potential.

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