Minimally Extractive Meta

Importantly, Apple likely cannot create a similar model. Apple isn’t a big interoperability fan.

So it needs to create a model in which it takes a smaller piece of a larger pie in order to do what it does best: aggregate and monetize attention and commerce.

Unlike Facebook’s products today, it’s anticipating that Meta’s users, developers, and creators will be able to pick up and leave -- or “rage quit” -- more easily, and take all of their assets with them, if Meta shifts from attract to extract.

Meta wants as many creators and developers building Metaverse products as possible, because more products mean more advertising opportunities and potentially small marketplace fees, so it can keep fees very low to encourage creation.

The more valuable the digital economy becomes, the more valuable advertising within digital worlds becomes. Businesses can afford to pay more to acquire a customer if they know they’re going to spend more. And Meta primarily makes money through ads.

Interoperability and ownership increase the value of digital assets. An NFT of a pair of sneakers should be more valuable than a pair of sneakers you buy in Fortnite, because you can use the NFT sneakers in many more places and because they have resale value.

At the very least, Meta has openly laid out its plan for the Metaverse and paid lip service to interoperability, user ownership, and low fees. Apple has not. Even if Meta doesn’t live up to its words, a world in which it builds hardware and experiences that compete with Apple’s would be better for developers, creators, and users.

If Sweeney is correct, along with the growing number of people who believe that the Metaverse economy will one day be larger than the meatspace economy is today, letting Apple control the Metaverse App Store would essentially give it the ability to tax a large portion of the world’s wealthiest users 30%.

Protocols can still charge fees. They shouldn’t lose money. They can become incredibly, incredibly valuable (see: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Uniswap, and on and on). But if they charge fees that are too high, they’ll lose. As Burniske put it, “Any unnecessary extraction from the process of exchange is a tax that will ultimately be weeded out by copy-paste ... See more