11. CryptoVoxels' Ben Nolan on Building a Humanity-Centric Metaverse

Ben Nolan is the founder of Cryptovoxels - a virtual world, or metaverse, built on the Ethereum blockchain.nUsers can build avatars, stores, galleries, show off their NFT collections or wearables, and also “socialize” in Cryptovoxels.

The platform has also become known for its art galleries, notably featuring a Beeple museum called the B.20 museum.

While many metaverse entrepreneurs are focused on raising money and scaling…Nolan thinks about the platform a bit differently, and takes a human-centric approach to building Cryptovoxels.

In this conversation, we covered a lot of ground, including:

An overview of what Cryptovoxels is
Why Cryptovoxels has decided not to raise capital
Interoperability with other metaverses
Why Cryptovoxels ditched its $COLR token
Why Cryptovoxels is centralized for now, and Nolan’s views on decentralization
Socializing and remote work bonding in the metaverse
Whether the metaverse should be an all-encompassing world we live in or a short-term medium like YouTube or PlayStation
What Nolan thinks about potential downstream social consequences of the metaverse
Advertising in the metaverse
How brands and artists are using Cryptovoxels
Building a distributed team
What the future holds for the platform