The Metaverse Standards Forum announced today that they are “incorporated as an independent non-profit industry consortium.” The Khronos Group has been financially bootstrapping the Metaverse Standards Forum’s efforts to see if there was enough interest, and they went from 37 founding members in June 2022 to now having over “2,400 members and multiple active Working and Exploratory Groups focused on driving pragmatic interoperability advances.” Now that they’ve incorporated as a 501(c)6 industry trade organization, they have “organized its own governance, finances, and operations. Working Group activities remain freely accessible to any member, while new paid membership tiers enable members to be elected to leadership roles in the Forum while funding Forum projects.”

I had a chance to chat with Metaverse Standards Forum Chair and the President of the Khronos Group Neil Trevett about the latest developments, and we dive into some updates on the latest member-driven approved Working Groups including Metaverse Standards Register, Digital Asset Management, 3D Asset Interoperability, & Real/Virtual World Integration. We also cover some of the Exploratory Working Groups that are in the pipeline for approval to becoming a full Working Group that includes Digital Fashion Wearables for Avatars, Interoperable Characters/Avatars, Privacy, Cybersecurity & Identity, 3D Web Interoperability, Network Requirements and Capabilities, & Technical Interoperability and End-User Troubleshooting.

Again, the Metaverse Standards Forum is not developing these standards, but they’re facilitating discussions amongst other Standards Development Organizations and open source formats in order to facilitating interoperability with however the future of the Metaverse continues to unfold. I was able to get a much clearer idea for what’s been happening since June of 2022 when they launched to the pipeline of various different working groups, thousands of participating members, and coming soon a searchable database of the Metaverse Standards Register that is keeping track of the various open standards that may be relevant to the continued development of the Open Metaverse. You can find out how to join the Metaverse Standards Forum if you’d like to participating in helping to shape the future of the open Metaverse, and be sure to check out this presentation PDF for even more context.