On this episode of Archebyte we are joined by Justin Melillo, co-founder and CEO of Mona. Mona is an infinite network of immersive experiences with a focus on openness, decentralization, and creator/developer ownership.

A lifelong artist with a focus on computer animation, visual FX, and immersive content, Justin has worked at companies like DreamWorks and Magic Leap, designed tour sets for artists like Drake and Sia, and worked on various AR experiences. When he found blockchain and NFTs several years ago, he saw it as a real alternative for digital artists outside of design work, freelancing, or working for a studio. He then combined these worlds, alongside friend Matt Hoerl, to bring Mona to life.

During our talk, we dive into Justin’s view of the metaverse and its many challenges, opportunities, and misconceptions. Justin also tells us about building for a metaverse-native generation, we look at the future of AR and VR, and we talk about how much we love Tears of the Kingdom.

📬 To keep up with the latest from Archebyte and receive articles and research from the rest of the Archetype team, subscribe to our newsletter: http://eepurl.com/iCApL2

- - - - - - - -

‍⌛ TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

1:48 Justin’s Background

5:20 How Justin sees the metaverse

8:41 What is Mona?

11:23 Creating unique and immersive experiences

16:35 The future of the metaverse, VR, and AR

18:03 The metaverse-native generation

20:16 Games can be art (and we nerd out over Tears of the Kingdom)

26:05 Metaverse misconceptions

26:41 Check out Mona!

27:26 Outro

‍

👋 FOLLOW US

‍Justin: https://twitter.com/justinmmelillo

‍Mona: https://twitter.com/monaverse

Katherine: https://twitter.com/katherineykwu

Archetype: https://twitter.com/archetypevc

‍

📜 TRANSCRIPT

‍Katherine Wu

I'm joined today by Justin Melillo, co-founder and CEO of Mona, the leading 3D World Building Platform and Social Network. As a 3D artist and creative technologist for over 12 years, Justin has worked with world class teams and clients such as Magic Leap, DreamWorks Animation and more. I'm so excited to have Justin on today to chat all things Metaverse and what the future holds for us. Welcome to the show, Justin.

‍

Justin Melillo

Hey, Katherine. Thanks for having me. Super stoked to be here.

‍

Katherine Wu

Yeah, I'm really, really excited about the topic that we're exploring today, but I'm most excited to have an excuse to talk about my favorite video game at the moment, Tears at the Kingdom, but we'll get to that later.

‍

Justin Melillo

Same yeah, I'm so excited. So many hours lost this weekend in Hyrule.

‍

Katherine Wu

Oh, my favorite place in the world. Okay, so to kick us off, I want to take some time, and I don't always do this, but I really want to talk a little bit about your background because I think you come from such an interesting, unique place from, you know, from a lot of the computer scientists or devs that I usually interact with. So tell us a little bit about your background, where your career got started and how it led to you starting Mona.

‍

Justin Melillo

So my background is actually more so rooted in art than programming. I've actually been an artist for as long as I can remember. Always very interested in making things, creating, drawing, painting. And this led me to get my degree in computer animation and visual effects from the School of Visual Arts in New York, after which I became a freelance VFX artist producing 3D content for different studios in the city shortly before joining DreamWorks Animation out in L.A..

While I was at DreamWorks Animation, I got really immersed in the world of feature animation production, but I was always very curious about what the next phase of technology and entertainment would be, particularly how people would interact with digital content in the future. And that's when I started getting really into virtual reality and augmented reality and started diving more into this new realm of the future of tech and immersive content.

And I started learning about a company called Magic Leap, which was producing what was going to be the preeminent AR headset that would actually let you interact with 3D content in the world around you. So I left DreamWorks in 2016 to join Magic Leap, where I started working on a project of building a digital human that you could interact with in AR and then a number of other exciting projects, all the while starting to learn about this thing called blockchain and started learning about one project in particular that caught my eye, which is CryptoKitties.

And at the time I saw that there was something really interesting there, but it did take me a while to have real clarity on where this was all headed. And so the aha moment really dawned on me at the beginning of 2021, after I saw that Beeple had sold his Everydays piece at Christie's for $69 million. So up until that point, I had been a freelancer my whole career and working with companies like DreamWorks and Magic Leap. I had also designed tour stages for artists like Drake. I'd been building AR augmented reality experiences, but this was the first time that I started learning about 3D artists making a living without being in that freelance studio setting. They were carving out careers themselves as legitimate artists, and this was all made possible by blockchain. So I started learning more about Ethereum, and this led me to realize that decentralization was really the missing piece to a number of different thoughts that I had had over the years. Everything from this idea of games being art themselves, but also what the future of the internet was going to look like. And so this led me to call up my really good friend Matt Hoerl. And together we started Mona.

‍

Katherine Wu

That's yeah. I mean, that's an incredible and very unique path, at least in crypto thus far. But it's so funny because everybody has that one moment where they're like, wait, crypto intersects with everything that I've known so far, which is amazing. 

Okay. So our topic today is the metaverse. And I think the metaverse has become kind of like a hot topic. I think it entered the mainstream when Facebook announced it was going to change its name to Meta, kind of as a reference to that. But I think even then, even so, everyone thinks about the definition of metaverse pretty differently. Like, we talk about Hyrule being my favorite place in the world, but to me, it's a real place, right? So I guess for you, what is your definition of “the metaverse”?

‍

Justin Melillo

Yeah, it's interesting and sort of funny seeing that it really entered the mainstream with Meta’s announcement. But yeah, for those who don't know, the metaverse was actually a term that was coined by author Neal Stephenson in his book Snow Crash. And while many people have a number of different ideas or definitions of the metaverse, I think the easiest way to really sum it all up and for anyone to grasp the concept, is to think of the metaverse as the future of the Internet, and the realization that the future of the internet is immersive.

I think that's the easiest way to think about it. Over the next 5 to 20 years, we're going to see a transition from consuming content via 2D interfaces - consuming the world's information in this 2D style - to consuming content in three dimensions with digital content eventually blending seamlessly with the world around us. That is the metaverse.

‍

Katherine Wu

I like that framing. It’s less so that you have to define what it looks like. Like the future of the internet, how it's immersive is actually just one part of our current experience. Kind of like leveled up, if you want to use gaming terms, I think that's a much easier way to grasp it.

‍

Justin Melillo

Yeah, I love that. It's like leveling up all of our current experiences and I think what a lot of people don't realize is we've already been in the metaverse for a while. I think people are constantly asking the question, when is the metaverse going to happen? Or now we're seeing articles saying, Oh, the metaverse is dead. But you have to realize you have hundreds of millions of people, and a lot of them a younger demographic, this is the norm for them - connecting in this medium of digital experiences, trading virtual clothing, avatar skins, digital assets and objects. This is just a small glimpse into the future that we're going to be living in.

‍

Katherine Wu

Yeah. Well, part of that, I guess what you're saying is also it's not so much how it looks, it's more like your experience right? Like when my parents think about Metaverse, they're like, oh, it's the fake buildings with fake people running around. And I'm like, well, that's a world, I guess, but it's not the metaverse.

‍

Justin Melillo

Yeah, no, exactly. And just like we spend all our days on calls over Zoom now, you know, very soon in the future, we're going to be spending calls via volumetric capture where I could actually see the digital representation of yourself as it's live captured from whatever setting you're in and get the sense of that connection and telepresence with you, even though we're not in the same geographic location, you know, that's all part of it, too. It really comes down to experience, like you said, and human connection.

‍

Katherine Wu

Going back to Meta and these big announcements of who's entering the space and what it seems to me like a lot of these bigger names or web2 or big tech platforms are building like their own version of what they think a metaverse is. And you spoke earlier about decentralization - how is building an open metaverse, like what you're doing at Mona, differ from these legacy or bigger efforts to build their own metaverse?

‍

Justin Melillo

So the metaverse to me doesn't work without decentralization. So I think a lot of legacy companies or web2 companies, they take a very opinionated approach to ownership and distribution of content and the experience itself. And you end up with what a lot of people call the walled garden - the idea that you can do and play and have so much freedom within a certain context, but you can't take any of your assets or your experience outside of this construct that these companies have created.

And so the sad reality of purchasing and owning, say, a skin in Fortnite is that if Fortnite were to ever cease to exist, the value held in that asset that you purchased evaporates instantly. And so that's the importance of this idea of the open metaverse, which is one where the user has true ownership over all of their content, all of their data.

And, you know, that's really where Mona exists is as that visual abstraction for the ownership of decentralized 3D assets that will underpin this new internet that we're talking about. This is the medium by which we're all going to be connecting with each other, and Mona is really going to be that experience layer of the Internet. That's what we're building.

‍

Katherine Wu

Tell us more, because we've referenced now at this moment a couple of times and I gave the one liner earlier, what are you building exactly at Mona? And can you also explain to us, in the narrow construct of open metaverse plays, how Mona is also differentiated there?

‍

Justin Melillo

Yeah, for sure. So Mona is a credibly neutral, open platform. And we exist to pioneer these open standards that this next evolution of the internet is going to be built upon - these standards for sovereign, honorable, immersive content and 3D assets.

So with Mona, anyone can design and build any type of digital object. That could be a 3D asset, an avatar, a wearable digital fashion, environments or entire playable experiences or augmented reality or virtual reality experiences. You can build all of that. You can have it uniquely owned and authenticated on Ethereum, and then you can access and enjoy it in any platform or game engine. 

So Mona has the tooling and infrastructure for that content and experience creation. We also have the highest quality immersive experience that you can get in a web browser. It's all web accessible in a way that today you can start exploring any of the 15,000 experiences that have been uploaded to the platform to date.

And we also have a marketplace where creators and developers and anyone can start monetizing their 3D assets, these interoperable digital objects that they own.

‍

Katherine Wu

As someone who's seen a demo, it is so cool.You go on to Mona, on your browser, by the way, so I don't have to boot up my PS5 or anything, and I just can jump from what feels to me like little planets - from one to the other, and it feels very seamless. 

And the spatial audio that was built in. Like if I saw someone, not only can you talk to them live, but depending on where I am to the other avatar, the volume or where the sound comes from changes.

‍

Justin Melillo

Yeah. That's our spatial voiced feature, it’s really exciting. That's a recent update that we've added. But you know, I think this all goes back to what we've been talking about, which is how we as humans are going to connect in this immersive medium and having that spatial voice chat, that spatial audio, is such a key feature because audio is such an important part of the human experience.

And to be able to be in an immersive setting is one thing, but then to actually feel like, Oh, I can hear you behind me or to the right of me immediately makes the whole thing feel more real, right?

‍

Katherine Wu

Yeah. So not only does it feel realistic, it's awesome that you can bring one asset from one planet to the other, which is very transferable in that way. And I really like that it's probably a really different experience for every person, right?

Because you can bring different things. You can look different ways. You can go to different places. I think the decentralization part actually remixes the experience so that it's more unique to each person.

‍

Justin Melillo

Yeah, that's a really great insight there. It definitely lends itself to each user's unique experience on the platform with all this content.

‍

Katherine Wu

Yeah. Is this kind of what you're seeing across other open or decentralized metaverse plays? Is this like a common theme? Is there something that's really different with what each of these other companies are doing?

‍

Justin Melillo

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. Before I started building Mona, other sort of decentralization or open metaverse plays were more based around this concept of selling land, which  is definitely a compelling idea, but it was never one that really placed the creator or developer first. You still kind of gave people a very limited set of tools to build with, and it was really driven on this speculation that there's a limited amount of virtual space.

And that never really made a lot of sense to me. You have an unlimited amount of virtual space to build in, you know?

‍

Katherine Wu

Okay. You know, what I always thought was weird with that is, if you think about the internet, the internet is literally the most chaotic, abundant experience you can have as a user, right? And so to build in limited things, it feels weird. It feels weird.

‍

Justin Melillo

Yeah it always felt weird to me too.

‍

So I wanted to take a very firm approach in really placing developers and creators first, much like with the birth of the internet where it was this open sandbox to build anything and you have an unlimited amount of virtual space to build in. Why not apply that concept to this idea of what the immersive internet's going to look like?

‍

Katherine Wu

Yeah, I mean, in that way, you're actually enriching the user's experience, too.

‍

Justin Melillo

Yeah. Yeah, placing the user first. Exactly.

‍

Katherine Wu

If it's a creator's work, I understand the scarcity part, but like selling digital land on the internet feels very at odds with how crazy the internet is. It feels like there's almost too much on the internet, right? Anyways I think we're on the same page here.

‍

Justin Melillo

Yeah, definitely. Well that's what's great as an artist - if you wanted to tokenize a 1 of 1 immersive work or 3D object, you still can. And then you have this scarcity built in. It's just not at the platform level. We leave it much more open for people to decide how they want to build and create content.

‍

Katherine Wu

Yeah, I like that. I like that a lot. Okay. So basically, unlike your centralized counterparts, the definition of the metaverse is up to the creator and the users. And then maybe what makes Mona unique is that you guys start from a limitless, boundless kind of space, right? And there's how many, you said 15,000 worlds or something?

‍

Justin Melillo

Yeah, we have 15,000 worlds that have been uploaded now. It's crazy and we're just getting started. You know, we've been around for just about two years, technically less than. And yes, it's amazing to see the traction that we're seeing with creators who are building these decentralized experiences. It's just a small glimpse into the future.

‍

Katherine Wu

Yeah, well, I'm glad you brought up the future, actually. That is going to be my next question to you. I wanted to touch on your future outlook. What are some trends that get you even more excited about the future of Mona or the broader future of the open metaverse?

‍

Justin Melillo

So let's see. We’re very excited for this future of content blending with the world around us. A lot of people are talking about the Apple headset coming out soon. Everyone keeps saying it's coming out next year. It's coming out next year. 

‍

Katherine Wu

I literally just heard about this last weekend. I don't know if you know things I don't, but I haven't heard about this. And I was talking to someone and he was like, when you think about all these big tech companies, who makes hardware the best, right? And he was like, so you can probably assume that's the next big product release from Apple.

‍

Justin Melillo

Yeah. I mean, I think they've been talking about it for a while and people have been speculating. So yeah, I think VR, AR, it's definitely a trend and has been for a while. I think AR is going to be very, very exciting. It's still early. It'll be probably ten, more than ten years before we get to a stage where we have an AR device that is more like a pair of glasses or a pair of goggles and something that is more sustainable to wear throughout the entire length of your day if you wanted to. But I think that's really exciting. And I think this idea of digital identity and ownership over digital fashion and wearables, that's a trend that I'm always paying really, really close attention to. 

We actually had a conversation recently about how Gen Z and millennials are sort of like digitally native generations. But if you look at Gen A or Gen Alpha, kids today, they're growing up with it being so commonplace to hang out with their friends in Roblox, in Fortnite, checking out their digital avatars and selling their digital clothing.

You know, this is a generation that is growing up to be metaverse-native. And I think that is probably the biggest trend that maybe not a lot of people realize is as these kids age out of these platforms, they're just going to be expecting to have these experiences where digital assets in many cases will be worth more than physical counterparts.

‍

Katherine Wu

By the way, that is a one-liner that I have stolen from you on multiple occasions and in multiple conversations, because it was such an aha moment for me. The framing is that the kids today - the Gen Z kids - they’re the smartphone-native generation.  And they're going to translate that to Gen Alpha. 

What you just said as the metaverse native generation is crazy, you know, because I think, even though I'm a millennial, I still feel young. I think there is this weird perception that =I feel young even though I'm squarely millennial. And so like the smartphone thing, I feel like I get it, but there really is a big disconnect between our generations. Like we grew up on the internet for sure, but pre-iPhone was very different. 

I don't know. I feel like back then it was like, you had your AIM, you had your MSA and depending on where in the world you are or you had these chat rooms where you talk to strangers, which was part of the growing up on the internet experience. But like we said earlier at the beginning of the show, the metaverse is so much more about living out the experience.

‍

Justin Melillo

Yeah, some people are definitely thinking about it, but it's a huge realization, right? It's a totally different way to grow up in the world and a different world to navigate. And yeah, I love that. I might borrow that from you, leveling up the experience. I think that that's really what this is all about.

‍

Katherine Wu

Yeah. I mean, that's really what you said. Okay. So before the show, I know I was super excited to talk about Tears of the Kingdom and stuff like that. But I was trying to think about how to work it into a conversation about the metaverse. So one of the questions a lot of people asked and they probably don't realize it is, is like a scaling question, right? Which is like, okay, when will the metaverse come into my everyday life? And as I was thinking about this question, I actually saw a tweet from you and I'm going to read it here- you said “Games can be art. Part of my early thesis for Mona that continues to be proven by the thousand plus experiences on our platform” and then you cite the release of Tears of the Kingdom. So let's dissect this tweet. I want to know, what was going on in your brain when you tweeted that?

‍

Justin Melillo

Well, I was definitely very excited. This was the day of the release for Tears of the Kingdom. So I was definitely very excited for it just from seeing the gameplay footage and, you know, fully verified now from experiencing it over the weekend, that is a game that I consider to be a work of art. And so in this way, I say games can be art.

I would say games are art because my personal viewpoint is that these are works of art. But I don't think it has to be the case. And I think if you ask game developers, not everyone may say that their game is a work of art, but you look at something like Tears of the Kingdom, Breath of the Wild, that is very much an artistic experience for me.

You know, I kind of get the same experience personally playing that that I get being in an art museum, stepping really, really close to like a Rothko or experiencing art in a museum setting. It's a very similar visceral experience, but it's one that you can play and actually experience and interact with. So, so yeah, that's sort of what motivated me to send the tweet.

And also, I was reflecting on all of these thousands of experiences that have been uploaded to Mona so far and realizing that we have probably the largest community and most passionate community of 3D creators. Many of them are game designers, they're architects, they're hobbyist 3D creators who built these really incredible interactive worlds. And as I go through any of the worlds in Mona, I have the same feeling that I have playing Tears of the Kingdom. It feels like a very artistic, creative experience and looking at these 3D assets as works of art, going back to the beginning of the conversation where decentralization has to be at the center of all this is because each of these worlds on Mona, they are tokenized as 1 of 1 assets on an open ledger, you can point to who's created it, who owned it, how it traded hands over time. And no one can touch that. I don't mess with that. It's a trustless system. And yeah, I think that really has to be key when you look at 3D content and immersive content in gaming. These are all the ideas that I tried to sum up with that simple tweet.

‍

Katherine Wu

Yeah. Okay. So for people who are huge Nintendo fans, but are new to the concept of a metaverse or open metaverse, specifically what is it and what would an open Nintendo metaverse look like?

‍

Justin Melillo

Well, Tears of the Kingdom is a great example where you have just this massive open world that feels very endless. You know, it takes hours to just roam around, hundreds of hours to explore and discover new things. I mean, I think if Nintendo were building an open metaverse, this would be the closest that they're getting to, is an experience like Tears of the Kingdom. A different example could also be something that's like really close to Animal Crossing, something that's maybe a little more social. Tears of the Kingdom is very much a single player experience, and I think you can definitely experience the metaverse as just a solo player, but then if you consider something like Animal Crossing where you can invite friends to your island and you can interact with your real world friends on this island with things that you're building and collecting and you can trade, I think that's also getting pretty close to it if we're looking at examples from Nintendo.

‍

Katherine Wu

I mean, as someone who has spent over 200 hours each playing Animal Crossing and Breath of the Wild, I am so excited for the future of not just games, but what an endless metaverse could look like for both a creator and a user experience. I think part of what makes these games so magical is that the possibilities are literally endless. And your experiences as you go through the game, as you move through the game, is so unique to your own. It's genuinely amazing. I think both making me as a user appreciate the creators, but I'm sure for the creators it's a whole other way for them to remix and think about the endlessness of their art potential. So yeah, I think it's so cool.

‍

Justin Melillo

I love that. Yeah. I think you summed it up so perfectly there and that word magic - I think that's so key. And I think it's also the key to the future of this is that user experience and having that individualized experience, but one that's super, super high quality. I think that's just so, so important for people.

‍

Katherine Wu

Yeah. Last question for you. What is one, and maybe you've touched on this earlier, but what is it one huge misconception about the metaverse that you wish more people just understood more or didn't think about it that way.

‍

Justin Melillo

That's a great one. Surprisingly, maybe not so surprisingly, some people think that Facebook owns the metaverse because they changed their name to it. So that's a pretty big misconception, I think. I think we could extrapolate from that - the idea that one person owns the metaverse or will own the metaverse. Again, I think the biggest misconception is thinking that it's going to be owned by one person or one company when in reality it's really just going to be the next evolution of what the current state of the internet is. And it's not owned by anyone, but it's owned by many. You know, I think that's probably the biggest thing for people.

‍

Katherine Wu

Well, where do people go to experience Mona for themselves?

‍

Justin Melillo

Check us out at our website at Monaverse.com. You can jump straight in from your web browser and start exploring some really incredible immersive experiences. If you're taking a break from Tears of the Kingdom or want a very similar experience, check us out and definitely follow us on Twitter at @monaverse.

‍

Katherine Wu

Amazing, amazing. Yeah. Cosign that, everyone go check it out. Well, Justin, thank you so much for taking the time to talk all things metaverse and for indulging in my love for Nintendo. And yeah, everyone go check Monaverse out.

‍

Justin Melillo

Thank you so much for having me, Katherine. This is so much fun. I really, really appreciate your time and being here. Thank you so much.

‍