DePIN: The Key To Fixing The Current Metaverse Bottleneck

• PUBG creator PlayerUnknown has criticized how developers are taking the wrong approach to building the metaverse.
• DePIN could be the key to solving the current hardware and compute-resource bottlenecks that prevent the creation of an interconnected digital world.

Brendan Greene, also known as PlayerUnknown and creator of PUBG, said during a discussion with PCGamesN that everyone is looking at the metaverse the wrong way. He explained that most companies have modeled their goals with the “Ready Player One dream.”

The metaverse vision is grounded in the idea that the multiverse comprises digital worlds where people can explore. Meanwhile, developers build their model from the top down.

However, Greene believes creators are approaching things the wrong way. He highlighted that their existing server-client models could never support more than 10,000 concurrent users in a single experience.

ADVERTISEMENT## Hardware Limitations Preventing the Creation of a True Metaverse

Greene claimed that Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, doesn’t think the metaverse is possible because there aren’t enough server farms to support its scale. But then again, he stated there’s a way to build a technology that can create the infrastructure locally on players’ devices. This is apparently his vision for Project Artemis, a compilation of open-source next-generation technologies aimed at building a digital “planet-scale” world. It starts with PlayerUnknown Productions’ Prologue game, which includes machine learning (ML) generation features.

Prologue Go Wayback (Image courtesy of Steam)Although Greene didn’t thoroughly discuss how his team would achieve his metaverse vision during the conversation, his idea of a bottom-up, open-source infrastructure that does not rely on server farms mirrors the decentralized, democratized design of DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks).

DePIN Solving the Metaverse Dilemma

Traditional open-world multiplayer games typically rely on massive server farms, such as AWS (Amazon Web Services) or Google Cloud, to manage player interactions and movement. This is currently very expensive and prone to a central point of failure.

ADVERTISEMENTDePIN solutions enable the metaverse to thrive by providing an elastic supply of computing power that scales with the number of people joining the network. Chains like the Akash Network (AKASH) and Aethir (ATH) have specialized infrastructures that move the heavy lifting away from conventional centralized data centers.

Greene’s Melba engine has not explicitly used the term DePIN to describe its nature. Nevertheless, its technology stack and philosophy align with the inner workings of decentralized infrastructure networks.

“Our vision for the future of emergent player experiences,” says Greene’s studio. “Project Artemis is our ultimate goal to build the technology to scale massive online worlds, enabling communities of players to build, play, and create their own experiences in.”

Furthermore, Greene’s suggested “bottom-up” approach solves the problem DePIN addresses. Its ecosystem departs from centralized server farms in favor of a decentralized, player-based infrastructure to build the metaverse’s persistent world.

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