Introduction
The Metaverse Standards Forum marked a significant milestone in April 2024 by celebrating its first anniversary as an independent non-profit industry consortium. As we reflect on our journey, we want to share our achievements with the community and express our thanks to everyone who has supported our growth. This report showcases the Forum’s key accomplishments and milestones throughout 2024.
Forum Motivation and Formation
The end of 2021 marked a pivotal moment when the technology industry recognized an extraordinary convergence of several disruptive technologies—artificial intelligence, GPU processing, XR, Web3, and advanced networking including 5G/6G. While each of these innovations is transformative in its own right, their integration represents a generational shift in how humans interact with technology, merging the connectivity of the Web with the immersiveness of Spatial Computing. This technological synthesis has come to be known as “the metaverse.”
While the future integration of these rapidly evolving technologies will unfold through a complex, evolutionary process that defies precise prediction, one fundamental imperative is immediately clear: interoperability through global open standards. This foundation of interoperability will enable companies and platforms to effectively harness emerging technologies as they become pervasive, creating market opportunities that far exceed what any system could achieve alone in its isolated silo.
The metaverse’s broad scope requires open standards developed by a diverse ecosystem of organizations—Standards Development Organizations (SDOs), consortia, non-profits, companies, and academic institutions. Yet traditionally, SDOs have operated within their specific domains of expertise, which can limit broader industry collaboration. Creating the metaverse demands cross-disciplinary communication and cooperation. The Metaverse Standards Forum emerged to address this need—not as a standards body, but as a neutral, accessible venue where standards organizations and industry can come together to collaborate.
In 2022, as interest in the metaverse grew, The Khronos Group—an SDO active in metaverse-related open standards for 3D acceleration, AI, and XR—recognized the need for a widely accessible venue where organizations could coordinate their interoperability efforts. However, no such organization existed at the time. In response, Khronos President Neil Trevett, together with Patrick Cozzi of Cesium and Marc Petit of Epic Games, initiated the Metaverse Standards Forum as a one-year funded project running from April 2022 to April 2023. The Forum launched in June 2022 with 37 founding members, comprising companies, SDOs, and industry associations, united in their mission to coordinate efforts toward building a global, open, and inclusive metaverse.
During its initial “incubation” period as a Khronos Group project, the Forum established its foundational infrastructure, including its website and support systems. The organization adopted many of the Khronos Group’s proven best practices, with Khronos leadership—including Neil Trevett and Emily Stearns—serving as Forum leaders, roles they continue to hold today. The Forum’s explosive growth to over 2,600 member organizations demonstrated the industry’s clear need for such a collaborative platform.
Plurality, inclusivity, openness, transparency, and decision-making by consensus have been key values of the Forum since its inception. In April 2023, having validated its core concepts, the Forum took a significant step forward: its membership voted to incorporate as an independent non-profit, establishing its own governance, finances, and operations under an elected leadership board. Since its incorporation as a Delaware non-profit, the Forum has maintained its founding principles of openness and pragmatic action to accelerate metaverse interoperability. With its extraordinary membership of over 2,600 organizations, the Forum holds a unique position to enhance visibility and foster cooperation on metaverse standards—creating meaningful industry-wide impact through global collaborative participation.
The Industry Role of the Metaverse Standards Forum
Since its founding, the Forum has emphasized pragmatic, industry-driven collaboration, eschewing rigid metaverse definitions and long-term roadmaps. Instead, it acknowledges that the metaverse will evolve through successive waves of innovation, propelled by emerging technologies and products. Through its bottom-up pre- and post-standardization activities, the Forum helps address urgent industry needs while fostering immediate business opportunities—steps toward an open, standards-based metaverse that many view as the internet’s natural evolution into the Spatial Web.
The Forum serves as a collaborative platform that enhances and accelerates the work of standards organizations by facilitating broader exploration of interoperability in metaverse development. While the Forum does not create standards itself, it actively supports standards organizations in their mission to build an interoperable, open metaverse. As illustrated in the figure below, the Forum’s activities are structured around two key phases: pre-standardization and post-standardization.
Figure 1: Metaverse Standards Forum pre- and post-standardization activities
The Forum fills a unique pre-standardization role by bridging a critical gap in the interoperability timeline—the period after a technology and its need have been proven but before formal standards exist. Through its post-standardization activities, the Forum helps ensure deployed standards effectively meet industry needs. By fostering communication across traditional standardization boundaries, the Forum identifies overlooked opportunities for cross-domain collaboration and supports SDOs in developing effective interoperability standards.
Forum Organization
Any young organization must organize effectively to make an impact. The Forum’s governance structure includes a board of elected directors and officers who champion the interests of its members. This board convenes monthly to strategize on optimal resource allocation to maximize return on investment for both members and the broader industry.
As a non-profit organization, the Forum is a means rather than an end in itself, and so the Forum maintains deliberately inclusive participation policies—requiring no NDAs, patent licensing obligations, or participation fees for many of its activities, including Domain Groups where detailed interoperability discussions and activities are held. While core activities remain freely accessible, the Forum requires funding to operate and achieve its goals. To this end, it offers a paid ‘Principal Member’ tier through which organizations can support Forum activities. In return, Principal Members gain a voice in guiding the Forum’s work through oversight of Domain Groups, the right to vote and stand in Board elections, and priority marketing considerations.
Figure 2: Metaverse Standards Forum Organizational Structure
The Forum has 2,613 member organizations headquartered across five geographic regions, representing international participation from a truly global ecosystem.
Figure 3. Distribution of Forum Membership by Geographic Region
The Forum’s diverse membership spans 76 major organizations, thousands of smaller entities, and over 4,000 individual professionals who have registered through the member portal—all united by their commitment to advancing interoperability and standards development.
Domain Group Process
Since its inception, the Forum has established agile, pre-standardization collaboration processes that serve its diverse membership. It focuses on practical, fast-moving initiatives through regular Working Group meetings, with priorities emerging organically from members to ensure industry relevance. As illustrated in the figure below, Forum members advance their ideas and interests through a Domain Group process, where Exploratory Groups develop Working Group charters by consensus. Through its Domain Groups, the Forum develops cross-disciplinary use cases and requirements, providing standards bodies with valuable insights to ensure their work delivers real-world impact.
Figure 4: Metaverse Standards Forum Domain Group Process
The Forum’s Domain Group Process stands as a cornerstone of its activities, ensuring all members can shape Forum priorities and activities, while maintaining the Forum’s focus on pragmatic projects and deliverables that address urgent metaverse interoperability needs. Members actively generate new ideas for Forum initiatives—in just one year, nearly 250 ideas have been organized into more than 20 domains of interest. Members can align themselves with these domains and upvote topics for Exploratory Group consideration. The figure below lists the topics for which Working Groups have formed or are being proposed. Through its pipeline of member-driven Domain Groups, the Forum has cultivated an unprecedented level of open dialogue between the standards community and broader industry.
Figure 5: Metaverse Standards Forum Domain Groups at the end of 2024
Forum Effectiveness
The Forum’s remarkable growth presents both opportunities and challenges. With our extensive membership and numerous activities, members can find it challenging to identify the groups and projects that will best serve their organizations. To streamline participation, we provide a comprehensive member website and portal detailing ongoing projects and groups. Our managing director hosts monthly orientation sessions for new members, supported by detailed guides and documented best practices to help members engage effectively.
Given the metaverse’s technological breadth and our global membership, accommodating diverse interests across time zones requires careful planning. We conduct well-attended monthly plenary meetings, twice on the same day to enable worldwide participation, while Principal Members participate in additional monthly oversight meetings to oversee Domain Group activities. All meeting materials, recordings, and minutes are openly available online to all members at any time.
We continue to strengthen coordination between Domain Groups with adjacent interests. Quarterly progress review meetings for Working Group chairs complement ongoing efforts to align and enhance Domain Group activities, ensuring effective collaboration across the Forum’s initiatives.
The Forum Standards Register Working Group plays a vital role in promoting visibility, coordination, and cooperation across Domain Groups. Through its database, the group tracks metaverse-relevant standardization activities and key standards throughout the industry, helping organizations navigate the complex standardization landscape. The Working Group is also developing a comprehensive database of metaverse use cases and a standardized glossary. This work ensures consistent terminology across Forum activities while supporting broader industry alignment through collaboration with initiatives working to establish common language for use cases, requirements, and projects.
Figure 6. Process for populating the Metaverse Standards Forum Standards Register
Global Engagement
Since its incorporation, the Forum has achieved significant milestones and emerged as a leading voice in discussions about open and interoperable metaverse technologies through media engagement, events, content creation, social media presence, and educational initiatives.
The Forum has garnered substantial industry attention, generating 1,234 pieces of global media coverage from prominent outlets including VentureBeat, Reuters, Forbes, Decrypt, and Immersive Wire. This extensive coverage across mainstream and specialized tech media demonstrates the Forum’s growing influence in metaverse development.
Forum members have shared their expertise through numerous digital platforms, participating in prominent podcasts and webinars such as Voices of VR, 80 Level, Meta Minutes, ACM Bytecast, and XR Today. The Forum’s work has been featured in major analyst research and forecast reports, with leadership maintaining active dialogue with leading industry analysts including Forrester, McKinsey, Gartner, and others. The Forum’s digital presence continues to grow, with nearly 13,000 followers across LinkedIn, Bluesky, Mastodon, and YouTube.
The Forum’s influence extends to major industry events, where members have contributed to dozens of panels, presentations, and networking sessions at prestigious gatherings including CES, Mobile World Congress, SXSW, SIGGRAPH, and SIGGRAPH Asia. Members have also presented at numerous Standards Development Organization meetings, including ISO/IEC JTC1, IEEE, ITU, and W3C, including efforts to support the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, ensuring open metaverse standards discussions reach all stakeholders.
The Forum’s innovative work earned recognition as one of Fast Company’s ten World-Changing Ideas in the Experimental category for 2023. Its YouTube channel serves as a comprehensive public resource, featuring presentations from industry experts, events and Domain Group speakers.
In late 2024, the Forum launched a series of open Town Hall meetings focused on vital metaverse topics. The first two sessions—exploring Volumetric Media and OMA3’s Inter World Portaling System—drew significant community and attendance.
Challenges and Opportunities
Despite strong momentum and participation, the Forum is navigating challenges in its core mission: promoting cooperation to encourage and inform the development of interoperability standards for the immersive web. Looking ahead to 2025, the Forum’s leadership is committed to continue transforming these challenges into opportunities to benefit the broader industry.
The term ‘metaverse’ has weathered a significant hype cycle, where inconsistent definitions led to confusion and premature declarations of its demise. The surge in AI interest has further complicated the narrative, with some suggesting AI has superseded the metaverse as a transformative technology. However, viewing the metaverse through the Forum’s inclusive definition—the convergence of web connectivity with spatial computing—reveals that activity in this space is not only continuing but accelerating. AI serves as an enabler, enhancing metaverse capabilities, while the metaverse will often provide a natural interface for AI interactions and agents. The Forum will intensify its efforts to show how AI and the metaverse are interconnected technologies that enhance and amplify each other.
While the term ‘metaverse’ may currently carry baggage from its hype cycle, the underlying technological convergence it represents remains vibrant and growing. Until a more precise term emerges, the Forum will continue to focus on educating the industry about the concrete and significant capabilities being developed, rather than debating the term itself.
While the late 2021 surge in metaverse interest sparked numerous initiatives—many of which have since ceased—the Forum remains focused on strengthening its industry relevance through a unique approach: concentrating on pre- and post-standardization activities for the emerging immersive web. Rather than debating theoretical long-term roadmaps, the Forum encourages the natural member-driven evolution of pragmatic projects that create immediate business opportunities through growing interoperability.
Like many startups, the Forum faces ongoing funding challenges. We are focused on delivering strong, tangible value to our members to encourage Principal Member participation and financial support, while exploring additional revenue sources—including grants and collaborations for projects where the Forum’s unique capabilities and broad industry participation can create distinctive value.
The Forum’s Elected Board of Directors
In April 2024, the Metaverse Standards Forum marked its first anniversary of incorporation with the installation of a newly elected Board of Directors—a pivotal moment in its mission to advance interoperability standards for an open and inclusive metaverse.The 19-member Board brings together distinguished leaders from prominent organizations, representing a comprehensive range of metaverse-related expertise: generative AI research, 3D geospatial technology, systems architecture, standardization, network technology, AR, VR, multimedia, and the legal and privacy considerations of emerging technologies. This Board oversees the Forum’s core mission of providing a neutral venue where standards organizations and companies can collaborate to develop interoperability standards for an open metaverse.
The Board’s executive leadership comprises four officers: Neil Trevett as president, Emily Stearns as executive director, Christine Perey as secretary, and Yu Yuan as treasurer. More details on Board members are provided below:
Matt White | CEO, Berkeley Synthetic – An AI and simulation researcher, Matt is known for successfully deploying large-scale AI and simulation platforms across the telecom, gaming, media, and entertainment industries.
Patrick Cozzi | CEO, Cesium – Patrick is dedicated to advancing the field of 3D geospatial and is a recognized expert in 3D graphics and mapping technology, open standards, and open-source software.
Eric Klein | co-founder Cloudonix, Inc. – Eric has over 30 years of experience in telecommunications, mobile, and networking. He is a mentor, community advocate, writer and strategic advisor across many aspects of technology and he currently serves as the chair of the Technical Interoperability and End User Troubleshooting Exploratory Working Group at the Forum.
Leonard Daly | Daly Realism – Leonard has a long career in 3D graphics and open standards and specializes in 3D systems design.
Liam Broza | co-founder, Ethereal Engine – working on the intersection of spatial computing, computer vision, and data sovereignty, Liam’s work focuses on building the open social, spatial web for all.
Mats Lundgren | Futurewei Technologies’ director open source technology strategy – Mats has 20 years of experience in telecommunications, mobile, and wireless.
Rouslan Ovtcharoff | founder and CEO, Groovesetter – Rouslan brings a passion for blockchain technologies and expertise in film and television production, distribution, advertising, XR, and interactive media. He is also the co-founder of the Blockchain Global Entertainment Alliance, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting blockchain education, adoption and common standards in the entertainment industry.
Paul Higgs | Huawei Vice President of Video Industry Development – Paul brings 20+ years of experience in systems architecture, engineering, and development management for next-gen technology to the table.
William Benman JD | CEO of Integrated Virtual Networks and Web3D Consortium Board Member – Bill is the inventor of multiple patents on IVN’s Silhouette® Technology and has experience in telecommunications, aerospace, and intellectual property law.
Fred Chesbro, Esq. | Co-founder, Metaverse Radio WMVR-db Chicago – Championing the intersection of creativity in the digital frontier while covering events and hosting ongoing conversations about the metaverse’s potential for advancing music, visual arts, and literature.
Ulrich Dropmann | Nokia Head of Standardization and Industry Environment – Ulrich heads external standardization engagement and is responsible for global and regional standardization, including radio spectrum aspects.
Alfred Tom | Executive Director, OMA3, President of Lumian Foundation, and CEO of Wivity – Alfred has run multiple consortia and helped create several industry standards, including SunSpec Alliance, Car Connectivity Consortium, GENIVI, PC Card, and IrDA. His current focus is assisting Web3 consortia and DAOs operate.
Christine Perey | President, PEREY Research & Consulting – Christine specializes in helping organizations identify new opportunities for Augmented Reality in industrial and enterprise use cases.
Ben Erwin | owner, Powersimple, LLC – Dedicated to the advancement of the XR industry, Ben has developed the advocacy and recognition platform The Polys – WebXR Awards, the WebXR Summit Series, and MetaTr@aversal, which have created engagement and awareness of the immersive web.
Thomas Stockhammer | Qualcomm Senior Director of Technical Standards – Thomas is an award-winning tech and standards leader in mobile multimedia, TV, adaptive video streaming, 5G Broadcast, XR technologies, and is also IEEE Fellow.
Virginie Maillard | SIEMENS Head of Technology Field Simulation and Digital Twin – Virginie leads tech research in the US and serves as the global Head of research in Simulation and Digital Twins.
Marc Petit | Principal Consultant, TRNSFRM Inc – Marc is a co-founder of Building the Open Metaverse podcast and serves as co-chair for the 3D Asset Interoperability Working Group. Marc spent 35 years in computer graphics at TDI, SOFTIMAGE, Autodesk, Fabric Engine, and most recently, Epic Games.
Yu Yuan | Co-founder of VerseMaker and CEO of 0xSenses – Yu is a visionary scientist, inventor, entrepreneur, and investor in the areas of Virtual Reality, Metaverse, and Digital Transformation. He has held a variety of leadership roles, including but not limited to Founder and Acting President of the Metaverse Acceleration and Sustainability Association (MASA), Treasurer of the Metaverse Standards Forum, President of the IEEE Standards Association, and Member of the IEEE Board of Directors.
Elizabeth Rothman | XRSI.ORG Senior Legal Affairs and Digital Trust Advisor – Elizabeth is an attorney and advisor in emerging technology, often working at the forefront of legal, privacy, and safety concerns presented by the implementation and convergence of technologies in digital environments.
The Forum sincerely thanks all Board members for their generous donation of time and expertise to further the Forum’s mission.
Looking Ahead
2024 has marked unprecedented advances in technologies and applications shaping the metaverse—a rapidly emerging global platform for connected spatial computing. The rise of AI has proved especially transformative, unlocking new applications that solve real challenges in both consumer and industrial domains. This accelerating progress strengthens our commitment to ensure the standards community comprehensively supports metaverse development, enabling its revolutionary potential to become reality.
As we mark our first year as an incorporated entity, we deeply value our members’ contributions and extend an open invitation to all organizations to join the Forum. Our Domain Groups offer members the opportunity to propose, lead, and participate in initiatives that advance both their own missions and the broader metaverse ecosystem. We particularly welcome new Principal Members who can help shape our direction and sustain our ongoing work.
Together, we will continue advancing standard protocols and interfaces for an open and interoperable metaverse in 2025 and beyond!
