Is Apple the savior the Metaverse needs?

The Metaverse looks like a desert. Crypto fans are placing their hopes on Apple, which plans to bring a VR headset to market.

The Metaverse looks like a desert. Crypto fans are placing their hopes on Apple, which plans to bring a VR headset to market. But can the company save the Metaverse?

Anyone looking at Decentraland and The Sandbox will realize: the Metaverse is a desert. In April, player counts hit a new low. By now, Decentraland had only 23 users online per day. For a project that gulped millions in development costs. Not to mention the price movements of its own tokens. In recent months they've only seen one direction: straight down. MANA and SAND are each more than 90 percent from their last all-time high.

And on the commercial side, things look grim for the Metaverse. The rebranding of the Facebook group to Meta really kicked the hype around digital worlds into gear. Horizon Worlds" was supposed to be fun and an experience. Also a place where people could network. Today it is mainly one thing: a billion-dollar hole. In 2022 alone, Meta’s Reality Labs division spent almost $14 billion developing AR and VR technologies for the digital world. In the latest quarter, that figure added another nearly $4 billion.

Allegedly, Horizon Worlds was so popular among staff that Meta instructed employees to spend more time in their own Metaverse. Officially, Mark Zuckerberg still defends his push, but Meta has long since shifted its focus to the next hype: artificial intelligence, also known as AI.

Is Apple the savior?

But there seems to be a glimmer of hope, at least in the eyes of some crypto enthusiasts, as Apple is set to launch its own VR headset with its own App Store. The first product release since the Apple Watch in 2015 is planned for June 5.

The crypto community is also hopeful about their own projects. "Metaverse shitcoins will pump so hard that it won't be fun anymore," View post on X. It is quite possible that this pump will materialize. When rumors about Apple glasses first surfaced earlier this year, MANA rose from 30 cents to 80 cents. The rally, however, was not sustainable. The situation is likely to repeat itself for the actual launch.

Meanwhile, market watchers continue to whisper about a separate Apple metaverse. Aside from the VR headset, there is little evidence of a separate digital world. But it would certainly be what some call a "corporate metaverse," like Meta's Horizon Worlds.

Apple has no stake in crypto

Moreover, one should not forget: Apple as a company has no interest in engaging with crypto—quite the opposite. Late last year, the company tightened its App Store guidelines and prohibited apps from integrating mechanisms such as "cryptocurrencies or wallets". Furthermore, Apple traditionally relies on a closed ecosystem for its products; external partnerships are rare. Consequently, the crypto industry is unlikely to benefit from an Apple metaverse. A true savior looks different.