OpenAI announced that it has hired the co-founder of Facebook’s failed Libra crypto project on the same day that tech giant Apple revealed new integration between ChatGPT and its Siri artificial intelligence.

The San Francisco-based firm announced on Monday that former Facebook Libra exec Kevin Weil will become its new chief product officer. Sarah Friar, the former chief financial officer of Square, will also join OpenAI as chief financial officer.   

The tech firm said that Weil “will lead a product team focused on applying our research to products and services that benefit consumers, developers, and businesses.” 

Facebook launched the Libra project in 2019 as an open-source digital currency. It then rebranded to Diem in December 2020 as the firm reportedly sought to distance itself from the social media platform and woo US regulators. 

Regulators were concerned that the stablecoin project could be used for money laundering and worried about its impact on monetary stability. They also raised concerns that stablecoin-specific regulation wouldn’t be ready before Facebook released Diem to its billions of users.

The project ultimately failed to gain regulatory approval and Facebook shuttered Diem in January 2022, selling $200 million worth of assets to Silvergate Bank. 

Read more: Hong Kong bans WorldCoin, but for how long?

Apple also announced its new partnership with OpenAI on Monday. The deal will see OpenAI lend its ChatGPT artificial intelligence to Apple where it will be incorporated into the firm’s Siri assistant.

OpenAI CEO and co-founder Sam Altman said on X (formerly Twitter) that he was “Very happy to be partnering with Apple to integrate ChatGPT into their devices later this year! think you will really like it.”

Sam Altmans’s crypto-focused identity project Worldcoin has also hired a new executive with a crypto past. Coinbases’s former head of corporate communications, Elliott Suthers, was announced yesterday and will be joining Worldcoin as its head of comms for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

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Metaverse tokens burst onto the world stage on a tidal wave of enormous promises and mind-boggling figures. Experts trumpeted Total Addressable Market (TAM) figures like five billion users and $13 trillion dollars and the world’s largest publicly-traded social network, Facebook, changed its name to Meta and guided over $15 billion in metaverse expenditures. It has since actually spent that sum.

Speculators enjoyed big returns on rapidly appreciating plots of land in Decentraland, The Sandbox, Earth2, or NFT Worlds and metaverse builders marketed each of their virtual worlds as the next big thing.

Of course, as is the case with so many hyped crypto sectors, away from the fanfare and bright lights, metaverse adoption has achieved barely a fraction of its marketers’ promises.

Active usage rates are dropping rapidly and the value of most virtual land has plummeted, with average trading volumes for parcels down 98%. Some properties have created flurries of activity with branded events, incentivized gameplay, or sponsored performances, however, these promotions cannot make up for the fatal weakness of the metaverse: dismal user engagement.

Active users and value drop throughout 2022

Speculation drove most of 2021’s surge in virtual land prices. Investors were snapping up plots and then not doing anything with them and many ended up holding a property that no one even wanted to visit.

The small number of active users didn’t help matters. Users simply don’t stick around with very little to do outside of events organized by developers.

According to DappRadar, Decentraland earns an average of 654 unique wallet actions per day. Using different math, Decentraland estimates Daily Active Users (DAUs) to be around 8,000. The project also says it sold a notable number of in-world items like wearables and emotes. Decentraland acknowledges that DAUs have dropped since 2021 but says the number of core users is still healthy.

For perspective, Decentraland’s token, MANA, is valued at $1.1 billion, or $137,000 per DAU.

The Sandbox’s proprietary token, SAND, has dropped 87% since the start of the year. Investors have introduced brands like Atari and The Walking Dead to the metaverse, and it earned some traffic from its Alpha Season events. However, users barely even bothered outside Alpha Season. On average, the Sandbox earns a dismal 605 unique wallet actions per day. Even after increasing this DAU using the same math as Decentraland above, SAND is still valued above $100,000 per DAU.

The bubble in metaverse tokens burst in 2022. Virtual land trading volumes have declined 98%. Metaverse tokens have lost two-thirds of their value this year.

Even Facebook can’t save metaverse tokens

Since Facebook rebranded to Meta, it’s spent $15 billion building its metaverse, Horizon Worlds.

However, The Wall Street Journal has interviewed a number of Meta employees who have branded their own project unusable. It estimates that metaverse registrations are 300,000 people shy of the company’s 2022 goal. It also estimates that a majority of worlds built by creators are never visited by anyone other than their creator. Just 10% earn visits from more than 50 people.

In the middle of September 2022, metaverse vice president Vishal Shah expressed frustration with Horizon Worlds’ current state. He sent a memo telling employees that they need to use the rest of the year to “ensure that we fix our quality gaps and performance issues before we open up Horizon to more users. … The simple truth is, if we don’t love it, how can we expect our users to love it?”

Read more: Meta whistleblower warns Zuck’s metaverse could harm mental health

Conclusion

Meta could have learned from its failed efforts with its multi-billion dollar Diem (formerly Libra) stablecoin project: Launching a successful digital asset ecosystem isn’t as easy as it looks. It gets perilous if employees can’t even enjoy it enough to use it themselves.

Across the world, metaverse projects are retreating from overhyped promises. Speculators realize that their undeveloped plots cannot hold value forever. Virtual events might get brief attention, but not even a big name like Meta can prop up a house of cards.

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Blockchain brands are flexing finances to lure top execs from tech giants like Facebook, YouTube, and Amazon to build the crypto-centric internet ecosystem known as “web3,” reports CNBC.

Ambitious tech folk are hoovering up massive salaries and mouth-watering share packages offered by crypto companies like Polygon, Circle, and Coinbase.

Coinbase, the top US crypto exchange, has offered software engineering roles that earn up to $900,000 per year, according to social network Blind.

“As more crypto and web3 companies emerge, we expect the market for tech talent across all levels to become even more competitive,” said James Hallahan, director of UK and Ireland for Hays’ tech division (via CNBC).

The outlet noted that blockchain startups raised more than $25 billion in venture capital in 2021, giving them plenty of cash to attract top talent.

Talent follows (web3) innovation

Checkbooks aside, crypto companies are relying on targets being unable to resist web3’s allure.

The term is mostly amorphous, but it generally relates to the budding blockchain-powered tech stack envisioned to one day democratize our internet experience away from legacy tech corporations.

“Naturally, people will want to work on what they view as the most exciting and innovative developments in the technology space, and currently, that is crypto and web3,” said payroll software firm Deel’s chief Alex Bouaziz.

“Many are seeing it as the future of the tech industry, in the same way that Facebook and Amazon were attractive in the past.”

Certainly, this looks to be the case. Established tech giants are indeed haemorrhaging top talent to their blockchain rivals.

Last month, Novi’s chief marketing officer (Facebook’s crypto and payments unit) Sherice Torres was poached by payments portal Circle. A move likely in part inspired by Diem’s untimely demise.

Circle is currently looking to public via a SPAC deal that will see it reportedly valued at $9 billion.

Also in January, Amazon’s general manager of edge services, Pravjit Tiwana, joined Winklevoss-backed crypto exchange Gemini as its new chief technology officer.

Read more: [Cancel culture or DAOism? Web3 hits fever pitch over religious tweets]

Not to mention Ryan Wyatt, YouTube’s senior managing director and global head of gaming who left to head up a new studio at Ethereum scaling solution Polygon.

Speaking about the new web3 opportunity, Wyatt told CNBC:

“When I started at YouTube Gaming almost eight years ago, I was the first person there. We didn’t have a team. People were really starting to show interest in gaming video.”

“I look at this opportunity very much the same way.”

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