Jacob Navok is the co-founder and CEO of Genvid, which is the leader in interactive streaming technology. They are working on one of the most interesting problems in the pursuit of the metaverse vision which is, how do you get millions of people to concurrently be participating and interacting in one live experience with no latency (delay or lag)? This is as opposed to what’s happening right now with server sizes of around 50 people in say Fortnite concerts. 

Jacob was the co-author of the networking and compute articles in Matthew Ball’s Metaverse Primer series. There he outlined the technical and infrastructural limitations and challenges we have today to make the metaverse a reality.

Beyond the buzz around what kinds of new use cases and consumer experiences the Metaverse will enable, it’s important to think about the foundations. What is the infrastructure and computing power we will need to actually power this future? This is not something that will be solved by any company alone, but a collective effort of all the builders of the internet. 

ABOUT THE GUEST

Prior to founding Genvid, Jacob led worldwide business development and strategy at Square Enix Holdings, reporting to the CEO. He also built their cloud gaming division, Shinra Technologies, where he met many of his Genvid colleagues.

SHOW NOTES

[5:20] Definition of the Metaverse

[7:20] Why VR is not representative of the Metaverse

[13:05] Concurrency and the challenges of hosting live, synchronous events with millions of people

[17:35] Twitch as the first example of massive multiplayer concurrent gaming

[19:40] Rival Peak, Genvid’s Live Interactive Multiplayer Reality Show with AI contestants

[22:50] Hacks for the concurrency problem

[25:30] Why decentralized systems don’t work well for live 3D experiences

[27:15] Future use cases of live synchronous events

[30:30] Social platforms like FB, Twitch, Discord as identity systems of the Metaverse

[37:15] Why FB keeps investing in AR/VR

[39:10] How will life in the Metaverse be different from the real world?