This is something a lot of people has toyed with over the years, at last since Snow Crash, where federated 3D worlds are an important part of the plot.

At the time most people thought the open ecosystem of interconnected endpoints was destined to dominate the global information storage, because smtp had outcompeted proprietary messaging systems, and the url was looking to displace localized hypertext systems and the open web looked unstoppable.

That was before the reactionary trend where gmail overtook the smtp momentum and actors such as Facebook expanded their walled gardens by absorbing or straight up acquiring forums and smaller players. Facebook wasn't unique in their business model of locking up as much of the world's information as possible into their platform, but they were certainly the most successful.

That made it the more telling when Facebook made their pivot into assisted reality public, starting with naming their walled garden the metaverse, a term taken right out of the most visionary futurists of yesteryear! Let's see if the time has come for the pendulum to swing back. It'd certainly be most fitting if the term itself gave new life to the open interconnected ecosystems to show us again what's possible with permissionless innovation.