SALT LAKE CITY – Want a glimpse of what the office would be like if everyone was wearing Apple's Vision Pro headsets?
You can find it at an in-person gathering of developers focused on the Solana blockchain, known as “mtnDAO,” in Salt Lake City. What is the common theme? They're geeks, they're rich, and they're the natural demographic to try out newly released devices, which can cost upwards of $5,000 including accessories.
More than 20 participants at this month-long coworking event purchased Apple's Vision Pro. They spend their days staring through sophisticated goggles, moving between digital recreations of reality and giant workspaces that only they can see.
MtnDAO is Apple CEO Tim Cook'sThe era of spatial computing“ – where the spatial environment of the flesh is enhanced by digital goggles, where everyone simultaneously uses digital goggles to work, play, even socialize, and in some cases eat together physically while wearing them. Cook announced Vision Pro will be available in June 2023.
Perhaps most interestingly, the whole thing is completely organic. In short, it's a new lab for the future of work, without influencers or corporate sponsorship.
These people don't work for one company that develops VR technology. They are almost all independent technologists in the cryptocurrency industry. They spend their days building products for the “future of finance,” a world built on cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and the Solana blockchain.
The fact that so many 20- and 30-somethings are able to afford Vision Pro may only be possible thanks to crypto wealth, or Solana in particular. Since October, the blockchain’s flagship token SOL has risen more than 10x, making it the best-performing large-cap cryptocurrency of 2023. Solana has many followers, and mtnDAO participants have plenty of SOL to use.
And then there's the airdrop. This is essentially a token giveaway for blockchain projects to incentivize early users. Over the past few months, a parade of financial applications built on Solana have created their own tokens and rewarded their power users with big rewards. Just trade your tokens on a platform like Jupitersome Vision Pro buyers said they received airdrops worth tens of thousands of dollars.
“I know it was a $5,000 impulse buy, but hey, I just bought a $5,000 airdrop on impulse,” said a pseudonymous Solana contributor, mtnDAO participant and developer correspondent on the Monad blockchain. ZenLlama, who is in charge, said.
“We legitimately think we have the most Vision Pros in some areas,” says the former Netflix and Disney animator who actually develops products for Vision Pros here at mtnDAO. said MJ, one of the few headset owners.
Headset owners' purchases are driven as much by jealousy as by curiosity. Only a handful of people have pre-ordered the Vision Pro. Most of the rest bought a pair due to FOMO. Their friends had it on mtnDAO. So they, too, made the mile-long pilgrimage to Apple's downtown store to get theirs.
As a result, WeWork is crowded with people wearing headsets, staring at who-knows-what and the “norm” around them, regularly experiencing the old reality. These two groups interact frequently. Normals chat with headsetters, and headsetters chat with other headsetters. The front of the headset displays a purple digital eye that mimics a real eye. In real life, they are staring at an invisible screen even though they are typing on a real keyboard.
“It’s time to get serious,” Marvius, a product manager for a crypto fitness game, said while getting into “the box.” He said he wears Vision Pros all day. He sets up some desktops inside his VR and lets just a sliver of reality pass through around them.
“We are spending more time on it than we expected,” said Anders Jorgensen, head of growth at Marginify, a crypto lending and borrowing protocol that is one of mtnDAO’s hosts. He pre-ordered the Vision Pro several months ago and brought it to WeWork, where mtnDAO's cryptocurrency staff gather, on a weekday in February.
Inside the Vision Pro, Jorgensen has opted for a “fully immersive setup – no distractions,” and the Airpod Pro features additional noise cancellation. He's not typing inside his busy WeWork, but gazing out over mountains and at the moon.
Jorgensen and fellow mtnDAO regular TJ Littlejohn, a former Apple employee who also pre-ordered his headset, said they helped “many” others who attended coworking events do the same for themselves. He says that this led him to purchase the Vision Pro. The other two went to the Apple Store with Littlejohn, and Littlejohn picked him up and returned with a pair of his own.
That gave birth to the Vision Pro local run. By mid-February, there were rumors on mtnDAO that Apple's local store was sold out.
Not all mtnDAO Vision Pro owners are cryptocurrency developers. Two of them are building the program for the device itself. Animator Littlejohn and his MJ were among the first in his mtnDAO to own a headset, helping to sow his FOMO that sparked a buying frenzy.
“The whole vibe of our operation right now is we're trying to figure out what really compelling experiences we can do with Vision Pro,” says Littlejohn, who currently runs a VR gaming studio startup called Middle Curve with MJ. speaks.
Their short-term plans are to build a spatial video game for the Vision Pro, and then apply the technology to other applications in the “professional” field, perhaps by building character avatars that Vision Pro users can refer to in place of menus. It is to make use of it.
Littlejohn said he was surprised by how many other mtnDAO participants purchased Vision Pro. It's been a bigger hit among experts than he expected, and many people spend their days immersed in mixed reality.
Participants told CoinDesk that there is something powerful about using Vision Pro in an office environment. This allows you to switch between immersion in your work and the myriad distractions around you in seconds.
“Somewhere in my heart, I wonder if this is the only place I can fall in love with,” Marvius said.
