A Layer 1 blockchain for the Open Metaverse, founded and incubated at Studio6 alongside Neal Stephenson, Rebecca Barkin, and Tony Parisi.
As a founding team member, I helped incubate Lamina1 from inside Studio6, a web3 venture studio. The project: a Layer 1 blockchain built for the creators and builders defining what comes next online. Brand, narrative, product, and community, all forged at the founding layer.
- Founding & Incubation
- Creative Direction
- Brand Identity
- Systems Design
- Web Design
- Product Design
- 3D Design
- Industrial Design
- Product Management
I worked alongside Neal Stephenson, the writer who coined the term "metaverse" in Snow Crash, and helped shape Lamina1 into a framework for the builders and creators defining what the open metaverse becomes. Founding-team work, done shoulder to shoulder.
As Lamina1 took shape, I led the formation of the brand identity. Discovery sessions with stakeholders, investor presentations, and the initial design system that powered every early material. The work was about giving Lamina1 a coherent voice from day one, before the rest of the world had language for what we were building.
Lamina1's debut landed at Consensus 2022, hosted by CoinDesk's Michael Casey. I stood on stage with the founding team for the first public unveiling, in front of the audience that would help shape the next decade of web3.
Consensus opened the door for business development. Alongside the Studio6 team, Gordon Mattey, and Margo Spiritus, I held conversations with industry leaders about investment, partnerships, and integrations. I also designed the event assets that gave attendees a lasting first impression. Many of those conversations became foundational to Lamina1's fundraising trajectory.
Lamina1's next chapter brought Rebecca Barkin on board as CEO, drawing on her work leading product at Madison Square Garden Sphere and Magic Leap. I worked closely with her on the whitepaper, contributing to and refining it alongside the team. From there, I went deep into breakout sessions with Neal Stephenson and metaverse pioneer Tony Parisi, co-creator of VRML, X3D, and glTF. The kind of working room you only get a handful of in a career, and the work I brought into it shaped what Lamina1 would offer and the role it could play in the open metaverse to come.
Partnering with Lamina1's Director of Content Strategy, Casey Halter, I built out the Lamina1 Discord into a hub for the open metaverse community. Channels, user personas, incentivized activities, all designed to give early members a real reason to show up. In less than a year, the Discord crossed 40,000 active members.
As my time incubating Lamina1 wound down and I shifted back to other emerging projects at the venture studio, I handed the work off to Rebecca and the next wave of the team. Santos Dilone and the creative crew that followed carried the aesthetic vision forward, evolving the system I'd helped seed into a phase 2 brand that matched the scale of what Lamina1 was becoming.
As I prepared to transition back to the venture studio, Neal offered a kind token of appreciation: a signed first edition of Snow Crash, with a note inside. Lamina1 was a chance to help shape one of the most ambitious infrastructure plays in web3, alongside some of the people who literally invented the language we use to talk about the metaverse. I worked across every layer the project asked for, helping make a vision that doesn't yet exist legible to everyone who'd need to build with it. Founding work, at the layer beneath the layer.