VRChat
VRChat is a social virtual world in which almost everything — avatars, worlds, behaviours — is made by its users. It has among the longest average session times of any platform in the category and almost no formal economy, which makes it the strongest evidence that presence and commerce are separable.
What it demonstrates
People spend hours there daily with no land, no tokens and little to buy. Whatever drove the 2021 thesis, it was not that virtual presence requires an ownership layer. Presence came first and has persisted through the entire collapse of everything built around it.
The commercial question it poses
If the most-inhabited social worlds have the least developed economies, the binding constraint on in-world commerce may be cultural rather than technical — a question of what a population will tolerate being sold, not of what a platform can support.
Position disclosed: Metaverse Group holds no position in VRChat.
Disclosed on every page in the estate that discusses this world, generated from one source so it cannot go stale.
See also
Related entries in the Register. Every see-also is reciprocal — if this entry points there, that entry points back.
Metaverse Group, The Register, REG-016 “VRChat”, as at 2026-08-28. https://metaversegroup.com/encyclopedia/vrchat/
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