At Meta Connect 2025, the company unveiled its Ray-Ban Meta Display smart glasses and a Neural Band wristband that reads subtle muscle signals to control digital devices with a flick of your fingers. Paired with new AR developer tools, Meta is betting big on hands-free computing, immersive overlays, and seamless interactions.
It’s being marketed as an everyday consumer product. But for Web3 communities who already live at the intersection of online and offline, these tools could make IRL meetups, hackathons, and DAO conferences radically different.
“Glasses aren’t just for seeing. They’re for sharing. In Web3, that means proof, presence, and participation.”
Web3 events are unique:
Communities are global, but gatherings are local. Most contributors know each other through Discord, X, or Telegram. IRL meetups are rare but high-impact.
Proof of attendance matters. From POAPs (Proof of Attendance Protocol tokens) to NFT ticketing, showing who was there is part of the culture.
Engagement is hybrid. A conference session might have 100 people in a room—but 10,000 online watching in Discord or via livestream.
The glasses + Neural Band combo offers new ways to merge those layers.
Forget QR codes. Glasses could display a live AR “proof of attendance” badge, scanned instantly by others. The Neural Band could confirm the claim with a gesture. Attendees walk away with an on-chain token—frictionless.
Imagine sitting in a DAO town hall. Through AR glasses, proposals, votes, and treasury balances appear in real time over the stage. Want to vote? A quick finger pinch on the Neural Band casts your token vote, recorded on-chain.
In IRL events, identity is tricky—people go by handles, not names. Smart glasses could overlay wallet-linked IDs, NFT PFPs, or DAO roles above each person. Networking goes from awkward to instant: “Oh, you’re @DogMetaX!”
Of course, this comes with challenges:
Privacy: Do you want your wallet ID hovering above your head in a bar? Communities need opt-in layers.
Surveillance creep: Big Tech building the hardware means Big Tech controlling the data. Can Web3 design privacy-preserving AR apps?
Digital divide: Glasses won’t be cheap. Will this tech empower DAOs—or just crypto whales at conferences?
Meta may not care about DAOs, POAPs, or NFT-gated raves. But Web3 builders should. Every hardware leap is an opportunity to bring on-chain culture into the real world.
If AR glasses and Neural Bands catch on, the communities that experiment first will set the tone: frictionless proof of attendance, immersive governance, seamless networking.
“In Web3, IRL isn’t the opposite of digital. It’s where digital becomes real.”
Would you wear AR glasses at your next DAO meetup? Should communities embrace or resist Big Tech’s hardware in their events?
Drop your thoughts in the comments—and if you’re building AR x Web3 tools, let’s connect.
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