There's some work going on at the Metaverse Standards Forum to progress these ideas with Web of Worlds (https://webofworlds.github.io/). It's scope is a lot broader than VRML, it covers assets, identity, avatars, payments, etc.
I know a guy in LA who basically spent every waking minute of his life past year or two building a spec for this. Announced soon apparently. I’ve spent hours reading some of it.
