Users of the Metaverse can start over with a digital identity made up of avatars and digital assets, but there are some problems to think about.
The word “Metaverse” has become one of the most popular buzzwords of the year as more brands, companies, and even countries look into doing business in virtual worlds.
Even though the development of the Metaverse is still going on, a recent report from the technology research and advisory firm Technavio says that by the year 2026, the Metaverse will have a market share worth $50.37 billion.
Another report says that e-commerce, which is expected to reach a market share of $60.47 billion by the year 2026, will drive the growth of the Metaverse.
In the coming years, e-commerce on social media platforms is also likely to grow, which could mean that the Metaverse will become the next generation of social networking.
Because of this, it shouldn’t be a surprise that some Millennials and Gen Zers are interested in the Metaverse right now.
The Metaverse depends on digital identity.
Findings from the Metaverse platform Virtua’s “Digital Ownership Report 2022” show that younger people are especially interested in the idea that they can change who they are in virtual worlds that let them create digital identities and ownership.
For example, the report found that 63 percent of American millennials think the Metaverse will help them change who they are, while 70 percent of Americans surveyed agreed that digital items like clothing and artwork are already an important part of who they are.
Jawad Ashraf, CEO, and co-founder of Virtua reported that one of the best things about the Metaverse is that people can change who they are:
“Many people today have reinvented themselves on social media, as they are projecting an image that is still personable and interactive. The Metaverse allows users to express themselves through an avatar, allowing each person to be themselves without the fear of face-to-face interaction.”
Ashraf says that people will be able to say what they want in the Metaverse much more freely than on Web2 social media sites like TikTok and Instagram. He thinks this is the case because users will be able to make avatars that look like them and use digital assets that they already own.
He also said that everything in Virtua’s metaverse can be changed, so users can make their own avatars that show their “digital identities.”
Janice Denegri-Knott, a professor of consumer culture and behavior at Bournemouth University and one of the researchers behind Virtua’s digital ownership report, reports that digital identity in the Metaverse does not yet have an official definition.
But she thinks that if you think about digital identity in a practical way, you can describe it as “the unique, recognizable information that is linked to a person when they are online.” So, in this case, the idea of a digital identity goes much further than making an avatar look like oneself. Denegri-Knott elaborated:
“The Metaverse with its blockchain infrastructure affords users the potential to assume greater ownership rights over their own data, giving them more control over the information they share with others. The beauty of the Metaverse is that a user can have different digital identities, such as a workplace identity, sporting identity and personal identity, while all still being based on the user’s real-world identity.”
Denegri-Knott also said that she thinks it’s a good idea for people to reach out to others online. “It’s helpful to think of your digital identity as connected to your “real” identity rather than as something separate from it.
“This will let us see how our sense of self may be “digitally” expanded in our ability “to do” and “to express ourselves,” she said.
With this in mind, Denegri-Knott said that the digital things that people own in the Metaverse will be a big part of how they grow and show who they are, just like material things help people reach their goals and intentions in the real world.
In Virtua’s report, it was pointed out that 70 percent of consumers think their digital items help create the image of who they want to be. Also, 75% of the people surveyed said they felt an emotional connection to the digital items they owned in the Metaverse.
Chris Chang, co-CEO of ZepetoX, a metaverse project based in Asia, reports that digital assets in the Metaverse show a person’s habits in the same way that real-world objects show a person’s physical space. He said, “A Metaverse is a place where you can explore relationships and identities that are different from the ones you have in the real world.”
This is a very important point because Denegri-Knott went on to say that avatars in the Metaverse can help people reach goals that might not be possible in the real world:
“One of the first cases I reported for Virtua was that of an avid Second Life member who lived in squalor, but who in Second Life led a successful life and lived in a palatial home. In our digital avatars, we can realize the blocked goals in our physical lives and achieve the status that is denied to us.”
The challenges of digital identity are trust and privacy
Digital identity is a big part of what makes the Metaverse interesting, but there are still some security issues with this idea.
Andreas Abraham, who runs Validated ID, a project that works with the European Commission on their blockchain identity initiative, told Cointelegraph that if you want to change who you are, you have to think about your values, activities, and maybe even how you act.
So, he thinks that the Metaverse will give everyone a chance to start over and decide who they are and who they want to be.
But this could cause a lot of problems, like not being able to trust that an avatar is who they say they are. There are ways to deal with these problems, which is good news.
CEO of Cheqd Fraser Edwards reports that self-sovereign identity (SSI) could help. Edwards says that SSI is often called “decentralized identity,” which means that each person owns and has control over their own data.
Edwards pointed out that avatars in the Metaverse are moving data points that can be used to make decentralized reputations. “Avatars in the Metaverse will collect online social proofs,” he said. This means that the way they interact with each other can be used to figure out which ones represent good people (or not) while keeping their anonymity.
In other words, this lets people remain anonymous while building trust: “Even if an anonymous developer only exists in a Metaverse, they could build social proofs through interactions with SSI and, as a result, a reputation.”
Edwards also said that some Metaverses let users make their avatars look like made-up 3D characters, while others use “photo-realistic” avatars.
Union Avatars, a virtual identity Metaverse platform based in Barcelona, uses real-life pictures to represent a user’s avatar in the Metaverse.
CEO of Union Avatars, Cai Felip, reports that a photo-realistic avatar is a 3D virtual representation of a user’s real-world self-based on their actual image: “By using computer vision technology, we’ve made a way to turn a single selfie you take with your webcam or upload to our webapp into a full-body avatar.”
Tina Davis, the chief creative officer at Union Avatars, said that photo-realistic avatars are used in fields where it’s important to look like you do in real life. She said, “These are usually the fields of medicine, business, education, and travel.” Davis, on the other hand, said that the gaming industry is starting to see a wider range of uses for virtual identities as more people start to use them.
Even though the Metaverse is new and interesting, protecting user data becomes an issue there as well. Dawn Song, the founder of Oasis Labs and a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, reports that anonymous-looking metaverse platforms may still be able to collect user data. “For example, in our research, we’ve shown how the Metaverse poses new risks to privacy. “We need new ways to use technology to better protect the privacy of users,” she said. Song said that she helped make a decentralized, anonymous credential system with on-chain verification so that people could prove their identity without giving away their privacy.
“This system can do on-chain verification for the first time in a way that is both practical and private. It can use zk-SNARKs and smart contracts to verify anonymous credentials and let users show “know your customer” certificates without revealing their identities. Song also said that her research group at U.C. Berkeley came up with a new idea called “metaguard” to give users in the Metaverse a way to stay anonymous.
What will happen to digital identity
Even though there are problems, digital identity in the Metaverse will keep getting better. For example, Sebastien Borget, co-founder and chief operating officer of The Sandbox, reports that digital identity in the Metaverse will grow to allow for interoperability with other virtual ecosystems: “Users will want to take more than just the way their avatar looks from one virtual world to the next. They will also want to take with them their online reputation, progress, and accomplishments.”
Borget says that people’s digital identities will keep growing as they spend more time in the Metaverse, whether it’s through games, virtual events, or online workplaces. “Online, users should be able to use all of their information to prove who they are. This will help figure out a person’s true digital identity (or identities, since people can have more than one),” he said. Borget also said that a user’s digital footprint will soon be important in other areas, such as decentralized finance (DeFi):
“Even in DeFi, a crypto exchange can loan you more to buy a land if you prove you actually spend time building and playing in the metaverse. And you don’t want that data to be held in just one virtual world — in the true spirit of Web3, users shouldn’t have to be locked in one walled garden platform to carry out their history and reputation.”
Also, it’s too early to say for sure, but the fact that a user’s digital identity is important may make it less likely that illegal things will happen in the Metaverse.
Song pointed out, for example, that tying a decentralized identity to other parts of life like bank accounts could give the Metaverse a lot more features: “We still need to make sure that people have better privacy and data sovereignty if they want to use the Metaverse in a real way.”
