Our Metaverse ID

Identity in the metaverse is a murky topic with ambiguous descriptions scattered across platforms. While on one spectrum we have people who stand for complete anonymity and pseudonymous existence, the other spectrum is talking about centralized vaults of personal information that can be used to verify identities in the metaverse.?

As citizens of the metaverse, what would you choose? The most common answer that I have heard from people is to be somewhere in the middle, a world that is not entirely anonymous nor centralized—is the way to go.?

Before I discuss what I believe in, let me break down the concept of identity in the metaverse.?

What is your metaverse identity?

Identity in the physical world has been an issue of grave significance for centuries. The current version of the passport can be traced back to the 16th century when the British Empire started issuing them.?

Besides passports, every country in the world has some form of domestic identification document proving a person's identity. But in the digital world, it has never been an issue. Since every ecosystem runs its own identification and verification program and with almost zero interoperations with other ecosystems (like Windows and Mac), the need to create universal identities has never come up.?

Your Mac/iOS ids are different from your Instagram account, you use different names in Discord and WhatsApp, and your Call of Duty profile is entirely different from the other platforms as well.?

But what if they were all connected in a way??

Big tech giants like Google and Facebook give you the option (SSO) to use their database to log in to some other platforms, you have surely seen the “Log in with Facebook/Google option” on certain platforms. But it’s limited to the platforms that are willing to give access to Facebook and Google.

That’s where the idea of a universal identification system comes to mind that can operate in any ecosystem without exploiting or divulging any private information.

Obviously, this might not be a priority right now, because the use case of such a system is very slim given the current utility of the metaverse is mostly restricted to games. But as soon as services like education hubs, businesses, government operations, social media/networking platforms, and entertainment hubs move to the metaverse, universal identification systems will start coming into the scene.?

What does your metaverse identity look like?

A mature future-back vision is every individual will be able to move seamlessly across any experience (platform, chain, and protocol) while carrying their own “belongings”: what you did, like, bought, said … and own.?

But to get there we need to reflect upon what information your physical identity proofs cover? In general name, country, and residence are the three primary data taken into consideration. Depending on that, your job, marriage, assets, debts, etc. are verified.

A metaverse identity will cover similar information but thanks to the interoperable nature of the metaverse you won’t need a hundred different IDs to get things done, one ID will be enough. And that will cover your wallet address(es), assets, tokens, communications, preferences, selections, access privileges, places, people, and things.?

An example will be—say you want to attend a students-only college event organized in the metaverse by your college. Normally you would need your college id, but thanks to your metaverse ID, it’ll automatically detect you as a student of that college. You can use that same ID to get into the library or a movie theater. The same Id can be used in gaming environments to locate all your assets and achievements, and thanks to interoperable games, you can bring your stuff from other games as well.

I call it your digital backpack where everything that you own or is attached to you comes with you from one platform to another, in short, that’s your digital.me.

How far is the technology to support it?

A system that is strong enough to organize every data point of a digital being and still manage to keep it decentralized and fragmented between hundreds of platforms and services is still a faraway dream. Since an ideal fully-functioning metaverse is still at least a decade away, it’s fair to predict that the identification system will follow the metaverse.

However, that doesn’t mean there is no work going on to create a similar model. IDunion is an organization that is working on a system named Self-sovereign identity (SSI) to “create an open ecosystem for decentralized identity management, which can be used worldwide.”

This is a program initiated by the German Federal Ministry of Economics to strengthen the digital identity sector in order to include web3 and blockchain technology in the core governmental system.?

SSI approaches the common challenges of the digital world by enabling users to choose one or several wallets, which are used for storing and presenting credentials to third parties as required. Hopefully, we will find some sort of solution in SSI that will pave the path for a more organized and orderly metaverse.

Future implications of metaverse identity

In one of my articles, the problems in the metaverse, I mentioned one of the problems being law and order. Just in the past few months, we have seen a flurry of incidents reporting sexual violence in the metaverse, and that’s just the tip of it. Every day reports of rug pull, NFT scams, DeFi liquidity pool hacks, and compromised bridges have become a common phenomenon.?

And we’re still relying on the traditional law system to take action against the perpetrators, while in reality there are no appropriate rules against such conduct because web3 is a fairly new concept. And when the governments across the world come up with new laws and regulations, they won’t be effective enough due to the decentralized nature of the web3 world.

That means we need actual enforceable laws in the metaverse that will be recognized universally and will be indifferent to physical boundaries and jurisdiction. And to do so, we need to identify the accused people first before we convict them.

This is just one future implication of an identification and verification system. There are tons of other changes, but those are subjects for another article.?

If you liked the article, share it with other fellow metaverse enthusiasts, check out more of my articles here, and have a good day!

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