According to Gartner, in about 5 years about 2 billion people across the globe will actively spend time in the #metaverse.
Metaverse would offer them unique experiences to shop, learn, work, get entertained, and probably in many more ways that we can’t even comprehend today.
* A digital identity will be an important aspect of “trusted” interaction in the metaverse and will become a non-negotiable part of the value chain at some point.
* Decentralised identity(DI), is being seen as the “standard” to solve for this part of the value chain.
* With support from the W3C (an international organisation that creates standards for the World Wide Web), its applications are becoming relevant.
* Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin proposed Soluboud tokens, which would include elements of DI and will be a non transferable NFT.
* A soulbound token, also referred to as a “Self Sovereign Identity”, will have 3 key aspects. 1) Blockchain based storage, 2) Verifiable credentials 3) Decentralised identifiers (DID).
* Assume a scenario with a person, say “John”. John will be able to get a digital identifier issued by an “Issuer” organisation like governments, universities etc. John will also be able to collect multiple identifiers.
John the “Holder”, can then use these identifiers to verify their identity with “Verifiers” organisations/individuals who would want to verify the identity as part of some sort of interaction.
I believe digital identity needs a lot more work if metaverse and the ecosystem being built around it has any chance of going mainstream.
It absolutely has to be positioned as part of the journey of people who do not know or consider it important for them today.