One of life’s most fundamental questions is this: “who am I?” Your identity is what makes you, well, YOU! We spend a huge chunk of our lives in search of who we are and trying out different identities for something that feels right. And it’s not just important to you. For any society to function properly, there needs to be a secure and robust identity system.
This is already a crucial challenge in the physical world. When you take into consideration the fact that the Metaverse is close at hand, one would also need to think about how identity would work in a completely virtual world. What works on an NFT gaming marketplace, for instance, may not work on social media. With several variables in play, digital identity should become a more widely discussed topic.
Dissecting Digital Identity
Fraud and identity theft already abound in the cyberspace. With the level of interconnectedness that the Metaverse will bring, safeguarding one’s identity becomes more important than ever. There could be a centralized system of managing identity. This would enable one global identity that can be tracked and monitored. However, this has the potential to be an invasion of privacy, along with it being vulnerable to data breaches. Another solution is to have multiple identities. But this again has its drawbacks and makes trust difficult in the Metaverse. The last option seems to be the most viable: a decentralized system of identity. However, technical challenges still appear.
Closing Thoughts
Perhaps the ideal system of digital identity management would be one that combines the three approaches. With the blockchain already slated to be the foundation of digital identity, bringing almost unquestionable security to the table, digital identity could be the next hot topic in the tech world. So here’s hoping that soon, we will have an uncompromisable digital identity in the Metaverse!
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