The role of identity in the future of Metaverse Commerce

Looking forward to a world where Web3 technologies intersect with rapidly evolving virtual reality and augmented reality capabilities, we ask; what is required to unlock commerce in virtual worlds and the emerging open metaverse.

Our face-to-face interactions are now supplemented with social time spent on digital platforms, from Zoom and Airtable to Fortnight, Decentraland and Cryptovoxels. Businesses and shops are opening up in virtual worlds, and Boson Protocol made history this month with the world’s first billboard recruitment campaign in the Metaverse.

Solving the deepfake problem

At a time when deepfakes are becoming more and more realistic and identity-based fraud is rife, it becomes crucially important that we can prove to other people that our digital image, whether that is our own face through the lens of a camera or an avatar, is truly ourselves. If you watch a livestreamed concert, win a seat at a virtual lunch with Mark Cuban or Elon Musk, network with someone at a VR conference or go on a virtual date, you need to know that the individual you are seeing is who you believe it to be.

Concepts of self and identity in the digital world blur our ideas of who we really are, and what being ourselves means in virtual reality. The success of Pixar’s movies from the Eighties and Nineties onwards shows us that people can empathise as readily with a CGI character as with a human (which is why actors are paid millions to voice these roles), and in gameworlds we use avatars to socialise, win battles and buy and sell.

As technology evolves, it is likely that our avatars will become ever more realistic: take a look at Unreal Engine’s Metahuman Creator for a taste of what humans will soon look like in the Metaverse. If we want to retain control over our identity in these new surroundings, this is far too important to be entrusted to games developers or videoconferencing companies.

A new interoperable digital identity

Just as Decentraland, Cryptovoxels, The Sandbox and other blockchain-based games are breaking the mould when it comes to decentralized asset ownership, it is becoming clear that we need some kind of interoperable digital identity, like a passport, that we can use in multiple digital settings to prove who we are.

Crucible Network, with whom Boson Protocol recently partnered for an exciting dCommerce proof of concept, describe the idea of a digital soul: “an ever present, always available companion to your travels in the Open Metaverse. Inside your games, beside you as you visit virtual worlds, go to work in telepresence or browse the web”.

This idea of a blockchain-based, portable and interoperable self-sovereign identity is crucial if we are to avoid handing over ever-increasing volumes of personal data to centralised organisations. For example, in a game or virtual world where there is age-appropriate content that needs to be ring-fenced, Crucible will allow you to prove you are over 18 while keeping your personal information private, while protecting you from identity fraud.

This may not seem as important now, in games where the persona we adopt is largely fictional. However, just as commerce transitioned away from bricks-and-mortar stores during the Web 2.0 evolution, we are gradually starting to see the beginnings of a new dCommerce (decentralized commerce) world emerge, powered by Web3 innovators.

In these new worlds, we will watch models and influencers wearing fashion items, or see high-end accessories displayed in metastores and we will need to know that the person or organisation selling them or wearing them is who they purport to be.

How Direct to Avatar will transform commerce

In further signs that the boundaries between our physical selves and our digital identities are blurring, developers are creating technologies that will allow us to try on clothes in the Metaverse and buy them for our avatar, for our real-life bodies, or for both.

The potential for selling purely digital clothing is one that is being watched closely: Ryan Gill from Crucible uses the expression ‘Direct to Avatar’ or D2A to encapsulate an entirely new business model, whose potential is vast.

“What used to just be a sequence of levels.. has become vast free-to-play open worlds with economies where people spend billions of hours and dollars a month, socially and competitively. It’s where 30 percent of the planet is hanging out. It’s also COVID-proof,” he told Forbes.

As a frictionless business model with no shipping costs, this makes sense. But the likelihood is that while some commerce in the Metaverse may be D2A, many consumers will still want the thrill of owning products in the physical realm.

Auroboros is one of the startups pioneering this trend, with their beautiful designs promising “to merge science and technology with physical haute couture, as well as digital-only ready-to-wear.”

Cryptonative payment systems

If decentralized identity is an important piece of this futuristic jigsaw puzzle, then equally important are cryptonative payment systems and commerce platforms. Boson Protocol’s commitment NFTs use game theory to enable a smooth shopping experience, where both buyer and seller are incentivized to fulfil the transaction as agreed, with minimum arbitration and friction.

Sometimes it is hard to look at Decentraland or Cryptovoxels as they exist today and envisage the hyper-realistic experiences that they will become, just as the earliest netizens browed interfaces that were largely text-based and found it hard to imagine movies being streamed online and the rich interactive Web 2.0 experiences that have become familiar to us today.

But with innovations such as MetaHumans, Crucible’s digital souls and the technology that is being developed to establish a whole new decentralized commerce stack, it is not hard to see how the development of the Metaverse will enable a whole new step in human evolution.

Let’s build an open tokenized economy together.

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