Gartner predicts that by 2026, 25 percent of people will spend at least one hour a day in the metaverse for work, shopping, education, and entertainment. The global metaverse market is expected to be worth $678 billion in the next seven years and will grow at a CAGR of 39.8 percent during 2022-2030. PwC’s recent report “A Middle East Perspective on the metaverse” highlights the significant potential of the metaverse to energise and transform key sectors in the Gulf Co-operation Council(GCC) countries. According to PwC, the metaverse’s potential contribution to GCC economies is expected to reach USD 15 Billion in the next seven years. By 2030, projected metaverse economic contribution in GCC countries for travel and tourism stands at approximately 3.2 billion, followed by gaming at 2.4 billion and retail and e-commerce at 2.2 billion.
The metaverse not only creates the potential for new opportunities but also paves the way for cybersecurity risks that can result in massive legal and financial losses for enterprises, businesses and brands. We should be mindful of the risks and work towards mitigating them proactively. Cybersecurity and privacy are the top concerns regarding the mainstream adoption of the metaverse.
Identity thefts and misrepresentation in the metaverse
There is a considerable possibility for misrepresentation via avatars, leading to a trust deficit between entities and people in virtual worlds and real-world settings. A decentralised identity platform should be integral to metaverse design to address cybersecurity and cybercrime issues, including virtual identity theft, deep fakes, and data breaches/attacks in the metaverse world.
The metaverse is an online virtual world; designing it with self-sovereignty principles and consent-driven architecture will address the trust deficit problem. In the decentralised identity-powered metaverse, your online persona is always associated with your actual identity, and it can’t be stolen or used without your permission. This system would also allow for better control over our personal data. The user could choose who has access to their information and revoke access at any time, keeping the data safe from hackers and malicious actors.
metaverse provides a unique opportunity for users to mask their online identities through avatars. While this allows users to protect their identity from overexposure and misutilisation, users still need to be authenticated, so there is no misrepresentation and complete lack of authorisation. This is where digital identities step in and play a major role in authenticating the users whenever required by service providers, 3rd party players and also by regulators while maintaining anonymity in general interactions.
Identity and ownership in the metaverse
Let’s look at how the metaverse is structured. The technical building blocks of the metaverse can be broadly grouped into three broad categories: interface, identity and ownership and infrastructure. User Generated Content (UGC) are integral to the concept and design of metaverse. To enable complete ownership of UGC, a self-sovereign native identity construct is necessary to ensure users are empowered to control their identity and data across various metaverses.
Interface: It represents the devices and creator tools that enable application and content creation to interact with the metaverse environment.
Identity and ownership
- Digital identity – platforms that enable reusable and secure identities, including persistent avatars, by leveraging self-sovereign digital identity;
- Digital assets – Web3 wallets for secure ownership of assets, tokens, digital currencies and digital assets.
- Payments – tools for seamless exchange of value in the immersive world.
Infrastructure: The infrastructure level comprises the solutions pertaining to connectivity, security, storage, and computing.
Self-Sovereign identity (SSI) is necessary for enabling frictionless and secure access to users across web 3.0 and metaverse-based ecosystems.
SSI not only enables users in a metaverse gaming environment to make their identities interoperable across virtual worlds but also aids in monetisation and seamless exchange of gaming assets and tokens with gaming participants in a privacy preserving and compliant fashion.
Cybersecurity in the metaverse
In a digital world, your identity is everything. It allows you to access your online accounts, make purchases, and interact with others online. So, it’s no surprise that maintaining control of your identity is a top priority for many people.
But as the internet has evolved, so has the way we manage our identities. There needs to be more than a username and password to access our accounts. We now need more sophisticated authentication methods, such as passwordless authentication and two-factor or biometric verification.
And as we move further into the digital age, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to maintain control of our identities. Every day, we create new accounts on different websites and services, and it’s becoming harder and harder to keep track of them all. Plus, with the rise of social media and other online platforms, our personal data is more exposed than ever before.
Current IAM (Identity and Access Management) and user onboarding systems, built upon centralised architectures, are vulnerable to DDoS(Distributed Denial of Service) attacks, password breaches and phishing attacks. A blockchain-based decentralised identity management platform has no single point of failure and cannot be compromised by DDos attacks and credential thefts. New emerging threat vectors in the metaverse need a blockchain-native, zero-trust approach to enable a secure and user-oriented environment.
Decentralised identity refers to an identification system that doesn’t rely on a central authority to manage user identities. Instead, it uses a distributed network of computers to authenticate users and verify their identities, making it much more difficult for hackers or malicious actors to gain access to user data or impersonate users online.
The metaverse presents a market opportunity of $250 billion to $400 billion in the next two years. Dubai’s metaverse Strategy with a vision to make Dubai a leading metaverse economy will add $4 billion to the economy. Saudi Arabia’s $500 billion city of NEOM has a significant metaverse component. UAE’s metaverse Incubator is expected to bring forth innovative early-stage metaverse and web applications. These initiatives are likely to accelerate the growth of metaverse in the region significantly.
Business leaders and technologists must acknowledge that to harness the full economic potential, it is necessary to create safe and user-friendly digital environments which empower users to engage, interact and transact securely.
