On Thursday (December 16), COINBASE Co-Founder and CEO Brian Armstrong CEO and Alex Reeve, Identity Product Lead at Coinbase, shared crypto company’s latest thoughts about the metaverse.
blog post published yesterday, they started by explaining that Coinbase’s thinking about the Metaverse has been “heavily influenced by venture capitalist and writer Matthew Ball”, who defines the term “metaverse” as follows:
“The future of the internet: A massively-scaled, persistent, interactive, and interoperable real-time platform comprised of interconnected virtual worlds where people can socialize, work, transact, play, and create.“
They then went on to say:
“The earliest version of the internet, Web1, was about accessing static web pages. Web2 is about interactive, social experiences within closed ecosystems. And Web3 will be about digital ownership within an open, decentralized environment.
“The Metaverse is the distant evolution of Web3. In its most complete form, it will be a series of decentralized, interconnected virtual worlds with a fully functioning economy where people can do just about anything they can do in the physical world.“
Coinbase believes there will be many interconnected metaverses and we will need blockchain technology to “transfer identity and ownership across virtual worlds, attestation to verify them, and payment rails that allow people buy, sell, and earn income within a decentralized economy.”
Next they moved to the very important topic of identity:
“Identity determines who you are, what you can access and do, and how you’re represented across the worlds of the Metaverse.
“In the Metaverse, our identities will have to include an easy login, a unique ID, an avatar that represents us, metadata that follows us, and attestation so we can prove who we are.“
What Coinbase wants to do is “to help pull all the pieces of identity together — essentially creating an identity on-ramp into the Metaverse.”
So, here’s what they are currently working on:
“That’s the idea behind our work with ENS, which makes it possible to create a unique username NFT that resolves to a wallet. Eventually, this will allow users to carry a unique ID across different worlds in the Metaverse.
“We’re also working on technology that will allow you to purchase your avatar, define and maintain your public profile, and establish trust. And we’re working on features like Sign in with [Eth/Coinbase], which could allow users to sign into every app in the Metaverse.“
