Analysis of MetaVisa: A Metaverse Personal Identity System More Important than Avatars

Author: Sleepy

In recent months, the most talked-about topic has been NFT avatars. From the wealth effect that can multiply by hundreds of times to people gradually discovering their more valuable aspect as "social capital." Further extending from "social capital," people believe that in the metaverse, this avatar will represent their identity.

Indeed, an avatar can be deeply tied to a person's identity, with the most well-known being the holders of CryptoPunks, some of whom even change their Twitter accounts to the number of their CryptoPunk.

What are the benefits of using NFTs as avatars? First, holders of the same NFT series will naturally form a community, and the avatar will deepen the cohesion of this community; second, as more people use this series, it gradually becomes a brand, and the brand value will benefit the holders; third, avatar NFTs can also be traded on the secondary market. In fact, each avatar does not have a deep binding relationship with its holder, and the so-called deep binding relies on the holder's own willingness, so holders can also choose to sell this "symbol of identity" at a high price, which attracts many people to purchase NFT avatars.

However, precisely because avatars do not have a direct deep binding relationship with their holders, the tradability of avatar NFTs makes people's "identity" in the metaverse become blurred. Since the metaverse is the next stage of the internet, a "virtual world" for people's future lives, identity becomes incredibly important. You might consider an avatar as a symbol of "identity," but it cannot fully represent your identity.

So, are there any projects that can solve the identity problem in the metaverse?

MetaVisa Project Introduction

Before understanding MetaVisa, let's first discuss why an identity is needed in the metaverse and what "identity" really means.

"Identity" refers to a person's background, status, and qualifications, which have always been somewhat elusive in the real world. In the real world, all past records rely on centralized institutions or subjective judgments. A simple example is that your mastery of a certain skill is reflected by other users "liking" you on LinkedIn.

This leads to the existence of a large amount of false and ineffective information. For a person's identity, you must unconditionally trust that the centralized platform has made objective and detailed records.

Blockchain technology brings us decentralization; in the crypto world, we no longer need to "trust" this behavior because a person's every move is clearly recorded on the blockchain. Thus, your identity can be "proven," as only decentralized proof is meaningful. Now you can understand why an avatar cannot fully represent your identity, right? Because "identity" is a "proof of your past experiences," and Proof of Experience is very important and meaningful in the metaverse.

Why do we need to prove our experiences?

Setting aside the philosophical question of "who am I," the tangible benefits this proof can bring us are various airdrops. In the crypto world, we have seen too many airdrops, from DeFi projects like Uni and dYdX to NFT projects like RARI and RARE. One of the main reasons people like these airdrops is that they receive tangible rewards.

These airdrops are essentially rewards for users, based on the user's historical records on the chain, such as whether they have interacted with a certain project, etc., which reflects the function and importance of Proof of Experience.

Furthermore, beyond being used to obtain various rewards, this proof will have more profound applications. MetaVisa proposes a brand new concept for the metaverse identity system: MID, which stands for "Metaverse + Identity." In MetaVisa's view, there is currently no perfect solution to the identity and credit issues in the blockchain and metaverse fields, and this is precisely the significance of MetaVisa's birth.

MetaVisa will establish an on-chain identity + on-chain credit profile for each user by analyzing data such as on-chain behavior of addresses, without infringing on user privacy or extracting and using personal sensitive information. Through MetaVisa's oracle, this will be applied to various DeFi, NFT, gaming, DAO, and other DApps.

MetaVisa will comprehensively evaluate addresses based on multiple dimensions such as credit history, on-chain behavioral preferences, address activity, asset holdings, and address relevance, and based on the results, grant users different levels of NFT badges. Users will have different privileges in various projects based on the badges they hold. This also provides project parties with a precise marketing approach, allowing them to directly target their desired users for targeted promotions or rewards, the most common example being the aforementioned airdrops.

MetaVisa's Applications in the Metaverse

The metaverse is the main battlefield of our future lives, but in the crypto world, everyone is anonymous, and the only thing visible to everyone is the wallet address, which will inevitably make our living environment in the metaverse more chaotic. The social attributes essential to the metaverse also require us to clearly understand each other's identities.

MetaVisa's identity and credit system can help various metaverse platforms analyze users and classify them into levels based on the analysis results, thereby providing different services for users at each level, such as helping users match for social interactions based on analysis results, or providing exclusive activity venues for specific levels of users in the metaverse.

In the on-chain metaverse, various project parties can also use MetaVisa to classify users into different levels, providing different services for users at each level. Through the identity and credit system, finance and the metaverse can achieve a more perfect integration. At that time, we will be able to conduct operations such as collateralized lending without stepping out of the virtual world. When the metaverse has a complete financial system, it will present more diverse possibilities.

MetaVisa's Applications in DeFi

MetaVisa can also perfectly combine DeFi with the metaverse. One of the important factors that distinguish the metaverse from simulation life games is finance. With a financial system, all assets in the metaverse have value, and assets in the metaverse can be priced and traded without relying on the financial system of the real world. Such a metaverse will become a true virtual "world."

Through MetaVisa, we can conduct operations such as collateralized lending without stepping out of the virtual world. When we take out loans on decentralized lending platforms, the platform usually requires us to add collateral equal to or greater than the loan amount to ensure that we will repay the loan. However, with the support of MetaVisa's identity and credit system, we can also perform over-collateralized loans on-chain, which was previously impossible.

MetaVisa's Applications in Communities

The identity and credit system is also very compatible with the "community," which is highly valued in the crypto world. Starting from the need for "social" interaction, communities require closer relationships among members to strengthen the community's cohesion, which further enables the birth of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).

Closer relationships rely on community members knowing "who you are," needing to understand each other's true identities and past experiences, not just a string of characters that make up a wallet address and an NFT avatar. For the question of "who you are," previous solutions included decentralized KYC projects like Humanity Dao and BrightID, which required video verification to prove that a user is a "real person," not a robot or a scammer. Additionally, communities can directly classify users into membership levels based on MetaVisa's identity and credit system, facilitating the establishment of membership systems and issuing different benefits based on different levels to incentivize users and increase community member retention.

For DAOs, MetaVisa's identity and credit system will elevate community governance to a new level. Simply put, through the identity and credit system, users will have different weights, which is a significant innovation. Current governance mostly determines weight based on the amount of a certain token held, which inevitably makes whales the "center" of this "decentralized organization." MetaVisa can perfectly solve this problem.

Roadmap

The MetaVisa Protocol V1 testnet is planned to officially launch on the Ethereum network in the fourth quarter of 2021, with data integration and algorithm model construction, and is set to go live on the mainnet in the first quarter of 2022, integrating with Ethereum Layer 2 networks and collaborating with some DeFi applications and NFT projects. By the second quarter of 2022, the MetaVisa Protocol will launch MetaVisa DAO and will also support public chains such as Solana, BSC, Heco, and Polkadot, deploying the V2 version testnet. In the third quarter of 2022, the MetaVisa Protocol V2 version will officially launch on the mainnet, and the oracle engine for the identity and credit system will be introduced.

The metaverse carries our infinite expectations for the future, and we all dream of the rich possibilities of life in this virtual world. However, infinite possibilities often mean disorder and risk, and metaverse identity will become a powerful tool for maintaining the safe and orderly development of the metaverse, making this virtual world a part of our real lives.