The Coinbase exchange platform is said to have big plans for its integration into the metaverse. Its CEO has indeed confirmed that an identity service is in development that will allow to connect to multiple services. What’s behind this huge ambition?
Coinbase plans to enter the metaverse
Coinbase explains in a blog post yesterday what it considers to be part of the metaverse, and its interest. The platform sees the field as an evolution of the Web3:
“In its fullest form, it will be a series of decentralized, interconnected virtual worlds with a fully functional economy, where participants can do pretty much anything they can already do in the physical world.”
Coinbase points out that the metaverse is already brewing millions of dollars in digital plots of land on virtual worlds, and billions are currently being invested in startups in the sector. Not forgetting of course Facebook, which has renamed itself Meta in order to tackle this vast field of applications. Suffice to say that the field is booming.
An identity service for Coinbase
Coinbase clarifies at the end of the article how it intends not to miss the metaverse train. This will go a priori through an identity solution, in order to create “an access path to the metaverse”.
The company is working on a technology that will allow people to buy an avatar – similar to the NFT profiles that are currently in full swing. But also to define and maintain a public profile and “build trust”. It should also be possible to register and connect to metaverses with .eth domain names or a Coinbase account.
Indeed, the company intends to rely on the services offered by Ethereum Name Service, which allow to have a wallet address that also acts as a domain name, in the form of NFT.
Coinbase, a social network for the metaverse?
A Coinbase account linked to an identity service, a digital wallet and avatars available on online socialization tools… It all sounds fiercely reminiscent of a social network adapted to the crypto sauce.
Although Coinbase’s announcement about the metaverse is only a paragraph long, it is very revealing of the brand’s ambition. If the company succeeds in bringing all this together, it could indeed become sprawling.
We’ll leave it to the reader to interpret this freely: is this another adoption vector for blockchain technologies, or are we witnessing the birth of another surveillance tool? The debate is on.
