🔎Market Opportunity

DISCLAIMER: THIS RESEARCH WAS CONDUCTED BY WEB3 STUDIOS.

The metaverse hype comes with an intrinsic paradox – everybody is excited about it, but nobody can clearly define what it actually is.

The key insight for us is that the digital identity market is still in its infancy - but will grow exponentially over the next years.

It has been forecasted that the digital identity space may generate more than $600bn by 2030.

Ready Player One - Visual example of avatars

In the expression of one’s digital identity in virtual space, avatars play an important role today. While many companies focus on the virtual representation of one's real-world features with human-like avatars, other innovators are moving towards borderless avatars that open up creative freedom to enable new perspectives on self-expression, diversity, and interaction possibilities.

Besides working on the visual expression side, many smart minds are trying to solve the trust gap in digital identities. For this, the concept of cryptographic credentials seems to offer the first promising practical concept to combine safety, security, and privacy controls.

We should get comfortable with our perception of the metaverse evolving over the course of the next years. Not only because it is cumbersome to come up with new definitions while the space is evolving so rapidly, but even more to eliminate the mental constraints these definitions put on our imagination. At the end – who would have imagined what the internet could be 10 years ago?

The more our lives shift into the digital realm, the more important it becomes to find answers to some of the core questions of digital identity:

1. Why do we need avatars?

2. What should our digital identities look like in the future and why?

3. What is the size of the market?

"The Avatar is your entry point into the Metaverse; it allows you to engage in immersive experiences with new social interactions. Web3 technology lets you own your Avatar - not the platform it was created on - and use it across decentralized virtual worlds like The Sandbox. Come as you are and play with Avatars from your favorite projects or community, each being unique & interoperable as NFTs. In the future, Avatars will become our new digital identity, meaning you'll also build our reputation online and carry your wearables and equipment but also your achievements and your progress across the Metaverse." - Sebastien Borget, COO & Co-Founder of The Sandbox