Liquid Avatar subsidiary wins metaverse exclusive

Linking one’s real life identity to a virtual world identity is proceeding at pace as Oasis Digital Studios, a wholly owned subsidiary of digital identity and blockchain developers Liquid Avatar Technologies, has signed an agreement to be the exclusive agency for the sale of virtual land and items in Aftermath Islands, a metaverse currently under development ahead of launch in mid 2022. Facebook has also announced plans to hire 10,000 personnel in the EU to work on its metaverse capabilities. Liquid Avatar is developing the technology to let a person use the same avatar in multiple proprietary metaverses, pinned to their digital identity on Earth.

Digital identity could be even more important in the metaverse, and even use biometrics. See our introduction to the metaverse and biometrics.

Aftermath Islands are a string of virtual islands which form locations for first-person augmented and virtual reality experiences, concerts and shopping. The deal will see Oasis take up to 30 percent of the revenue from all sales such as virtual land as well as receiving a portion of land and taking property management fees. Sales will all be conducted through NFTs, a specialization of Oasis.

Islands will be themed and there is already interest in creating stock exchange and even decentralized finance (DeFi) islands.

Despite the hype and fall of Second Life, the improvement in technology and 5G are leading to fresh predictions of a huge take up of the metaverse, where virtual land and product sales – still with a focus on clothing on avatars – could see the sector reaching almost US$800 billion as soon as 2024, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

“It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever done because there’s the opportunity to touch up to five billion people,” said Liquid Avatar CEO David Lucatch, speaking to Agoracom founder, George Tsiolis in a video interview, “Digital identity is addressable to everyone around the world and if digital identity is addressable to everyone around the world, it follows that avatars are addressable to everyone around the world. And if avatars are addressable to everyone in the world, the metaverse is addressable to everyone in the world.”

Liquid Avatar Technologies hopes to tie a user’s avatar(s) to their real-world identity through an app which will also handle payments. The firm creates blockchain-based digital identity products and created the Oasis subsidiary to sell products that “were not digital identity but yet connected your digital persona – who you are in the real world – to who you are in the virtual world,” says Lucatch.

The CEO believes the travel and ecommerce elements will appeal to all ages, as will the fact that one’s presence belongs to oneself, not a social media company.

“None of this stuff is a fad – it’s real. Facebook has just announced that they’re going to spend $50 million,” said Lucatch, referring to a global fund for responsible development for the metaverse, “That’s just a drop in the bucket. Facebook will invest substantially more.”

Facebook to take on ten thousand staff to pursue metaverse

Facebook is focusing on the positive plans it has for creating the metaverse after its recent whistleblower issues. The latest part of the plan is to hire ten thousand staff in the EU over the next five years to work on building the computing platform for its idea of the metaverse.

“This investment is a vote of confidence in the strength of the European tech industry and the potential of European tech talent,” said the company release, explaining why Europe “Beyond emerging tech talent, the EU also has an important role to play in shaping the new rules of the internet. European policymakers are leading the way in helping to embed European values like free expression, privacy, transparency and the rights of individuals into the day-to-day workings of the internet.”

The Verge is also reporting that Facebook could rebrand at or even before its 28 October annual Connect conference. This would be to reflect its interest in the metaverse, or create distance from the social media network with an umbrella organization.

Article Topics

AI  |  biometric payments  |  biometrics  |  digital identity  |  ecommerce  |  Facebook  |  identity verification  |  Liquid Avatar  |  metaverse  |  metaverse biometrics  |  NFT  |  secure transactions  |  tokenization