Protecting privacy and security through zero-knowledge proofs is key to avoiding a dystopian metaverse

*Author: Bijan Shahrokhi - * O(1) Labs* Product Lead, * Contributor to the Mina Protocol*

Metaverse - The Digital Future is Here

While all discussions about the metaverse focus on the future, it is safe to say that we are already living in a world where there is no distinction between "reality" and the digital realm. From the birth of the first online chat room in the 1980s to the internet boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s, business, communication, and entertainment have been moving towards digitization. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated our current permanent digital lives.

The concept of the metaverse takes this push towards digital reality to the next level of interoperability and expansion, creating new economies, communities, and even nations, all with new opportunities to build, trade, learn, and create. The metaverse will end the current fragmentation of the web—our identities and interactions isolated on different platforms. Just as in the real world, where we can walk from our home to the local grocery store or pack our bags to fly to the other side of the world, the ideal of the metaverse is to achieve the same seamless interaction in the digital realm.

Potential Dystopian Futures

With Facebook rebranding to Meta, and companies like Epic, Roblox, Microsoft, and others establishing themselves as leaders in the metaverse, it is evident that large tech companies are actively trying to capture market share in this emerging field. However, given their prioritization of profit growth over user privacy protection, and their mixed track record in addressing mishaps, large tech companies in the metaverse are attempting to maintain control over our communications and connections. Many wonder whether the metaverse in the hands of large tech companies, which have a history of setting constraints to protect their control, will lead us into a surveillance-based dystopian digital future.

Just as travel, business, and civic life in the real world require managed rules, we also need rules in the virtual world. For example, you need a passport, and sometimes a visa, to travel abroad. These are forms of identification that prove you are who you say you are. In the real world, governments are the arbiters of truth. In the current iteration of the web, tech giants are the arbiters of truth. We provide data about our identities to be verified and to use their platforms. However, things are not as rosy as we might imagine. The recently released Facebook Files highlighted these issues, and Amazon has also failed to uphold its promise to keep our data secure. In the vast, untamed realm of the metaverse, tech giants and gaming platforms are racing to become arbiters— we have all seen how rule-makers change the rules according to their interests.

Despite this, I want to prove that there is hope for alternative solutions—a digital universe that can facilitate genuine connections between people and provide us with a foundation of truth to address some of the greatest challenges of our time, such as COVID-19 and climate change. However, the key factor that could make a more positive future possible has disappeared from the catalogs of large tech companies—privacy.

Protecting Privacy in the Metaverse through Zero-Knowledge Proofs

I believe in a world where businesses do not dictate our daily lives and do not act as arbiters of our personal information. The technology to achieve such a world already exists: blockchain enables the decentralization of governance and data ownership. Just like physical laws, the rules in blockchain are objective and cannot be misused, unlike the subjective rules imposed by tech giants to meet their needs. However, if people, rather than corporations, are to establish the rules of the metaverse, we need a secure and private way for users to prove their identities. This is where zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) come into play.

You can think of zero-knowledge proofs as a proof-based verification system that relies on cryptography to demonstrate "this is a fact about me" without revealing sensitive information. For example, suppose you need to possess certain superpowers to enter a specific area in the metaverse (a world, a game, a group, an event), but you do not want to disclose any information about your physical identity to anyone or any company, which could lead to the misuse of sensitive information. In that case, zero-knowledge proofs will allow users to prove they have the rights or superpowers needed to enter the area without sharing any personal identity information. For instance, you could join a group, event, or digital location by proving you have the necessary credentials while keeping your identity and actual credentials private, eliminating any subjectivity between you and your own perspective. You are proving the truth of a fact without revealing the fact itself.

We hope to apply the identity and personal information needed to facilitate visual healthcare, social networking, financial inclusion, entertainment, education, and many other industries facing disruption in the metaverse to the same proof-based verification process, creating one or more healthy societies in the metaverse based on non-abusable rules and regulations.

The Stakes are High

The fact is, to unlock the potential of the metaverse, we need to eliminate concerns about anyone or anything exploiting private data. The nightmare of a harmful digital world already exists. Under the domineering control of Meta and other large tech companies, our operations occur within a surveillance economy, where every aspect of our lives is converted into data and sold to the highest bidder. From a relatively mild perspective, this data may simply be used to sell us products; however, it could also be used to manipulate, perpetuate hate crimes, discriminate, suppress freedom and equality, and other ills.

The Aspen Institute's Commission on Information Disorder recently released a report investigating the causes and solutions for the spread of misinformation and disinformation. This is a highly detrimental characteristic of the surveillance economy. The report emphasizes that misinformation and disinformation have become matters of life and death. For example, distrust in government, science, news media, and other institutions has led to a significant misunderstanding of COVID-19 risks, resulting in severe hospitalizations and deaths.

The commission also refuted the notion that the best way to address the spread of misinformation is to help people access accurate information better. However, the dissemination of accurate information is simply insufficient to address the crux of the problem: an incentive system that permanently disorganizes information. The report includes recommendations on how to tackle this societal issue, including focusing on public interest research, content moderation and disclosure, advertising transparency, and establishing accountability norms and promoting orderly digital discourse. While these recommendations are commendable, what we truly need is to take concrete actions to build the infrastructure for a well-ordered and secure metaverse—zero-knowledge proofs are the only way to solve this problem.