In this new space, a person’s crypto wallet will be the key to their establishing a presence in the metaverse, from serving as an entryway into games to helping them build nonfungible token (NFT) collections to allowing them to do business. Crypto wallets will be connected to everything users already do on the internet and in every online activity yet to come.
All this is not to say that Web2 will become completely or instantaneously obsolete. It won’t fade away, but it will be incorporated into Web3 spaces. Domain ownership, for example, will become backward compatible with ICANN standards, meaning individual owners will attain the same legitimacy as they did in the past by acquiring a domain through ICANN.
Services like PayPal will naturally continue to exist: Those accounts will eventually be connected to a wallet address instead of to an email address. This shift is already happening across mainstream finance platforms and retailers.
Streamlined and accessible
Given the possibilities of crypto wallets, the future of domain purchasing and digital identity will pair a collective-benefit mindset with individual ownership. It will revolutionize the way we identify online. Domain name service (DNS) records, which are used to trace URLs to IP addresses, have thus far been needed for resolvers, but this resolution will occur natively in a fully realized Web3 environment. In a similar way, many of the extra steps needed in Web2 ownership and identification processes will be rendered unnecessary.