OK. I'm gonna get started. Uh So when I was thinking about the title for this session, I realized that these two terms are considered to be unfamiliar to most of the folks that I speak to.So digital identity and meta versus now the focus of this session is to explore how digital identity credentials enable the creation, exploration and adoption of technology and meta. Versus now, the first point to be made is that there's not one metaverse that exists meta verses are being created all over the world for different purposes. Uh The most well known use case for meta versus is definitely recreational gaming. So you can think about um if you have kids or if you're a gamer yourself, you can think about Roblox Minecraft, et cetera. But beyond this concept of meta versus as spaces for augmented reality, virtual reality and subsequent kind of gaming entertainment, I really want to focus on accessing and leveraging meta versus to create Digital Twins of spaces where users can access different types of services, anything from remote work to remote school government, social services, uh even online gambling, setting up shop in the metaverse uh or in with their own metaverse is a direction many agencies and companies are taking.

Now, one thing I've noticed is often the mental association is when people hear the word metaverse, they start thinking about the recently rebranded Facebook now meta but as this area of innovation continues to evolve, the lexicons of of terminology are changing so rapidly. Uh And I really think that a crucial piece of technical adoption is number one, closing the digital divide. And secondly, ensuring that both digital identity credentials and meta verses are created in a way that is inclusive and based on human centered design. So as industries continue to evolve and undergo digital transformation, uh change management strategies include establishing guardrails around things like remote work fraud detection, cybersecurity. And that intersectionality of digital identity and the metaverse can really bridge the gap in building a foundation for decentralized approaches to what will hopefully become a virtual social infrastructure now. Who is who, what is Id Q and who am I? Uh Id quotient was founded in 2010 as an it consulting firm. Uh And Id Q stands for identity quotient. Uh The firm is really was founded on three principles, the principles of integrity, insights and intelligence. Uh And really what we do is try to leverage key neuroscientific principles.

Uiux design to drive implementation of vetted infrastructure models uh for technology to support private and public sector organizations both in creating launching and implementing new technologies. Uh who am I? Uh my background is in neuroscience and tech. Um I am the child of a Caribbean immigrant parents.

So I started out uh pre-med, finished my thesis work in cerebral cortex functionality and then decided that that was not what I wanted to do. Uh Fast forward, 17 years later, um I have accumulated uh a lot of experience planning dev ops, business transformation, product engineering.

My career actually began in asset management and risk model design within financial institution frameworks. Um And then as I shared, uh you know, I really pivoted after finishing my thesis work and I've been fortunate to work with some great companies that are now owned by Gartner Salesforce.

Um I've, I've gone to work with Deloitte Cian uh and cision in consulting. So it's definitely been an exciting journey. So just a little bit of uh an overview of what I will try to cover in the next 40 minutes. There's so much to unpack around digital identity and meta versus, and I think I'm gonna really try my best not to delve too deep into engineering and technology uh terms. But over the next 40 minutes, I'll be going over the foundational elements that a digital identity can include how citizens might be using digital identity today in terms of metaverse applications. Uh And I'll attempt to explain what meta verses are before jumping into some examples of different use cases. Uh We'll wrap up with understanding identity verification touch a little bit on regulatory compliance mechanisms and how they function within meta versus and then finish off with a light overview of some of the privacy concerns that experts are worried about as it pertains to Blockchain and data privacy.

Uh I definitely encourage anyone to reach out to me, post the session if they'd like to delve deeper into any of these topics. Um But again, I'll do my best to uh scan the chat at the end. Now, this is a, a great infographic by mckenzie that reviews six possible ways people can utilize digital identity. But first, uh I want to answer two questions. Number one, what is digital identity? And number two, why is it so important? Now, there's been some phenomenal sessions throughout today talking about decentralized identity, self sovereign and identity, digital credentials, Federated identity. All of these terms are sometimes used interchangeably. Uh Digital identity is the collection of information.

So you can think about this as your personal information such as your name, date of birth. Um even purchasing behaviors that verifies that you are who you say you are. And there's definitely different approaches to solving the digital identity dilemma. Uh S si or self sovereign identity is one Federated is another, often these two approaches are considered in a versus context. So Federated identity uh links your identity across multiple disparate and third party identity management systems. Whereas the self sovereign identity approach focuses on giving holders or users or citizens control of how they manage access on authentication of their digital identities. And the focus really is on being independent of third party systems and having that holder centric control.

Now a good place to start in conceptualizing this topic is to think about, you know, what do we typically consider acceptable forms of ID? You can think about your driver's license, uh birth certificate, uh A state issued or provincial issued identification card, maybe a student identification card uh in the US, your social security card in Canada, your social insurance card, uh maybe military identification, um a passport.

Now, all of these I DS that I've just rhymed off, they're issued and controlled often by different potentially disparate agencies. The citizen themselves has very little control in obtaining or modifying their ID. Digital identity is a digital credential where users control who's accessing their credentials for verification.

Uh And when they wish to validate and verify who they are, this is extremely relevant in the context of metaverse where ideally all validation and verification of that digital identity credential would be stored on the Blockchain as an irrevocable record. Now, proving one's identity could be done in a, in a host of different ways. It could be done by a biometrics, it could be done by a multi factor authentication, but leveraging Blockchain technology, self sovereign identity establishes trust. And if you've been listening to the sessions today, this concept of trust comes up again And again, it's so important to establish trust between different parties and to guarantee the authenticity of the data that's being exchanged at test stations. Um But probably most important not to store any personally identical identifiable data on the Blockchain. Now, within digital identity circles, you'll often hear the term zero trust and interoperability. This means that a user's digital credential could be used and function in multiple use cases.

And environment and global interoperability takes this concept one step further striving to create digital credentials that could be recognized, authenticated and utilized anywhere in the world. So again, very relevant when we think about meta versus even in in the real physical world, think about you losing your wallet overseas while you're on a trip or maybe immigrating somewhere new where the physical pieces of ID that you have are not recognized by the government in the new country that you've now immigrated to.

So why is digital identity so important? Uh especially as it pertains to enabling metaverse experiences because digital credentials empower citizens and users to control how their identity is used. And that single fact, there's a ton of wonderful research done by many people smarter than myself.

It's been proven to directly impact GDP of of several developing countries, accessibility to information education safety, security. Uh The global landscape around digital identity is admittedly very disparate at the moment. You know, within the Eu Estonia as a country has had established digital credentials. Uh for many years.

So citizens in Estonia, they have digital identity credentials that they can use to vote uh to file their taxes. Um within the US. There's been some attempts via what's called ID me to kind of have a national digital identity credential within Canada. Um Secure key has done some really great work with the Canada Revenue Agency to try to establish a mechanism where citizens can access social services. Um And then even within Asia Pacific digital Identity models are evolving really, really rapidly in Japan, uh Singapore and China.

But overall, this concept of the metaverse is that meta verses exist uh in a global environment and users can really be anywhere. So I'll touch on it a little bit later, but really want to circle back to this topic of controls, governance um and privacy policies and, and really all of these questions around how digital identity can help solve some of those concerns that are being voiced. Now, understanding digital identity is very helpful in navigating how meta verses can be architected and accessed. The big question is, what is the metaverse? What are meta verses? Well, uh it's not second life. So second life is an online virtual community. Uh It was launched initially in 2003.

Meta verses are essentially considered to be a digital world parallel to the physical world. They don't need to be identical to the physical world. And unless we're talking about things like digital real estate or Digital twins. Um oftentimes a metaverse version of a physical space is, is not identical. Now, before we delve into the topic of digital real estate and access controls. Um I really want to address the fact that there's a few schools of thought when it comes to the concept of meta versus, but generally, I would say that I've observed two main camps. The first camp um often says that meta verses are a way for human beings to cross the digital and global divide, engage in alternate realities where they can work where they can learn. Um And it's a wonderful positive thing. The second camp um or perhaps the alternate camp frequently talks about how meta versus actually magnify that space of the digital divide due to issues with things like device support availability. Um The cost of augmented reality virtual reality headsets, whether people have access to phones or devices, even.

Um if we think about legacy models of accessing meta versus now several brands um have already established metaverse presence. You can think of Gucci, Nike JP Morgan, uh Microsoft, uh Zara Hyundai Google. What you'll notice is a lot of the traction in meta versus is related to consumer goods where consumers would have a virtual avatar that represents them and they could enter virtual storefronts to experience digital different products today. Mainly we think of the visual or auditory components of the physical world that would be replicated within meta versus sensory feedback for our eyes and our ears that are augmenting this experience. But as metaverse experiences mature, many brands are experimenting things with things like proprioception, uh olfactory components.

You can think taste, touch, smell, you know, I'll give an example. Imagine somebody going into a metaverse storefront for uh Gucci and they're touching different handbags and they're smelling the, you know, that Great New Gucci Guilty perfume. They maybe they're trying on shoes.

Now, think about how important it would be for purchases to be able to verify your identity for purchases that were made in the metaverse, not only for digital products or for NFTS. Um but potentially this concept of people being able to navigate purchases and shopping in a metaverse virtual reality and then to receive products in the real world. Again, this concept of being able to validate who you are is really important if we think about, you know, digital currency.

Now this is a phenomenal infographic from Gartner. It touches on the different components of the metaverse. Uh When we think about how are we going to pay for things in the metaverse, what what would we be able to buy, who's going to access the metaverse? Um And for what purposes thinking about things like infrastructure. Uh And I think the most important topic again tied to digital identity and identity verification uh as it intersects with meta versus is how will the future focused metaverse experience protect users or digital humans.

Now uh vital Butter in the co founder of Ethereum. He has this concept that he talks about called the Blockchain trilemma. And this really art particularly elucidates, why an immersive and full of metaverse will potentially take a decade to build. And there's three components to this.

The first one is decentralization. The second one is scalability and the third is very much tied to the topic here. Security. Now, a big question is around the impacts of Blockchain. One of the solutions which I won't delve too much into today is a proof of stake approach, as opposed to a proof of work approach. Uh proof of stake approach, let leverages a consensus method to verify crypto transactions instead of proof of work schemes that unfortunately have a very high computational cost. So when we think about all of these different elements of metaverse, if we think about who's entering the meta meta versus what are they doing? Why are they doing it? What are people going to be allowed to do again? Who you are? And what you would be allowed to do is a question that hasn't been answered yet um because there's no central governing body at this point. Now accessing meta versus doesn't really at the moment require much more than a ARVR device or a legacy device like a phone, but where digital identity becomes crucial is twofold in the metaverse.

Um And as I just mentioned, the fact that there's no centralized governing body uh for metaverse or certain Blockchain protocols right now. So number one age restricted content and number two data s sensitive content are both huge areas of concern whether meta versus are private or public.

So you can think about things like banking in meta versus or accessing government services, essentially any metaverse ecosystem that could be a risk for financial crime, identity theft or fraud. And as we think about private versus public meta versus we start to explore identity access controls and mechanisms.

Now, in the real world, we track access by physical controls, entering a building with a security badge, maybe going into a bank with your debit card and entering a pin in the real world. There are security cameras, there's surveillance, but in the metaverse or meta verses, users are represented typically by their avatars and there's no mandate saying that avatars need to look remotely like the individual behind them. So again, this calls into question who should be able to access what for example, age restricted sites for gambling or adult content, these types of meta verses potentially would need to be restricted and users would ideally have to validate whether the physical user behind an avatar is old enough to gain entry.

Now, much of the metaverse experiences today remain centralized around gaming and consumer brands. Uh but governments uh like South Korea, they're betting heavily on metaverse experiences for government services. Um And I'll ch I'll touch on that a little bit later when we delve into governance and who's who's really in charge in the metaverse. Now I mentioned identity access management. When we talk about CIA M or I AM or identity access management, often these terms I find are used interchangeably with the term digital identity. And this is an an erroneous term. It's erroneous to do that, to say that they're the same really digital identities are a tool to help with identity, access management controls for meta versus uh I am has several components that are all centralized around proving that you are who you say you are now, the lo a or level of assurance required might change depending on the use case and what you're trying to do.

So in Canada, there's been developed a Pan Canadian trust framework. Um The Treasury Board Secretariat has defined four different levels of assurance um and the subsequent correlated trust. Um If you, if you Google Treasury Board Secretariat and identity verification, there is a phenomenal document that kind of goes over, you know, why are there four different levels and what do they mean? And and how confident can you be depending on the level of assurance that a person is who they say they are. Now, when we think about metaverse users accessing various services, they could be purchasing or maybe exchanging personal data, maybe they're accessing financial or government services.

One of the key methods for validating a user's identity is to leverage biometrics. Now, examples of biometrics that could be utilized for metaverse access could be Iris scans, uh facial recognition fingerprints, even things like voice prints. But what's really crucial for the effective use of biometrics is a system of record to use as a record of trust. And again, there's that word trust. So an example that I think we'll all be familiar with is uh Ministries of Transportation will have photos of citizens from their driver's license uh utilizing facial recognition to match uh a live captured selfie with an existing photo to match landmark data points on a person's face.

That's a, that's a really easy way to confirm identity. And it's, it's possible it's been utilized for many, many years. Um Often facial recognition checks have the option to match data points on an existing photo such as one on a physical ID. And they also have the ability the algorithm might have the ability to detect the liveness of the subject that this is actually a live human being uh that could be done in several different ways, especially as we start thinking about bad actors in a metaverse context. Uh Photo border detection is this concept of being able to determine if there is a photo of a photo being taken. Um Sometimes when users are going through an authentication process, they, they need to agree at the beginning consent that they're being recorded. Uh Some workflows will actually capture pictures of the person through the authentication process and then see if they're moving in relation to the background tracking movement during authentication. Um But again, for accessing age restricted content in meta versus, or as it pertains to government services, ensuring the user is actually who they say they are is obviously crucial. Now, digital identity credentials can certainly include this type of biometric data um or functionality to determine what a metaverse user should be allowed to do in different environments.

For example, a user might want to gamble online their digital identity credential um could be used to authenticate who they are, including their age. They could actually set up those credentials to preapprove access to validate identity uh to certain verifier. So a verifier could be the government, it could be the bank, it could be a lottery corporation, but such sensitive access relies on the existence of something called revocation, meaning that credentials can change. Uh approvals could be updated over time and ideally, the user would be able to update what which verifier are going to allow to verify their credential. Uh But also for metaverse creators or ecosystem, it's called them controllers or creators to also decide, hey, if there's bad behavior or if there is a bad act or that they could block a particular user from accessing a metaverse space. Now, as part of authentication and permissions, um zkps or zero knowledge proofs are essential. Uh zkps are basically a means of validating a statement. Uh for example, this particular user is of age to get a license online or to gamble online or to access particular content.

But to do this in a way that doesn't reveal any secret information or personally identifiable information such as their date of birth. That's basically to say that what's stored on the Blockchain doesn't contain personally identifiable information. But rather simply the fact that this particular user was actually old enough to gamble because it's, it's really um a yes or no statement. We don't need to know the user's birthday or store that on the Blockchain from a metaverse perspective. Now, I'm cognizant of time, but I want to introduce uh this concept of a persona. I, I think it's really a nice way of kind of conceptualizing how challenging things can be um as we, as we navigate the physical world and potentially how meta versus could help that. So this persona was actually inspired by a project I was working on with a government consulting group uh from Benin during 2020. Uh And really what they wanted to do was they wanted to set up a system to verify identity, identities of citizens for COVID-19 screening questions.

But the challenge was that they needed, we needed to find one verifiable ID that every Benin citizen possessed. And we discovered that this the only ID, like this was something called the Benin Citizenship card, which unfortunately was paper based. And there were no security features.

So there was no barcode, there was no micro print, there was no hologram. It's just a piece of paper that was printed. Now, Nita Noah Noah is a persona fictional persona. She immigrated here to Canada with her family in 2010 from Benin uh seeking asylum at the time she was 16. And upon arriving in Canada, she had no physical ID documents. She needed to register for a social insurance number and a health card, but she had no ID. And the process was an absolute nightmare and typically proving your identity without physical documents is fast forward to 2012. She's 18. She's super excited to register for university. Uh All her high school transcripts from Benin are completely unavailable in a digital format.

She also needs to register for a driver's license. Um All of this requires accessing multiple agencies in person. There's a ton of documentation to file. She's got to sign and have affidavits stamped by notary public. It's a total nightmare. Fast forward four years. She's, she's managed to navigate this process. And yay for annoy, she's graduating from her undergraduate degree in biochemistry from University of Toronto. But again, all of her transcripts have to be ordered and mailed to the school that she wishes to attend for her master's degree, which happens to be in Alberta. She's moving to a new province and she's gonna need some physical proof of address such as a paper copy of the utility bill just to, to, to prove her address. Um Let's say she goes through this process. It's frustrating. It's annoying. Um But, but she manages to move fast forward to 2020. She decides to get married um in the midst of COVID. Uh but her parents no longer live in the same province with her and they need help downloading their vaccine credentials so that they can travel to see her. Now, the vaccine credential download process is very hard for them.

It's very difficult and they have no idea how to navigate what's called the arrive can app miracle of miracles. They managed to do it. They managed to come and celebrate with her fast forward. Two years were in 2022. Uh A no and her husband John have a baby girl, Eva and they need to register her for a birth certificate, health card and passport, but that requires going online and registering information in multiple systems. This is kind of the state of affairs today. Now meet AOA 2.0 completing these life milestones in a metaverse ecosystem. So 2010, she arrives in Canada. She has no physical ID uh but she has digital identity credentials that can be validated via biometric authentication. She can prove who she is, she can update her digital identity wallet with Canadian credentials. She does this via facial recognition and liveness detection in minutes. She's added service Ontario to her digital wallet as an approved verifier uh service Ontario has its own metaverse so she can speak to avatars if she needs help while adding to her existing digital credentials. 2012, she sets an approval for her bin high school to transmit digital transcripts.

And because everything is ideally stored on the Blockchain, uh Canadian universities can easily validate her grades where she attended school for how long registering for a driver's license is very easy. Her age is verified, the results of her driving exam are updated in real time and now her digital identity contains information from the Ministry of Transportation. She has no need for a physical uh driver's license 2016. She approves the University of Calgary as a verifier in her digital wallet. Uh All her transcripts are accessible for her change of address to Alberta. She can also prove where she lived previously to landlords in Alberta. Address verification doesn't require a paper copy of a utility bill or even for her previous landlords to be contacted. Her address history is attached to her digital ID. A renting apartment is suddenly no longer a nightmare. And all of the apartment tours that she wants to do are easily done within real estate companies meta versus where she can complete virtual tours. 2020 rolls around. Uh Her wedding happens in virtual reality and physical reality. Um in the metaverse, she's she set up um a metaverse ecosystem for her relatives overseas. Her parents still need their vaccine credentials. But she joins them in the Ontario Ministry of Health Metaverse and helps walk them through adding their vaccine credentials to their own digital I DS.

And she's even able to enter the Air Canada Metaverse to book airline tickets. And when the day of the flight comes, she can actually join her parents in a virtual lounge. So they don't feel anxious about traveling. Even her wedding dress fittings um are done in a Vera Wang Metaverse room where all of her close relatives or the ones at least that she likes can be there when she says yes to the dress. And when 2022 rolls around, uh A Noah and her husband John uh are able to set up their daughter's Digital ID really really quickly the hospital has approval from both parents to share all the personally identifiable information securely. And by the time they leave the hospital, uh their baby Eva has her own encrypted digital ID to grant her access to any social service that she might need. Now, this is AAA beautiful concept and and utopia of what you know, the power of digital identity could do to enable metaverse experiences, but there's definitely concerns around safety and ethics. So uh I I truly believe digital identity helps to enable safe and secure metaverse experiences.

But if meta verses are truly to be parallel to the physical world, users do need to have a way to prove their identity. And also to be certain of the identities of the individuals that they may be interacting with already several issues around online bullying and assault in meta versus have sprung up. Um There's no existing globally interoperable method to capture user data uh and identities.

And when that happens, it's a serious concern that users might be vulnerable to attacks on their privacy and attacks potentially on their avatars. Um If a person enters a metaverse space and then they're sexually assaulted by another avatar and that victim is connected via augmented reality, virtual reality devices. Is that an assault? There seems to be a question, this, this did actually happen to a woman. Um And there was a lot of confusion. So this concept of safety and ethics really leads me into this question of who's in charge in the metaverse or in meta verses. And this is a great question because meta verses are very much a proverbial wild wild west right now. Uh Regulators are seeking answers and solutions, but the technology is catching up. The legislation is catching up. Uh Existing criminal codes and privacy laws were designed obviously for the physical world, not virtual reality where identity verification is not always mandatory. Um The question is how can any governing agency enforce judgment on a crime committed in a metaverse environment?

If an avatar in Canada assaults an avatar in the Netherlands, which laws apply? Uh because meta versus are hosted in the cloud. It's very difficult to determine which laws apply. We can think about another use case. What if a user enters their insurance information to bind a new policy? Uh The data they share would need to be hosted on a server physically in a certain country, at least in Canada for insurance purposes. But what about unregulated transactions and services? There's even a lot of ambiguity around taxation for capital gains tax on digital real estate or revenue generated from NFTS uh and Gap and RFRS standards from an accounting perspective um have not yet caught out. And then there's even more questions around fraud and meta versus, and which governing agencies would prosecute a potential bad actor. Now metaverse um in South Korea uh in Seoul is the first city to create a metaverse for municipal administration. The city invested $3.8 million Canadian um or three point 9,000,000,001 in setting up a virtual space for citizens to access services. And what's fascinating about about this as a concept and as we can kind of perhaps extrapolate this in in North American use cases is the entire city has been set up to be a smart city with devices capturing all kinds of data for, for traffic um and citizen patterns and behaviors.

Now, this city metaverse um is expected to be launched by 2026 and think about this in the context of our own lives. Um The impact for reduced administration costs uh fees to run municipal services. There's, there's definitely concerns from a political standpoint. Um but it's de it's definitely exciting when we think about how much faster people might be able to do things. So historically, privacy laws have been very region specific uh within a metaverse users could very well be located anywhere and it definitely will be up to metaverse creators to determine whether their services and content will be restricted by geographic location of a prospective user.

Again, digital identity credentials will play a crucial part in these access controls and authentication processes. Many financial crimes units of financial institutions, they realize that meta versus have huge opportunity as it pertains to open banking, decentralized finance.

Um A lot of these wonderful concepts that really talk about social equilibrium um and access to, to wealth and growing wealth. But there's also this realization that meta versus could be a breeding ground for money laundering activities particularly as it pertains to digital currency and the anonymity that avatars currently um have access to. So in 2021 fin track, which is the Canadian Financial Intelligence Agency uh announced late in the year that they'd be updating their policies around identity verification. But policy changes, as I said are struggling to keep up with all the changes in the internet of things.

Um and web three and much of the, there's so many pros and cons that are listed, but the pros for metaverse are that such an ecosystem could ideally remove geographic barriers to economic success. Uh NFT artists can be from anywhere. There's the concept of remote work meta versus that can easily drive greater diversity and collaboration. Uh University meta versus could help make education more affordable and accessible. Um Some recent legislative moves uh to keep an eye on include the Improving Digital Identity Act of 2021 in the US, uh the Artificial Intelligence Act in the Eu uh and the Virtual City Consortium in Japan. Now, often, I think we've all seen that innovation and regulatory compliance struggle to coexist but metaverse creators um seem to be cognizant that user privacy and data security are key concerns not only for users but also for governments as they're trying to figure out how they would govern meta versus now, I've given a ton of information to digest today.

If you only remember three things. Uh remember these three things, digital identity informs a socially equitable future, centralized around access to social services and drives digital accessibility. Uh Number two, as we consider the impact of the metaverse on the future of work, uh Employers, I think will begin to see the continuance of the fifth industrial revolution and how employees navigate work remotely. Uh And number three levels of assurance are evolving and in turn the required levels of trust, uh Biometric algorithms are really key component. Um When we think about things like liveness detection and identity proofing identity binding, binding a person's identity to a device.

You know what happens if the device gets jail broken? All of these things are very relevant from a cybersecurity lens. Uh And I think what we're seeing is that much of these ecosystems tools solutions will be predicated upon mitigating fraud. Uh Thank you for listening. Uh I encourage everyone to reach out um or email me on linkedin. Uh I will scroll through. I know I'm almost at time. I probably have a minute. I'm gonna quickly see. Natalie says, how would this affect people who need to utilize identity protection programs? Uh So I think you're talking about consumer protection programs. Um Equifax is doing a lot of work in this space historically, they used to use something called E ID, which was this wonderful tool where you just answered questions and, and that was the way that, you know, you would validate your identity. Um Digital identity credentials are considered to be a much more secure means of protecting your identity um than the methodologies that have been historically used by consumer reporting agencies. Uh Patricia. I'm glad that you like the case study. Um I fully agree there's a lot of people in the world that I don't have ID si have seen this in my work um all over the world in Asia Pacific um in West Africa.

Um Really, I think one of the biggest learning opportunities for me was realizing that, you know, my, my parents happened to be from Jamaica. They immigrated here. I was born in Canada. I think when I've architected and designed solutions, my brain would always assume, oh, everybody has an ID. And, and I think this is the concept of digital identity that if we think about I'll use the example of um Estonia when Estonia now suddenly was a sovereign nation and no longer part of the US sr the model of digital identity evolved. Not because that's what they thought was necessarily the right solution. And they were trying to be innovative, that evolved because it was the cheapest way to ensure that all the citizens had identity. So I think this question of how is this gonna work for all these people that don't have a physical I DS? Well, I think that that's actually that's the, that's the answer. The answer is that we don't want people to have to have phys physical I DS necessarily, ideally, the way we would enable citizens is to help them have access to digital I DS, where they control their I DS, access to their I DS and updating their I DS.

OK. Well, everybody, thank you. Thank you so much for listening. Um I fully admit that there are so many questions around how the metaverse meta verses will function, how digital identity will function. Uh Ideally, I, I don't think that the answers will be provided by the government or regulatory compliance agencies anytime soon. Uh But I think that it's crucial that technology innovators and women in tech are part of building out those solutions to ensure that, you know, we don't just assume that when we're building out a user experience that everybody is experiencing that or everybody is navigating that from the same place.

Uh a privilege that we might have in North America. Thanks everyone. Please feel free to reach out on linkedin or ping Me. I'm always happy to have uh additional conversations, debates, questions, criticisms.