For a market projected to outstretch to nearly $800 billion within the next two years, it is certainly no surprise that everyone from McDonald’s to Nike to ambitious law firms are setting up shop in the “metaverse.” 

Of course, like with the World Wide Web in the 1990s—which today’s metaverse is often compared to due to the internet’s initial ethos of “no monolithic leader”—the “bad guys” in a new world are seldom far behind the early boom of progress. Indeed, the same qualities that make trademarks and properties in the metaverse so appealing to businesses and individuals—decentralization, digital ownership and embarking into the “next frontier”—might be the ones that make them susceptible to looming privacy threats.