here i just want to jot down the summary of my research on the solutions out there in the identity&reputation space, mainly about their focus and polarization.
is a cycle of adoption or is a cycle of infra? that’s the question i’ve seen being discussed numerous times on conferences, blog posts, twitter.
the dapps are all powered by various protocols and blockchain networks - where we can discover plenty of projects building identity and reputation focused technologies.
personally, i believe that while building great technologies is a must to be able to produce high quality products, the use cases and cool dapps should always keep the builders attention as it is how we really get the users to come to the space and to love the space.
as the identity concept sits deeply into the majority of the decentralized social projects (it is often a core idea of the produced content to associate it with some kind of a creator) the DeSoc use case will be one of the most clear ones for the mass adoption when it comes to the decentralized identity. social reputation is something that we are all familiar with and putting it on-chain feels natural.
however, identity&reputation opens up more use cases like scam elimination, sybil resistance, community onboarding and more.
this article doesn’t aim at being sufficient - i will be covering more topics in the next ones such as:
scores as a reputation primitive - space map
identity data providers and if they are ethic - space map
identity&reputation use cases
and more!
follow me on twitter and farcaster to get the latest updates and to chat about this article.
let’s get into the ecosystem overview!
identity in the blockchain gets its implementation in the proof-of-personhood consensus that provides each human (e.g. identity) with an equal voting power. In contrast with proof-of-stake, where the voting power is based on the stake (amount of money) the proof-of-personhood mechanism relies on the individuals as the core of the network.
Humanode - a network where every validator is a verified human ensuring that the node equals an identity.
Idena- one of the pioneers of the proof-of-personhood blockchains. verified identities can mine the native coins and spend them within the network including staking for a reward. to get verified, users need to get an invite from a verified identity and solve the puzzles within a limited timeframe.
Accumulate network - an identity-based, Delegated Proof-of-Stake blockchain, with features that power DeFi applications. Accumulate implements a chain-of-chains architecture in which digital identities (aka Accumulate Digital Identifiers(ADIs)) with the ability to manage keys, tokens, data, and other identities are treated as their own independent blockchains.
Lukso - Lukso is more of a creators/fashion/phydigital centered L1 (check their amazing whitepaper) but a notable fact is that they implemented Universal Profiles in the core of the network where every user gets their identity page.
Worldcoin is building a protocol that distributes the equal share of the native token - WLD - to each verified human that owns a World ID. The verification process is based on their specific hardware - Orbs that allow scanning the iris and getting the biometric information to create the World ID. Worldcoin, along with a couple of other projects, is focusing on the UBI (Universal Basic Income concept) which is implemented through distributing the native tokens to the participants of the network as Worldcoin Grants.
Proof-of-Humanity - enables social verification and utilizes Kleros for the courts where verified users vote for the newly joined users and anyone can dispute the verification.
BrightID - similarly provides the system for the social graph building and verification through the connections. It is one of the first projects working on the decentralized identity verification and implementing the social graph.
Karat Network - decentralized data identity protocol that provides users with the ability to share and control their data acting as a Data Middleware. KaratDAO creates the form of the personal data marketplace.
CyberConnect - allows creating the profiles and connecting them with the status - the specific token showcasing the credentials and memberships that the owner has.
Starknet - L-2 Ethereum Zk-rollup which has an amazing content creator on their Twitter (seriously, check it out) integrated the identity layer from the very beginning in the form of the StarkNet ID. The primary objective of the StarkNet ID protocol is to serve as a versatile passport for StarkNet, enabling users to seamlessly store and share their desired data within the StarkNet ecosystem while allowing various protocols to efficiently access and utilize this information.
Human Protocol - provides a CAPTCHA solution to identify and verify the real humans.
{r}elinkd - identity protocol and a dapp that collects all of the users credentials and DIDs along with the on-chain and off-chain activity to build a unique web3 score and open the opportunities to monetize this reputation representation.
Intuition - Intuition is (they are super steath mode so I have no idea actually what they are) infra for reputation and identity.
Karma3 EigenTrust - Karma3Labs are building a reputation graph protocol similar to SSL-certificates provider.
Civic - Civic Pass is a non-transferable token, representing the on-chain attestation of requirements defined by the projects, that grants the user permission to access the services or protocol. Projects can issue their own custom access tokens (SBTs), gate smart-contracts, conduct identity verification, or even create inputs for their own compliance program.
Dock - a decentralized network for creating, issuing, and managing both Verifiable Credentials and decentralized identifiers on the Dock blockchain since 2017. This blockchain runs its own validator network on Substrate (which is the same framework used throughout the Polkadot ecosystem). It uses the consensus mechanism offered by Substrate – nominated Proof of Stake (NPoS).
KILT protocol - a framework for issuing self-sovereign, verifiable credentials and DIDs (decentralized identifiers) and gives the data ownership to the users.
Walletlabels - provides API for the on-chain wallet labels, primarly working on mapping the wallets.
Disco.xyz - a protocol allowing to issue credentials and also create a user data “backpack”.
d.id - focused on issuing .bit domains, positioning themselves as a DAO solution. d.id is a known project developing a couple of solutions (DAO voting, DAO contribution credentialization, user profiles, domains).
Chainstory - provides a score and user badges in a cool dapp form. They allow minting an NFT with the badges, that is dynamically updated as the activity changes.
blossomland - not launched yet, something to follow the updates of as seems very cool.
Galxe - the community quests that allow distributing different onchain assets (tokens, OATs (on-chain achievements token), NFTs, etc for the tasks completion.
Zealy - a cool example of integration with Rarimo in order to allow issuing the NFTs for the users that participate in the community quests.
Polygon ID - an identity solution that allows users to use zero-knowledge proofs to interact with smart contracts, based on the Verifiable Credential documents issued off-chain.
Sismo - any app can integrate a selective disclosure flow for the users to share their identity data in a zk manner.
zk.me - zk credentials and zk KYC to build into the apps and chains.
KYCat - BAB (binance soulbound token) based app, creating a user KYC identity in a zk manner by integrating various user credentials and forming an astonishing Cheshire Cat avatar.
the reputation on social is something we are well-knowledgeable about. the more subscribers you got - the better KOL you are. however, now we can see a couple of interesting trends on the followers approach:
less followers → niche content
more followers → not always more reputation
some followers add on more reputation that others
For the last 2 trends there are a couple of tools focused on researching which people are one’s followers and how famous they are.
TweetScout serves as a rating system for crypto-related twitter accounts. the score rises based on the number and influence of well-known crypto personalities, projects, and fund employees who follow the account.
Twitter Score performs an analysis of crypto accounts, tracking trending web3 projects and coins. It automatically generates scores for twitter accounts based on their popularity within the crypto sphere.
Moni Discover Score is an alpha-searching platform designed for the so-called Degenerates. It categorizes all projects by an ML-based score, type (NFT, DeFi), and the number of smart followers.
the DeSoc space is a prospective one in terms of user engagement potential.
Lens Protocol - one of the leaders in the DeSoc space, is a social graph protocol that allows other dApps to build the decentralized twitters on top utilizing the very same Lens identity (Lens handle) that users already own.
Farcaster - a sufficiently decentralized social protocol allowing the users to contribute to the protocol in an open source manner - and implements its own way of the identity, an FID (Farcaster ID) and an Fname (Farcaster name).
DeSo - an L-1 blockchain custom-built to power and scale a new category of decentralized social applications allowing all of the dApps and protocols to get the social information stored about the users.
SoCol - a decentralized social platform allowing users to join the communities and obtain the NFTs collectibles. While the collectibles themselves are not the credentials provider, but I envision such collectibles that are linked to the communities to be a valuable credential.
Isme - a decentralized identity social network that acts as a Metaverse Social Explorer and enables users to discover connections while seeing the mutual experiences they share with each other.
While we all already agreed that the wallet does not equal an identity, the wallets that take care of the identity concepts integrating the VCs&DIDs are essential for the space.
Polygon ID mentioned above also develops the Polygon ID Wallet app - a set of open source user and developer kits to integrate or white label for custom applications.
AIKON - they are doing smth around identities and wallet. super complicated though.
Halo Wallet - everything that we love: socialfi, feed, your web3 identity.
Plug wallet - a wallet for ICP ecosystem powered by the ICP identity.
The SelfKey Identity Wallet - allows managing the digital identity, KYC documents. the app is not yet ready for the adoption, but the vision behind is cool.
The protocols and credential solutions all provide their APIs and SDKs to enable the ecosystem growth. BrightID, Worldcoin, Proof-of-Humanity, Idena, Polygon ID, CyberConnect and others all have their docs public for the developers to research and craft.
Here I’d want to go over some developer-focused solutions as DevEx still sucks and all the developer tools are vital.
Airstack is a web3 developer platform that provides powerful APIs for integrating on-chain and off-chain data into any application.
Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS) is a public good that enables anyone to make attestations on or off-chain about anything. Developers can deploy schemas (or use an existing one) about any topic and make attestations using that schema.
SpruceID provides the developers identity kit with the authentication, data management and credentials issuance modules.
Walt Id includes an extensive toolkit with the SSI, NFT, Wallet, Storage, and IDP components covering most of the needs when building a dapp requiring an identity.
NextID is a protocol offering Decentralized-Identity-As-A-Service (DIaaS), by aggregating the Web2 and Web3 digital identities, and offering an identity database for open-source developers and projects to innovate and build dApps on.
Fractal provides an integration to build a sybil-proofed dApp with KYC/AML regulatory compliance.
Overall, the ecosystem is growing and blooming - the real question is still behind driving the adoption and introducing users to a new way of the identity ownership.
this article was originally written by me for the relinkd blog. this is an updated and a slightly changed edition.