“I am not what I think I am, and I am not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am.” — Charles Horton Cooley

Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” found in Book VII of The Republic, has been a cornerstone of philosophical discussion for over two millennia (fun fact — it was also the cornerstone of my (Billy’s) middle-school valedictorian speech (thanks dad)). It describes prisoners chained in a cave, forced to watch shadows on the wall, believing these shadows to be the only reality. Only when one prisoner is freed and witnesses the outside world does he understand the shadows’ illusory nature.

When examining the digital age, particularly the concept of digital identity, one can draw many parallels between this ancient allegory and modern life. This article focuses on those parallels, the problems they illuminate, and a road forward towards a better future enabled by decentralized identity technologies.

The Shadows on the Wall: Digital Personas

Much like the prisoners in the cave, many in the modern world view themselves and others through the digital shadows they project online. Social media profiles, avatars, and online resumes become the representation of our ‘selves’. Just as the prisoners mistake the shadows for reality, many mistakenly conflate online personas with true identity, ignoring the nuances and complexities of human existence beyond the screen. Beyond this, each digital ‘shadow’ represents merely a small fragment of our true ‘Form’ (described in Plato’s Theory of Forms and poorly hinted at by me (Billy) in this podcast).

The Chains: Technological Dependence

The prisoners in the allegory are bound, restricted from seeing beyond the cave’s confines. Much like the prisoners, modern individuals can find themselves tethered to the digital realm’s confines, their perceptions molded by the shimmering “shadows” of social media feeds, trending news, and algorithmic suggestions. This virtual environment, though vast and intricate, is akin to the cave: a controlled, constructed space that may not truly represent the multifaceted world outside.

Take, for instance, the curated nature of social media feeds. Platforms, driven by commercial interests, employ algorithms that prioritize content likely to engage users, creating echo chambers. Much like the prisoners watching a singular set of shadows, users may be fed a repetitive and reinforcing stream of content, narrowing their worldview. The famous adage, “If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product,” underscores this dynamic, revealing how user attention is commoditized and directed.

Moreover, the rise of misinformation in the digital age serves as another poignant example. Just as the prisoners’ reality is shaped by the shadows’ dance, which they never question, many accept digital information without scrutiny, not considering potential biases, inaccuracies, or outright falsehoods. The infamous incidents of “fake news” influencing political landscapes globally and the proliferation of conspiracy theories online are testaments to this uncritical acceptance.

The Journey Out of the Cave: Awakening to Authenticity

When a prisoner is freed and emerges from the cave, he experiences overwhelming enlightenment and realizes the shadows’ true nature. Analogously, when individuals step back from their digital lives to engage deeply with the real world, they often gain a fuller understanding of themselves and the inherent limitations of digital representation. This doesn’t necessarily mean abandoning digital life but approaching it with an informed and critical perspective. A balanced approach, where individuals harmonize their digital interactions with tangible experiences, mirroring the philosophy of Eastern Yin and Yang. Here, seemingly opposite or contrary forces may actually be complementary, interconnected, and interdependent. So, while the digital world offers convenience, connectivity, and vast knowledge, the tangible world provides depth, texture, and emotional resonance.

The Return to the Cave: Digital Literacy and Responsibility

In the allegory, the enlightened prisoner returns to the cave to free others, only to be met with hostility. Drawing this into the digital age, the canvas changes but the essence remains. In an era where the shimmering allure of screens captivates billions, where the dopamine-driven feedback loops of likes, shares, and notifications ensnare minds, there emerges a new class of “enlightened prisoners.” These are the advocates of digital literacy, the champions of mindful tech consumption, and the harbingers of balanced digital well-being. They, much like Plato’s enlightened one, bear the torch of awareness, urging society to look beyond the captivating glow of their devices, to discern the shadows from the reality.

The Sun: Authentic Self

Plato’s allegory places the sun as the source of truth and knowledge, illuminating reality. In the digital age, amidst the screens and pixels that define our virtual existence, the concept of the sun as emblematic of our genuine self is particularly compelling. Consider the digital landscape as a dense forest, with myriad pathways, each leading to a different version of ourselves: the professional on LinkedIn, the casual traveler on Instagram, the opinionated thinker on Twitter. While each of these personas holds a shard of our identity, they are fragmented, similar to the fractured rays of sunlight filtering through a canopy of leaves.

Just as Plato’s sun exists beyond the cave’s limitations, our authentic identity stands apart from these digital avatars. The sun, in its undiluted brilliance, doesn’t waver or fragment; it remains a consistent source of light and truth. Similarly, our core essence remains immutable, undeterred by the multiple roles we assume in the digital theater.

As “enlightened prisoners”, it is our duty to return to the cave with our newfound knowledge — regardless of whether or not we are met with resistance. The knowledge we bring is not that the shadows on the wall are bad; for there is value to be derived from all things. The knowledge is that the shadows are merely shadows; low-resolution fragments of a higher-resolution whole. The knowledge is that there is a higher-dimensional world to be experienced, and the way to experience it is through the shadows, nor through the shunning of the shadows — but rather through experiencing the rest of reality through the lens of our learnings from the shadows, as the shadows can help us to better understand ourselves (just as the shadows of the Allegory of the Cave itself have helped us better understand ourselves for millennia).

Finding ourselves through our selves

To advance our understanding of the self, a proposed synthesis between our digital and physical identities becomes indispensable. Entities such as Facebook and Amazon, with their sophisticated data algorithms, have demonstrated a capacity to discern nuanced user behaviors solely based on digital interactions. The potentiality arises: what if we consolidate data across diverse platforms, apply advanced computational methodologies, and utilize this aggregated knowledge not for commercial gain but for rigorous introspection, remediation, and epistemological enlightenment?

This is not mere speculation but rather a trajectory towards our inherent selves and the realization of our optimal potential.

Decentralized identity technology serves as a pivotal framework in this discourse. Beyond its technical implications, it symbolizes autonomy. It posits a paradigm wherein individuals possess sovereignty over their digital representations, devoid of the constraints of centralized mechanisms. Within the Platonic schema, this technology could approximate a true Form — an unadulterated, idealistic representation of one’s identity. Such a reflection, free from external interference and intrinsically sovereign, resonates with the Platonic conceptualization of unalterable, pristine Forms. Through these objective digital portrayals, there lies the opportunity for introspective analyses, unveiling our virtues, vices, strengths, inclinations, desires, and beyond.

In epistemological pursuits, we often delineate our identity by juxtaposing it against its antithesis. By meticulously examining both the commendable and the deficient aspects of our digital representation, we can articulate a clearer aspirational identity. The axiom, “acknowledgement is the first step,” gains pertinence. Without a comprehensive acknowledgment of our inadequacies or propensities, how can we embark on rectification? A holistic digital amalgamation offers the precision and insight requisite for such an endeavor.

Finding ourselves through other selves

Charles Horton Cooley’s assertion, “I am not what I think I am, and I am not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am,” echoes through the corridors of human history, finding resonance in diverse cultures and epochs. This thought experiment captures the essence of the human psyche’s yearning to comprehend its place within the tapestry of society, akin to a drop discerning its place within an ocean.

Drawing a parallel from the natural world, consider the phenomenon of mimicry in the animal kingdom. Certain species evolve to resemble others, not for what they are, but for how they’re perceived by predators. The viceroy butterfly, for instance, mirrors the coloration of the toxic monarch butterfly, not because it is inherently toxic, but because it wants predators to think it is. In a sense, the viceroy is what it believes the predator perceives it to be.

Similarly, the perception-driven identity elucidated by Cooley reflects society’s hall of mirrors. Every individual, while forging their identity, is navigating this maze, using others’ perceptions as guiding posts. In literary circles, we see characters molded by societal expectations, like Jay Gatsby in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic, or even Othello in Shakespeare’s tragic play. Their actions are inextricably linked to societal reflections and judgments.

The contemporary evolution of this idea can be traced to decentralized identity systems. Here, the identity is not anchored to a centralized authority but validated by peers within a network. This paradigm can be juxtaposed with indigenous tribal communities, where identity and status are conferred not by a central chieftain but by collective acknowledgment from the tribe members.

Delving deeper into philosophical realms, Plato’s notion of the Forms — the ideal, immutable blueprints of all worldly things — dovetails with decentralized identity’s essence. Just as Plato proposed that our understanding of these Forms is innate, only to be “recalled” through introspection and dialogue, decentralized systems thrive on mutual verification and collective consensus. The decentralized network doesn’t merely replicate the societal hall of mirrors; it enhances it, fostering a more collective, dynamic, and organic understanding of identity. It’s a fusion of ancient wisdom and modern technology, suggesting that the quest for understanding oneself, through the eyes of others, remains an ageless human endeavor.

In reflection

At the crossroads of philosophical wisdom and modern technology lies the concept of decentralized identity. Our current centralized identity systems, much like the shadows in the cave, often present a skewed and fragmented perception of our true selves. The constant interplay between the individual and societal perceptions finds a harmonizing solution in decentralized identity systems, providing a canvas for a more genuine, unadulterated representation.

Decentralized identity is vital for our generation. It symbolizes autonomy and authenticity in an increasingly digital age. Rather than relying on centralized entities that may curate, manipulate, or even exploit our digital selves for their ends, decentralized identity places control back into the hands of individuals. It’s a paradigm shift from being passive observers of our digital reflections to becoming active curators of our own narratives.

Imagine a world where your identity is not tethered to a single platform, corporation, or government, but rather is a fluid, dynamic entity validated and recognized by a network of your peers. This world is not only more democratic but also more resilient to the myriad challenges we face today, from data breaches to misinformation. Your identity becomes a shared, collective truth, akin to Plato’s Forms, unmarred by external biases and distortions.

Furthermore, embracing decentralized identity systems could usher in an era of unparalleled introspection and personal growth. By consolidating data across platforms and leveraging advanced computational methodologies, individuals can gain profound insights into their behaviors, aspirations, and desires. But unlike the current paradigm, where these insights are often leveraged for commercial gain, in a decentralized framework, they become tools for self-awareness and enlightenment.

Let us rally behind decentralized identity as more than just a technological solution — it’s a philosophical evolution aligning with the very essence of individual autonomy and collective wisdom. By moving towards decentralized identity systems, we are not just adopting a new technology; we are taking a collective step towards a brighter, more authentic digital future. We are stepping out of the shadows of the cave into the radiant sunlight, where our digital and real-world identities harmonize in a dance of genuine self-expression.

Oh, and — welcome to The Atlas Initiative. Join the forum to join the conversation.

-Billy & Floppy Abe

At Intuition, our mission is to empower people to build, explore, curate, and claim ownership of an abundant, peer-to-peer knowledge-sharing ecosystem - one that enhances our collective intuition. 

To accomplish this, Intuition combines a plethora of decentralized identity, data, and finance primitives into a full-stack solution that allows anyone to claim anything about anything. The system incentivizes attestations of useful truths, encouraging people and machines to share their relevant knowledge, thoughts, and opinions with the world.

Information Overload

In the modern age, the emergence of the internet has profoundly reshaped the foundation of our decision-making processes. No longer do we rely solely on the data gathered from our personal experiences and interactions; rather, we find ourselves increasingly guided by a matrix of digitized information – binary codes of zeroes and ones representing the collective knowledge and opinions of others. This technologically-sparked paradigm shift facilitates our intuition in traversing the complex maze of our increasingly interconnected global society.

• Platforms like Yelp, TripAdvisor, Amazon, and Alibaba act as digital compasses, guiding our choices about where to go, what to buy, and how to spend our time.

• Netflix, Hulu, Twitter, and Instagram, serve as curated windows into the world of entertainment and social engagement, shaping our preferences and aspirations.

• Meanwhile, LinkedIn and Glassdoor offer glimpses into potential collaborations and career opportunities.

However, as with anything in its adolescence, this data-driven world has its shortcomings. The reliability and validity of the information we consume daily are often obscured, making discernment a challenge.

When did you last contribute a review on Amazon or fact-check an entry on Wikipedia? Have you ever been tricked by AI-generated content masquerading as genuine? Have you ever wished you could overlay your social graph onto recommendation engines to filter the data by the voices you trust? These topics and more are ones we must confront as we navigate the intricate relationship between data, technology, and the trajectory of our intuition.

Silver Linings / Silicon Linings

Towards Digital Self-Sovereignty: The Web3 Identity Stack

On the evolution of internet identity, a layer-by-layer overview of web3 identity infrastructure, and where we go from here

https://medium.com

^ (image source)

Although our technology is rife with shortcomings, technology is also our beacon of hope. Ground-breaking advancements in decentralized identity, decentralized data, decentralized finance, and blockchain technology have granted us the ability to navigate and rectify the vulnerabilities of our increasingly digital world.

The ingenuity of decentralized identity pioneers has allowed us the opportunity to build a future where identity security is no longer a concern, where fragmentation is a thing of the past, and where sovereignty is a given right, not a privilege. A world devoid of the burden of maintaining myriad application-specific accounts, or the looming fear of institutions denying access to your own digital identity.

Thanks to our allies in the realm of decentralized data, we can overcome the issues of data verifiability, monopolization, and proliferation. Empowered by these tools, data can evolve into not only being plentiful, but also trustworthy and accessible to all.

Similarly, advancements in decentralized finance illuminate the path toward building cryptoeconomic systems that stimulate mutually beneficial behaviors, fostering a culture of equitable productivity and collaboration.

And underpinning all these capabilities is the transformative power of blockchain technology, providing an objective trust layer that allows the aforementioned technologies to be open, permissionless, censorship-resistant, and community-owned.

Intuition: The Attestation Hyperstructure

At Intuition, we are assembling these innovative pieces into a coherent and empowering solution that enhances decision-making in our everyday lives through the wisdom of the crowds. We are not building in a vacuum, nor competing with those who have come before; rather, we're standing on the shoulders of technological giants, leveraging the remarkable tools they've developed to refine our intuitive capabilities and usher in a future where each decision we make is empowered, secure, and truly reflective of our individual needs and aspirations.

Intuition is a composition of these identity, data, and finance primitives into the production of an open, decentralized, permissionless, semantic knowledge graph. The unique structure accommodates both objective and subjective truths, paired with tailored tools and interfaces for users to effectively curate and navigate the data.

The Intuition stack is composed of three distinct layers, each playing a pivotal role in the formation of the Intuition ecosystem and designed with interoperability and composability in mind.

• The Protocol: Serving as the foundation, the protocol comprises the Intuition knowledge graph and the rules of engagement in the Intuition 'game.' These rules uphold the integrity of the graph, ensuring a reliable, fair, and engaging platform for users to interact and contribute.

• The Middleware: The middleware is the bridge that enables developers to build effortlessly atop the protocol. It augments the foundational structure with additional non-fundamental rules and logic, thereby expanding its utility and adaptability.

• The Application(s): The applications are the user-facing interfaces that facilitate the reading from, and posting to, the knowledge graph. Designed for usability and effectiveness, they serve as the tangible manifestation of our vision, providing users with a seamless and empowering experience.

Our ultimate goal at Intuition is to evolve into a seamless backend that powers enriching social features and functionalities across the web. We envision an ecosystem of applications interconnected by a shared pool of verifiable data – a digital reservoir of knowledge accessible to all, fostering a global network of informed, empowered, and intuitive decision-makers.

The Intuitive Approach

Intuition achieves this vision by empowering individuals with more than just an influx of data. We hand the reins of sovereignty back to the user, operating on the conviction that freedom of choice should not be an exception, but a rule. We hold fast to the belief that the choice of trust—be it in the voice of an individual or the logic of a specific developer's algorithm—should lie squarely in the user's hands. It is essential that people aren't funneled into a single, opinionated interpretation of data, but rather, have the liberty to explore, pick, and choose.

Because the world does not subscribe to binary logic. It isn’t composed of simplistic cases of true or false; of right or wrong. The truth cannot [yet] be codified. It is a complex tapestry of nuanced shades of gray. Understanding your truth in this kaleidoscope of realities involves embracing your agency and making informed decisions for yourself. Intuition provides the tools and platform for you to do just that; enabling you to navigate the uncertainty with confidence, and shape your own narrative in an ever-evolving digital landscape.

Unopinionated Incentives

In order to realize this vision, Intuition employs a novel suite of incentive mechanics that encourage individuals to make attestations, all while maintaining neutrality concerning judgments of right or wrong, or true or false. This approach enables Intuition to amass a comprehensive and inclusive understanding of crowd wisdom, crowd-sourcing knowledge about all things from all people (and machines), regardless of their backgrounds and affiliations.

P2P Claim Facilitation

Intuition’s dynamic toolset eliminates a majority of the friction associated with the act of making attestations, streamlining the creation of an "attestation" into an activity as intuitive as a simple mouse click. Concurrently, these tools allow developers to seamlessly integrate attestation infrastructure into their core stack, without the need to independently craft identity and data infrastructure or keep abreast with the latest advancements in the ever-evolving identity/data landscapes.

Model Marketplace

The flexibility of the middleware endows users with the power to select any voice(s) they wish to listen to when attempting to distill the signal from the noise. For example, users can decide to only view data created by a specific set of attestors they trust, or have their data filtered through an algorithm they’ve selected from a list of community-created and community-curated models. The openness of the Intuition ecosystem grants everyone the freedom to create and collaborate on cutting-edge models and analytics, amalgamating and distilling information from a plethora of contexts, and giving users the latitude to select the models that most align with their specific needs.

Perhaps one gravitates towards an Amazon model when browsing products, while turning to the Rotten Tomatoes model for film reviews; another may lean towards Yelp’s model for restaurants, and TripAdvisor for accommodation. By doing away with the imposition of a singular, biased worldview, users are emancipated from the restrictive boundaries of an echo chamber dictated and curated by an invisible hand.

The Possibilities

Envision a world where your voice carries inherent value, irrespective of the size of your audience; where the revenue from the data you generate flows directly into your pocket, bypassing incumbent platforms, without the necessity of being an "influencer."

And through this, the data of your trust graph is made available to you - without needing to talk to your friends or listen to your favorite podcast - as correct incentive alignment encourages the voices you want to hear to make verifiable claims about things.

A world where your trust graph accompanies you everywhere you go, presenting the viewpoints of those whose opinions you value most - allowing you to sift through data on platforms such as Amazon and Yelp, zeroing in on voices that resonate with your perspective.

A world where the tedium of creating new accounts for every service is obsolete. Instead, your exceptional Uber rating becomes your passport to book an Airbnb, or your robust Twitter following and Reddit karma serve as credentials for an under-collateralized loan.

And this is just the beginning.

Pseudonymous quadratic freelancer marketplaces, peer-to-peer credit scores, DAO voting systems rooted in reputation…

Multi-contextual-reputation-based social feeds, incentivized crowdsourced content attribution, meme markets…

Cross-application content curation, publicly accessible content classification metadata, incentivized data labeling…

The list goes on.

Get Involved

We are playing in an infinite garden. And so, just as we want to provide you with intuitive agency, we also invite you with the agency to join us in our mission. Hop in, say hello, and come build the future with us. As our entire goal is to crowdsource knowledge, we quite literally cannot do this alone.

Follow along on Twitter and Lens.

Join the conversation in Discord.

Join our Guild for exclusive roles and rewards.

Sometimes, you just gotta #BUIDL. For the Intuition team, the month of March was full of experiments, side quests, and puzzle pieces falling into place.

Intuition was forged in the fires of ETH Denver-inspired innovation last year, so it just felt right to return for the Year of the Spork. As we prepared for our journey and laid out an event strategy, we saw two potential paths emerge before us:

1. Main Questline: Set up a booth. Exchange stickers for emails. Host a party with dubious hors d'oeuvres and deafening techno in some dimly-lit hotel lounge. Fill every waking moment with meetings. 

2. Side Quests: Do what we do best: hack. Buidl applications and tools to showcase the power of Intuition. Show; then tell.

Coincidentally, two weeks before ETH Denver, we saw a familiar phenomenon manifest: the circulation of community-sourced event spreadsheets & public Telegram groups for attendees to coordinate schedules. We realized this ritual could be a lot more... intuitive. 

It’s 2023, and we - the Ethereum community - are #BUIDLing on the technological frontier, which is why we - the Intuition team - embarked on the path of the Side Quest: build an app to make the ETH Denver experience verifiably unforgettable.

intuition.events: Your ETH Denver Companion App

intuition.events is a mobile-friendly web app built to guide you and your friends to the best ETH Denver satellite events. The app places the wisdom of the crowd in the palm of your hand to enhance your intuition about events before they even take place, and get you to the right place at the right time.

Within the app, you can:

• Make claims to help others navigate the festival.

• Rely on social attestations from others to filter out the noise.

• Plan and personalize your ETH Denver experience by watchlisting events.

• #BUIDL new connections and grow your decentralized friend list.

• Coordinate your schedule with friends to meet up at the best events.

Feel free to visit intuition.events or check out the thread below to learn more! ⬇️

Intuition 👁️

@0xIntuition

We are SO back (from ETH Denver).

Intuition was forged in the fires of innovation last year, and intuition guided us back for The Year of the Spork. Way too much happened to condense into a single thread or blog post, so here we go:

INTUITION: SIDE QUEST RECAP (1/3)

24

4:21 PM • Mar 22, 2023

We worked tirelessly on this application in the two weeks leading up to the festival, and although it was a bit buggy, and the WiFi at the venue was less-than-optimal, we are immensely proud of it. Keep an eye out for updates prior to ETH Denver 2024!

The sleepless nights we spent working on the app only prepared and invigorated the team for more sleepless nights to come, hacking in the mile-high city. 🗻

EigenList: DID Classification & Social Curation App

With the first Intuition-protocol-based application in our pockets, in retrospect, it was inevitable that we'd hack on the second one. EigenList (or Intuition Lists) represents a concept we’ve been contemplating as a team for quite some time.

In this exponentially-complex world that we live in, there's so much information out there that we want and need to interact with. To keep track, we categorize the info, then tuck it neatly into various files, folders, and lists. But do those tools really work for you? Do you have GOOD lists? And when you have too many lists, how do you organize those?

EigenList is a tool that allows you to capture, categorize, and curate your internet experience.

To learn more about EigenList, check out this thread! ⬇️

Intuition 👁️

@0xIntuition

Intuition: Side Quest Recap (2/3)

Upon arriving in Denver with a sufficient variety of energy drinks and American diet staples (corn dogs, fruit rollups, go-gurt, etc.) for @0xholman to sample, the team sat down to brainstorm our @EthereumDenver BUIDLathon submission.

Intuition 👁️

@0xIntuition

We are SO back (from ETH Denver).

Intuition was forged in the fires of innovation last year, and intuition guided us back for The Year of the Spork. Way too much happened to condense into a single thread or blog post, so here we go:

INTUITION: SIDE QUEST RECAP (1/3)

17

11:03 PM • Mar 28, 2023

Slang: Decentralized Data Developer Tooling

Slang was born out of necessity: EigenList runs on it.

Slang is developer tooling that simplifies decentralized database interactions. Decentralized data storage solutions are an essential innovation, but adoption is lagging. Why?

First of all, the learning curve is extremely steep - particularly for Web2 developers unfamiliar with various protocols, concepts, and tools involved in working with such a system. Secondly, centralized data storage solutions are objectively easier to work with at this point in time, and even Web3 devs will often turn to these centralized solutions to save time, money, and headaches.

We decided to open source Slang in an effort to reverse this trend and ultimately onboard more developers to decentralized data solutions.

To learn more about Slang, check it out on Github or read the thread below! ⬇️

Intuition 👁️

@0xIntuition

As much as the whole team would have loved to participate in the @EthereumDenver BUIDLathon together (with matching jackets & bucket hats), the rules clearly state: no more than 4 on a team.

So we divided... and conquered.

INTUITION: SIDE QUEST SZN RECAP (3/3)

20

5:08 PM • Mar 29, 2023

Recap

As previously mentioned, Intuition began as a hackathon project at ETH Denver 2022. We didn’t participate in the hackathon this year to compete with any other teams: we participated to compete with ourselves. To hone our skills, and to remember what it feels like to build from scratch.

ETH Denver 2022 Accolades:

• BUIDLathon Finalists: DAOs & Communities Track

• Ceramic Bounty: “Best Demonstration of Data Interoperability”

• SKALE Hack Award

ETH Denver 2023 Accolades:

• BUIDLathon Finalists: Infrastructure & Scalability Track* (Slang)*

• Ceramic Bounty: “Best Application Built Using Compose DB on Ceramic” (Slang)

• Ceramic Bounty: “Best Identity or Reputation App Built on ComposeDB” (EigenList)

• Ceramic Bounty: “Best Web3 Social Apps Built Using ComposeDB”* (Eigenlist)*

And that’s not all!

Intuition team member, AFK, led her team to the BUIDLathon finals with Bitcoin: Vitalik’s Vision. 

Two weeks later, AFK & full-stack Intuition dev Christian dominated ETH Porto with their zk-proof-based polling platform EtherVoice - which also leverages Intuition - winning:

• ETH Porto Hackathon (1 of 5 winners)

• Ethereum Foundation Bounty: “Best Integration of Web3 Components on Ethereum.org”

• Sismo Bounty: “Best zkConnect App”

I think it’s safe to say: we’ve outcompeted our past selves, and this side quest season was a resounding success! So, what happens now?

The Main Quest Resumes

Many of you may still be wondering what Intuition actually is. That’s understandable - we’ve been rather cryptic and mysterious up to this point. And while we already have some content prepared that will change that, it’s ultimately much easier to show you Intuition in action than it is to describe it on paper.

That is why we embarked on these side quests. Check out intuition.events. Fall a little deeper down the rabbit hole. Let your intuition guide you to that inevitable “lightbulb moment.”

When you’re ready, hop in the Discord, join our Guild, and follow us on Twitter or Lens Protocol!

The Beginning

In the earliest days of Ethereum, a novel concept emerged — instead of only signing codified transactional data with our Ethereum accounts, what if we made it easy to sign ANY piece of data? Though signing messages with private keys to make statements / attestations / pieces of data “cryptographically verifiable” was not a novel concept, the proliferation of consumer-centric PKI in the form of “blockchain accounts” made this a potential consumer-facing experience for the first time.

This concept was radical. It was transformative. It had the potential to change nearly EVERYTHING — every industry vertical, every user experience. Identity, we quickly realized, was a foundational layer for EVERY use case we were focusing on with blockchain technology.

This concept seemed to be maybe as big as Ethereum itself. Some people even lost the forest for the trees, and abandoned Ethereum entirely in their identity architectures — but we’ll get to that later.

The Potential

This concept quickly enamored the few folks who understood the potential.

What if ConsenSys could sign an attestation claiming that an individual was a ConsenSys Employee, and that person could immediately have cryptographically verifiable access to our offices or our systems?

What if a reputable bank could cryptographically sign an attestation saying they KYC’d an individual, and that individual could present the credential - digitally - to anyone who needed to verify their identity?

What if governments could create verifiable credentials representative of digital passports, and we could easily prove the authenticity of these digital documents for the first time?

Zug ID: Exploring the First Publicly Verified Blockchain Identity

Zug ID: Exploring the First Publicly Verified Blockchain Identity We recently announced our cooperation with the Swiss City of Zug and local development partner ti&m to introduce the world's first ...

https://medium.com

And what if the individual themselves could maintain sovereignty over these credentials / this data, without relying on centralized custodians?

Verifiable, self-sovereign cryptodata.

Attestations about things.

Using these attestations for ANY arbitrary purpose.

Access control. Reputation. Sybil resistance. Trust. Certainty.

Aggregating data at the focal point of the user, rather than in application-specific silos.

The potential to revolutionize nearly every industry.

uPort

Along came uPort to address the issue.

In the early days of Ethereum, most people building anything interesting were somehow affiliated with the ConsenSys Mesh — a global, decentralized, loosely affiliated cohort of brilliant, radical revolutionaries on a quest to build out the Ethereum ecosystem.

While the Ethereum Foundation focused on the Ethereum protocol, ConsenSys set out to start to populate the middleware and application layers. A venture production studio backing all of the wild ideas required to kickstart this brand new revolutionary ecosystem of the decentralized web / “world computer”, as it was called at the time (I still like using the “world computer” analogy).

One spoke of ConsenSys was uPort.

Many of the brightest minds in the Ethereum ecosystem at the time set out to solve this problem of self-sovereign identity and user-centric data — to make it easy for people to obtain, issue, and manage these “Verifiable Claims / Verifiable Credentials / Attestations” — under the uPort banner.

Early Iterations

Stepping into this problem space, a few learnings were very quickly discovered:

1. Your private key should NOT be your identity.

Your identity is possibly even more sensitive than monetary value. Imagine instead of losing your 32 Bored Apes, losing your private key resulted in you losing your ENTIRE IDENTITY?

To address this, uPort leveraged “Proxy Contracts” — a smart contract that was representative of your identity, enabling programmable ownership. The first “Smart Contract Wallet” — the first of many now-blossoming ecosystems that uPort helped kickstart.

This allowed users to rotate keys & use different recovery mechanisms to recover their identity. Social recovery. Multisig with some trusted custodian(s) on the other side. Limitless programmable options.

2. Users should not have to PAY to create their digital identity.

Now that we established the need for Smart Contract identities, there was an issue — users had to PAY to create these smart contracts because there was an associated Ethereum gas cost for deployment!

At the time, Ethereum mainnet was all that existed. And although ETH was cheap and gas fees were even cheaper, the costs were not negligible — especially for many of our target markets, which were people in underprivileged environments.

So, uPort built Meta Transactions.

(fun fact — my team won the Eth Denver hackathon 4 years ago with a permissioned Meta Transactions system called Meta Cred!)

A transaction relayer service that would pay the gas costs of creating these proxy smart contracts on behalf of the user, where WE (uPort / ConsenSys) would subsidize the gas costs.

These ended up blossoming into another entirely new ecosystem once open-sourced, but that’s another story for a later time.

3. The minimum cost of making an attestation should be CHEAP/FREE

Initial iterations of attestation infrastructure maintained all attestations on-chain. Although creating an attestation was far cheaper than deploying a new proxy smart contract, there was still a cost associated with the process.

As attestation schemas got more complex, this cost would only increase.

What if an attestation / verifiable credential should have a picture?

What if it should have a whole plethora of fields?

What if it should have a long-form descriptor?

With each new attribute and use case, the cost of fully on-chain attestations scaled prohibitively.

So — what if we instead just stored, on-chain, the URI or hash of some off-chain file or data?

Enter the precursor to the current NFT architecture.

4. Some data MUST be private

Again, initial iterations of attestation infrastructure consisted of storing and indexing all attestations on-chain. However, the need for private data was quickly realized.

What if, instead, we only used the chain for storing hashes of encrypted off-chain data?

Blockchains are very good at creating an immutable record of sequenced canonical events.

What if we just used Ethereum for this purpose? To help do things like show the time of issuance, and time of revocation (if applicable)?

5. All cryptography will one day be broken

The next leap that was made was — we must operate under the assumption that all present cryptography will someday be broken.

What if we didn’t store ANY attestation-related data on this timeless, immutable ledger so that people’s PII would not one day be decrypted by things like quantum computers?

What if we built an entirely off-chain ecosystem for this verifiable cryptodata?

The Birth of the Identity Ecosystem

As the surface area of the problem expanded, the identity efforts of ConsenSys began to fragment.

There were so many directions the group could go, and each direction was OBJECTIVELY a good idea.

There were TOO MANY problems to solve.

And staying true to our decentralized, non-hierarchical ideals, the group had no single leader to point the ship in a single direction.

So things began to splinter.

uPort became Serto and Veramo. Folks from other teams around the ConsenSys ecosystem joined up to form the “identity blob”.

Notabene, 3Box/Ceramic/Self.id, Spruce, and Disco spun-out to start their own companies.

Each solving their own portion of the identity puzzle. Each correct. Each building critical lego blocks to eventually be composed into something beautiful.

As time passed, core pieces of infrastructure finally started to emerge.

Watching this play out, it seemed like the time was nigh. The identity wave was cresting. The pieces were taking shape. The puzzle could be built.

Not just from identity pieces, but from the decentralized finance and NFT pieces as well. We could finally start to build something truly meaningful — that could draw from all of these various streams to pull the masses into a truly meaningful experience built on the shoulders of giants.

It just needed someone to build it.

Enter: Intuition.

More to come soon.