Background

How will the Arweave ecosystem develop in 2023? Arweave is identified as a significant player in the data storage track, with distinctive features that provide permanent storage and secure access control for individuals. Jessica, Founder of Relation discussed the socially programmable privacy solutions being developed on Arweave, which enables users to customize their privacy settings based on their social relationships and the context of their interactions. Relation presented our latest product, the Semantic SBTs with socially programmable privacy, at the Arweave booth during the ETHDenver conference.

In Relation Talk #9, a group of Web3 builders from Relation, Ar.io, everVision, and 4EVERLAND came together to share their thoughts on the opportunities and challenges for building on Arweave in 2023. The discussions among the speakers are recorded as follows:

Host

Jessica, Founder of Relation. Relation is building a Web3 social graph infrastructure that will host the next generation of billions of DApps, and empower souls and communities to co-build reputation and a better society on Web3 with SBTs and relationship data. Relation has launched Web3 social Dapp Relation ONE and the Semantic SBT standard which will create a chain native data layer that is easy to query, share and reuse with lower friction.

Speakers

**JonnieSparkles (Director of Ecosystem Operations at ar.io). **Ar.io is a global network,protocol and currency that enables the permaweb.

Romain (Branding Manager of everVision). everVision provides Arweave-based infrastructures for anyone who wants to build on Web3 using everPay, Permaswap, PermaDAO, and the development tool: Web3Infra.

**Val (Global Marketing Head of 4EVERLAND). **4EVERLAND is a Web 3.0 cloud computing platform that integrates storage, computing, and network as its core capabilities. It aims to help users make a smooth leap from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 and become the infrastructure for millions of Web 3.0 developers and applications.

Introduction by Jessica (Founder of Relation)

In the last episode, we ran a Twitter Space discussing the AR ecosystem, and over 1000 audiences tuned in. We discussed the merits of Arweave about data storage and the permanent web. You can listen to the last Relation Talk here.

We believe Arweave is attracting more Web3 users to this data-perpetual track at an extremely impressive rate. Today, we would like to talk about what kind of plans the project working on the AR ecosystem will have in 2023, what kind of development goals AR will have this year, and how users can get involved and enjoy a wave of dividends if the market has a chance to rise this year.

Question One

Arweave is entering 2023 with a new wave, as one of the ecological cultivators, do you see this as a positive signal for the market? From what you have known, what are the developments for the Arweave ecosystem this year? How can developers or users get involved?

JonnieSparkles (Director of Ecosystem Operations at ar.io): As far as the ecological cultivator and health of Arweave, I would say we talk about it internally too. The greatest thing is that the Arweave ecosystem is not paying full attention to the broader crypto Defi market.

It matters for the health of crypto and balance sheets especially, but the Arweave ecosystem is really super product focused, super builder focused too. Despite all the negative sentiments of the bear market, all the teams of 4EVERLAND here and everVision and the other teams keep on building.

This is healthy because in the end for a crypto project to be successful, it really needs to add traction to the use of the blockchain to begin with and really create a user-friendly experience.

So, that’s for the first part, for new releases throughout the year, I think the biggest one coming out is Arweave 2.6. It is an upgrade to the overall network which should allow for cheaper and more energy efficient data storage. We are really excited to see it being adapted and rolled out. We recently released a quick sync feature which basically allows a quick syncing of your large drives or files quickly.

As far as getting involved, the ecosystem is super friendly and welcoming. There’s tons of ways to get involved. The Ardrive website, ardrive.io, has tons of educational materials on it. Its also a project called cookbook, you can go to cookbook.arweave.dev, it’s in development and there’s been a lot of great contributions already.

Any team’s website will have links to resources to get started in the ecosystem.

Romain (Branding Manager of everVision): I don’t know what anyone else has to add about the ecosystem, because I think you’re spot on. You cannot get any better than that, to be honest. I mean the ecosystem is just the friendliest, like you said its not about the money, what I’ve raised, so and so. It’s all about building.

I think a good thing about 2.6 is also you will be able to mine with Hardrive. With HDDs not just SDD, the faster Hardrive. There’s not much to add.

Val (Global Marketing Head of 4EVERLAND): Personally, I think it’s important to mention that in 2022, Arweave was doing pretty well with the involvement in the web 2 sphere. We all know about the integration with Instagram and Meta. So, we would love to see if Arweave currently has any plans to integrate with other social media platforms,

There are some interesting names, and we definitely would love to see what Arweave might integrate with next. I think this is like one important step towards mass adoption, not only for Arweave as a blockchain but also for Arweave as a sphere.

So, in terms of plans for the future, I would personally think of some kind of deep integration into the web 2 world for sure.

Jessica (Founder of Relation Labs): For us, because we are building in the web 3 social and have introduced the socially programmable identity primitives, AR is a very good ecosystem for us to build on. We can leverage it to design a lot of the tools that we can utilize to record some privacy preserving data storage and have some access control designed on top of it.

So, there are a lot of innovations and instances we can just explore. One thing we have is that we are now trying to design a socially programmable privacy on Arweave. The solution allows individuals to configure and control their privacy settings in a social context, to control the access of the encrypted information that they uploaded to Arweave. This means that users can customize their privacy settings based on their social relationships and the context of their interactions, rather than using a one-size-fits-all approach. We also have a deep interest in and will later develop products on personal data space for keeping everything about oneself inside of this data package.

Also, having access control within each social interaction and contacts. For those who are interested, for example, web3 developers can get involved with us to build together within the Arweave ecosystem. As a user, if you are interested, we are also developing some templates.

Question Two

There are many different competitors in the data storage track. What are the distinctive features of AR in the data storage track? How do you enable users to quickly understand the need and security of data storage by using the tools and services you provide?

**JonnieSparkles (Director of Ecosystem Operations at ar.io): **As far as the competitors, Arweave’s biggest difference is the permanent data storage angle. It’s a layer one network optimized for permanent data storage. The competitors out there are kind of like renting a home, you have to continuously pay to keep your files secure.

There are solutions coming out like those in Filecoin and Solana which are taking a perpetual storage angle. It’s great to see that imitation is the highest form of flattery. However, having Arweave as a layer one network whose pure function is permanent data storage with a proven four plus years of operation. It has proven to be a successful protocol for incentivizing miners to store data for the long term.

That key of permanence unlocks a lot of cool things. Its not just storing your files and family photos, and things forever, which is obviously an awesome part of it. But you are also able to store applications and websites, functional things on the network. Our CEO recently posted a tweet of hosting the Ardrive app permanently on Arweave.

This means that the version of the app at that moment is forever stored on the network, and any user can still go back to use it. If we update the app, you don’t like the app or a team disappears for whatever reason, that version of the app will always function.

It is a really cool aspect once you start thinking about all the different features.

Romain (Branding Manager of everVision): I don’t really see a competitor for Arweave. If you wish, I don’t think they do the same thing that Arweave does. The Permaweb is something very important, but if the company decides to shut down, all the users lose everything. However, if Ardrive decides to, its always going to be there with the user. That is something important.

It gives users trust which is important for now and the future. A couple days ago, I don’t know what company decided to stop using or allowing storage, I can’t remember, but that’s something users are going to lose. If you do not want to lose something, Arweave is definitely the place.

I honestly just don’t see that there’s a competitor to Arweave right now. Jonathan talked about Shadow drive and what not but the biggest difference is Arweave is an L1. We can actually build on Arweave.

Val (Global Marketing Head of 4EVERLAND): For 4EVERLAND its actually pretty easy to explain why our users should use Arweave instead of any other products. It won’t be a surprise if I say Permaweb storing information for the time that any other product won’t be able to store it. There was a question about how we make the users utilize Arweave?

Well, we just explain that the data that you have, for example, data for NFTs could be stored for much longer compared to any other protocols. This idea actually comes across as how could it be? Lots of people have heard of Arweave, they would love to have their data stored somewhere, but they do not know the right platforms or protocols.

For products coming with NFT collections or any type of data they have to store, like Defi or SocialFi, Arweave would be the best solution for them. So, its not even a challenge, explaining the possibilities Arweave has in store.

It is a great solution, the main feature of storing information can hardly be beaten by anyone. That makes it really awesome.

JonnieSparkles (Director of Ecosystem Operations at ar.io): I think for people already in crypto and web3, Arweave is a much easier pitch. They already know the lingo of crypto and what not. Trying to convince or educate a web2 customer, say someone using Google Drive, will definitely be more of a challenge.

First, we are guilty by association with the broader crypto market. Then there’s the user friction: private key, wallet management of your own data, it’s all intimidating at first. Getting through that hurdle is tough, I think what we have done with Ardrive is, once you’re done with that step, it’s a really intuitive interface.

It should all be familiar. We have created a lot of content around making users comfortable using the product.

Romain (Branding Manager of everVision): I agree, Ardrive is so easy to use my girlfriend actually uses it and she has no idea what web3 is. The only thing that was difficult was getting AR. It was the only hurdle or obstacle, but once you get over that, its super easy and intuitive to use.

There was one thing that Val said, and that was misconceptions with Arweave, and that’s totally true. Most people don’t even know, they just think, yes you just store your stuff and all that, but it’s so much deeper than that. A thread was posted outlining the misconceptions within Arweave. I’ll post that in the comments.

Whoever is interested in seeing what misconceptions there are about Arweave can go ahead to go through that. It’s a really nice, detailed and cool thread.

Jessica (Founder of Relation Labs): I love the part about you and your girlfriend using Ardrive.

Romain (Branding Manager of everVision): Yes, her former Hardrive was actually corrupt, it had ten years’ worth of pictures and then she lost a whole bunch of pictures. She was gutted. Now, she knows that with Ardrive, no matter where, she can break her phone, her PC can explode, she’ll always have her pictures. She just needs her private key and she goes into Ardrive, easy-peasy.

Jessica (Founder of Relation Labs): Yes, I had a kind of a similar experience using web2 services. Sometimes the service was discontinued and then we had to struggle to move everything from here to there before they shut down. And there are cases of missing the period of transitions and everything is gone. It’s good that people with little or no Ar or technology background can easily use Ardrive to upload information to Arweave.

I also agree that the concept of permanent storage is especially important in the identity data field, what we need is the persistence of identity information. Not only the identifier of the identity but also many identity-related information that is evolving over time. All these have to be kept as a record in a persistent way that never expires. Makes information available and able to find it when necessary. Regardless of whether it is private or public, we need to have confidence that our social data is always there when we need to find it. No matter if we change devices or it’s been a long time, we don’t always have to be extra mindful of fee paying. It’s really important in building the decentralized social graph with decentralized public data storage.

Question Three

Enthusiasm sweeps through the Blockchain industry as ETHDenver kicks off. As the world’s largest and longest-running Ethereum conference, we are sure that many eco-headquarter projects, developers, and community members will be there. This is one of the rare times of the year when friendships and ideas collide and new projects are born and launched. So, can you share with the audience whether your project will be present at ETHDenver and what information you will share with developers at the conference? In what form will you be attending?

**JonnieSparkles (Director of Ecosystem Operations at ar.io): **Our team is organizing Arweave day on March 2nd. Romain has been instrumental in that. It’s basically a day full of Arweave adventure, there’s going to be a panel and discussions. I am not sure but I think registration might have filled up already so you could check our social channels.

So hopefully, we have lots of attendants. Our team will be on a panel on infrastructure, and Phil our CEO will be on a panel as regards decentralized applications. Plans aren’t fully baked but the day after, we are going to try to host a smaller event, a community event. We will also be at the Arweave booth on Friday and Saturday, the 3rd and 4th.

Those are our plans and we are really excited to meet the community, meet Romain and a bunch of people.

Romain (Branding Manager of everVision): Just to go off with what you just said, the day after we are actually planning a little “walkathon” Sam for example likes to walk and just talk back on all these ideas. So, that kind of grew on me. The next thing after Arweave is Arweave day made by you guys.

We are planning to do the walkathon from about ten in the morning to maybe like lunch time. So, I guess we will have to talk about that, you and I. We can see if we can make that happen. I know that Phill is definitely down to doing that as well. I’m doing what he’s doing by the way, whatever Jonathan is doing, I’m doing because we’re basically going to be in the same spot.

**JonnieSparkles (Director of Ecosystem Operations at ar.io): **That’s pretty cool. Phill has been on one of those walks before, so I’m sure he knows what’s up, he’s down.

Romain (Branding Manager of everVision): You know what, I think you have to come as well. Maybe we can actually combine it or do something after the walkathon like that.

JonnieSparkles (Director of Ecosystem Operations at ar.io): As far as the trends for ETH Denver, NFTs have always been hot. I think we will continue to see NFTs trending from just profile pictures and trading card equivalents to utilities, features and assets with actual utility. For example, token gating, access to premium features or ticket type utilities. I see those as a kick up for NFTs.

The current use of them isn’t very exciting to me, I know a lot of people think they are. However, I do see the actual technological use for them that I look forward to.

Jessica (Founder of Relation Labs): For ETH Denver, there are certain events that will happen there. A lot of communities will be posting some meetups, conferences and that’s really interesting.

We are definitely interested if you want to share those. I’d be happy to join. So, we are joining the Arweave booth and presenting our latest product which is the Semantic Soulbound token with socially programmable privacy.

That way, people can actually configure and control their privacy settings in the social contacts and customize their process ID on social relationships in the context of their interactions rather than using a one size fits all approach.

You know the social sphere is a very complex thing that in one case we might want to show up about ourselves. While in other cases, we might need to put up our privacy. So, it should be able to give people the right to customize the settings in terms of privacy and protect themselves. This is the one thing that we developed, leveraging Arweave and lead protocol to balance the desire for privacy with the need for sovereign interaction and building the circle of intimacy.

This is one thing that we are going to present at the Arweave booth and during the ETH Denver. If you are interested, please join us to see the demo or the try out.

Val (Global Marketing Head of 4EVERLAND): Well, we are planning to go to ETH Denver but unfortunately, we won’t be. We would love to follow through, and see some new projects coming there. Apart from decentralized storages, Defi is also worth looking out for, merging science and technology especially the blockchain and web3 fusion. Personally, I would love to see new names there and follow them for sure.

JonnieSparkles (Director of Ecosystem Operations at ar.io): For Arweave day, on March 2nd, for anyone who can attend we are planning to have it totally recorded and live streamed. So, I figured if it’s going to be on our channels, stay tuned, it will be posted all over.

Question Four

Let’s pick up on the last topic, what are your expectations and what do you hope to achieve at the conference? Which Web3 trends do you think will be most likely to be pointed out at the conference? Is the social protocols track likely to be a popular topic?

JonnieSparkles (Director of Ecosystem Operations at ar.io): For me, my main goal of going out is to meet all these people I just know by avatars and digital texting. Bunch of us have met already but a lot of us have not. Even our team, I think there’s like twelve of us going out there. Some I have not met in person, So, I’m really excited about that.

Romain (Branding Manager of everVision). I think there will definitely be a topic, there’s a huge overlap with Arweave and social networks, the whole censorship and having things available and access taken away from you, Arweave addresses a lot of that. If you post a social network on Arweave, there’s no single entity or governing body committee that can delete, censor your profile or take down your post.

It’s really like a fundamental concept for where social seems to be trending in the ecosystem; integration with Lens, Relation to mention a few. Protocols that can leverage permanent data storage. It’s not just by being censorship-resistant, it’s also immutable. Once something is posted you know it can’t be changed. That version of it is the version that was posted.

So, you need to be more careful before posting, people can’t juts change their opinions, especially when approaching deep fake videos. The time stamps and knowing original videos were on certain dates, would really be powerful in letting the user figure out what is true than having central authority do that for you. It’s a really fundamental concept.

Jessica (Founder of Relation Labs): I agree with Jonathan, I think the Blockchain based identities certificate, the information stored or hosted anywhere must meet the design goals. People need decentralization, privacy, security, proof-based, discoverability, interoperability and many other features.

We need to make sure they are tamper proof, transparent and verifiable without need for a central authority. That way, no one controls or dominates most of the information people or those who are underrepresented in other social networks or groups, can have a way to be discovered here. They may also gain the opportunity to be represented in the social network, while protecting their privacy.

I think this is really important so I think Arweave is the best solution that empowers most of the design goals of the identity and social. It helps to empower the storage within the decentralized society. We would love to see that more and more people are being aware of Arweave and building on Arweave. If you would like to collaborate with us while building the structure of the decentralized society.

We specialize in building the structure of organizations such as this; the DAO, the individual, or the governance bodies or entities. Those actually empower the whole structure of the whole society and we will be happy to see more people building from the other perspective of non-financial applications including social, so that we can have this built in web3 to solve the problems we don’t have specified solutions for.

Question Five

Let’s move on to the final topic, the theme of our Twitter Space. Could you share what you think the opportunities and challenges for Arweave will be in 2023? Also, what are your project’s plans or activities for this year?

JonnieSparkles (Director of Ecosystem Operations at ar.io): We already touched on the user onboarding, and token acquisition experience, web3 people know what’s up. It’s getting people outside of the crypto sphere to try our products. I think that’s going to be a focus of the ecosystem this year. We have some new features coming out that we hope will make the experience easier for teams.

Another trend I think we’re seeing is standardization around specifications and things in the ecosystem. Till date everyone’s kind of running around doing the same thing, developing what they think is the best version of a thing. You can see that the ecosystem is trying to come around to like, okay, lets get organized now, lets get together and figure out the best way to standardize these things.

It happened with the atomic asset, ANS 108, and standardization is really important. It allows teams to create products that are interoperable. You don’t have to start from the ground up every time. Every time you want to create a product, there are already tools available in the library to refer to. It is just like in the US, the railroad standardized the size of the railroad tracks, unlocking the whole railroad network making them interoperable.

Once that process gets started it’s going to be pretty exciting to see how quickly the ecosystem develops. On our end, other than the Ardrive, we are working on the launch of the Rio network. Asides from Arweave 2.6, we feel like this is going to be one of the biggest contributions to the ecosystem.

Arweave has formalized itself as a protocol for storing data permanently. Pay once, store forever, lots of teams use it, nearly everyone uses it. It incentivizes miners to store their data, but there’s really nothing in the protocol incentivizing anybody to serve that data in a performant way. Like if you are reacting with an actor for example, there are gateways. Anybody who has interacted with Arweave has probably interacted with Arweave.net specifically, Arweave.net slash transaction ID to get to a file.

That is a gateway our team currently operates, it was founded by the Arweave team, it’s a single gateway. It is responsible for the entire Arweave, however, because it is centrally controlled, it’s a single point of failure. We are trying to create this network of decentralized gateway services.

So, it’s a network, it’s a token, there will be a token, the IO token. We are trying to attract gateway operators to come on board and operate their own gateways whether they want to create one as big as Arweave.net for the community or smaller ones focused on making their applications woek for whatever reason.

We hope this will bring Arweave to the next level of decentralization and robustness. We are really excited, and we are working on the whitepaper right now. Should be coming soon.

Romain (Branding Manager of everVision): Arweave is still in a sense young, not a lot of people know it yet, but there’s tons and tons to do on Arweave in terms of development. Just like Jonathan said, user acquisition or making it easier for users. Right now, I think that’s our main issue, just making it easier for users to onboard or use Arweave without wanting to smash their computer. I think that’s the main thing for Arweave.

In terms of opportunities, whoever is a developer looking to build on Arweave, there’s just so much to do. We can’t really get enough developers right now. I guess that’s pretty much what we are looking for, the best devs for this beautiful ecosystem to turn it into this beautiful tree so that it can prosper forever.

That’s my key idea.

Val (Global Marketing Head of 4EVERLAND): I think fellow guests have nailed it down for me. In terms of the possible challenges in 2023, Romain you mentioned making Arweave as easy as it could be for ordinary users. I think that with integration with some web2 platforms, there would be some type of opportunity for that.

For 4EVERLAND, we are planning to launch services for different groups of users. Right now, we have got some plans and studies right now, understanding the best way to realize these services. So we are on secret mode, working on that. Stay tuned.

Jessica (Founder of Relation Labs): From our point of view, we believe Arweave is really building one of the most important parts of web3. For the internet or the web, one of the most important things is storage. The others might be computing or something else but storage is really important.

How the data is going to be hosted and accessed as well as shared is really one of the important topics in web3. Arweave is one of the key players here and this is the main opportunity for Arweave and the ecosystem in terms of building. In the near future, we will definitely explore more integrations and tools leveraging permanent storage along with helping people build and utilize more applications or customized social related tool kits.

We would like to collaborate with more builders who are onboard Arweave. Lastly, I’m really looking forward to seeing you guys in real life.

https://relationlabs.ai/

About Relation

Relation is building a Web3 social graph infrastructure that will host the next generation of billions of DApps, and empower souls and communities to co-build reputation and a better society on Web3 with SBTs and relationship data. Relation has launched Web3 social Dapp Relation ONE and the Semantic SBT standard which will create a chain native data layer that is easy to query, share and reuse with lower friction.

Website | Twitter | Github | Discord | Mirror | Medium | Telegram | Documentation

The value of social decentralization

The construction of Web2 social applications is now largely mature, and there is a great demand for sticky social applications from users. Still, there are also some pain points of centralized social media networks, where users have limited control over their data and content and are subject to censorship, algorithmic manipulation, and privacy violations. Traditional centralized social media platforms have dominated the market for a long time. However, they still need to address the issues of data and content creators, such as the interference of social media handles or unequal distribution of revenue and lack of control over their content. With the rise of the data economy and decentralized technologies, there is a growing need for a platform that can provide a fair and transparent system for data and content creators to distribute and monetize their content.

Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the trend toward remote work and digital content consumption, which has increased the demand for platforms that can connect creators and consumers in a decentralized manner. It is not only pressing but also presents an opportunity to develop a new generation of decentralized social media platforms that can address the needs of the data and creator economy and provide a fairer and more transparent system for content distribution.

Decentralized social networks built on blockchain technology can address these issues by giving users control over their data, providing transparency and immutability, and promoting a more open and free exchange of ideas. Obviously, the decentralized social is a high-potential vertical in Web3. It addresses the growing demand for creator-economy, privacy, ownership, control over contents, and censorship-resistant communication channels, which are important to individuals and communities seeking to protect their rights and publish their content freely online without the interference of centralized authorities. The emergence of web3 technologies provides new possibilities for developing decentralized social platforms to ensure trust, interoperability, and seamless value transfer within a peer-to-peer network.

How to build a social graph in Web3

Decentralized social graphs aim to settle more value than ever before, giving data control to the next billion users on web3. But calculating and analyzing on-chain social data volume is a non-trivial exercise. Raw data is rife with noise and opportunities for misinterpretation. Representing social data in web3 becomes extremely important as the user number increases exponentially.

The question is, how would you design the data structures for a very large social network?

Not considering millions of people?

That is fine if we are not considering a huge social graph that manages massive social data. We can construct a graph by treating each person’s handle NFT as a node and letting an NFT indicate that the two users are friends. To find insight between two people, we start with one person’s NFT, do a simple search, and process the information.

What if the social graph is very large?

With the growth of social graphs and the exponential rise of social data, we cannot rely on primitive processing methods anymore if we want to analyze social networks.

The design goals of decentralized social networks indicate that it is critical to have a common data model that allows representation, exchange, interoperability, transformation, and querying of social network data in web3 in a decentralized manner.

The RDF graph is possible to meet this requirement. Based on the developments of tokenized decentralized social graphs, we propose an RDF-based social data model that fits the above requirements.

RDF, short for Resource Description Framework, is a standard created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for metadata modeling. The RDF, also called the RDF Triple (the triple), stores and expressed information in a sentence-like structure of three: subject-predicate-object, represented by two nodes connected by an edge. For example, Alice knows Bob. This information will be structured as triples Alice-knows-Bob, where the subject in Alice, the predicate, and the object in Bob are known.

Decentralized social graphs with common data models make analysis easier and faster in 1000 times. All RDF-based social graphs use the same standard framework and formal semantics for storing and representing data and a standard querying language. Data sharing between RDF data stores on web3 has simplified thanks to RDF’s syntax. RDF triples follow a standard that allows interoperability among social graphs. This interoperability allows RDF-based graphs to integrate and exchange information with each other. It also allows users to add new nodes and relationships, or even substructures, without the need to rebuild the dataset.

Encode Social relations in Web3

Relation builds an innovative decentralized social graph protocol for encoding relations in Web3. It creates a blockchain-native data layer through Semantic SBTs and a standard data format for developers, providing a trustless, open, and interoperable infrastructure for social interactions. In this protocol, as users interact with the DApp, they will generate massive amounts of data on the blockchain that is standardized and machine-readable RDF data. On a deeper level, users will gain more real ownership and control over all the social data generated, sharing it as they wish and deciding how it is used.

Relation Protocol is building the decentralized social layer for web3, providing chain-native social experiences that facilitate seamless data integration and customizable privacy settings for communities to better coordinate in more open and inclusive community-owned economies with enhanced user sovereignty and network effects.

Chain-native smart contract ecosystem

Relation has raised the EIP 6239 Semantic SBTs to specify the common data model and events. According to the EIP, communities, and individuals can build their social connections in the graph by deploying smart contracts.

Using events as atomic units to integrate new and updated graph data into the global social graph is also a novel approach, making it easier to maintain and update the graph more transparently and tamper-evidently.

Common and flexible data model in graph

Relation integrates the RDF, a flexible and expressive graph data model for describing the relationships between resources, making it ideal for representing social graphs and other complex data structures. Using RDF, the Relation protocol makes integrating data from multiple sources easier and representing it in a consistent and interoperable format. It offers a highly scalable and composable data model for social networks, enabling different applications and smart contracts to interact seamlessly with each other and share data. Thus Relation enables the decentralized social data middle layer for web3; the multi-chain social data is integrated into the global social graph through the RDF. The private module (Private SBTs) for configuring privacy settings is a unique feature that enables users to control content access in different social contexts. The natively on-chain (by Semantic SBTS) or publicly visible storage (on Arweave) for data hosting removes the need for trusted intermediaries, increasing decentralization and security.

Privacy configuration

Relation protocol features socially programmable privacy and identity management, allowing native on-chain data hosting and decentralized access control, giving users more control over their personal data and content. Through innovative Private SBTs, users can customize their privacy settings based on the context of their social relationships and interactions, further enhancing their ability to control who has access to their data and content in different social contexts. This differentiates it from traditional social networking platforms that rely on centralized data storage and monetization through targeted advertising.

Infinite imagination on the protocol

Relation Protocol launched the first pilot application, Relation One, in April 2022. It aims to be the web3 social gateway in emerging social markets.

Relation One bridge the gap between web3 and web2 social identity by allowing users to manage their profile in both ecosystems. It is building of instant messaging based on wallet address allows for web3 native, secure, and private communication between users across platforms. Using token-gated authentication for forming discussion groups also introduces a unique way of building communities with shared interests, promotes the formation of tight-knit communities, and incentivizes community members to contribute and participate in discussions. This helps content creators reach a more engaged and invested audience, leading to more meaningful interactions and greater exposure for their content. Lastly, the decentralized access control feature gives users greater control over the content they publish, ensuring that only those with the appropriate permissions can access it, which can be important for maintaining privacy or restricting access to exclusive content.

With over 200 thousand users linked to over 3 million unique wallet addresses and social handles, it formed over 11 million connections. The application has gamified social features and is achieving exponential growth with built-in social referral mechanics.

Of course, Relation One is only used as one of the social examples. Any developer who wants to build social DApps can do so on the Relation protocol., such as a decentralized dating platform, a decentralized credit loan system, a decentralized content-distribution network, and a decentralized advertisement network. Such as the decentralized wallet Hashkey Me and the Web3 recruitment platform Dejob are already connected to the Relation Protocol to enhance the social aspect of their business. The potential of the Relation Protocol will attract more developers to join the ecosystem to build the Desoc ecosystem.

https://relationlabs.ai/

We are excited to announce that Relation has cooperated with Lit Protocol to integrate the decentralized access control into Semantic SBTs!

What’s Decentralized Access Control?

With decentralized access control provided by Lit Protocol, access to encrypted content is granted based on on-chain conditions set by the content owner. These conditions could include things like owning a certain NFT. The network provides signatures and decryption keys to users who meet the conditions, but no single node in the network has full custodianship of the private key, making the process decentralized.

To encrypt content, the content owner generates a symmetric key and distributes it as shares across Lit’s network. They then set rules for when and under what conditions the network should provision the symmetric key to users. When a user attempts to access the encrypted content, the network checks if they meet the conditions (by prompting them to sign a message with their wallet), and if they do, the decryption key is provisioned to the user so they can unlock the content.

Integrations In Semantic SBT Protocol & Product

Privacy-Preserving features developed by Lit Protocol make it possible for people to meet their demand for diverse social interactions while protecting privacy. Therefore, to help users build a personalized and privacy-preserving social network, Relation has utilized the Decentralized Access Control SDK provided by Lit Protocol to develop a privacy module in the Semantic SBT Protocol to achieve encryption and gated access to private content in Semantic metadata.

Moreover, Relation has created the SBT template with the privacy module in the Semantic SBT Mint Tools, with which developers can directly deploy Semantic SBT contracts with decentralized access control. As soon as a Semantic SBT contract has been deployed, whitelisted users will be able to claim their SBTs in the SBT Bazaar and sign in to access the encrypted content in the SBTs.

As Semantic SBT Mint Tools integrated with Lit Protocol become open for everyone to use, individuals and communities will be able to accurately manage and control their privacy settings based on their own social networks and interactions.

Permanent Storage on Arweave

Thanks to the integration of Lit Protocol, Bundlr and Arweave, Relation is able to use Bundlr, a decentralized storage scaling platform that increases the number of transactions conducted on Arweave, to upload the encrypted metadata in SBTs to Arweave for permanent storage.

Thus, the Semantic Metadata in the SBTs is not only privacy protected with decentralized access control but also stored permanently on the chain, paving the way for broader, diversified and personalized applications of Semantic SBTs.

Demo of Semantic SBT Privacy Module

Here is the Demo of how to deploy Semantic SBT contracts with the privacy module in the Mint Tools and how to decrypt the Semantic SBTs in SBT Bazaar. The privacy module is built based on the decentralized access control SDK provided by Lit Protocol. Both Semantic SBT protocol and Mint Tools have finished the integration. Welcome to check!

Building the DeSoc with Semantic SBTs

Semantic SBTs are programmable NFTs (non-fungible tokens) that are metadata-linked and interconnected in a way that is machine understandable and interpretable. A semantic SBT is a new type of SBT with semantic meaning written in the metadata which represents a statement with three attributes including a subject, a predicate and an object.

The main difference between Semantic SBTs and other SBTs is that they are designed to provide a richer, more meaningful description of the data they represent. This is achieved by linking the SBTs to semantic ontologies, which define a set of concepts and their relationships, allowing machines to understand and interpret the relationships between different data sources.

In the context of building the Web3 Social Protocol, Semantic SBTs are used to provide a decentralized digital identity solution that is both self-sovereign and verifiable. By analyzing the social relations of individuals and communities in a decentralized way, Semantic SBTs can be used to represent proof not only of a person’s identity but also their friendships, affiliations, memberships, qualifications, and even employment on the blockchain.

These Semantic SBTs are then collected into what are called “Soulbound Journals” (SBJs), which list all the identifying information of the account through its constituent Semantic SBTs. SBJs provide proof of attendance, proof of skillset, and proof of personhood, and they can be used to protect against Sybil cyberattacks, target-market services based on user interests and needs, and help with social recovery wallets.

Overall, Semantic SBTs and SBTs are important tools for advancing the capabilities of Web3, providing a new paradigm of identification and verification that balances the need for trust with the precepts of decentralization and anonymity.

How Will Lit Protocol Expand the Application of Relation Social Protocol & Products?

The integration of decentralized access control provided by Lit Protocol has created a privacy module in Semantic SBTs and will greatly expand the application scenarios of Semantic SBTs and its protocol in Web3 Social.

For example:

Gated Social Club

By setting the holding of a Semantic SBT with privacy module as a requirement, the access of members in a social club will be automatically managed with the SBT. Therefore, the Social Club will be more private and more flexible for managing Club members.

Access-Controlled Content

By setting certain requirements as conditions, only people who meet the requirements will be able to access the content to protect privacy, manage permissions and target audiences.

Quick Adoption for R&D

Since the Semantic SBT Protocol and Mint Tools have integrated the Lit Protocol, it will be very easy for developers to utilize and integrate. More Social Dapps and scenarios could be expected to spring up in the future!

Conclusion

The Integration between Lit Protocol and Relation has profound significance, especially for building a decentralized society. Semantic SBTs with the privacy module will open up more possibilities for Web3 Social which needs to meet various personalized social demands. By the way, Relation keeps trying to complete more innovative integrations to optimize Semantic SBTs and the Web3 Social Protocol.

https://relationlabs.ai/home

From the beginning of Relation Ambassador Program Phase 1, we have received 117 applications and selected 23 Ambassador trainees to join the program in 7 interest groups, including Translation, Content & Research, Design, Video, Moderation, Promotion, Activities & Operations.

In the past 4 months, we have witnessed the growth of 5 Trainees into Junior Ambassadors and 17 Trainees into skilled ambassador candidates. The Ambassadors and Trainees have made great achievements including: providing Chinese, Japanese and Russian translation for official content; generating recap for Relation Talk to spread the insightful ideas further; producing videos for Relation Bi-weekly Report and User Guide; being responsible for discord moderation and ticket support; making proposals for community events and local meetup; promoting Relation brand and community events; and assisting in design work.

Now, Relation Ambassador Program Phase 2 is open for application! For this round of the ambassador program, we prefer to see more applicants from the Asia-Pacific region, Europe and America, especially countries and regions including Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, UK, US and Australia.

Why?

Since April 2022, Relation has started our journey in the Web3 world and made great achievements: we’ve encountered a group of business partners and faithful users around the globe; we’ve earned a place in the Social Graph field and been welcomed by more and more users; we’ve established 3.2M+ social nodes & 10.8M+ social connections and stored millions of NFT data sources and indexing addresses; we’ve also established partnerships with 90+ excellent Web3 teams. All the efforts and achievements will boost the development of Web3.0 social graph.

The application of Web3.0 Social Graph is still in the early stages of exploration. Relation team is deeply inspired by the paper titled Decentralized Society: Finding the Web3’s Soul co-authored by Vitalik Buterin, and is making significant changes in our new round of exploration to provide a set of programmable Semantic SBT minting tools and a SBT protocol standard for all the Web3 users and developers. Through the non-transferability and weak financial attributes of Semantic SBTs, we hope to unveil the whole picture of a personal profile and social existence by adding descriptions to the metadata based on W3C standard. We think it’s a key factor in making Web3 social graph more attractive and sustainable. And, of course, We will also extend the use of semantic SBT to include more social proof of relationships, such as qualifications, affiliations, commitments, reputations and more into Semantic SBTs. *For more understanding of Semantic SBTs from Relation, please read Semantic SBTs: Encode Social Relationships on Web3 and Soulbound Journals — The New Paradigm of Identification and Verification in Web3.*

At this right moment, we are eager to embrace more talented, passionate and insightful people to join us to spread Relation’s vision, expand Relation’s brand influence and empower Relation to become the next generation of Web3 social graph infrastructure. In the next 5–10 years, we hope all the Web3 projects could benefit from adopting the Relation Semantic SBT standard and tools to achieve their business success.

Who can join?

• Those who love and recognize the value of Relation’s brand

• Those who love to share, communicate and build social relationships with others

• Those who can grow with Relation in the long run and desire to participate in and influence the development of Relation

• Those who have special talents in marketing, community development or management, user education, writing, translation, design, coding, video production, integrating industry resources, etc

Benefits

Ambassador NFT Pass with Exclusive Rewards

Holding the official Ambassador NFT Pass, the higher the rank, you will get the higher levels of benefits. You will have a priority in joining the brand events and specific activities to get special rights and different rewards. You will also have an opportunity to be a member of the official DAO in the future.

Honor & Achievements with Higher Personal Influence

You will enjoy the honor of becoming an official Ambassador for Relation. Relation will issue Proofs of Ambassadors SBTs to prove your achievements in the Web3 industry. You can also accumulate community experience and marketing skills to enhance your personal impact in the crypto world.

In Close Touch with Information Frontier & Professional Guidance

You will get close contact with pioneer builders of Web3 Social Graph and the team of idealists to know project development plans ahead of others, and obtain professional guidance & resource support, including materials, prizes, information, and etc. By entering the exclusive group for the ambassadors and participating in regular meetings, your feedback might influence the future development of Relation.

Ambassador Growth Path

The growth path of Relation Ambassador is divided into 3 levels. After your application for Relation Ambassador is approved, you will become a Relation Ambassador Trainee and are able to earn higher levels of honor and rewards by taking corresponding tasks and responsibilities. More details are only open to Relation Ambassador Candidates.

Level-1 Junior Ambassador

• Completing open tasks to accumulate points

• To get a Proof of Junior Ambassador SBT & Discord Role and an NFT Pass for Junior Ambassadors after gaining a certain amount of points

Level-2 Senior Ambassador

• Completing open tasks to accumulate points and guide Junior Ambassadors on completing tasks

• To get a Proof of Senior Ambassador SBT & Discord Role, an NFT Pass for Senior Ambassadors and 200U bonus per month

Level-3 Lifetime Ambassador

• Completing appointed tasks, guiding Junior & Senior Ambassadors on completing tasks, and working independently as a trainer, activity planner and meeting organizer, etc

• To get a Proof of Lifetime Ambassador SBT & Discord Role, an NFT Pass for Lifetime Ambassadors, 500U bonus per month and Relation Token rewards in the future

  If you think you’re qualified for Relation Ambassador, please submit your application here. (Application Form: https://forms.gle/VNNKrikdTZ7EazWz6)

https://forms.gle/VNNKrikdTZ7EazWz6

After successful submission, you can enter the #-Open-ticket channel at Relation Discord server to claim the Trainee role and become a candidate for Relation Ambassador.

The second round of application for the Relation Ambassador Program will last from 21st February to 21st March 2023. We sincerely welcome you to join us and grow with Relation together!

https://relationlabs.ai/home

Introduction

The Relation Community has been supporting and witnessing the development of the Web3 social graph infrastructure built by Relation. It’s a thriving community with great creativity. In previous campaigns, such as Adventure NFT Creation, Insight Writing, and Meme Design, community members have shown their talents and abilities in creating original content with excellent ideas.

It’s also a fast-developing community with a fair degree of autonomy. In the Relation Ambassador Program, a group of Trainees has entered their favorite interest groups to contribute to the community while evolving their position in the Web3 world. The community members are also very active and helpful in exchanging ideas and welcoming newcomers.

We’re proud that so many creative, active, and talented people have gathered in the Relation community, which has great possibilities to merge into a future DAO to co-build the Decentralized Society!

What’s Next?

The stars in the Galaxy get connected into constellations, forming diverse shapes, unique names, and legends. A sustainable community with vitality is like a healthy plant with strong roots (connected and interactive), only then can leaves, flowers, and fruits grow and impress the world with their beauty and abundance.

Therefore, to boost the development of the Relation Community, we not only need to carry the Relation Ambassador Program forward and train more talents but also unite community members around a consensus we all share.

Symbols are good mediums to express the spirits and ideas of the community. Therefore, we propose to create a unique name and mascot for the community!

Spiritual Symbols

Creating a name and a mascot representing and sharing by the whole community is a great way to unite every member together.

For example, many KPOP groups will select a name and a representative color for their fans. Some Web2 Social Platforms will also give a nickname and mascot to their users.

However, in the DeSoc (Decentralized Society), we think the ownership of the community should be given back to the community members. That’s why we call for ideas from all the community members to create a name and mascot for the community.

Community Name & Mascot

Background

https://relationlabs.ai/home

To boost the development of science and technology on the homeworld, an expedition team of humans — Spearheads, who have the most foresight and the strongest strength, left the Web2 world and started an adventure in Web3 space.

The Relation Community is where the Spearheads gather to build a base and continue the adventure in Web3 Space. They are the pioneers who aim to promote everyone’s participation in building the future DeSoc based on Relation Social Graph.

Relation Social Graph has been built and will be built according to Roadmap from Planet to Omniverse. The Relation Community will continue to grow in the Web3 Space following the Roadmap.

Direction

You can provide your ideas for the Relation Community Name & Mascot in any style you like! But to give you a hint, the name and mascot of the Relation Community could be more futuristic, creative, and impressive, with a clear image and good meaning! You can take the images below for reference. However, we believe your imagination is way beyond!

Application

The community name and mascot will be used to call the whole community and every single community member. The name could be used by others and also by community members yourselves.

How to Join?

Time

Duration: 9th February — 9th March 2023

First-round Voting will be held through google form at Relation Party on 11th March 2023 to pick 10 ideas from each of the two tracks.

Second-round Voting will be held on 14th March to pick the final winner in the two tracks through Twitter Poll.

Requirements

Track One | Concept

1. To join the first track, please add a reply to this Tweet in the following format (Required: @relationlabs, #Concept, Community Name, Concept Image, Reason, Relation ID)

2. Send your reply tweet link to reply to the themed post in the forum >> https://discord.gg/JH27maG2SD

Track Two | Visualization

1. You can create an original image for the Relation Community Mascot. Also, you can try the latest AI Drawing technology to generate an image you like for the Mascot.

Try with DALL·E 2:

https://openai.com/product/dall-e-2

2. To join the second track, please add a reply to this Tweet in the following format (Required: @relationlabs, #Visualization, Image, Reason, Relation ID)

3. Send your reply tweet link to reply to the themed post in the forum >> https://discord.gg/JH27maG2SD

Rewards

1. To reward you for providing valuable ideas, we will issue a Creator Medal SBT for all the qualified participants. (Sent to your Relation ID, and can be claimed on the Medal Wall in Relation >> https://relationlabs.ai/#/medalwall)

2. 150U will be rewarded to the winner on Track One; 250U will be rewarded to the winner on Track Two.

3. The winners will have a prior say in constructing the future community image building.

Contact

Please drop your question in the forum for this campaign, the team and mods will help answer your question as soon as possible!

Thanks for reading! We look forward to knowing your wonderful ideas for building the Relation Community together!

https://relationlabs.ai/home

Arweave is the infrastructure for the permanent storage of human ingenuity as the Library of Alexandria in the age of Web 3.0. Web3.0 is accelerating, and Arweave will be adopted by more and more developers as an infrastructure, creating a new and more colorful ecosystem.

The Arweave network has surpassed more than 200 applications in categories such as social networking, infrastructure, content distribution, authentication tools and many more. We believe there is a very strong market demand for social infrastructure based on solutions for permanent data storage.

**Relation is building the decentralized social graph protocol which is built in a bottom-up way, in a decentralized manner by the individuals and the communities to issue the Semantic Soulbound Tokens. **Relation is exploring the Semantic SoulBound tokens on Arweave and storing the Semantic meaning of the social relations around people, about their attributes, interests and other information like membership, affiliations. Everything socially related about this person on Arweave is in the structure model which follows the graph data structure.

In Relation Talk #8, a group of Web3 builders from Relation, Arweave, everVision, decent.land and 4EVERLAND came together to share their thoughts on Identity, Social and Permanent Storage on Arweave. The discussions among the speakers are recorded as follows:

Host

• Jessica, Founder of Relation. Relation is building a Web3 social graph infrastructure that will host the next generation of billions of DApps, and empower souls and communities to co-build reputation and a better society on Web3 with SBTs and relationship data. Relation has launched Web3 social Dapp Relation ONE and the Semantic SBT standard which will create a chain native data layer that is easy to query, share and reuse with lower friction.

Speaker

• Abhav, Chief of Staff at Arweave. Arweave is a new type of storage that backs data with sustainable and perpetual endowments, allowing users and developers to truly store data forever — for the very first time.

• Romain, Branding Manager of everVision. everVision provides Arweave-based infrastructures for anyone who wants to build on Web3 using everPay, Permaswap, PermaDAO, and the development tool: Web3Infra.

• Benjamin, Founder of decent.land. decent.land is a set of web3 social protocols for identity, DAO governance and social networking. Built on Arweave, decent.land stores all data on-chain immutable and permanent.

• Chris Banks, SMM of decent.land.

• Val, Global Marketing Head of 4EVERLAND. 4EVERLAND is a Web 3.0 cloud computing platform that integrates storage, computing, and network as its core capabilities. It aims to help users make a smooth leap from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 and become the infrastructure for millions of Web 3.0 developers and applications.

Question One

First of all, I would like to invite @Abhav to give a quick introduction to the current situation of the Arweave ecosystem to everyone. Arweave is also currently doing smart contracts, what is the difference or advantage over public chains like Ethereum?

**Abhav (Chief of Staff at Arweave): “**So, as for the state of the Arweave ecosystem, in my personal opinion, I think Arweave has had an interesting point, such that a lot of the necessary infrastructure that’s required for the reliable and scalable access to Arweave’s storage network has been built out over the last few years, and the ecosystem isn’t a place where you can now build massively scalable applications on top.

So, a team that’s building smart contract infrastructure on Arweave yesterday released an ecosystem map, about hundred projects that are building on top of Arweave in a substantial way with use-cases across NFTs, smart contracts and permanent storage. I also recently saw a tweet from Sam that showed that they are now dependent on Arweave’s JavaScript-client library.

So, the ecosystem is sort of at an interesting point the way I see it. As for the differences with smart contracts, the main difference comes from the fact that Arweave nodes do not come to consensus on the state of smart contracts per se. So, nodes do not have to actually execute smart contracts by creating or validating blocks, Instead, smart contracts are just data transactions. So, the code, the initial state and all interactions in a contract are added as regular data transactions to the Arweave Blockweave.

The current state of any smart contract is then evaluated lazily when it is needed by the client. So, this means that smart contracts are more scalable since they are not limited by the computing capacity of the network. Another key difference with Arweave’s smart contract, which I think makes an interesting case for putting NFTs on Arweave is that on typical smart contract chains like Ethereum the contract is the primary asset and it is only loosely associated with the data that it points to. It’s usually a link that points to some metadata which is usually stored to some centralized server. Even if it’s stored on some reliable infrastructure, what we’ve seen in a lot of cases is that a lot of contracts end up pointing to the same file. And in that case, what do you really own in that NFT?

So, with Arweave NFT contracts on the other hand, the data comes first and contract coders atomically associate with this data.* So, you only have one contract for a piece of data. So, I think that’s what I see as the two differences**.”***

Question Two

We know the recent loss of metadata of Solana NFTs hosted on a centralized server. Decentralized storage is necessary for Web3 builders to remove reliance on intermediaries. Any more use cases you think we will have, and when do you think the demand for permanent storage is most likely to explode?

**Chris Banks (SMM of decent.land): “**I know that the metadata and the permanent storage is extremely important there. Obviously, with what just happened we can look at what’s probably the reason that Meta and Instagram have chosen Arweave for their NFT storage, probably in part of the situation that did happen. The ability to create a once pay, once for storage within our lifetimes and our children’s children lifetime is a huge achievement by Arweave.

We are using EXM for arc to build an identity manager that is permanent. We are working on a UX that is friction-free and user-friendly as possible. EXM turns Arweave into a powerful; data and execution layer basically and we’re doing some amazing things with it. If you want to touch on that now.”**

*Val (Global Marketing Head of 4everland): “It seems that due to some recent events with some centralized exchanges, there is a new trend in the whole industry and this is what could be clearly seen from discussions with lots of projects. So, once again, there is a trend and the trend is emerging. For huge amounts of projects, decentralization doesn’t mean decentralization of the NFT metadata or of anything else. It’s like decentralization of everything that exists in that project and therefore, they are looking for solutions like Arweave. So, this is what I see as how the market evolves.*

Recent events, with the fall of centralized exchanges, really influenced the whole industry. It also seems that decentralized storage can be really interesting for a couple of niches in Web3.0. A team is building a decentralized science project, DeSci guys, involving some crypto and decentralization.

It’s often important for them to store these data as long as possible. Another sphere of course is NFTs which was already mentioned. Arweave generally speaking is the best solution for storing NFTs and if we are talking about the fate of NFTs in the future, it could be seen that you get more and more usability from the industry.

These NFTs are not only becoming the solution when it comes to making money but also to solve some problems like NFT ticketing. So, if we try to solve this problem, Arweave is the best solution because it provides you with metadata that could be proved, checked or traced. It won’t be deleted or something. So, I think, the future development of NFTs and generally speaking, the interests of the Web3.0 industry. These are the trends that I see in the market.”**

*Chris Banks (SMM of decent.land): “Even beyond NFTs, like how we can store every layer of the application stack. You can use layer-2s on top of Arweave, like EXM and warp for the smart contract piece. You can store application UI on 4EVERLAND or Arweave.dev and then to address the issues of proof of work chain which takes long to mine, there is stuff like AR seeding and Bundler which can do the instant data availability of that. Combining that basically can give end users and developers a Web2.0 like experience but with falling back to how robust Arweave is and the tool that it provides.”*

**Abhav (Chief of Staff at Arweave): “**Yes, I completely agree. I think that UIs being hosted on Arweave is an underrated feature that permanent storage actually enables. What that essentially means is that you can now develop apps that give users and developers on top of web applications.

Provability guaranteed that the platform will not sort of like move under their feet. As you have seen, platform integrity, risk has been a problem for creators, developers across the evolution of Web2.0. That’s a big one.

Another one that’s a use case of permanent storage which I find super interesting is the fact that a project called Alex.* I’m not sure if anyone has heard of it. It’s a cool idea that incentivizes archival of data on Arweave. It is a cool idea based on two observations; One, that it’s important for the world to archive conversations around controversial events; Covid policies, Ukraine Russian war etc.*

All of these events are unfolding in real time and you have a lot of people that have lots of opinions about these events. So, it is important to archive this so that historians can later piece together what actually happened, but who pays for something like this? That’s not clear. The second observation is that during the NFT craze we saw that people value being associated with content, meaning and communities. Alex is built on this idea that you can combine these two operations to actually incentivize people to contribute to pools that actually are then used to archive this information.

So, for example, potential NFT owners can contribute some funds to a pool and then those funds are used to upload data to the Arweave network, and each time data is uploaded it’s actually uploaded as an NFT. This NFT is randomly distributed to one of the contributors in proportion to their share in the pool. What that does is that; one, it gives NFT selectors a chance to own a piece of history. This project Alex was actually called heroes of history before. It also creates a public boldness; to incentivize the preservation of this data for a really long period of time.

So, that gives another full use case that permanent storage enables that hasn’t been explored so far but is now being.”**

Question Three

The biggest problem with most public chains today is the inability to store large amounts of hypermedia data on their chains; blockchains are made to do bookkeeping functions, not storage functions yet. As a storage layer for on-chain data, what role does Arweave play, and what market gap can it solve?

**Val (Global Marketing Head of 4everland): “**Well, I assume that this question is closer related to the question of decentralized storage. Yes, for sure, we can actually store media on the chain but is there any sense in that’ll make us do that? This is a point of thinking, we could use Arweave for storing data on-chain for sure, in all these spheres where we need to prove something. For example, if we have to prove that this piece of information is yours or created at that point in time, i.e., in that point of time it exists and can’t get deleted, all these needs form the marketing gap which exists nowadays.

For sure, I think that if we look at the market, the biggest need of storage is again the sphere of NFTs, the metadata for NFTs and storing this metadata is an important issue. Still, lots of projects use centralized storages, and once their centralized storages deletes the data then the value of the data is no longer with that collection.

At the same time, we have already mentioned that there are a lot of use-cases and I really like the use-case of traditional spheres. I think when we were talking about carrying information about some conflicts, maybe social issues, it’s really important for the journalism sphere, they could use this as a solution for their own projects. I think this gap for sure exists on the market but as Arweave ecosystem projects, our own mission is to assimilate people and make them understand why they should use Arweave.

It seems like in the Web3.0 industry this understanding is becoming more real due to recent events with decentralization as a trend.”**

**Chris Banks (SMM of decent.land): “**I know we all worry as far as where our information comes from and if they are verifiable and attestable, you know that this is genuine information. I think Arweave can fill that gap, I know there are a few Dapps working on something like microtransactions that reward monetized systems of upvoting etc., where the user can be basically verified by the community for the information that they are putting out there. With Arweave, it really kind of solidifies it with e permanence on chain.

I think in the social media aspect, in all the kinds of platforms that are out there, this is some of the gaps that Arweave can help fill, and with the protocol, we’re linking Web3.0 identities across multiple chains.

Chain agnostic or multi chain or however you want to call it is going to become a thing of the past and figuring out ways to get these blockchains to communicate with each other and link your identities so that at the end of the day, people really know who is who and who is publishing what across Web3.0.”**

**Abhav (Chief of Staff at Arweave): “**To add, Jessica, it seems like you initially sought Arweave out because your existing storage provider was giving you limits on hypermedia storage. I would love to get your take on this. Essentially, I mentioned earlier that Arweave has permanent storage and you pay upfront for two hundred years of storage but actually the cost of doing that ends up not being that much although it sounds like a lot, it ends up being about 1 cent per megabyte in today’s value. So, you could store like hundreds of gigabytes on Arweave at not that much cost of storage.

I did pin something to the top and that’s something that Benjamin has built, the Permacast app and that’s you know being able to store podcasts which obviously are huge amounts of information with Arweave and hyperdata. So, if you want to take a look at that guy.”**

**Jessica (Founder of Relation Labs): “**We actually found out that some builders including us tried to explore a variety of solutions, because different chains will have different features and some of them are trying to explore the computation on chain and exploring the hosting of databases on chain.

They all have their limitations. Yes, I do love the technology of permanent storage of Arweave, no limits on storage. It’s quite helpful when we are storing a large amount of data on the chain.

We are hosting pictures for the Semantic SoulBound tokens on Arweave and we are also exploring the Semantic SoulBound tokens on Arweave. So that means that we are storing the Semantic meaning of the social relations around people, about their attributes, interests and other information like membership, affiliations. That is, everything is socially related about this person on Arweave, in the structure model which follows the graph data structure.

We are utilizing the resource description framework so it’s just a short statement of the graph data model in this expression like subject, predicate and object.* It’s very simple, for example Alice knows Bob, and Alice.eth knows Bob.eth, so it’s something like this and it is a short text**.”***

Question Four

As Arweave’s permaweb is not private, all data is permanently public and directly accessible and is not suitable for storing personal data or some sensitive data, which organizations and companies do you think that Arweave is suitable for hosting their data? Is it suitable for social applications？

Benjamin (Founder of decent.land): “I think there are encryption options available as you mentioned, it would be possible for example to create within a social application you could create like a private area where it is only accessible by people who hold this DAO token or NFT. So, the encrypted data would be stored on Arweave in the browser unlike the local side of things. There’d be a way to decrypt, similar to how you can login and decrypt your messages on telegram or something like that.”

Romain (Branding Manager of everVision): “Just to add on that, isn’t accord, isn’t there stuff private? They have vaults, right?”

**Benjamin (Founder of decent.land): “**Yes, accord and Hardrive do this. Sort of using in house self-made encryption solutions. There actually aren’t that many open-source public ways to do this. Accord and Hardrive have both kind of done their own in house. There is a tool called selfguard.xyz, they have done a proof of concept on uploading something with your Arweave wallet then being able to specify who is in the group and who is able to decrypt it. By that way, you will be able to make members only areas, for stuff that only you can see if you have connected your whitelisted Arweave wallet on the front end, so that’s possible.

I think as far as Social goes, I see a big drive in appetite for there to be no way to delete stuff after the fact. Or at least for there to be a way to provide publicly auditable edit history.* For example, when you see big tweets and stuff like that then get deleted. Someone has screenshotted that and then they will want to share it. Just generally talking from the public square should be the source of truth perspective. I think it’s a good thing that Arweave kind of holds the people who said things accountable to their opinions in the first place, because already you see circumvention by the public using tools like simply screenshotting in order to bring the truth back to light.*

I think it’s generally a public good for everyone.”**

Abhav (Chief of Staff at Arweave): “I agree I think public forum, public square like applications is where Arweave really shines for social applications, and there is an appetite for this. Even benevolent dictators that we’ve seen end up harming free speech with recent actions on platforms.”

Jessica, (Founder of Relation Labs): “Relation is building the decentralized social graph protocol and the social graph is built in a bottom-up way, i.e., in a decentralized manner by the individuals and the communities to issue the Semantic Soulbound tokens, to capture the attributes of this person and also the social relationships that they may have. For example, the friendships, memberships and affiliations that they hold.

All these information captured by the SBTs in the metadata follows a structure model which is in the resource description framework in a short expression in the subject, predicate and object. We are built on the EVM chains on Arweave.* We are actually hosting a lot of the social relationships on Arweave and they are now all public.*

We also have the project plan to investigate the private Soul Bound tokens, which means that the hash of the data is on the EVM chain so the data is actually, maybe as a sensitive data, like a passport, content created by journalists for example, something private. The data will be on Arweave and will be token gated, so that some of the token holders can view this data when necessary and this will have a lot of use-cases.

For example, storing some personal sensitive data for the creators and decentralized verification cases. This is how we plan to investigate this to support social relationships on Web3.0.

Following the existing NFT standard which is non-transferrable and also has rdf metadata that captures the meaning and having the hash of the data on chain and the data is actually encrypted and also on Arweave.”**

Benjamin (Founder of decent.land): “That makes sense, I think a lot of it actually stands around Arweave’s NFT standard, that is maybe a little bit too early to commit to. Even the NFTs standards, never mind that of the Soul Bound token standards. I think that’s something that the Arweave community needs to come together on and to make a concrete spec around.”

Jessica (Founder of Relation Labs): “Yes, I agree with that. We believe in this identity field, it’s quite early and under standardized. However, I think it’s pretty much okay. We need to investigate and explore more and later, when it becomes more mature, we can have time to have some standards.”

Question Five

There are still relatively few identity building and social applications on the Arweave ecosystem, why did you consider the AR ecosystem and how do you combine the features of Arweave to empower your products?

**Benjamin (Founder of decent.land): “**First of all, I think that the Arweave identity part, like your literal wallet address, goes hand in hand with the Arweave social layer infrastructure. Like we would have the option via Bundler or AR seeding to just proxy data uploads via something more centralized like just paying for their uploads. However, I think that takes way control and identity, attribution and ownership from users themselves. That is the reason why we initially built decent.land on Arweave, more recently was EXM. EXM is like a smart contract layer two on top of Arweave.

For us it replaced smartweave, smartweave was like the original smart contract layer on Arweave that used the bare Arweave protocol. EXM is kind of like a layer on top, it is lightning fast and very extensible as well. So, we kind of ran with that and built out a library of decent.land developer tooling called molecule.sh which expands EXM and makes it possible to sign Arweave smart contracts with wallets on other blockchains.

So, like Ethereum, Solana wallets, we recently added support for like Ziliqa, and substrate-based chains like Polkadot. With that there it makes Arweave like the perfect master identity layer, where you can settle back your identity to. This tooling kind of makes it possible to aggregate multiple identities into one and that’s kind of the whole mission behind our protocol.

Your Arweave public key, your address as you got master identity on a whole bunch of different apps, but it is able to verify that you are the same person on Ethereum, Solana, Near or a whole bunch of different protocols that it can talk to via our protocol.

So, we chose Arweave mostly because it is able to store a large amount of data cheaply and that’s pretty important for the Arc oracle.* The arc oracle provides aggregated API feeds. It stores aggregated API feeds in order to sort of tell other apps about the token balances that you hold.*

An Arweave app using our protocol can understand that you own a BoredApe on Ethereum and that this is your Arweave address for that. Then you can deploy a DAO tooling protocol on Arweave that would be like, you can only vote if you own a Bored ape, or if the Bored ape has this particular trait. So, when we are storing large amounts of data like say you own like a million NFTs and you need all the metadata for it, Arweave is really the only thing that makes sense. And with the way we have been able to expand EXM to be able to talk to other protocols, there’s no real need for us to move off of Arweave and pay for more expensive storage elsewhere for the same sort of Oracle service.

So that’s kind of like why we came to Arweave in the first place and why we keep sticking around.”

Chris Banks (SMM of decent.land):* From a non-technical standpoint, and having linked my identity with Arweave protocol. I am so excited about it from a user standpoint, I know we really need to start seeing some of these Arweave Dapps from the ecosystem build out better UX. Some of them are really just a little painful to look at, obviously there’s some amazing coding going on in the background, but we need to make it as frictionless as possible and I know we are still getting there. We are just slowly migrating to Arweave too***.”**

Romain (Branding Manager of everVision): “I actually agree with that. You know there’s also AR connect, and its kind of like a little hard to look at but the team is doing a fantastic job with that, so that will be looking sweet anytime now.”

**Benjamin (Founder of decent.land): “**Yes, ArConnect is one of the most foundational tools on top of the ecosystem. We are really excited, I have been talking with the team, and they are going to integrate the same kind of thing. You know how in MetaMask, you can send Eth to a .eth address? It’s going to be possible to send to .R address using the ANS lookup on that.

As well as that they also integrated feeds of crypto from the ecosystem into the wallet as well. ArConnect is about to enter a new era which is good because it helps everyone. It is the entry point into the ecosystem, maybe it wasn’t supposed to be, like I know originally, Arweave maintained its own wallet which was deprecated in place of ArConnect, but you know, whether you like it or not, wallets are the one of the most key pieces of infrastructure.

To see improvement coming along the pipeline for that is amazing.”

Romain (Branding Manager of everVision): “There’s other things that he’s planning to have as well, so it’s going to look pretty good for the ecosystem. Hopefully it just brings more eyes to projects who deserve it which is pretty cool, like you guys for example. Oh, and I really like what Permaswap is doing.”

Question Six

At present, there are many concepts and ideas on how to implement digital identity in the industry: some think that the DID may become the most developed digital identity on chain, while others think that the SBT (SoulBound Tokens) concept recently proposed by Vitalik may be a good form of paradigm for the digital identity.

Do you think there is a viable solution for a Web3.0 digital identity powered by Arweave? If so, what is it? If not, what are the current bottlenecks in developing digital identities?

Benjamin (Founder of decent.land): “I think that it would end up being a combination of both things. Like DIDs and SBTs.* DIDs will serve the purpose of a core top-level identity layer like username, social bio, references to like what your profile picture is etc. That’s what we built with ANS like an all-in-one username social meta data, pay once own forever. Then SBTs, I think they are more suited to stuff like achievements and credentials like elements of a user identity that won’t expire that you can hold to one identity forever.*

An issue with this, something that I have been talking about with the team and with some partners, is that SBTs are kind of unable to be recovered if a user loses access to their keys. This is obviously like one of the biggest problems in crypto but if we see that they kind of scale up to the level where SBTs replace things like university diplomas, we need some kind of escape hatch for that in order to recover it.

We are looking to implement SBTs as part of the Identity layer of decent.land.* One thing that we are working on is being able to reset or recover the address for it. So if you can prove that you own the wallet that’s being set as the recovery address, like for example by submitting a transaction to the chain that it’s on and using R protocol and attesting to that identity.*

Then it’s still technically SoulBound like bound to the human being that was able to attest the most that they own both.* Then the recovery address should be able to trigger the address of the SoulBound tokens under those like special escape hatch circumstances.*

That’s like one issue I see with the SoulBound tokens and our solution for it. I agree both things are kind of like necessary DID is like for the top-level identity, a lot of people go by their .eth, .R address, or their .lens handle. This is the core identity of who you are with your core metadata attached but then as a tack on that, I did this or that, attended this event, that would be up to the role of SBTs.

To be honest, SBTs are a very good idea because they are very top-level. For example, it is easy for an application to determine whether you do or don’t own it. They do not necessarily need to dig into the smart contract state of some distant contract. To be able to see whether you are in the owner’s list. It’s like the tokens in your account, that’s very good from the integration perspective and gaining adoption more widely.

So, I’m behind both. I think both are the future, there’s not really a trade off there.”

**Jessica (Founder of Relation Labs): “**I agree with you. There’s not one single solution that fits for all. DID and Verified Credentials can be one. And we think the way of combining the domain names and SoulBound tokens can be another one, and worth building on. To investigate the identity in a way that is social because people are connected with each other in some way. Also, fragmentary, i.e., not a single identifier can be all, people may have different avatars, to travel across different metaverses.

For example, people may hold ENS, ANS and may have different avatars in professional forums or interest groups. It’s important for people to show a different part of their souls. This is also a way to help solve the problem of recovery. That there are already some wallets helping people make social recovery with the help of the centralized institution. With Semantic SoulBound tokens, we may have some other ways to make the recovery of the wallet.

It’s like you are assigning some of the trusted contacts and letting them help you make the recovery when necessary. It’s just like Facebook recovery, and it is a more decentralized way to verify your identity and make sure that your identity is not stolen. One other thing worth investigating is the scarlet letter issue, both the DID plus VC and domain name plus SBT are not good enough to avoid this. It’s like receiving something you don’t want to be public, an active reputation.”

Benjamin (Founder of decent.land): “Like the issue of there needing to be a disavow function almost inside the SoulBound function and contract.”

Abhav (Chief of Staff at Arweave): “People should only be able to read ownership of NFTs that I give them access to. So, someone might give me an NFT that I don’t want to be displayed and associated with my account, I guess.”

Benjamin (Founder of decent.land): “It puts the onus of on the receiver to then go and ensure that they are only representing the best part of themselves. Maybe it’s possible from a technical perspective to only get an SBT if you are the person who is whitelisted for it. Then you are the one who then claims it to your wallet manually as well.”

Abhav (Chief of Staff at Arweave): “I guess one way to solve that is to basically vet the actual issuer of the token right. So, if I go around handing people, this person is bad, this person is bad, then people will probably, applications that probably care about your reputation and mine will not listen to me.”

Romain (Branding Manager of everVision): “I think what Abhav was saying was actually pretty good. Having a reputation for apps, or maybe issuers.”

Benjamin (Founder of decent.land): “I think that there are a bunch of on-chain reputation scoring systems out there right now.* One is Nomics score, it is able to aggregate how likely you are to be an actual user of stuff like how many apps do you interact with, how many NFTs have you got? What is the velocity and veracity of your on-chain activity?*

This would stop people making burner wallets to spam people with rubbish.*****”*

Romain (Branding Manager of everVision): “For anyone listening, BAR is burn AR, anytime you upload anything on Arweave you receive BAR basically, I guess a proof of use. Just showing that you are actually a user. BAR doesn’t really have a use-case for now. We’ll see what it does in the future though.”

**Benjamin, (Founder of decent.land): “**Do I get BAR by uploading to any given application?

Romain (Branding Manager of everVision): “From what I understood, it’s when you use Arweave. I think the biggest holder of BAR is probably bundler since they do obviously all these transactions. I am fairly new to this BAR thing, found out about it two weeks ago, so I’m really keen on seeing what is happening with BAR and how it will be used.”

Abhav (Chief of Staff at Arweave): “Just to answer the question that Benjamin asked, to get BAR, whenever you upload anything to Arweave, if you add the appropriate smartweave transaction tags, then you get BAR. It is just another smart weave contract and you can mint BAR by uploading data and including the smartweave contract tag.”

Romain (Branding Manager of everVision): “Who’s behind the BAR? Did Arweave make it or other team”

Abhav (Chief of Staff at Arweave): “I don’t know. It was definitely not Arweave, I don’t know who uploaded the main contract source code.”

Free Discussion 1

What do you see as the future of Arweave for large-scale application scenarios?

**Benjamin (Founder of decent.land): “**I think in the very beginning, I’ve been in Arweave for quite some time, only recently, maybe last year as Arweave became appropriate for full large scale application scenarios. I think there are multiple things. It’s more cases to this, who are building layers on top of the Arweave network to help solve this.

Like getting AR tokens itself in the US, especially, is an issue and so like everpay Permaswap isn’t on Ramp via Eth. Then you have instant data availability to give a Web2.0 experience, and AR seeding and Bundler fix that for both for the data availability part and the payment proxying part where you can pay with Sol, Matic or Eth. For uploads on Arweave and so this kind of negates any kind of issue that an application developer can have like not having direct contact with the Arweave chain itself.

Another thing is a round gateway decentralization, so, everything right now is hitting Arweave.net, mostly in order to resolve transaction ids. Like you know, most of these NFT metadata, okay we hear Arweave.dev/ the Tx id, ARIO is fixing that by essentially being able to do custom gateways which are able to monetize in their own way. They are able to specialize in their own way so application developers can basically get their own gateway which sort of sidesteps the need for their own decentralization around Arweave.net.

As well as that, we know Arweave is a small chain. It is very powerful for data storage but it is not necessarily where the transfers of value, reputation or identity happens. So, we are building an Arc protocol for that to break down the silos between chains. To be able to say, this is my Arweave address, this is also my ETH and Sol address and I’m this one person, linked back and it’s all settled on Arweave.

So, I think that that helps put more awareness on larger scale application awareness. You know you have decentralized gateways; payment proxies and you are able to get AR tokens in the US via a DEX using everPay as well as Arc protocol.

There are a lot of developments that have happened in the last year, maybe even less than a year, that are bringing Arweave more in the realm of mainstream, large-scale adoption.*****”*

Romain (Branding Manager of everVision): “The part where the community starts working together now is doing something for the ecosystem as well. Before, everyone was kind of doing their own thing and building the same things. Now, I guess people are working more and more together. It’s also something that can hopefully help out this beautiful ecosystem.”

Abhav (Chief of Staff at Arweave): “I agree, I think that has been summarized pretty well thanks for that.”

Free Discussion 2

Lastly, do you have any upcoming product updates or campaigns that our audiences can join?

*Chris Banks (SMM of decent.land): “ANS, Arweave name service and our .AR names that are hundred percent permanent without renewal fees and without protocol. You are able to link everything, even your .eth name, lens and Twitter all sorts of social media information along with wallets across multiple chains.** A cool way to do that and have it personalized rather than just using your Arweave address with Arweave name service.*

We just booked our tickets for Eth Denver. We’re going to be out there, there’s a Near day, and then the Eth events as well, just because we can communicate across those chains. We are going to be launching it after that, our Arweave name service, more of invite only. We are slowly trying to build our Discord community.

Check us out on Discord if anyone is interested in finding out more, lots of links go into our GitHub and open source about the things that are going on at decent.land. So, come on by and get in there now, so that you have access to an invite only coming on probably in the 30 to 60 days.*****”*

**Benjamin (Founder of decent.land): “**We went around with a QR code that you could scan, as an early ANS adopter. Then, you are able to link your EVM address with your Arweave address using Arc protocol. Making it so that it is possible to receive your ANS domain in your Arweave address despite the fact that you had only scanned an Ethereum address.

So, this was kind of like a promotion and a demonstration of how the protocol can make attestations across different chains to prove who you are. We are going to be doing the same thing in Eth Denver as well. So, if anyone’s coming to Eth Denver, you can DM Chris, Max, our new developer.

Get your PoAp and be one of the, right now we have around 600 users of ANS, with invite only, So, all of these people have either being airdropped it based on their activities on Arweave or they have basically completed tasks or challenges we have put forward to the community for gaining an ANS name.

A way to get it really easy is to come meet us at Denver.*****”*

**Romain (Branding Manager of everVision): “**Just wanted to say that AR drive is going to be hosting an Arweave event at EthDenver, so if three are any builders here listening and they are interested in building on Arweave or that don’t know anything about Arweave, just keep an eye out for that. Go follow AR Drive on Twitter, AR.io on twitter and I’m sure that they will be posting things like that.

Really what the AR ecosystem wants is just the best builders on this planet. It‘s just getting all these big brain people and making sure that we could just move forward together.*****”*

Jessica (Founder of Relation Labs): “To wrap this up this year, we also have new year free gifts for all those who are interested in getting one, starting from tomorrow. So, please follow our official twitter handles.”

That’s all for the recap of Relation Talk #8. Thanks for reading!

https://relationlabs.ai/

Relation New Year Meme Festival

Relation New Year Meme Festival will be held soon in Relation Discord Server to provide community members a platform to share their meme creations and win the Creator Medal SBT. Stay tuned!

Product & Dev Updates

Completed

Relation One DApp

• Relation Medal System has completed the upgrade. All the Relation Medals could be minted into SBTs in Relation ONE to help users record their achievements permanently on chain.

• An event page for Relation Merry Christmas & Happy New Year 2023 Semantic SBT Gift giveaway has been released for participants to mint exclusive Festival SBT.

Relation Link Tool Suite

• The first version of SoulDrop has gone live. SoulDrop is a raffle tool based on Semantic SBTs. We have finished the first SoulDrop raffle — the Christmas Eve SoulDrop Raffle on the SoulDrop page.

• The Beta version of SoulScan has gone live. SoulScan is an exclusive explorer for Semantic SBTs.

Work in Progress

Relation Link Tool Suite

• The Semantic SBT Bazaar and SoulDrop will be continuously optimized and upgraded to provide better SBT claiming experience.

• The Semantic SBT Mint Tool, SoulScan, SoulDrop and Bazaar will be open source for the public in the next phase.

Marketing & Community

Activities

• Relation Party #32 was held on 17th December in Relation Discord Server. Jessica, Founder of Relation, and Nori, Moderator of Metaani attended the Party. Link>>

• Honours Achievement NFT Pass has been open for claiming since 18th December 2022. Honours Achievement NFT Pass will be another important proof of membership and participation of Relation community. Link>>

• Relation and Tearing Space co-hosted a partnership giveaway on 19th giveaway on Twitter. Link>>

• The .bit ✖️ Relation SubDID account airdrop has been finished on 20th December. More than 900 users have got the .relation.bit SubDID account. Link>>

• Relation Talk #8 was hosted on 21st December and gathered speakers from 4EVERLAND, everVision, Arweave and decent.land to discuss on Identity, Social & Permanent Storage on Arweave. Link>>

• The Merry Christmas & Happy New Year 2023 Semantic SBT gift has been released since 22nd December for Relation community members and partners to commemorate the year of 2022. Link>>

• Relation Medals have been upgraded to Semantic SBTs on 23rd December . Now Relation users could mint their medals into SBTs and store the medals permanently on chain. Link>>

• The Christmas Eve SoulDrop raffle was held on UTC 00:00 25th December. The SoulDrop page has been first released and offered multiple rewards for Web3 Football Carnival SBT holders. Link>>

• Relation and TaskON co-hosted a holiday special giveaway on 30th December to celebrate the 2023 new year. Link>>

News

• An article titled Soulbound Journals — The New Paradigm of Identification and Verification in Web3 was published in Coindesk to introduce Relation’s pioneering work of Semantic SBTs and Soulbound Journals. Link>>

• The recap of Relation Talk #7 was released on 18th December to record the ideas of speakers from Unstoppable Domains, EDNS Domains, .bit and Litentry on DID and Their Social Intersections. Link>>

• The winner list and reward list of Web3 Football Carnival was announced on 20th December. Link>>

Cooperation

• 0N1 Force Club has been established since 23rd December. The 0N1 Force are 7,777 generative side-profile characters with over 100 hand-drawn features fighting for their existence. Link>>

• The integration of PNS has been finished in Relation ONE. Relation will keep supporting the Polkadot ecosystem in the long run. Link>>

• The Metaani DNA Club has been created since 28th December. Metaani DNS is the first Japanese 3D avatar NFT collection. Link>>

https://relationlabs.ai/

About Relation

Relation is building a Web3 social graph infrastructure that will host the next generation of billions of DApps, and empower souls and communities to co-build reputation and a better society on Web3 with SBTs and relationship data. Relation has launched Web3 social Dapp Relation ONE and the Semantic SBT standard which will create a chain native data layer that is easy to query, share and reuse with lower friction.

Website | Twitter | Github | Discord | Mirror | Medium | Telegram | Documentation

Why is this and how did we get here? Fundamentally, the internet or Web 1.0 was built without an identity layer. It wasn’t needed, as everyone involved in its development was known and trusted. When social media and Web 2.0 came along, it allowed users to create their own identities — albeit provided by the big technology companies.

As Web3 and various blockchains are being built, the problem of identification remains: It’s still very difficult to know who, or perhaps what, you are connecting to. This puts huge limits on what we can do with this technology.

There are existing digital identity solutions which fall broadly into two camps: centralized and decentralized. Centralized digital identity solutions have been a hallmark of the journey from Web 1.0 to Web3. Even in the latest applications — such as account bound tokens that individuals receive after a KYC verification — centralized digital identification has proved remarkably enduring. Decentralized digital identity solutions are self-sovereign identity claims that are owned and stored locally by an individual. These may lack the ability to be verified and trusted. But what if there was a third way?

A New Paradigm: Social Identity

Using advanced data science techniques, it’s now possible to identify individuals using the intersection of social data that will uniquely define a person’s identity, what’s also known as their social graph. This does not mean that the name, address or photo of an individual will be shared, but rather that the footprint of their presence on-chain is unique and can be verified as an individual, rather than a bot.

Relation Labs is pioneering this third way by analyzing the social relations of individuals in a decentralized way. This makes it possible for individuals to mint programmable NFTs called SBTs that are metadata linked and interconnected in a way that is machine understandable and interpretable (called Semantic SBTs). These represent proof not only of their identity but also of their friendships, affiliations, memberships, qualifications and even employment, on the chain.

The individual is sovereign in that their SBTs are held in their own wallets and written on public chains. The information can be kept private but the SBTs can be used publicly. Each SBT consists of a series of what are known in data science as “semantic triples.” This is a statement with three attributes, usually a subject, a predicate and an object such as “Jill knows John,” or “Jon attended a Web3 summit.”

While each semantic triple, or SBT, can be used as an individual proof point, their utility grows exponentially when collected. How does this work? In Relation’s model, these SBTs are all collected into what are called “Soulbound Journals,” or SBJs, which list all the identifying information of the account through its constituent Semantic SBTs. In turn, other accounts list mirrors of those Semantic SBTs. So if John knows Jill, then Jill knows John.

Each account creates and maintains their own SBJs, which are essentially personalized distributed ledgers. These SBJs evolve over time as new SBTs within them are added or taken away or interact with other SBTs. In the same way that the semantic triples are the primitive building blocks in SBT, so the SBTs are primitive building blocks in SBJs. And these then become the basis for activity in Web3.

There are several ways that SBJs can unlock decentralized Web3 activity by serving as identifiers and verifiers. They provide proof of attendance, proof of skill set and proof of personhood. They can provide protection against Sybil cyberattacks, where hackers create a large number of pseudonyms to exert control over a platform or protocol. People with shared slices of data, triples in SBT, can help to verify when there is a query. Furthermore, services can be target-marketed, based on the attributes or interests proved by SBJs to precisely match user needs and interests. They also help with social recovery wallets, as they allow you to assign your guardians based on the diversity of your social circle to avoid collusion.

By minting semantic SBTs, Web3 navigators can create a framework for representing and sharing information in a way that allows machines to understand and interpret the relationships between different data sources. This can improve the efficiency and accuracy of data analysis and enable new applications and services that require a deep understanding of the underlying data. In this way, semantic SBTs and SBJs are likely to be important tools for advancing the capabilities of Web3.

With programs included that incentivize participation, including tokens that can be earned by undertaking verification and identification, Semantic SBTs and SBJs introduced by Relation are likely to figure widely in the next stage of development of Web3, solving the paradox of building trust in a decentralized environment.

https://relationlabs.ai/home

About Relation

Relation is building a Web3 social graph infrastructure that will host the next generation of billions of DApps, and empower souls and communities to co-build reputation and a better society on Web3 with SBTs and relationship data. Relation has launched Web3 social Dapp Relation ONE and the Semantic SBT standard which will create a chain native data layer that is easy to query, share and reuse with lower friction.

Website | Twitter | Github | Discord | Mirror | Medium | Telegram | Documentation

Jessica, founder of Relation first mentioned the concept of Soul Bound Journal (SBJ) in this section. Web3 needs to have a digital identity and we need to have able to identify and verify counterparties, while at the same adhering to the precepts of decentralization and anonymity, which is the direction that the development of digital identity needs to try to address. How to recover your account and prove things about your account and these are often cross-cutting concepts related to the social nature of identity. And that is why SoulBound Journals are good solutions to build these things. We can use the social connections that have been forged to help us recover our identity, or we can use the technical solution of zero-knowledge proof to prove something that is on our account. This is also where the SoulBound Journal comes in, it is an on-chain Journal that contains the collection of all your SoulBound Tokens. SoulBound Tokens can be used to prove your attendance. That creates a digital Journal that records the evolving-over-time identity related information about the holder, just like you write your physical Journal. That’s the idea of Soul Bound Journal. It is a good solution to build more fragmentary and social parts of the identity ecosystem.

In Relation Talk #7, a group of Web3 builders from Relation, Unstoppable Domains, EDNS Domains, .bit and Litentry came together to share their thoughts on social identities and social intersections, and to try to explore the application and possible impact of SBT in the Web3 space. Let’s review Web3 builders’ discussion in Relation Talk #7.

Speakers

• Nate Peace, Director & Partner Engineering of Unstoppable Domains. Unstoppable Domains is a Web3 domain name provider and digital identity platform working to onboard the world onto Web3.

• Mike Ng, Co-founder & Technology Director of EDNS​ Domains. EDNS Domains is a name and lookup service built on the Polygon blockchain, a layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum, and it’s compatible with Ethereum allowing crypto users to translate their machine-readable addresses to human-readable addresses.

• Wenser-0973.bit, OG of .bit community. .bit, an open-sourced decentralized identity protocol built on the blockchain, is committed to providing permissionless and irrevocable decentralized identity for individual users and DAOs, establishing the awareness of identity sovereignty around the world.

• Teun Habraken, Growth Director of Litentry. Litentry is a Decentralized Identity Aggregator that enables linking user identities across multiple networks.

Question One

In both Web2 and Web3, identity is extremely important as it proves who we are. In the wave of building Web3, digital identity is a necessary infrastructure for our digital life.

Why do we need a decentralized identity? What should a digital identity look like in a Web3 world? What problems of the Web2 identity system can be solved by decentralized identity?

Wenser-0973.bit (OG of .bit community): In Web2, everyone has their own identity cards or license cards to prove themselves. They have some educational background or jobs; and in Web2, we need permission or validation as proof. However, in Web3 or DID, we need to prove more things, especially for different processes. For example, I might want to make an investment to get something from others. Thus contacts are very important in Web3. The DID looks like another layer in smart contract to provide proof.

For the first question, I think that we need a decentralized system to ensure that our identity is effective and validated. In Web2, we need the government and other centralized organizations to ensure that. However, in web3, we only need the decentralized system to prove it. For the second part, I think that people should have multiple choices and rights to decide, to do something or not, given the boundaries of law and other rules, but not of violent organizations.

For the third part, I believe DID can solve some problems like the validation period and the inconvenience in the transfer of digital assets. By DID, we can define others. We can also exchange and transfer our assets. We can then open other metaverses or digital societies by DID. It’s our meaning, our key, and our tools.

Teun Habraken (Growth Director of Litentry): Decentralized identity on its own, is a sovereign identity as you mentioned already. An identity where you as the identity holder are in maximum control of your data. Not just data but the what, when and to who you’re showing your identity. DID goes beyond your state or governmental name. It can be built on your governmental name but it doesn’t depend on it. So, it really relies on the self-sovereign identity framework where you have other trustworthy independent issuers who can help you establish your DID. Those issuers cannot take it from you.

Often, DID is a pseudonymous identity where just as in this Twitter Space, so many people are logging in with their nicknames or pseudonyms. This is really interesting because the act of operating under pseudonyms is also an act of decentralization itself. At this point, you are creating a new role, independent of the governmental register. You’re becoming an identity that is harder to cancel, harder to discriminate and still get a reputation.

You’re becoming an identity that depends on the environment of the metaverse that it enters. It gets valued by the most relevant qualities instead of personal characteristics or what gender it is from and all those implicit biases that can come along with them. So then, what should a DID look like in a Web3 world?

I think it should mostly be internet-proof and I think we have some amazing companies on the Twitter Space who are working on that internet-proof identity.

The identity proof allows you to operate on the internet with its maximum possibilities. An Identity can receive messages and get reputation credentials. So, we can compose and compile other identities on top of it or link to it and then verify, authenticate and authorize with that single identity.

You cannot really do that with a governmental name. But on top of that we want to add privacy and pseudonymity. We see examples like Ethereum Name Service or Polkadot Name Service but also decentralized identifier standards from the World Web Consortium. These are the types of internet-proof identities that have those extra features beyond our traditional state names. In terms of what problems it could solve, compared to the Web2 identity system, we’re really talking about complete data ownership, right?

We don’t want to depend on one centralized database that can decide whether or not you still have access to your audience or not. That determines what the information resolution is, of your identity. We want you to be in control of which information you are disclosing. So selective disclosure is a big one for us at Litentry, making sure you have maximal customizability and privacy over your identity and then there is a bigger vision where DID that is adopted by everyone in the ecosystem becomes interoperable.

This bigger vision could really create a frictionless world where data is being shared across organizations without compromising the privacy of the user. So those are the things I’m thinking about, thank you.

Question Two

In the identity ecosystem, signing in with your account and giving your account a name are two things that are worth building. How do the Domain profiles work to support the identity ecosystem development?

Nate Peace, (Director, Partner Engineering of Unstoppable): I would actually like to start by looking at what web2 does right now, when I think about web2 log in, I think it’s important to remember this. Every time you log into a site, Twitter, Google or something else like that, somebody gets paid. An even interesting thought, whether it’s a transaction because of a SaaS contract they have with another company, whether it’s because of the market value that Google gets every time you log in, using Google, somebody gets paid.

Ironically, in web2, you’re not the person who gets paid, some centralized company gets paid. That was the first thought. It’s one of the things that this web3 solution, and logging with domain names can fix. Instead of Google, Amazon, or Facebook owning your data, you can own your data and you can login.

This means instead of them getting paid for your information, it opens up this interesting opportunity of reward and you getting paid. Maybe it’s some type of crypto for your information. So, that’s the first thing, you get control of your data and it also gives you a value of your data.

The second thing is interoperability, right now, in web2, as I log in to sites, we’ve all gone through this, and put all that information, my name, e-mail, Twitter handle, KYC, credit card info, and the likes. However, what if we could verify all of this on-chain? What if I, as a user, can decide if I want to share that information with that specific Dapp or site?

I don’t need to re-input that information. I already have that information, maybe it’s stored on-chain with zero-knowledge proofs or through an NFT. The point is, I have that information, and I can decide what information I want to share with that site, maybe depending on which public persona or avatar I’m using. So already we are seeing differences between user-owned data and interoperability.

Lastly, I want to talk about domains. They should last. With domains, it’s something that you don’t need to sign up for a subscription or anything like that. You can actually have a domain that has an NFT. I think we should look at it more broadly than a domain. It’s really your address. You can have that gaming or professional avatar or dating avatar, whatever it might be, again depending on the level of verification you want to share or that that site requires, you can choose to participate or not.

Maybe they can even encourage you to participate with some certain information, rewards, or micropayments. To me, what web3 or domain login does, almost completes what web2 login tried to do. It completes making it easy to access sites, making it easy to share information across sites. Also, instead of my information being owned by those central cooperation. I finally get to own and share my information, make money off of it and allow people to market it or not. It becomes my decision, not that of a decentralized company.

So, these are the kind of things I’m excited about, and it kind of builds on what Vitalik talks about.

Mike (Co-founder & Technology Director of EDNS): At our current web2, just as you said, every time you log in, someone gets paid. I’m an expert in Cloud, who used to work at Amazon. I understand that on the current web2 network, the data or the things that we think we own, we do not own these things on the internet. We are just users with access to this data on the internet. All of these data are owned instead by giant tech companies. With the power of web3, web3 utilizing blockchain technology and cryptography, including cryptocurrency, we can now own our own data for the first time.

The problem is by utilizing cryptography, everything has become a hash or long hex string or an ID we can’t even remember. Now, a name has surfaced to tag or label different things like your personal identity on the web3 network to help others resolve the identity problem. This is where the decentralized name service comes in, like in web3, you use the wallet to log in, and now we use the domain name as a label.

For the next step, we will be creating our personal identities, the DID on web3. The next phase or wave of web3.

Question Three

Other two things that are worth building within the identity ecosystem are how to recover your account and prove things about your account. These are intersectional concepts related to the sociality of identity. Why SoulBound Journals are good solutions to build these things.

Jessica, (founder of Relation): The key point with social recovery is that, you can select several guardians to take care of the recovery and generate an address to this when it is necessary to make this recovery. But selecting the guardians isn’t usually easy because the relationship can change, and there can be collisions coordinated at recovering your account and bypassing you.

This is where social relationships come in, for you to select the guardians. We have social relationships, and you can actually assign the guardians to your friends, families, or when someone is within your community. Since we are also having the community detections, it is quite easy for us to analyze the correlations between the guardians so that there’s a diversity in selecting the guardians and it will lower the chances of collisions. For example, you can have at least three to seven guardians, they may never know each other, to help you safeguard your accounts when it is necessary.

One more thing, is to prove something about your account, other than the zero-knowledge proofs. There actually will be many other things to prove with your account and to record your life moments. For example, the proof of attendance, the proof of skillset, and also the proof of fellowship, friendship, etc. There are a lot of things that you may want to prove with your life.

This is also where the SoulBound Journal comes in, it is an on-chain Journal that contains the collection of all your SoulBound Tokens. SoulBound Tokens can be used to prove your attendance. For example, a virtual event such as today’s talk. And proof of relationships, for example, you have met a new friend today, so you issued a friendship SBT amongst each other, etc. That creates a digital Journal that records the evolving-over-time identity related information about the holder, just like you write your physical Journal. That’s the idea of Soul Bound Journal. It is a good solution to build more fragmentary and social parts of the identity ecosystem.

It is also necessary to have the names and DID with your accounts and that makes it easier for the holders to manage their accounts. Also, no matter how many SBTs or identities you might have, the intersection of all these data, the names describe the uniqueness of you in the web3 word. Starting from the names or domains, you are building the identity that is not isolated in this web3 world, rather than a self-sovereign identity, the sociality of the identity makes you connected to each other. In this way, some of your friends will also be keeping some data that is mirrored by the Soul Bound tokens.

I think that’s one of the natural ways to build and maintain identity. The identity-related information is also evolving with time. This is what Relation is building and I think it’s a good supplement to the identity ecosystem.

Question Four

At present, there are many concepts and ideas on how to implement digital identity in the industry: some think that the hotly developed ENS may become a digital identity card on the chain, while others think that the SBT (Soul Bound Token) concept recently proposed by Vitalik may be a good form for digital identity…

Do you think there is a viable solution for a Web3 digital identity? If so, what is it? If not, what are the current bottlenecks in the development of digital identities?

Nate Peace, (Director, Partner Engineering of Unstoppable): I have to admit that I am biased. I do believe that there is a viable solution for web3 digital identity. I believe that it is Unstoppable domains and that’s actually why I joined the company. It is because of what they are doing there and a couple of things that just stood out as what is required for web3 digital identity. Its first, as an NFT there, has to be something that really stays with the user. Once bought, it’s their NFT, and I think that’s what Unstoppable does well that others don’t do so well. Others allow you to bring domains almost similar to the kind of old-school web2 programs, legacy programs where you have a domain for so long.

I think both approaches are awfully incorrect and also anti-decentralization. So, I think that web3 digital identity needs to be once purchased by that user, it should be able to be kept by that user or transferred if they deem it fit. Additionally, there’s something like an SBT which I think is part of a web3 digital identity. The SoulBound that’s not transferable. It has a use case kind of under the umbrella of web3 digital identity. I think of something like a college degree or something that you can’t transfer because only you personally went to that college, and it needs to remain with that individual user. Also, there’s a phrase in the states, “good on paper “it describes how somebody can look good on paper, on their resume, yet in real life, they don’t live up to those things. Or worse yet, somebody can fake their resume, fake their LinkedIn and there’s no substance behind them.

Something like a SoulBound Token allows us to say that this person is certifiable whatever they are, whatever that SBT is for. Whether it’s an academic or some kind of job they’ve had in the past. It could also be a KYC that verifies that this person is who they say they are. Instead of having the phrase good on paper, it becomes the opposite of the phrase. Hey, this is good on-chain, this is confirmed by the person that is attached to them.

So, to your question, I think that for web3 digital identity, you see why Unstoppable is well positioned. You see why I joined them. I think that SBTs are also an advantage within the space, for digital identities, etc. are really an addition to it and within the same umbrella.

Teun, (Growth Director of Litentry): I think the Soul Bound Token concept is definitely a very interesting concept and it leverages those characteristics of Blockchain that we’re pretty used to. This includes immutability, transparency, and its public nature, but there are definitely criticisms towards that and whether or not identity details should be that public. I am unsure about how it will play out and I do think there will be value use cases for Soul Bound Tokens, definitely when you want to look at them from a larger scale. You want to analyze the behavior amongst social groups or social networks and who holds a lot of thought leadership or reputation. I think that could be very interesting. However, you don’t always want your identity details to be transparent and public.

That’s where there are other technologies that can be added on top of SBTs such as verifiable credential standards or other privacy-preserving technologies that just could make sure that you guard your privacy a little bit better and not have everything open and exposed on the internet.

In general, I think the decentralized identity ecosystem will consist of a multitude of NFTs, token standards, and verifiable credentials, and that hopefully it will be up to the user to decide what he feels most comfortable with, in each situation.

Wenser, (OG of. bit community): Yeah, I totally agree with that. I also think that we have a system to build a web3 identity system. Maybe, in my opinion, we have something to prepare for that. Like the SBTs and DID and another in the middle of those two decentralized identity proofs. We can get proof from our birth to our death, from our education, jobs, lives, and other things to define who we are.

Maybe we should also solve something like how to make something difficult to change by some centralized nodes or other organizations. Besides, I also think that we should pay more attention to some POE, the proof of experiences. It’s a middle between the Proof of stake or Proof of work. We can get some payoff or other feedback by those DID, SBT and those other proofs. I also think that we can build an ecosystem in the different Blockchains, applications, and spaces in real life and in the digital world. In the future maybe we will all have different choices to use our different digital identities to open the door in the metaverse.

Nate Peace, (Director, Partner Engineering of Unstoppable): I like that, in fact, I like what I’ve been hearing about this conversation that it really seems like there’s a digital identity ecosystem. Each of the parts of this ecosystem from domains to SBTs, KYC to some kind of verified credentials, whatever it might be, have a little bit of nuances that allow them to be better for certain things. I love what Teun said about SBTs, how you say, whether or not we want to put private information on there.

I want to go back to the accreditation, maybe you went to school somewhere, and you can have that accreditation as an SBT, something that’s a little public facing. Maybe you are a founding member of a company and you want to have that accreditation, and for other things, maybe you just want to have a zero-knowledge proof. So, what I’m excited about is, the ecosystem that is forming around digital identity, and now the challenge for us is “how can we bring those things together?”

What is that web3 digital identity? How can we bring those things together and make it more usable, so that like Jessica said, we can bring the next million people onto web3? We can do so in an easier, more secure way. And although there are five, or six different technologies and specific nuances, we’re talking about here, we can make it seem as if it’s one for the individual user. Then, they don’t need to know if they’re using a domain vs a verified credential vs an SBT vs a Zero-knowledge proof. This way, we can make it easier for the users going online.

Teun, (Growth Director of Litentry): Yes, I absolutely agree with that. Another thing I would like to say is that, If a user is to make a decision about whether or not he wants to have some information displayed as an SBT, that’s a bit more immutable, transparent, public, and harder to delete or a verifiable credential, I always think of them as jewelry or tattoos. Do I want this information to be worn as jewelry on the days that I like to show it off, or do I want it to be displayed as a tattoo, something that is on my body permanently and will never be taken away from me? So, that’s maybe a good metaphor to think about.

Nate Peace, (Director, Partner Engineering of Unstoppable): I like that metaphor; I like that analogy and I will be using it. I will make sure to give you credit for it.

Wenser, (OG of. bit community): Yeah, DID is a modern tattoo maybe.

Jessica, (Founder of Relation): I think that introduces another problem that’s been widely criticized currently. People may have the chance to get SBTs which they cannot transfer out. I believe there is a lot of room for us to investigate and the industry is still under-standardized. I think the good way is to start building that and exploring that in many combinations. For example, the name plus SBT, or DID plus verifiable credentials, so that we can know who we are and identify each other’s connections on-chain. It makes improvements in many things such as reputation building and giving a lesser room for hackers to steal your identities or assets.

Question Five

The recent launch of Binance’s BAB is a very hot topic and users can get Soul Certified SBT after verifying their identity, i.e., KYC. How do you see the relationship between digital identity and KYC? Is it possible to build a digital identity system without KYC?

Nate Peace, (Director, Partner Engineering of Unstoppable): I see digital identity as an umbrella and I think within that umbrella can be KYC, but it doesn’t have to be. I think the best way to look at this is through a couple of examples. Let’s say I’m a gamer, I’m in the metaverse and playing games, and I’m working on building an avatar. Nothing about that needs to have KYC in all the games. It doesn’t matter if I have multiple avatars, for example if there’s a level twenty or fifty. And there’s nothing nefarious or shady about having different avatars. I could want to showcase these skills while in my other avatar, my other digital identity, I want to showcase something else. In that case, I don’t think a KYC is required.

But then, maybe I want to login into multiple exchanges, Maybe I do want to login to a futures investing platform. In some of those, obviously, KYC will be required on the platform themselves. However, wouldn’t that be great if within my digital identity, I can already show that I am KYC’d? I could already show that I am an accredited investor, or whatever the case may be.

So, in those cases, I think it’s better for the user to have KYC as part of the digital identity or another way to sum it up is this, I don’t think you have to have KYC as a part of your digital identity. However, as a user, sometimes you want the KYC as part of that digital identity. Going back to my earlier point, it is important that the user can decide when they want to share these KYC credentials.

Another thing I would add is a use case such as DAOs. You might have a role that says only one individual can have one vote. So, even if an individual has hundreds or thousands of wallets, or a thousand of whatever the token might be, how this specific DAO is set up is usually based on an individual person not so much as their wallet. Or maybe DAOs even as a governance and it gives some interesting implications there. In that case, we can again use KYC as almost a zero-knowledge proof humanity check, or maybe each one as a unique identifier on-chain.

This way, even if they have a thousand wallets, a thousand connected wallets, or tokens, you know that that’s one individual person. and you can achieve a voting system that really opens up to some obvious web2 use-cases. These include elections, governance, so that you can vote. So to sum it up, I think KYC is a powerful piece of digital identity but should not be required, and you can have a digital identity without KYC.

Teun, (Growth Director of Litentry): Yes, I would 100% agree with that. There are a lot of good ways to look at it from your explanation. What I’d like to add is that KYC is not necessarily bad, but complete disclosure of KYC is not always needed. A KYC credential or standard could also be selectively disclosed. So that you just prove that you’re over eighteen but you’re not proving at what exact place or what date you were born. If you as a user in a decentralized identity have control over all of the various credentials that you own whether they are KYC or just completely pseudonymous and based on web3 experiences, if you have that collection of credentials, it’s up to you to choose what you disclose, at what point and to who.

I think that could be a powerful way to think about it, not necessarily whether KYC is a good thing or bad. I think it’s definitely a good thing but the way you can control KYC is what is most important.

Wenser, (OG of. bit community): Yes, I also think that KYC is unnecessary for many organizations in web3 or other projects and we have so many tools or ways to verify our users or members in the communities. The KYC means “Know Your Clients” totally and it just means more ways to get informed about a person about an organization. Then we give power to centralized and powerful organizations and we need more databases.

However, in web3, we need to think twice, should we need a centralized power more or less? KYC is just a way to figure out something about a person but we can get something and information from a person’s actions on the blockchain. We can then judge this, should this individual be a user or a member and other things.

So, KYC is not necessary, and we should make more efforts in cross-verifying our actions and our other information on the blockchain. Then we can find that DID and other information are enough to judge a person if he is the best candidate for something or rules within the ecosystem.

Jessica, (Founder of Relation): I agree with you that KYC is not so important or necessary in the web3 world, especially in the non-financial side of the web3. If we consider why we need KYC from the financial point of view, the purpose is anti-money laundry right? So, actually, if we can have ways to identify the pattern or the coordinated strategy behavior of money laundering. There are many other ways to identify the crimes rather than taking the passport from every user.

From another point of view, currently, many practices are not anti-money laundry. They are more anti-Sybil attacks, so, a better way to approach is the identification of bots and the bot masters. Why should we identify them? Sometimes, the bot master is the talent that someone would like to hire. so, to better identify them, and prevent and mitigate their attacks.

There might be a better way to do this since we have the technologies that are evolving and helping to do the analysis, computing, pattern/ trend identification, and predictions.

Because we are having Machine-learning and graph analysis and AI. There are many better ways for us to try to investigate in web3, rather than taking passports.

Question Six

The concept of Soul Bound Token was introduced in May this year in Vitalik’s joint publication “Decentralized Society: Finding Web3’s Soul.”.

How do you see the relationship between SBT and DID, and is SBT an extended resume of DID?

Teun, (Growth Director of Litentry): As I said before Soul Bound Tokens could be one way to express decentralization in the various ways that people may be creative to use them, there will be other tokens and standards emerging as well. As you said, the proof of abundance or Poaps NFTs could tell something about them itself. All of the transparent and public data that you are generating on blockchain can be used to identify you, tell something about you.

It’s just up to what type of token standard or type of identity primitive is being collected so that it becomes communicable and you can send it over as a credential or piece of identity data. I think that as the question, what will emerge? will it be Soul Bound Tokens, verifiable credentials? or just NFTs and Poaps? I think the decision is still in the making.

Mike Ng, (Co-founder & Technology Director of EDNS): Actually, because the identities currently only persist and are located on one blockchain network, like if you’re using Ethereum, Polygon etc. The problem is that DID’s should be cross-chain, multichain or omnichain, allowing for the use of multiple Blockchain networks, like Solana, Aptos. This will mean that our identities will be distributed in multiple networks. If we adopt SBTs and DIDs together, the non-transferable nature will cause us to want to solve the cross-chain problem.

This will be another problem to be solved. We probably can utilize different cross-chain protocols like Nomad, multichain, and integrating SBTs to achieve such features to allow for the reissuing of our DIDs on other networks. After that, we will need to address another problem, how can we synchronize the information or data that we have updated? We could also utilize a cross-chain platform but the problem is that the cost or fee will be increased.

It is pretty hard to confirm or say, we will adopt SBTs, with the DIDs. However, at the moment, we should try to put both together. Is this what people really want? What are the different services, providers, or different entities willing to use or adopt currently?

Nate Peace, (Director, Partner Engineering of Unstoppable): I really like that point, I think somehow, we’ve made it an hour into this without discussing multichain as well as cross-chain, as we look at our digital identities, I think we should also look at them being a little more universal. Instead of having different digital identities, Ethereum vs Solana and the likes, when I want to use, I just want my digital identities to be able to connect with the Dapps and online presence I want to connect with.

It not only should be interoperable between applications but also between chains. This is really interesting, and it gets technically difficult but I think there’s a bigger conversation about, not just SBTs, verified credentials, NFTs, or Poaps which is a chain itself. It is how do I share these regardless of if as the old adage says, a user of a Mac or a PC. In a similar way, whether I’m a user using Ethereum or Solana, how can I still use my digital identity and share the information I want, and own it across these chains?

It’s an interesting issue and it’s not been solved yet so, I think even to your question Jessica, what wins or what will happen? I don’t think we have fully seen the technology that will win out. We obviously have to iterate on it to make it more usable and to make it more multi-chain and cross-chain supportive.

Wenser, (OG of. bit community): Actually, .bit is making its best to do that and then we support Ethereum and Polygon, BSC, and Tron. We will also support more Blockchains to make good use of every community and organization’s identity and to do more things. For example, membership, ownership and utility, and permissions. I also think that SBT is data description proof. It looks like that and DID is a bonded mark. In a way, maybe SBT is just as renowned.

For example, say you just graduated and you have been some person in your company or organization, your DID will follow you from your birth to your growth and death. It is the following mark in your digital track and digital action in web3 and the digital world. You have more reputation, reputation, networking, and stats. DID looks like a container, while SBT looks like a showcase or a book about something in your life.

Question Seven

The concept of SBT is still quite new to most users, how do you think the SBTs can benefit users for the reputation of their digital identity and do you have any plans to introduce the SBT concept into your product business? How will you go about it?

Teun, (Growth Director of Litentry): So, from Litentry’s side, we have already introduced a sort of Soul Bound Token together with one of our partners, Phala. So, Phala Word has a gaming environment where you can get a gaming character, you can login with a gaming character and then the gaming character as a soul. Now, that soul is an NFT, now what is that soul built out of? The soul is built out of the community participation that can be proven of you as a Phala World community member. So, depending on how often you have support, how many Phala tokens you are holding, how often you have tweeted about them, and whether or not you have contributed to their GitHub, the soul of your NFT gaming character gets loaded up with that data.

So, in this case, Litentry is injecting your community participation data inside an NFT, and that NFT becomes the soul of the gaming character.

It’s one creative way that we are currently using the type of SoulBound NFT that really shows the part of the identity that you cannot just buy.

It is a part of the identity that you have to earn and it is verifiable across time and really SoulBound. So, that’s one of the ways that we are looking at it, and then I think in the future we will be supporting SoulBound Tokens next to verifiable credentials in our upcoming products.

Question Eight

Lastly, do you have any upcoming product updates or campaigns that our audiences can join?

Nate Peace, (Director, Partner Engineering of Unstoppable): From Unstoppable Domains, of course, we would love you to get a domain and start using it, as your digital identity, for peer-to-peer payments for logins and even for decentralized websites through IPFS. Check us out at Unstoppable.com or better yet, follow us at Unstoppable web. There’s actually a pretty exciting announcement, we signed with other web3 domain services, something called the web3 domain alliance, you can check us out at web3domainalliance.com.

We haven’t talked about it in our conversations, but it is looking at how to prevent collisions within a decentralized identity. If by definition, I’m using my domain, as my identity, I want to make sure nobody else can have NatePeace.NFT, Jamesbond or Natepeace.eth. So, what we have done with this web3 domain alliance is, we have actually signed an agreement with other partners, just protecting the name space, looking at usage, market penetrations.

So that’s something that we could drop today, and it’s definitely worth checking out. As a partner, if you are a part of this conversation, please reach out to us, we would love you to be a part of that.

Mike, (Co-founder & Technology Director of EDNS): Some updates for EDNS. The EDNS is currently working on a next generation smart contract which can adopt multichain, cross-chain and omnichain, different blockchain networks by utilizing Nomad, wormhole and Layer Zero in different cross chain protocols. Also, we are planning to adopt Solana and Aptos. In the next year, we will adopt different blockchain ecosystems Solana, Aptos, Cosmos and Near. As I mentioned before, not only Ethereum, but Ethereum compatible networks too.

The next step you know EDNS or other domain names in web2. So, we are actually developing a Layer two decentralized storage, which is not completely but partially decentralized. As I mentioned before, I’m a cloud expert, so I’m combining the traditional web2 technology cloud and web3 technology together, to provide layer two decentralized storage. We are currently cooperating with Alibaba, Tencent, and different cloud providers to make this happen.

We expect that we will launch a product in the upcoming month or December. So, stay tuned to our Twitter or discord.

Teun, (Growth Director of Litentry): From our side, we are looking forward to the release of some of our Alpha and Beta versions at the beginning of next year. Some will be just available to interested community members and people who are ready for some beta testing, but definitely keep an eye on our Litentry channels as well as our Discord and Twitter to see when our next product, the identity hub, an interface to the Parachain protocol will become available as well as where you will be able to aggregate your digital identity and store those sensitive relationships in our trusted executive environment. Then, you’ll be able to generate those verifiable credentials that you could start sharing with other applications and web3 products.

If you are a web3 product and you want to get to know your perfect user, definitely reach out because we have the necessary tools and data to allow you to get in touch with your perfect user, but in a privacy-preserving and secure way. So, I’m looking forward to all the new things that will be launched early next year.

Wenser, (OG of. bit community): For .bit, we are making something in sub DID, and that’s our unique title or product in the next stage. We all think that maybe web2 and web3 all need the same DID ecosystem and .bit can provide that. We are trying our best to attract more people from web2 and web3 to join us. We can do more things in organizations, communities, economies and other aspects in our lives and digital society. Maybe sub DID in the next web3 DID era, everyone will have the parent .bit account. to make more Sub DID, to provide more permissions and ways to get close to web3. Then we can find that one DID cross-chains, more utility and more relations in web2 and web3.

More brands and more stars, for example, our recent cooperation with Neymar. We have created so many activities to attract more people from web2 into web3, and we can open a new era of a decentralized society.

Jessica, (Founder of Relation): From Relation side, we are going to host a football theme event later this month before the World Cup 2022 begins. So, just follow our Twitter for the latest news and updates as soon as it’s ready.

https://relationlabs.ai/home

About Relation

Relation is building a Web3 social graph infrastructure that will host the next generation of billions of DApps, and empower souls and communities to co-build reputation and a better society on Web3 with SBTs and relationship data. Relation has launched Web3 social Dapp Relation ONE and the Semantic SBT standard which will create a chain native data layer that is easy to query, share and reuse with lower friction.

Website | Twitter | Github | Discord | Mirror | Medium | Telegram | Documentation

To boost the development of science and technology in the homeworld, an expedition team of humans — Spearheads, who are with the most foresight and the strongest strength, left the Web2 world and have started off an adventure in Web3 space.

Relation Eureka Medals have been issued to the Spearheads from the homeworld since May 2022 to commemorate their journey of exploring Web3 space. By completing three types of behaviors including Personal Behavior, Social Behavior and Value Behavior, the Spearheads are able to collect different Energy Cubes containing energy values. Energy Values could be used for claiming rare treasures in the future. **Check the Eureka Medals Story**⬇️

https://blog.relationlabs.ai/eureka-medals-of-relation-one-introduction-cafd360b00a2

Up till now, Spearheads’ efforts have really made magnificent progress! The homeworld has acquired higher levels of science and technology in Web3 and is able to write the Spearheads’ achievements in Semantic SBTs which Spearheads could carry and are universally recognized in Web3 space. And the energy values that Spearheads have collected will be an important factor for Spearheads to get more exclusive NFTs, SBTs and gas rewards in the Bazaar.

However, to help Spearheads finish the transition from collecting Medals to minting Semantic SBTs, here is the notice that you should follow to make preparations:

1. Make sure to claim all the medals that have been issued to you before the energy value settlement date

All the Relation Medals that have been issued to you should be claimed before UTC 00:00, 23rd, December, 2022. After that, You will be able to directly mint Medals into Semantic SBTs by yourself.

You Energy values collected from Relation Medals will be settled and recorded at UTC 00:00, 23rd, December, 2022. In the future, instead of energy values, the number and value of your Semantic SBTs will be weighed to measure the achievements and contributions you’ve made. However, all the Medals and Energy Value that you have received and settled will be recorded and recognized.

2. Try to use the same address to mint Semantic SBTs

From UTC 00:00, 23rd, December, 2022, you won’t be able to claim Relation Medals and could directly mint Relation Medals into Semantic SBTs. Please keep in mind that all your collected medals are recoded under your Relation ID, and you will be able to mint them into SBTs using your wallet addresses. But you can’t mint one medal twice or more with different wallet addresses.

It is highly recommended that you should use the same address to mint Semantic SBTs, since in future airdrops your qualification will be weighed according to your SBTs collection on the same addresses. So try to use the same address to mint SBTs!

Ps. If you have ever claimed Medal SBTs in Relation’s past campaigns with one address, by switching to that address on the Medal Wall, you will find that you don’t need to claim the SBT again.

3. Know the utilities of energy values

After UTC 00:00, 23rd, December, 2022, you can only get Energy Value by completing Daily Tasks. The energy values you have accumulated in the past will be available for exchanging for rare NFTs or Semantic SBTs, or to get you qualified for airdrops in specific events.

According to the long-term development path of Relation, the utilities of Semantic SBTs will make users’ right more realistic and irreversible by avoiding sybil attacks on-chain. Semantic SBT will be an effective on-chain data-based authentication and airdrop in Web3.

4. Learn the rank growth system based on medals

From UTC 00:00, 23rd, December, 2022, you will be able to mint Relation Medals into Semantic SBTs and keep them on chain permanently. Some Medal SBTs will still contain different levels, such as the Party Attendance Medal, which has three levels based on how many Relation Parties you have attended. The thresholds for getting SBTs of different levels will remain the same. Certain Medal SBTs will be the necessary requirements for getting you qualified in future SoulDrops. So make sure to mint your Medals into Semantic SBTs with higher levels and variety.

5. Mint your Medal SBTs on Polygon Network

Currently, we plan to support Polygon network for you to mint SBTs but we will further expand to support more networks and chains as the ecology develops. When you use a non-polygon network address during the minting process, the front-end will prompt you to switch networks.

6. All the minted Semantic SBT are available on the chain

We Support any user to query their own minting data on the chain. You can access Polygonscan by clicking on the address infomation of the SBT image, or you can login via Relation Semantic SBT Bazaar. (https://sbt.relationlabs.ai/bazaar)

This upgrade of the medals to become Semantic SBT is another fresh practice on the verifiability of Web3 digital identity by Relation. We use on-chain traceability and readability to analyse each accounts’ unique on-chain footprint to verify whether the account is a real person or a bot, providing the technical solution necessary to drive Web3 forward.

For more information you can read more about us by Soulbound Journals — The New Paradigm of Identification and Verification in Web3.

https://relationlabs.ai/home

About Relation

Relation is building a Web3 social graph infrastructure that will host the next generation of billions of DApps, and empower souls and communities to co-build reputation and a better society on Web3 with SBTs and relationship data. Relation has launched Web3 social Dapp Relation ONE and the Semantic SBT standard which will create a chain native data layer that is easy to query, share and reuse with lower friction.

Website | Twitter | Github | Discord | Mirror | Medium | Telegram | Documentation

ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI and Microsoft, is a natural language processing (NLP) system that is capable of generating human-like conversations. It is based on GPT-3, a machine learning model with 175 billion parameters, which enables it to understand language context more accurately than traditional NLP models. ChatGPT could be used to build digital assistants and chatbots that can generate natural conversation in real-time.

To provide Web3 users with timely experience of ChatGPT, Relation has integrated ChatGPT into Relation AI Bot, enabling users to experience human-like interactions with their bots and digital assistants. The AI Bot is powered by the latest deep learning technologies and provides interactive dialogue and natural language understanding to create an engaging conversational experience.

The integration of ChatGPT has enabled Relation AI Bot to be accessible in Relation IM without regional restrictions. This means users can experience the AI Bot through Relation IM regardless of their geographical location and are free to use different languages and dialects. Currently, Relation IM Toolkit has been implemented in Relation ONE Chat Plugin 0.7.10 & HashKey Me 3.0 and could be easily integrated into other Dapps & Platforms.

Now let’s take a quick look at how to use Relation IM to experience Relation AI Bot!

Relation ONE Chat Plugin

Relation ONE Chat Plugin is an extension offering Web3-native IM features including Chatting, Transfer, Open Search, NFT Sharing, Friends Management, etc. You can download the extension in Google Web Store and install it to try Relation IM.

Download Relation ONE extension & Update to v0.7.10

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/relation-one/bmabahhenimmnfijaiccmonalfhpcndh

You need to log in Relation ONE with your crypto wallet and search for Relation AI Bot to find it. And then you can start a chat with the Bot to experience ChatGPT in Relation IM..

(Relation AI Bot’ Relation ID: 7qrm5-hqaaa-aaaaj-aag2q-cai)

HashKey Me 3.0

You can also experience Relation AI Bot in HashKey Me 3.0 since all the Relation IM features and Relation social graph data has been integrated into HashKey Me.

HashKey Me is a crypto wallet mobile app enabling your Web3 experience any time and anywhere. Now you can bind your Relation ID into HashKey Me and synchronize all your chats and relationship data.

1. Download HashKey Me 3.0 on Mobile Devices

https://me.hashkey.com/en

2. Create a Decentralized Account or Connect with a Mobile Wallet to Login HashKey Me

It’s recommended to login with an address connected to your Relation ID to synchronize your Web3 social relationships.

3. Login Chat Page in HashKey Me with an Address Bound to Your Relation ID

It’s recommended to login with an address bound to your Relation ID.

Guide on How to bind Relation ID to HashKey Me

https://support.hub.hashkey.com/hc/en-us/articles/9273616851353-Through-Binding-Relation-Account-in-HashKey-Me-to-start-Web3-Social-Experience

4. Seach for Relation AI Bot & Start a Chat

Now you can search for Relation AI Bot to find it and start a chat with the Bot!

(Relation AI Bot’ Relation ID: 7qrm5-hqaaa-aaaaj-aag2q-cai)

That’s all for the guide on how to experience ChatGPT with Relation AI Bot in Relation IM! Currently, Relation AI Bot is still under Beta test. We will continue optimizing the Bot and keep up with the times to offer Web3 users the best social experience with our partners!

Now share your interaction with Relation AI Bot in Screenshot to win an Explorer Semantic SBT! (Plz drop your ETH address to get the SBT)

https://relationlabs.ai/

About HashKey Me

Based on MPC (Multi-Party Computation), HashKey Me is a decentralized identity wallet supporting multiple blockchains. With email addresses as unique identities, users can generate accounts compatible with a number of major blockchain ecosystems, including Cosmos, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Polkadot, Polygon, Avalanche, Arbitrum, and Conflux. While safeguarding digital assets in a decentralized manner, the solution also lowers barriers to access, for it does not require managing memorics and private keys.

Using an email address as a user’s unique identity, HashKey Me enables transactions across multiple blockchains, create (by snapshot) and display NFTs on demand, and share them on social networks such as Twitter and Telegram with one tap click.

You can download HashKey Me APP either on the official website or on major app stores. Welcome to Web3!

About Relation

Relation is building a Web3 social graph infrastructure that will host the next generation of billions of DApps, and empower souls and communities to co-build reputation and a better society on Web3 with SBTs and relationship data. Relation has launched Web3 social Dapp Relation ONE and the Semantic SBT standard which will create a chain native data layer that is easy to query, share and reuse with lower friction.

Website | Twitter | Github | Discord | Mirror | Medium | Telegram | Documentation

Currently, Relation has deployed the Semantic SBT contract on Moonbeam. Therefore, with users claiming Semantic SBTs on Moonbeam network, countless SBT transactions and data will be generated and processed on Moonbeam.

A Semantic SBT describes the social relation between two souls in its metadata. Everyone will be able to mint self-certified or third-party-certificated SBTs to build social relationships of different attributes with others. For example, if an account owner was a member of a DAO and got certificated by the DAO with a membership SBT, then the SBT will prove the relationship between the account owner and the DAO and create a directed graph link. With the anti-sybil attack features of RDF, when Semantic SBTs usage becomes ubiquitous, a trustworthy and accurate Semantic SBT data layer will be built in the Moonbeam ecosystem, which still reserves the connectivity with other EVM SBT data layers.

In the near future, Relation will release the SoulScan services, similar to NFTScan, to enable everyone to query SBT data and RDF format semantic meaning in Metadata of the SBTs. More tools will be provided by Relation for developers to implement the Semantic SBT solution and produce more Semantic SBT data. Thanks to the composability of blockchains and the nature of Semantic SBTs in describing relationships among souls, SBTs from every corner of the blockchain ecosystem could be merged together to better describe users’ on-chain behaviors.

In Web3 Football Carnival, a Web3-native Football guessing party with Semantic SBTs, Moonbeam network has been integrated and supported now**.** Users can log into Carnival and collect all the SBTs on the Moonbeam network, bringing new users into the ecosystem.

Moonbeam provides a specialized environment for cross-chain integration, with the inter-blockchain messaging options, Ethereum compatibility and a proof-of-stake architecture built on Substrate. As Moonbeam network is supported in Relation’s multi-chain social graph, Moonbeam will be able to reach more users from different blockchains with Relation ONE social graph services and functions in a unified way. 800+ NFT contracts with 126k+ NFT assets on Moonbeam will also benefit from a larger scale of users by building Web3-native NFT social communities — NFT Clubs in Relation for multi-chain users to easily enter and be active in the Moonbeam ecosystem.

“Moonbeam has been an unmatched platform for multi-chain applications to achieve interoperability,” Said Jessica Chang, Founder of Relation. “As a multi-chain social graph infrastructure builder, Relation has been evolving to adapt to the development of the multi-chain ecosystem and keep optimizing the cross-chain social experiences. Since the birth of Semantic SBTs, Relation is facing a bigger challenge in cross-chain compatibility. And Moonbeam is our friend along the way.”

Relation will continue to bring more unified and smooth cross-chain social experiences to users and build a more dynamic multi-chain ecosystem with Moonbeam.

https://relationlabs.ai

About Moonbeam

Moonbeam is a smart contract platform for building cross-chain connected applications that can access users, assets, and services on any chain. By uniting functionality from Ethereum, Cosmos, Polkadot and more into a single platform, Moonbeam solves today’s fragmented user experience — unlocking true interoperability and paving the way for the next generation of applications. The Moonbeam platform uses integrated cross-chain messaging to allow developers to create smart contracts that access services across many remote blockchains. This approach, plus Moonbeam’s developer-friendly EVM platform, vast tool support, and modern Substrate architecture, creates the ideal development environment for building connected applications.

About Relation

Relation is building a Web3 social graph infrastructure that will host the next generation of billions of DApps, and empower souls and communities to co-build reputation and a better society on Web3 with SBTs and relationship data. Relation has launched Web3 social Dapp Relation ONE and the Semantic SBT standard which will create a chain native data layer that is easy to query, share and reuse with lower friction.

Website | Twitter | Github | Discord | Mirror | Medium | Telegram | Documentation

Navigate Our Everyday Life in Web3 with a Soulbound Journal

Suppose we want to navigate life in Web3, get proof of supporting our favorite sports teams, stake values to our communities, and control and maintain our identity-related data. It is essential to have a decentralized social identity.

Relation is building the Social Graph Protocol with a platformless Soul Bound Journal (SBJ) for Web3 natives to manage their evolving-over-time social identity related information among Semantic Soulbound Tokens (SBTs).

The SBJ is the maintained collection of SBTs that defines not only who we are and to whom we are connected, but also the narrative of our identities which is the internalized and evolving story of ourselves that we construct to make sense and meaning out of our life. The SBJ is fragmentary in various SBTs. It must be social because we are related to other people and communities. It is verifiable in a decentralized manner because the information captured by SBTs in one SBJ has a mirror or copy in other SBJs. And it is built with trust.

The SBTs are collected verifications of various memberships, social positions, and Web3 experiences. It forms people’s on-chain reputations, just as people can aggregate physical documents to build offline ones.

In this case, everyday Web3 users accessing and maintaining their social identities improves people’s experience in the on-chain world by creating immutable trust and verifiable data.

Communities become more solid with more value staked because users can trust each other when taking, voting and collaborating. People worry less that the people sitting over the screen are stolen identities.

Introducing Semantic SBTs

The Semantic SBTs are primitive building blocks of SBJ introduced by Relation. It builds on top of existing ERC721 standards using Semantic Triples, described by the graph data model -Resource Description Framework, to enrich the SBT’s social metadata. It captures the meaning of the SBT in RDF, the standard model for data interchange with a linking structure.

Semantic SBTs could help resolve trust issues in the emergent decentralized social structure by providing the means to verify reputation. It removes any data moat in Web3 as the social metadata are stored entirely on-chain with the token holders.

What’s more, by applying semantic web technologies, we create the foundation for publishing and linking data, integrating data from multiple sources and subsequently being able to query and retrieve information across these different sources, and make data reusable across applications and communities.

The maintenance of SBJ is integrating social data into a unified social graph and taking blockchain as a social metadata store. It ultimately enables analytics tools to produce practical, actionable business intelligence. It builds the foundation of future plural intelligence. The social graph provides more intelligent support for end users. Thus Dapps can give better support in finding info, selecting information sources, personalizing information, and combining data from different sources. It weakens the dominance and control of big names, makes the web more personalized, and makes information easier to reach.

Building the Sports Souls with Semantic SBTs

Sports are part of our daily life and bring some much-needed joy to the world. The world’s most prestigious association football tournament, the World Cup, is bringing excitement to hundreds of millions now. Watching sports is stimulating and brings us joyfulness, health, and well-being.

With the Semantic Soulbound Tokens, we can now record our life moments and Web3 footprints in tokens.

During this ongoing World Cup season, sports fans in Web3 can have their support to their favorite team recorded on-chain by minting a Team Fans SBT and join the guessing party by minting guessing SBTs for each match.

Furthermore, Relation and partners, EtherPOAP, .bit, PlatON, Permaswap, MetaOasis, and 4EVERLAND, are issuing the Membership SBTs as proof of verified memberships of these communities. Participants can get verified upon completion of a few simple tasks. These Semantic SBTs capture the meaning of ‘membership’ and store the social metadata on-chain.

The information will be available to anybody who makes queries in the unified social graph and would like to develop future use cases on top of the Membership SBTs. Many future use cases can be developed around the Membership SBTs. Like exclusive online community access for the membership SBT holders, for example, the NFT Club Space created by Relation ONE, the Web3 chat Dapp. They can be set as the eligibility conditions for future SoulDrop (smart token airdrop to souls) to these holders, for example, people who hold all seven Membership SBTs are eligible to claim some token airdrop in the future. And because the participants in the Web3 Football Carnival are all sports fans, any future sports-related campaigns or applications can directly market to those SBT holders.

Relation is building the decentralized social graph infrastructure as the cornerstone of future metaverses and on-chain reputations. This is a purely decentralized, open and permission-less protocol. Every corner of the blockchain identity ecosystem can participate in the co-building of social graph among Semantic SBTs and benefit from the unified social graph by having a web of trust, a personalized web and more intelligent and reachable information.

https://relationlabs.ai/

About Relation

Now Relation users could not only bind their Relation ID to HashKey Me to migrate all the Web3 social identities and relationships that they’ve accumulated in Relation, but also able to enjoy the Web3-native IM and social features on mobile devices, which has long been wished for by Relation users. Moreover, as the Web3 Football Carnival is in full swing, the entrance of the Carnival has gone live in HashKey Me to realize one-stop participation of the Carnival in one mobile Dapp!

Relation’s Web3-native IM chatting features has been implemented on Relation ONE Chat Plugin from the beginning to now. The Chat Plugin is essential in the Web3 social solution Relation provides, because Web3-native IM chatting helps users interact with each other in real time and exchange important information directly. Therefore, based on the IM chatting features that keep being optimized, Relation has released the Web3 native community operation plans — NFT Club Chatting Group and integrated the Group Transfer function. There are also multiple use cases of Relation IM Chatting and social graph services, for example, the integration of Relation IM in Marketplaces like OpenSea and CCC Protocol, empowering sellers and buyers in NFT trading.

Relation IM Chatting features not only serve as Web3-native instant communication tools, but also enable users to expand their Web3 social graph. In all kinds of groups and NFT Clubs, users could chat with different groups of Web3 users and follow each other to make new friends. However, although the Relation ONE Chat Plugin has been widely and frequently used, Relation users have been calling on the mobile version of the IM functions due to the inconvenience of using extensions on PC browsers. Now that HashKey Me 3.0 has finished the integration of Relation IM and social graph, the mobile experience of Relation Web3-native social experience is available.

To start with, HashKey Me has integrated the Web3 social graph data from Relation, therefore users could bind their Relation ID to HashKey Me and migrate the multi-chain social relationships including Following, Followers and Follower list. Users could also add new friends and follow each other in HashKey Me to manage their Web3 social relationships.

In addition, Relation’s IM features have been fully integrated in HashKey Me, which means users could migrate all their peer-2-peer chats, group chats and Club chats data to HashKey Me and enjoy the all the IM features like NFT sharing and creating new groups on mobile devices.

Furthermore, all the SBT collections based on Relation’s Semantic SBT standards could be displayed with their authentic semantic meaning in metadata. The SBTs and NFTs could also be shared within the chat groups or to other mobile apps.

And now with all of Relation’s Web3-native social and IM features integrated in HashKey Me, users could enter and experience the entire Web3 Football Carnival at one stop. Here are the instructions on how to join in the Carnival in HashKey Me:

1. Download HashKey Me 3.0 Mobile Wallet on a Mobile Device

https://me.hashkey.com/en

2. Create a Decentralized Account or Connect with a Mobile Wallet to Login HashKey Me

It’s recommended to login with an address connected to your Relation ID to synchronize your Web3 social relationships.

3. Enter the Explorer Page in HashKey Me and Click Relation Dapp to Enter the Web3 Football Carnival

4. Login Web3 Football Carnival with Mobile Wallet Dapp

5. Browse through the Web3 Football Carnival to Collect SBTs & NFTs

6. With the Early Bird NFT Pass, you will be able to join the Early Bird NFT Club

7. Login Chat Page in HashKey Me with an Address Bound to Your Relation ID & Enter the Early Bird NFT Club Chat to Interact with NFT holders

You need to login with an address that you use to login the Web3 Football Carnival and connected to your original Relation ID.

Guide on How to bind Relation ID to HashKey Me

https://support.hub.hashkey.com/hc/en-us/articles/9273616851353-Through-Binding-Relation-Account-in-HashKey-Me-to-start-Web3-Social-Experience

You can also check and share your Carnival SBT with others through HashKey Me!

Relation and HashKey Me have been keeping a close partnership with each other and will continue to work together on Web3 Social and DID development. Please stay tuned for our further cooperation and go to experience Web3 Football Carnival on HashKey Me now!

About HashKey Me

Based on MPC (Multi-Party Computation), HashKey Me is a decentralized identity wallet supporting multiple blockchains. With email addresses as unique identities, users can generate accounts compatible with a number of major blockchain ecosystems, including Cosmos, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Polkadot, Polygon, Avalanche, Arbitrum, and Conflux. While safeguarding digital assets in a decentralized manner, the solution also lowers barriers to access, for it does not require managing memorics and private keys.

Using an email address as a user’s unique identity, HashKey Me enables transactions across multiple blockchains, create (by snapshot) and display NFTs on demand, and share them on social networks such as Twitter and Telegram with one tap click.

You can download HashKey Me APP either on the official website or on major app stores. Welcome to Web3!

About Relation

Relation is building a Web3 social graph infrastructure that will host the next generation of billions of DApps, and empower souls and communities to co-build reputation and a better society on Web3 with SBTs and relationship data. Relation has launched Web3 social Dapp Relation ONE and the Semantic SBT standard which will create a chain native data layer that is easy to query, share and reuse with lower friction.

Website | Twitter | Github | Discord | Mirror | Medium | Telegram | Documentation

Football has become a trending topic in recent days. Everybody is talking about it. As a global sport, it outranked other sports when it comes to the degree of globalization and professionalization, showing tremendous cultural influence around the world. With the emergence of Web3, football, a borderless sport, is now reaching into a new atmosphere, creating a new cultural phenomenon that is attracting the attention of millions of new fans.

Launched by Relation, cooperated by more than 30 renowned projects in the nascent ecosystem, Web3 Football Carnival 2022 aims to promote a new paradigm of football culture by making possible a global online party featuring exciting events — gaming being one of them. A reward pool worth $50,000 (currently) has been set up by Relation and our partners to incentivize football fans in the Web3 world to be a part of this exciting journey. The partners of this Carnival include PlatON, Moonbeam, Unstoppable Domains, Flow Fans China, .bit, EtherPOAP, Permaswap, MetaOasis, 4EVERLAND, Token Pocket, P12, Port3, StarryNift, RociFi, NFT Play, EDNS Domains, MetaMirror, Bonfida, NFTScan, Mail3, Web3 GO, Ms-meta.HK, Knoknok, Linkkey, OP Sumo Club, IC Naming, Capsid, and NameDAO, EUT.

**In addition, it is the first time Relation leverages Semantic SBT in a major event to promote self-sovereign identity for Web3 and blockchain. As an RDF-structured semantic SBT standard, Relation’s Semantic SBT allows for social relations between two souls to be described in its metadata. **The same feature can also be used to articulate personal experiences, achievements, and qualifications. It is with this exciting football Carnival that Relation and its partners join hands to further increase the value of on-chain data for the whole world to explore. How valuable and critical it would be for the Web3 world if data can be seamlessly mined, shared, and reused across different ecosystems!

Portal for Web3 Football Carnival 2022

https://footballcanival.relationlabs.ai/

Guessing players! Be on the Lookout

How can you participate? Well, you can log in through your wallet address and finish Twitter verification. Then, you will be able to participate in guess games with featured team-specific SBTs. You are encouraged to play all the way. For example, players ranking Top 100 will share the reward pool, while the top 10 will have special rewards. Additional draws will be provided for plays who play all the way and have a winning rate higher than 50%.

The Carnival has set up various Sponsor Tasks for participants to claim different official SBT certifications, with which you can access NFT Pass.

1）Follow 10 Sponsors’ Twitter accounts to claim Brands Achievement SBT.

2）Finish at least 4 Sponsor Tasks to claim the respective Membership SBT certification and additional reward.

3）Follow 20 Supporters’ Twitter accounts to claim Supporter Achievement SBT.

4）A total amount of 19,500 Early Bird NFT Passes can be claimed by people holding Team Fans SBT, Brands Achievement SBT, or Guess SBT(obtained by finishing one guess). Twitter Giveaway campaigns hosted by different brands are also great places for participants to access this special pass. For more information, please refer to the Giveaway timetable.

Early Bird NFT Pass holders are eligible for entering the Club. They can participate in AR airdrop events sponsored by Permaswap and connect with other football fans during the Carnival in real-time.

5）A Honours SBT can be claimed with 4 Sponsors’ Membership SBT certifications and 1 Supporter’s Achievement SBT certification. Only 5000 Honours SBTs are available on a first-come-first-served basis. People holding an Honours SBT will be assigned a whitelisted ticket for the draw on Christmas Eve.

For more information, please click check the guide here>>

What do Web3 Builders think about football culture?

From Nov. 20 to 21 (1 PM UTC), Relation will invite a number of brands to share their thoughts on Carnival’s Twitter space. They will discuss the uniqueness and essence of the football culture, the enthusiasm surrounding it, and their respective project developments during the Carnival. For more information, please check the Carnival Twitter Space Schedule. The list of brands includes Platon, Unstoppable Domains, .bit, EtherPOAP, Permaswap, MetaOasis, and 4EVERLAND.

Featured Stages — Something you cannot miss

Permaswap, a project in the Arweave ecosystem, will launch a Twitter Space dedicated to the Arweave ecosystem. Several renowned projects in the ecosystem will be invited, such as ArConnect, to join Web3 Football Carnival 2022. With this opportunity, the community will discuss the current development and future trends of AR and the broader distributed storage sector, charting a course for AR and its mission to innovate the Internet. For more information, please follow Carnival’s event page.

Furthermore,** .bit, a cross-chain DID protocol provider, will also set up its a latest product in this Carnival, showcasing its SubDID along the way** (which is currently in the stage of whitelisting application). With this new product, a .bit main account can mint its SubDID at almost zero cost (as low as 1 ckb). A SubDID is as good as the main-account as a means of identity to be used in DAOs, NFT communities, Fans Clubs, GameFi games, and so on. At this dedicated stage, members in different communities can claim a SubDID themed such as“ilikefootball.relationlabs.bit” simply by finishing certain tasks.

New technologies, such as Web3, are changing the way we enjoy football. Web3 users around the world are about to explore the football culture together in a manner unseen before. This is a great opportunity for the global Web3 community.

https://relationlabs.ai/home

About Relation

With the awakening of data sovereignty, Relation is reconfiguring the social relations of individuals in a decentralized way. We make it possible for every Soul to mint readable, understandable, programmable SBTs to represent proofs of their friendships, affiliations, membership certificate qualifications, commitments, etc., on the chain.

Website | Twitter | Github | Discord | Mirror | Medium | Telegram | Documentation

As Jessica Chang, Founder of Relation, mentioned in Relation Talk #6: “Web3 has created a movement to fundamentally change how we interact with each other in the digital world. SoulBound tokens (SBTs) are the latest emerging use case for blockchain technology looking to support an interoperable digital identity. With SBTs, alongside their applications and infrastructure, it becomes possible to create socially verifiable reputations and a more pluralist digital world of increasing returns.

SBTs can serve as a user’s identity in web3 containing different attributes. An easy to deploy SBT standard that creates massive valuable social data which could be shared and reused without friction are essential. That’s why Relation is proposing the Semantic SBT standard that not only meets the requirements above but is also capable of protecting privacy and preventing sybil attacks. With Semantic SBTs, that’s how we are going to implement the decentralized social graph.”

In Relation Talk #6, a group of Web3 builders from Relation, FirstBatch, Trantor, Port3, Kleros and HashKey gathered together to share their perspectives on the transformational effects that SBTs will bring. Their discussions on the topic of “How SBTs empower decentralized identity, reputation and social data on Web3” are recorded as follows.

Speakers

• Kerim, Co-Founder of FirstBatch. FirstBatch is a leading identity generator giving data-driven attestations rather than claim-based validations and enabling ZK identity scaling.

• **Hera, COO of Trantor. **Trantor is a guarded inter-chain NFT communication infrastructure in accordance with mathematical algorithms and multi-fuse protection.

• **0xKongy, COO of Port3 Networks. **Port3 Networks is a web3 social data gateway that aggregates off-chain and on-chain data to empower web3 Dapps.

• Guangmian, Integrations lead of Kleros. Kleros is a decentralized arbitration service for the disputes of the new economy.

• HashKey DID Official. HashKey DID is a multi-chain decentralized identity data aggregator powered by smart contract.

Question One

After the concept of SoulBound Tokens being stated for the first time in early May 2022, SoulBound quickly became one of the hottest topics in the Web3 world. Do you think SoulBound Tokens are powerful in building non-financial applications? And why?

**Hera (COO of Trantor): “**In terms of what SoulBound Tokens are, I think SoulBound Tokens are non-transferrable NFTs that are linked to certain wallet addresses. I feel that the concepts of SBTs and DID come hand in hand. In the real world, we have a passport as our identity proof in a foreign country or region to gain trust. Similarly, our DID could be our passport in the Web3 world. Then we can compare SBTs to individual visas representing achievements and experiences that we accumulate along the way in Web3. Different types of SBTs collected by individuals will define what type of Web3 users they are. They could be gamers, Twitter or DeFi users with all those SBTs publicly displayed on their profiles.

This will allow like-minded individuals to socialize, for example in social related decentralized applications. It is natural that SBTs will be important for identifying like-minded people. Besides, I feel that in the Web2 world, when people want to recruit someone, they need to vet through their resumes, educational certificates and perform due diligence. The process is time-consuming and difficult to authenticate the certificates sometimes. With SBTs representing a candidate’s achievements, the hiring process will be much easier and more smooth.

In terms of what we do at Trantor: Trantor platform itself will be issuing our platform SBTs for people who finish quests from some projects. These SBTS can be used for exclusive airdrops in the future. So, these projects can have a way to identify their early and active users. This is how SBTs are utilized on the Trantor platform.”

Guangmian (Integrations lead of Kleros): “The non-transferrable nature of SBT is one of its most defining features. On top of being non-transferrable, SoulBound Tokens should also be bound to the soul: Not just to an individual’s wallet address, but to the person that is behind the address. One of the concerns of SBTs and people trying to create SBT formats and protocols is: certainly, you can bind things to an Ethereum address, and make it non-transferable out of that address; however, how do you make sure that people will not sell the private keys? Imagine that I have created an address, and I have a lot of SBTs and credentials, proving that I have a degree in law. And then, I get a lot of tokens on the address to access a lot of token gated communities, and after that, I sell that private key to someone else.

SBTs become transferable off chain when the private keys are sold. And I think that goes against the main idea of SBTs.* However, this problem can be solved and one of the solutions is with proof of humanity by creating a game theoretical framework behind the creation of SBTs. As a result, it becomes infeasible and nonsensical for anybody trying to sell their keys. The idea is that proof of humanity is just one implementation of this and I’m pretty sure there are many more possible implementations of this concept.*

So, when you create an SBT, with proof of humanity, you don’t issue anything. The SBT is just a registry where people will check whether this profile is registered and if it is still in their registry. The private key can be sold, but the moment it’s sold, the person who actually owns the face is free to upload another profile to negate the initial SBT that he or she sold. This means that if you try to buy a second hand SBT, a proof of humanity SBT and try to build your reputation on that, the moment the original owner of that face negates the original SBT, you lose everything on top of that.

I think that it’s an essential feature of a good SBT protocol, and that is something that proof of humanity is able to achieve.* Once you can ensure this type of security, you are able to build SoulBound applications when your token gate someone into a community saying that this person has certain credentials. You know that this person truly is the person who has the credential but not someone who has bought the private keys or somehow managed to get it from somewhere else through illegitimate mechanisms.*

So, I think that making SoulBound tokens truly SoulBound is essential.* After that, we can start putting all these non-financial applications on top of that.*”

Question Two

SBT is considered to be the most important breakthrough in non-financial crypto since the Ethereum white paper at the end of 2013. What’s your opinion on this idea? What kind of impact will SoulBound Tokens have on the industry as a whole or what kinds of innovation opportunities will SoulBound Tokens bring, especially in the social and identity field?

HashKey DID Official: “SBTs are indeed an innovative output with a high value which may link with reality.* SBTs make it easier for institutions and individuals to join in and understand the technology and application status of Web3 absolutely. So, it is definitely an amazing future direction. In my opinion, decentralized identity and some other decentralized certificates which may prove the contribution of individuals in specific are very promising scenarios.*

DID is much more like your passport in web3, and the credentials, especially SBTs are much more like your footprints.* It means that this class of non-financial crypto may also provide more extension solutions in application. For example, HashKey DID has already hosted or co-hosted around ten events or campaigns with more than 800,000 users participating. This will greatly empower DAO communities building governance processes, such as application management permissions, personal credit ratings to mention a few.*

These are all chances in the future. Tools related to DAO governance, credit rating and the data layer with privacy calculating technology will launch at the end of this year and later at HashKey DID. These are the directions that we are really interested in.”

Kerim (Co-Founder of FirstBatch): “My point of view is a bit different and I think it is important as a part of a whole. I*n FirstBatch, what we are doing is utilizing source specific AI’s, Reddit driven AI’s and onboarding user interests and personas, hundreds of attestations in miles of a second. While we are doing this, users are creating all these attestations as they keep proofs, so we are addressing a privacy layer.*

We think that we have to empower the on-chain data with the things that are not available.* If a user is a chess player interested in Figma, loves NFL teams or NBA teams that are not on chain, or available. And it is hard to understand with solely blockchain transactions. So, in FirstBatch, we are aggregating these interests and personas and making them on-chain provable. When we aggregate these off-chain data, the second question that arises with our perspective is, ‘There has to be a privacy preserving level and we have to divide the experience for two.’*

The first experience is the SBT part. The proof of person from these socials and instant proof of personas from these socials could be driven by SBTs. We are bullish on how to utilize SBTs with this kind of fully open point of view. As users want to protect their data, while having all the sovereignty, the second part is driven by an approach that has mixed SBTs and the ZK proofs which Vitalik is also bullish on. We are utilizing these kinds of data points in a decentralized interest graph that we are building.

I think SBTs and different kinds of data will see approaches from on-chain data but also from off-chain data sources. These will drive crypto socials and decentralized identity to build a comprehensive identity.”

Question Three

Both Relation and Port3 are focused on the Web3 social graph track, and we understand that Port3 has issued SoulBound NFTs to serve as the user’s identity in Web3. Relation has also released a semantic SBT standard to build the Web3 social graph data layer through semantic SBTs. What are Port3 and Relation’s thoughts on the application of SBTs?

0xKongy (COO of Port3 Networks): “From Port3’s perspective, the way we look at SoulBound Tokens is basically as your Web3 identity.* Everything you’ve done on-chain, every connection that you have built with others, every web2 app that you have experienced, can all be connected through your wallet. We collect all this data. We have one wallet and every time someone comes onto our platform, we can actually connect them to their individual social apps. For example, your telegram, Twitter or Discord, all can be linked to your wallet.*

So, once you get all the data together, you really create an identity of the person and how they go through the entire metaverse and Web3 world.* We haven’t launched our SoulBound Tokens yet. It’s probably in the pipeline, should be out by the end of the year. We’re actually collating and building up a community for it right now. Once we have the issuance of the SoulBound Token, our idea is just to incorporate everyone’s identity into SBTs.*

Then, the SBTs and data of a specific user can live on-chain and be permanently stored on blockchains.* From that point on, you apply the SBTs and related data to many scenarios. You use them for marketing. You can also have your personal information on SBTs that you can store and maybe use them like a resume. For example, if you’re a builder, you store all of your information out there and you can just send your SBTs to others as a proof. Then, people can see all the things that you have done.*

From our perspective, I think data is really powerful. In this stage, collecting as much data as possible is really what will help us get to the next level. By having a wide reaching SoulBound Token whereby you have the same community that shares the same SoulBound Token, a uniform set of data sets, your connectivity is going to be really seamless. That’s where we are going to head in the future. Essentially, our view and application of the SBTs is that SBTs will be your Web3 identity and you can really have many use-cases for SBTs.”

Jessica (Founder of Relation): “We think that SBTs can serve as a user’s identity in web3, and maybe a part of the source. People can hold many sources they have and different sources will make difference in the resumes. With the association of SBTs, you can view what the person is like and what fields he or she has interest in.

We have an idea that people may have so many SBTs on their accounts.* And people may have several accounts on-chain. In each account they hold, there might be a hundred SBTs, recording their past event transactions and fellowships. We are building this interactional graph among the semantic SoulBound Tokens. The Semantic SoulBound Tokens look similar to other SBTs. It is a variant of NFT that describes what the SBT means and it may have a graph associated with it.*

However, in the back end, it’s the on-chain data where we write the social media data on-chain, to take in the semantic meaning of the token.* This way, the standard of data models, also called the standard of data interchange that is stored on chains as well, will be promoted, based on an existing standard. This standard will be widely adoptable and familiar to many developers, so it becomes easy for developers to start implementing SBTs.*

Why we think following this standard data model and data exchange model is important is that, just like Kong said, data is valuable. When the community creates more data, it becomes a public good that can benefit the whole society from every corner. The most important thing is to make data easier to be mined and shared and re-used across different communities. Providing data sources is really important for the whole ecosystem.

Relation is proposing the Semantic SBT standard since we are trying to make this data layer that is readily native on-chain and easy to be shared and re-used without friction. That’s how we are going to implement the decentralized social graph. What’s more powerful is that the graph theory is actually a necessary fit in the SoulBound Tokens. For example, we issued two SBTs last month to prove the attendance of the TOKEN2049 event.

The holder of the Semantic SBT can actually read the semantic meaning; that this address attended this event, and it is actually in the short text record, pointing from one address to an event. In this case a directed graph link is created. So, by modeling these SBTs, we are actually modeling all those directed graph links which form the social graph.

The power of the graph theory is that it is easy to assign weights to the different attributes SBTs carry and to manage the correlation amongst all those holders of the SBTs. This way, it becomes easier for us to mitigate the sybil attacks or strategically coordinated behaviors. This is how we think the applications of SBTs can benefit us as a whole.

Question Four

Based on what you have described, SBTs are a proper model to introduce reputation mechanisms into Web3, so that the digital world can evaluate and measure the reputation of accounts. What problems might you encounter in the process of SBT implementation?

**Hera (COO of Trantor): “**Previously, the potential problem as Kong mentioned earlier, is that people may sell their private keys and the SBTs actually become transferable. However, this can be addressed via Kong’s solution. Besides, I feel like the whole model may be misused to target a certain group of people. For example, some groups may be discriminated against because of certain types of SBTs. For me, those are the main concerns I have for this model.”

**Guangmian (Integrations lead of Kleros): “**Well, I think there are two types of SBTs, those that you actually want and those that you don’t want in your name. For example, you could have SBTs for a law degree or attending a very nice event. However, if people are creating name and shame SBTs or undesirable SBTs like those from a corrupt official or silly person, you should have the freedom to unassign it from your name.

I also think if you make it too SoulBound and cannot be taken from your name, that could also be a problem. While SBTs should not be transferable, they should be destroyable to prevent the second problem from happening.”

Kerim (Co-Founder of FirstBatch): “Yeah, I totally agree. Some of the proof of person protocols that I’m observing right now, gave grants to users last April for personal level like three or these kinds of categories or hierarchical rankings. If a user is really genuine, and has like a hundred percent of proof of person rank, they’re probably going to show off. The problem is if you have the organic rank of 60–70% or 50%. I believe users don’t know what to do with it.

In some cases, users are adding more resources, more data to acquire a better proof of person level. So, I think the burning of the remaining of the SBTs is really important. I agree with you guys.”

Guangmian (Integrations lead of Kleros): “You can separate the issuance of the badges from the identity itself without compromising the scarcity of the SBTs. So, people should be free to operate. For certain badges through secure and zero-knowledge ways, individuals can delegate those badges to another address that only they can. Sort of like a decoy identity to preserve their identity.”

**HashKey DID Official: “**As you have mentioned, if a user does not want others to know more about themselves in reality, this class of SBTs may do the more privacy thing. For some rating standards, it’s so different from the organizations which may do these kinds of SBTs or these kinds of campaigns.”

Jessica (Founder of Relation): “Over publicity can also make people subject to social control.* This is one of the paradoxes that we are facing. Over publicity is a problem, along with over privacy. We need people to show up and prove something with their accounts so we can know more about this person. This way we can do the business and make plural intelligence etc. We don’t have a very good solution to solve this problem. However, we have some ideas on solving hiding some information from public visibility and protecting privacy.*

ZK knowledge is a good idea, but we still need people to keep it within a small group of people.* We are communicating with the link protocol and also Arweave on this project to make the private SBTs. It can then be accessed by a small group of people who are holding the access control around tokens so that they can view the data.*

We are very happy to discuss the ZK proofs on the SBTs to further protect the people’s privacy. A good example is people holding passports. With this kind of information, we can prove that this person is from Canada and female without unveiling the whole passport information to those who need to verify this.”

Question Five

What specific application scenarios do you think SBT will have? Especially in the context of your business?

0xKongy (COO of Port3 Networks): “Maybe not specifically in the context of our business, but one of the application scenarios we have been thinking about lately, is something like copy trading. Everything in the web3 space is on-chain, so when you trade, everything is loaded onto your account. So, what we are trying to look for is if you can actually give a certain wallet like a credit score or like a profitability score. We can then implement these into an SBT where we can tag certain wallets, with certain characteristics.

So, let’s say for example, if a particular wallet is a good trader, people can follow it, and you can do something like copy trader or web3 Etoro. I think viber has this right now but there’s no individual platform doing it right now. You can follow a specific trader who is doing really well and then try to make profit off the trades as well.

Alternatively, what we are also thinking about in terms of SoulBound Tokens is that you can actually create lending for it. So right now, in the web3 lending space, a lot of it is collateralized lending. So, you have to put something as deposit or collateral in order to get something in return.

What we are thinking is: if you have a certain SoulBound Token and you have actually worked throughout the entire lifespan. Let’s say this wallet has enough credit score, you always pay your debt and you have enough liquidity on it. You don’t have to deposit your collateral; you can actually use that and create a score for the wallet and maybe we can lend according to that. So, these are just certain uses that we see in terms of creating SBTs. It’s more on the financial side, but also because everything is on-chain, it’s more concrete and easily traceable.”

Kerim (Co-Founder of FirstBatch): “I have a few ideas connected to the scale of the AI space. Right now, many of us are using lots of decentralized protocols, decentralized publishing protocols and sending content on large protocols, CyberConnect or mirror, and these types of applications. We don’t have a great profile that other users can interact with, we don’t have great analytics, we don’t know what users are interested in, what they are writing on their own.

In these kinds of open socials, I believe the dynamic SBTs, oracle driven SBTs can provide identity by the content created by the user. If I’ve sent hundreds of mirror posts on Flash protocol and AIs are analyzing my content and they are saying Kerim is publishing content on Blockchain, Ethereum, basketball etc. These kinds of open identity profiles may lead to better interaction between users and this may bring lots of opportunities. This is one of my ideas.

The second one is on DAO, the decentralized autonomous organization side. We have a simplistic form of organizations and governance on the DAOs. With the data and these kinds of dynamic SBT approaches, I believe we can encode the social relationships between governance voting and users in a perfect way.”

Hera (COO of Trantor): “SBTs issued on our platform will be used for exclusive airdrops by the projects.* These are called SoulDrops, the projects have a way of targeting early and active users when they do airdrops, so it’s more effective. Besides, our platform itself will be issuing membership cards like in the form of SBTS to users. So, the users will be able to accumulate points along the way and upgrade their membership with us. When they get to the VIP stage, they’ll get to enjoy certain exclusive rights for members. These are our specific applications*.”

Hashkey DID official: “It is easier for everyone to get a mark of their own data or DID, on chain because all of this is public. We have already done marketing campaigns and airdrops before. It is really convenient for these kinds of special airdrops. A great idea.”

Jessica (Founder of Relation): “The SBTs can also help in the social recovery of the private keys.* There are many practices of social recovery, based on smart contract wallets, people have shards being distributed to people they know and trust. The wallet can be one, and friends of family, two or three. The problem is that people may lose connections after years. People can coordinate together to recover the key and bypass the true owner rights. One way to mitigate this issue is that the holder can issue some SBTs and let people of different communities hold a piece of this.*

For example, one shard can be owned by their colleagues, another by a DAO. I think that’s a better way to solve this kind of problem, to make social recovery more practical.”

Question Six

Sybil attacks happen in many cases. How do you think SBTs can mitigate this?

HashKey DID: “Most of the DAOs are built on discord or slack, these are more like Web2 tools. When they want to make decisions, Web2 communication tools are linked with their personal information. SBTs can help because they’re on-chain because they’re a really good solution.”

Hera (COO of Trantor): “SBTs can be like a form of membership for DAOs as well to prevent bad actors from entering and making decisions. In that way, the SBTs or like membership can help to prevent Sybil attacks by preventing people with malicious attacks from voting. So we can say that for voting, and make a rule that wallets with more reputable SBTs can have higher voting powers.”

Jessica (Founder of Relation): “We actually have a study on this. The Semantic SoulBound tokens can help mitigate this. The creation of multiple accounts by a single person is dangerous. However, there are many other ways to make this attack. For example, they can set up numerous profiles in one program. They can just invite their friends, coworkers etc. to join this. Because they are real people, it becomes difficult to figure this out in the attacks. These complicated cases can be dangerous for the ecosystem.

The Semantic SoulBound tokens can help with this, because through the SBT, we can study the plurality of the correlation of these SoulBound tokens.* For example, we are writing the social media data following the resource description framework. We are writing the predictive metadata in single words like; address A and address B. Listing all the SoulBound tokens, and listing all these words, we can just assign a word to it and analyze the matrix or distance between these souls.*

If we find that to be very close, we can just predict that these two souls are from similar backgrounds or homogenous groups. That is a good way to identify nested identities within this social graph of relationships. Many people care about the cooperation within a unique set of people, we can actually set a level or threshold. Say, a number larger than this will be considered potentially dangerous while a number below that can be regarded as worth the risk.

I think this is a good way to make governance more pluralistic.”

Question Seven

The concept of SBT is still quite new to most users, how do you think the SBTs can make users benefit from the reputation of their digital identity?

Kerim (Co-Founder of FirstBatch): “I think one of the most important parts of it is enhancing the user experience. So, we have found this on wallet-to-wallet messaging platforms and crypto socials. While users are minting these SBTs, with the on-chain graph side, main analytics and on-chain data, we have to provide users a great utility navigating through lots of applications. This is one of the most important things that we have to achieve. If users can understand the benefits of acquiring these SBTs, and acquiring a better user experience in many different environments, chains and applications, I think this will bring more and more users. It will also enhance the concept of SBTs to millions in the next few years.”

Hera (COO of Trantor): “From a user’s perspective, I think SBTs will definitely benefit me in all aspects. It’s more like building my resume in the web3 world. So, when it comes to the financial side, the KYC side, like credit ratings type, SBTs representing my reputation and digital identity will make it smooth and easy to do financial transactions in the future.

The users want to collect the SBTs by experiencing the projects and campaigns. Individuals also want to be the first ones to try out a project because they have great expectations for them, so they want to get their SBTs. So, from a user’s perspective, it’s going to be beneficial in many ways.”

0xKongy (COO of Port3 Networks): “The main thing we are pushing right now is our SoulQuest platform. The way we do it is by trying to collect user data through their history, and wallet transactions. So, every time you go through our SoulQuest platform, and complete a campaign, we give you a SoulQuest badge, that way we can solely build your profile.

When we eventually launch our SBTs, everyone can mint the SBTs, but depending on the number of badges you do, and what you get from different partners, you can actually segregate and segment people into different profiles. That way, we can actually give a rating or different segmentation for each profile from that point onwards.

So, the SBTs basically function as a history of what you have done so far with us.”

HashKey DID official: “We have issued some SBTs with different partners before. As I mentioned before, approving a user’s specific contribution in a specific ecosystem. These kinds of things may help us and them to do more data ratings or credit ratings. HashKey DID will have a governance token, so users can hold some SBTs from Haskey DID and other partnerships. They may get more governance tokens and HashKey DID have a high reputation fund called HashKey Capital, we have invested in different kinds of projects before.

If these kinds of projects may have more benefits or some airdrops we may consider our users first.”

Upcoming Campaigns

Hera (COO of Trantor): “On our platform we are currently having a model ecosystem carnival. It is a social platform to connect website builders. We are hosting this carnival to further empower their ecosystem. So, if you want to check it out you can follow our Twitter where we have constant updates. Afterwards, we are going to have a Halloween themed carnival as well on Trantor platform. Do follow us or keep up with the events to come!”

Kerim (Co-Founder of FirstBatch): “We acted as an infrastructure as a protocol that provides the fifteen different Defi Dapps and crypto infrastructures to build their environment with more fruitful on-chain data.* Since we have acquired these kinds of customers, also hundreds of thousands of users. Right now, we are releasing an application within the next six to eight weeks.*

The main thing is we are aggregating hundreds of forces releasing decentralized content in any chain. Buyer’s personas are with web2 and web3 data, all of these data will be created for you to navigate through Web3 to understand Web3 better. We are really excited to show these details in the upcoming months on Twitter.”

HashKey DID official: “At the end of this year, we will launch some tools for DAO building and DAO governance for the easy management and operation of the community. So, ensure that you are following us!”

Jessica (Founder of Relation): “*We have a Read-2-Earn campaign that is ongoing. We have just released an article about SBTs and how it works, and how we are encoding the social relationships among the Semantic SBTs. We have several questions for the learners to answer, to get the learners SBTs, you can join this campaign, thank you!*”

https://relationlabs.ai/

About Relation

Relation is building a Web3 social graph infrastructure that will host the next generation of billions of DApps, and empower souls and communities to co-build reputation and a better society on Web3 with SBTs and relationship data. Relation has launched Web3 social Dapp Relation ONE and the Semantic SBT standard which will create a chain native data layer that is easy to query, share and reuse with lower friction.

Website | Twitter | Github | Discord | Mirror | Medium | Telegram | Documentation

ONE Newcomer role marks you as a Relation ONE user who has finished at least 4 Daily Tasks in Relation ONE three days in a row. By finishing one daily task, you will get a chance to join the Lucky Draw. Check Relation Daily Task module by clicking the link below>>

https://app.relationlabs.ai/#/daily

To get the role in Relation Discord server, you have to submit a screenshot proof of you receiving the energy rewards by finishing 4 Daily tasks and joining the Lucky Draws three days in a row, which means you must present at least 12 energy receiving history from Daily Tasks module in three days and 4 records each day.

Here is the example of a screenshot proof👇

More details of Relation Daily Task module and Energy Receiving module, please check the article below👇

https://blog.relationlabs.ai/product-upgrade-daily-tasks-and-energy-receiving-history-have-been-released-d6f3a24aa6a3

To give you a quick guidance on claiming the role, please follow the instructions as follows:

Step1 | Enter Relation Discord Server

To claim the new role, you must enter the official Relation Discord server first. Click the invitation link below to join the server!

https://discord.com/invite/whGB5zEsHY

Step 2 | Enter the #🤖️-open-ticket Channel

When you are in the Relation Discord server, please the #🤖️-open-ticket channel. The link below will directly lead you to the channel.

https://discord.com/invite/Mj6a2wJv78

Step 3 | Claim a ONE Newcomer Role

Please click the [Claim ONE Newcomer Role] button to create a ticket. A ticket will serve as a private channel for you and the ticket support team to communicate on the role claiming process. And other members in the server won’t see your messages in the ticket channel.

A ticket channel looks like the screenshot below:

Step 4 | Send the Screenshot Proof in this Ticket Channel and Get Verified to Get the Role

Please send a screenshot proof your energy receiving history and claim the ONE Newcomer Role as the screenshot shows👇

Then, please wait for the Ticket Support team to verify your energy receiving energy and give your the ONE Newcomer role!

That’s all for the instructions! If you have any other questions about claiming the ONE Newcomer role, please contact us by opening a ticket in Relation Discord server following the steps above.

Thanks for your time and support!

https://relationlabs.ai/home

About Relation

Upon the announcement, Relation has integrated the Mail3 profile on One page. Now users can click the Mail3 icon in the Linked personal page module of Relation ONE to visit a Relation user’s Mail3 profile. Relation and Mail3 also cooperate on the front-end integration of listing Mail3 in Relation Bazzar and Marketing campaigns & social media in the long run, please stay tuned!

Relation’s partnership with mail3 further espouses our goal to continually aid users in strengthening and expanding their profiles and social connections in the web3 world. Our vision is to provide the most powerful and rich social graph data for multiple global blockchain systems and to explore new paradigms connecting people, organizations, relationships, and behaviors — serving as the next generation social networking infrastructure in the Web3 era.

With Mail3, users can share their social connections, identities and encryption keys on-chain. Mail3 also includes features such as a community-mail platform for crypto communities via a blockchain-agnostic DID network. The self-sovereign communication protocol enables the provision of new services while guaranteeing content security, privacy and data persistence.

Relation has launched Web3 social Dapp Relation ONE and initiated the Semantic SBT standard. With Semantic SBT infrastructure, We will make it possible for every Soul to mint readable, understandable, programmable SBTs to represent proofs of their friendships, affiliations, membership certificate qualifications, commitments, etc., on the chain.

Our partnership with Mail3 will serve to foster connection building in a decentralized society, and we remain deeply committed to reconfiguring the social relations of individuals in a decentralized way.

Metopia ✖️ Relation Special Raffle

Relation Space in Metopia is now open for exploration! This week, Metopia and Relation will co-host a partnership raffle in Relation Space to issue 20 “Best Ally” SBTs for participants. Please stay tuned!

Relation Talk #7

Relation Talk #7 is coming on 2nd November with builders in the DID filed! Speakers from Unstoppable Domains, EDNS, .bit and Litentry will join this talk. More surprises on the way, come and join us!

Product & Dev Updates

Completed

Relation ONE

• Unstoppable Domains services have been integrated in Relation.

• RociFi Non-Fungible Credit Score has been integrated in Relation One page.

• 0xScope has been sharing Data labels with Relation which helps optimize Relation’s recommendation system.

• Relation’s official website, Developer Hub, and mobile DApp pages have been updated with clearer theme and more convenient operation.

• The Contact module in Relation Chat Plug-in is now displayed in Group/Club. The Search function has also been optimized.

Relation Toolsuite

• The front-end demo of Relation IM has been updated.

Work in Progress

Relation ONE

• As the much-anticipated FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 is coming, Relation plans to invite a group of Web3 projects to co-host the “2022 FIFA World Cup On-line Quiz Carnival” to celebrate this grand sports event with football fans all over the world. Relation is making great efforts on developing this campaign to provide rewords like SBTs, NFTs, Tokens for Carnival participants and winners.

Relation Toolsuite

• Relation is developing the Semantic SBT minting tool which will be open for developers and partners soon.

Marketing & Community

Activities

• Relation Read-2-Earn activity has started on 19th Oct and will last until 18th Nov to allow participants to get certificated with a Learner SBT by answering questions about Semantic SBTs. Link>>

• Relation Talk #6 was held on 19th, Oct with speakers from FirstBatch, Trantor, Port3 Network, Kleros and HashKey DID. The topic of the AMA was How SBTs encode social relationships and and reputation network? Link>>

• Relation Party #24 was held on 22nd Oct on the topic of NFCS ✖️ Web3 Social Graph: Build a Trust-based Reputation. Konstantin, Co-Founder & CPO of RociFi, and Jessica, Founder of Relation, attended the party. Link>>

• Santry, CMO of Relation, joined the Twitter Space AMA on the topic of PLAYER ONE (1P) NFT held by MetaOasis on 27th Oct. Link>>

• Relation Party #25 was held on 29th Oct with special guest Stephen, Metopia Head of BD, to explore together the utility of Soulbound Tokens in unlocking Web3 on-chain reputation. Link>>

• Jessica, Founder of Relation, attended the Twitter Space AMA held by Web3 Women Union on the topic of SocialFi on 28th Oct. Link>>

News

• Relation has built an NFT Club for 721 Ether Plant which are full on-chain NFTs planted on Ether. Link>>

• PLAYER ONE (1P) NFT collection released by MetaOasis has landed in Relation Club on 25th Oct. Link>>

• SUKEBE KAI NFT collection which is released by MISOSHITA, a Japanese NFT artist and creator of FREE MINT BOYZ, has landed in Relation Club on 30th Oct. Link>>

Cooperation

• Relation has built a strategic partnership with Unstoppable Domains, a Web3 domain name provider and digital identity platform, and finished the integration of Unstoppable Domains services in Relation ONE. Link>>

• Relation has reached a strategic partnership with 0xScope, the first Web3 knowledge graph protocol to co-build a Web3 linked data layer with more trust. Link>>

• Relation has cooperated with RociFi, an L1 for under-collateralized credit protocol on Polygon, and finished the integration of NFCS in Relation ONE. Link>>

To overcome the limitation in the current DeFi field, RociFi has launched a Credit Scoring System (CRS) which analyses a borrower’s historical behaviors across multiple chains. After the analysis is done, a Non-Fungible Credit Score (NFCS) rating from 1 to 10 will be generated in descending order for the borrower. In this case, NFCS provides a quantified trust index of an account based on its previous transactions and DeFi footprints on a pseudo-anonymous basis.

While the CRS decides the levels of trustworthiness for every account in a quantitative way, Relation is building a trustworthy Web3 social graph with Semantic SBTs following a different logic.

A Semantic SBT describes the social relation between two souls in its metadata. Everyone will be able to mint self-certified or third-party-certificated SBTs to build social relationships of different attributes with others. For example, if an account owner was a member of a DAO and got certificated by the DAO with a membership SBT, then the SBT will prove the relationship between the account owner and the DAO and create a directed graph link. As Semantic SBTs usage becomes ubiquitous, the Web3 social graph will become more trustworthy with pervasive mutual certifications among souls.

Upon the cooperation announcement, RociFi and Relation have finished the integration of RociFi’s NFCS page, representing a “trust” data point for users’ on-chain identity, on users’ Relation One page. Now users can use the shortcut to easily connect their NFCS page to Relation ONE.

NFCS and Semantic SBTs are two different solutions to build reputation and trust in a decentralized society. They are not repulsive, on the contrary, they are complementary.

NFCS makes the trustworthiness of an account measureable, while Semantic SBTs make the attached attributes of an account certificated. The development of reputation in a decentralized society needs efforts in both two dimensions.

RociFi and Relation will work together in the long run. Please stay tuned for our future cooperation!