My early days on the internet felt like the Wild West. Banner ads were everywhere, screaming for attention, with no ad blockers or subscription models to shield users. Frankly, it was intrusive. As ad-blockers gained traction, they provided a visually cleaner web experience. However, this came at a significant cost: creator monetization. What followed was an ongoing game of cat and mouse between ad-blocking technology and websites erecting paywalls and restrictions. Finding a sustainable model seemed nearly impossible. Then came Brave, a browser that shared ad revenue directly with users. While a step in the right direction, it had one core problem: context and relevance. Built on strong privacy principles, Brave redistributed ad dollars without solving effective targeting. Meanwhile, Meta and Google built empires by hoarding cross-platform user data for precise targeting. This user data became the advantage for the big tech companies we use every day, to the point where no one else could compete, and your data ended up fragmented and locked away in their systems.

This problem isn’t just theoretical, it’s unwinding the entire ad industry. As privacy-conscious consumers reject exploitative data practices, centralized advertising models are crumbling. The digital advertising industry is in crisis mode. Chrome’s restrictions on third-party cookies and GDPR have essentially dismantled the tracking infrastructure that powered the $152 billion US digital ad market. Apple’s App Tracking Transparency delivered another blow, making precise targeting nearly impossible while sending user acquisition costs through the roof.

But where do we see this shift most clearly? Sports. Specifically, football. Football fans’ identities and data are scattered today across countless platforms and services, each holding fragments of your larger story. So, why don’t we allow fans to truly own and control their data while making it easier to establish direct connections between creators, brands, and sponsors that go beyond advertisement? In this new landscape, creators and brands build direct relationships, offering audiences genuine control over their data, deeper engagement, and experiences tailored specifically to their interests. The passion economy of sports represents the perfect testing ground for new identity technologies because fan loyalty is genuine, measurable, and spans multiple platforms.

In this piece, I’ll explore how we can build this future using cutting-edge technologies like Blockchain, Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs), Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS), and zero-knowledge proofs. We’re pushing for identity liquidity, onchain portable passports for football fans that travel with fans across the entire ecosystem, enabling direct connections between fans, creators, and brands without exploitative intermediaries.

Why fan identities won’t remain fragmented

You might have a membership with your club’s official fan association, an account on an e-commerce site where you buy jerseys, and another on a streaming service where you catch every game. Yet, none of these platforms talk to each other. The result? A scattered digital footprint that misses the bigger picture of who you are as a fan and leaves your loyalty unrewarded.

The fragmentation of fan identity is not accidental, it is structural. At the heart of this issue lies the siloed nature of the sports ecosystem, where each stakeholder, such as clubs, leagues, broadcasters, ticketing platforms, and sponsors, treats fan data as proprietary assets. Their intention is understandable, each party believes that exclusive access to their slice of fan behavior gives them a competitive edge. Fans become data points in a database rather than benefitting from the narrative this data creates. Ironically, in trying to gain more control, each stakeholder ends up with less. The result? The most iconic fan journeys and passionate commitments stay invisible.

Consider the case of a season ticket holder. Their years of unwavering attendance should be a badge of honor, unlocking perks like priority tickets or recognition at the club. In reality, this history is often locked in a club’s internal database, invisible to external partners or even the fans themselves. When such fans want to claim a discount at the club’s store or prove their passion and loyalty while applying for away match tickets, they’re often forced to go through redundant verification processes despite their proven track record.

The future of fan identity lies in creating a unified, portable representation of fandom.

So, what do I mean by identity liquidity? Imagine a digital profile that grows with you, a single identity that reflects your activities, achievements, and affiliations across the entire football ecosystem. Such a profile could document everything from the number of matches you’ve attended to the rare memorabilia you’ve collected verifiably and seamlessly accessible. What if you could share your football year in review, like Spotify Wrapped with your favorite matches, stadium attendance, and moments all captured in one visual snapshot?

A unified fan identity, a “Fanpass,” would completely change how clubs and brands engage supporters. Instead of paying for inefficient ad placements or expensive targeting, brands could offer tailored experiences: exclusive content for longtime fans, newcomer discounts for those deepening their engagement, and grand gestures to re-engage supporters whose interest is declining. Clubs could create cross-team recognition programs celebrating football loyalty beyond individual allegiances. Your reputation as a dedicated fan would carry across leagues and sponsors, eliminating the need to prove your passion from scratch.

This vision requires a fundamental shift toward interoperability and user data ownership. Blockchain and decentralized identity systems offer the technical backbone for such transformation, enabling fans to control their data and decide how it’s shared. The era of fragmented fan identities is ending, replaced by a future where being a fan isn’t about isolated accounts. It’s about an integrated, living identity that amplifies your journey and opens new doors to benefit at every step. Your proof of passion.

The paradigm shift towards decentralised and open fan identity

In a decentralized and open future, football fans will no longer be tethered to isolated platforms that dictate how their data is used or accessed. Instead, each fan will own a portable digital identity they can take anywhere. This identity, built on these technologies, would store everything from match attendance records to favorite team affiliations and even rare memorabilia collections. Importantly, it would be controlled entirely by the fan, who decides how and where this information is shared.

Consider a supporter who attends matches across multiple leagues and engages with fan-driven initiatives online. In today’s world, each interaction, whether buying tickets or joining a community, requires a separate account. But with a decentralized identity, the fan’s history travels with them. When purchasing tickets, their loyalty could automatically grant priority access. When interacting with a sponsor or digital creator, they could unlock exclusive perks without repeatedly verifying their status. In effect, their identity becomes “liquid” across the platforms.

This approach also benefits the broader ecosystem. Clubs, brands, and content creators gain access to accurate, trusted data without intermediaries while fans maintain control and privacy. Instead of being passive participants in a system that capitalizes on their attention, fans become empowered contributors whose identity and loyalty are the foundation of their interactions. Decentralized fan identities promise to replace outdated models with more equitable and interconnected visions of fandom, where every individual is both the owner and the architect of their digital legacy.

But what exactly would this decentralized fan identity contain? To make the invisible fan visible, we need to capture 4 key dimensions of their digital footprint: who they are, what they do, what they buy, and what they own. The table below is a starting point and breaks down how each element contributes to building a complete, portable fan profile that travels with supporters across the entire football ecosystem.

This leads to the main question haunting me for years: Who has the capability and positioning to make this happen? Who has the right partnerships, distribution channels, data access, and technical infrastructure to create these standards and disrupt the status quo?

Building universal onchain passports for football fans.

At OneFootball, we’re experimenting with the technologies that could define this future. Being uniquely positioned at the heart of the global football ecosystem, we already see the rich data landscape needed to bring this vision to life.

The stack for decentralized fan identity is still emerging, and we’re positioning ourselves to help determine which approaches work at scale. By leveraging Decentralised Identifiers (DIDs), Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS), and zK-TLS, we’re working on transforming fan profiles into onchain passports that tell a richer, more authentic story of each fan’s journey.

1. Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs):

   DIDs are a form of digital ID that is not tied to a central authority like a social media platform or email provider. A DID is a unique string of characters generated cryptographically, representing a fan’s identity. This identifier is registered on a decentralized ledger or blockchain, ensuring it’s secure, immutable, and accessible globally. Each DID links to a set of verifiable credentials, which might include records like match attendance or favorite teams. These credentials are stored off-chain, often in encrypted digital wallets.

   This system makes sure that fans maintain control over who can see their information while the blockchain verifies the authenticity of their identity and credentials. When someone, like a football club or sponsor, wants to access this data, you, as a fan, could use your wallet to grant permission or set global rules automatically. Every fan would get assigned a unique, portable identity (like our “.football ID”). This DID would then contain key elements of their football life - favorite clubs, match attendance, purchases, and more. Crucially, fans own this data and control who can access it.

2. Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS):

   EAS builds on the Ethereum blockchain to verify and record interactions in a way that’s secure and universally accessible. Whenever a fan engages with a club, platform, or brand - for example, buying a match ticket or voting in a fan poll - this interaction is cryptographically signed by the validator (like the ticket provider). The signed data is then written as an attestation on the Ethereum blockchain. Attestations are essentially public, immutable records that confirm an event took place. They can include metadata such as the action performed (e.g., “attended match X”), a timestamp, and the involved parties. Since Ethereum is a decentralized network, these attestations are trustworthy and verifiable by anyone without requiring a central authority.

   Attestations work like a trustworthy notary for your football journey. Each time you take action, such as attending a match, predicting game outcomes, or completing a fan challenge, it’s verified and logged as an attestation on the blockchain. These attestations act as proof of your activity and loyalty, forming a credible record that anyone, like clubs or sponsors, can trust. Over time, these verified interactions add depth to your fan identity, showcasing the authentic story of your engagement with the sport. The best part is that these attestations carry different levels of credibility depending on their source, for example, if I attest that you’re a season ticket holder, that claim has limited value, but if the club itself provides that same attestation, you can trust it’s authentic and carries significant weight.

3. Zero-Knowledge Transport Layer Security (zk-TLS):

   zk-TLS represents the cutting edge of privacy-preserving technology, enabling fans to prove specific facts about their digital interactions without revealing the underlying sensitive data.

   For football fans, this means proving loyalty without exposing personal details. Want to show you’ve been purchasing club merchandise for three years? zk-TLS generates a cryptographic proof confirming your purchase history meets specific criteria without revealing what you bought, when, or how much you spent.

   The revolutionary aspect of zk-TLS lies in extracting verifiable credentials from existing Web2 platforms without requiring any infrastructure changes from legacy sports organizations. This addresses the highest barrier to blockchain adoption in traditional sports: the reluctance of established clubs, leagues, and broadcasters to overhaul their existing systems.

   Instead of asking Manchester United, ESPN, or Ticketmaster to rebuild their platforms around blockchain technology, zk-TLS works with their current infrastructure.

How composable social graphs will break down barriers.

By combining DIDs, EAS, and zkTLS, we can enable fans to carry their football journey seamlessly across platforms while staying in control of their data. It’s about moving from fragmented, isolated accounts to a single, unified identity that truly belongs to you. That’s how we can track and store a social graph efficiently while also making it composable, which enables other players in the ecosystem to build on top of those standards.

Let’s take a step back first because composable social graphs represent a radical shift in how we think about digital connections. Unlike the tightly controlled networks of today, where platforms like Facebook or Twitter (X) lock your relationships and interactions within their walls, a composable graph allows users to own their connections and carry them across multiple ecosystems. For football fans, this could change how communities form, grow, and interact, enabling freedom and personalization that feels as dynamic as the sport itself.

Picture this: as a fan, you join an online supporters’ club dedicated to your favorite team. In the current setup, this connection and your group activity, contributions, roles, and engagement are trapped within the club’s digital domain. But with a composable system, that relationship becomes portable.

We already see glimpses of this in other domains. In gaming, platforms like Discord allow users to join communities for various interests, but those interactions remain siloed within the app. A composable framework would let users take their roles, achievements, and relationships to other platforms like competitive tournaments, gaming marketplaces, or virtual meet-ups. Similarly, in professional networking, platforms like LinkedIn contain an individual’s endorsements and connections, but those remain locked in a system that serves only LinkedIn’s ecosystem. Imagine if these elements were transportable, empowering users to leverage their credentials across freelancer platforms and other job boards.

For football fans, the potential is game-changing. Your digital fan identity could become a universal “Fanpass”. Your contributions to a local supporters’ group, the matches you’ve attended, and your interactions with team content could all weave together into a single profile, accessible wherever your fandom takes you. This would enable personalized match-day experiences, such as early access to tickets or exclusive digital collectibles, without the hassle of re-establishing your loyalty. Fans could seamlessly engage in peer-to-peer interactions, organizing prediction leagues, trading merchandise, or pooling resources for joint initiatives like choreographed banners or charity events.

This vision would also extend to dynamic content creation in the age of GenAI. A fan’s journey could feed into personalized recommendations for highlights, interviews, and articles, with their visible track record as a loyal supporter enhancing their voice in discussions or forums. Over time, this profile could transcend football, blending with other aspects of a user’s digital life, from hobbies to professional achievements, offering a multi-dimensional identity that evolves with them.

The key to unlocking this future lies in open standards and decentralized infrastructure. Blockchain tech provides a mechanism for users to securely export their data and manage permissions through smart contracts without relying on platforms as gatekeepers. As these technologies mature, the barriers between digital ecosystems will break down, and football fans will become architects of their communities, shaping spaces that are as vibrant and global as the game itself. In this world, your fan identity isn’t just an account. It’s a living, evolving representation of your passion and engagement.