In this digital era, your online identity encompasses all your internet activities, from social posts to website visits. It's a powerful asset yet poses significant risks, as sensitive data is often shared without consent or profit. Let’s discover how new Web3 technologies can empower users and safeguard privacy in our increasingly interconnected world.

What is online identity?

Your online identity is everything you do on the internet; every post you write, every video or photo you upload, every comment you make, every website you visit, every idea you share, every message you send.

All of this sounds powerful, even frightening. Whatever angle you look at it, though, online identity is a big asset, yet a big problem.

It is an asset because you can build an entire brand around your online identity, leverage it to attract connections and opportunities spendable in the real world.

It is a problem because your online identity is created from sharing sensitive data that can be exploited against you, and that can help third parties to profit from it without sharing a single cent with you.

Analysing the problem

Your social media posts, your followers, your milestones in games, your comments, everything that constitutes your online identity can potentially be your most valuable asset. The problem with the current Web2 framework is that you don’t own anything of this, when indeed you should.

In the real world, this would sound as if you wrote a book, and then once published, you get no royalties from it. Does it sound fair?

The other shady side of this problem is privacy. Whenever you enjoy the “interoperability” of Web2, meaning skipping the registration process to a new service by simply logging in with your Google or Facebook accounts, you are putting your privacy at risk. You have little control over what these third parties can actually access. The access is governed by Google and Facebook, and you can never know what actually leaks from them. While Google so far has had a decent record of data protection against third parties, Facebook has a very poor record in this regard. Nobody can forget the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Web3 promises to prevent a scandal of this kind from ever happening again.

The possible solutions

There are different solutions that are emerging in the Web3 market, to bring data ownership in the hands of the users. The most crucial and revolutionary ones are: ZKP, EAS, SSI.

These solutions tackle different aspects of the issue with online identity.

ZKP (Zero-knowledge Proof)

ZKP is a cryptographic method that allows one party to prove to another that they know a value (like identity information or a piece of it), without revealing such information.

ZKPs allow users to validate their credentials without having to expose sensitive personal data. This means users can prove their identity or qualifications without actually sharing the underlying data.

By not revealing any actual data during the verification process, ZKP reduces the risk of personal data being compromised or leaked.

EAS (Ethereum Attestation Service)

This is a powerful tool in Web3 for attesting online and offline activities on the blockchain, functioning similarly to a digital notary. This service allows for the verification and attestation of various types of claims or credentials in a decentralized manner, leveraging the security and transparency of the Ethereum blockchain. Attestations made through EAS are secure and immutable, providing a reliable record that can be referenced and verified by any party.

EAS can be used in various fields such as education, employment, and personal identification, but also in helping users to build and prove their online reputation. With a market saturated with any kind of influencer, and the rise of AI, it got hard to stand out and claim the authenticity of what you post online. EAS could solve this problem.

SSI (Self-Sovereign Identity)

ZKP and EAS automatically empower the users with managing their own data. This is a user-centric approach to identity management, enabling individuals to have complete control and ownership over their personal data. SSI operates on principles of privacy, security, and freedom, fostering a digital landscape where identities are not dependent on centralized institutions.

Conclusion

To sum up, these technologies aim at multiple objectives:

• Empowering users with full ownership of their data

• Protecting users’ privacy

• Helping users to build and preserve their online reputation

In order to reach the above goals, SiBorg decided to partner with Lens Protocol, the most prominent social graph for building Web3 social media applications. Lens is already empowering a solid community with over 120,000 users, spread across already functioning and promising platforms like LensTags (threads), Dumpling (streaming), or Riff (music sharing).

As you can guess, Lens offers high versatility, being able to support any kind of social media app you plan to develop, over a truly interoperable system.

Relying on centralized services is the past. The future of social media is on Lens Protocol and is decentralized. SiBorg is looking forward to welcoming podcasters on a new fun, fair and community-centric ecosystem.