In a supposedly hyper-connected world, we still find it frustratingly difficult to connect to the right person or to put trust in whom we are really connecting to. There’s something we haven’t figured out yet.

You see it everywhere. When reaching out for new connections, people nowadays use Twitter, Discord, and LinkedIn DMs. But due to the lack of effective identity gating, one usually ends up getting not connected at all or waking up every day to an inbox flooded by random DMs and spam. The prevalence of scams and lack of context further corrode the goodwill we have for anyone behind the screens, leaving us with a haunting sense of distrust that strangles potential connections and collaborations. This leads to dire consequences on the security side: in the US, losses due to identity thefts and related frauds grew from $1.8 billion in 2019 to $3.3 billion in 2020 and $5.8 billion in 2021 (FTC, 2022). The problem still continues to grow fast as more of our lives move digital in response to the global pandemic.

We are missing something fundamental here - the web lacks a layer of identity that carries trust and is enriched with meaning.

The digital identities we currently have usually lack dimensions and mostly exist as only identifiers, like number entries, on many segregated centralized platforms. There are no easy ways for users to verify the claims and attributes of a specific identity and no network for discoverability and real connectedness on a web level.

The decentralized web we are building with blockchain technologies has great promise in reducing harmful intermediaries and facilitating individual peer-to-peer collaborations. And now we are moving beyond financial use cases and are unlocking the great potential of a decentralized society. But how are we exactly solving this issue of trust and meaning in identities? And how are we enriching the contexts of holistic identities beyond transactional records?

Introducing Link3

Link3 is a Web3 social network of verifiable identities.

Aggregating both on-chain and off-chain data, Link3 profiles serve as holistic identities enabling trustworthy networking and meaningful connections among users and organizations.

Link3 helps you build trust with verifiable connections and enrich identity meaning with contexts. In Web2 we hold up our public persona by following people, publishing content, and self-attesting all sorts of attributes and preferences. On top of these, Link3 brings in a new array of dimensions that tell a more authentic and complete story about who you are:

• connections you have with other people and organizations, regardless of platforms;
• assets you own that stand for your status and tastes;
• credentials issued by third parties such as DAOs and projects about your key achievements and roles; and,
• all other on-chain activity records such as votes and donations that attest to your involvement in communities.

An endogenous layer of trust will grow from all those added dimensions of contexts and meanings because they are verifiable.

Composed of all such connections and records, relational identities like these are organic and evolving, authentic and trustworthy, rich in context and meaningful, just like how we are as social beings and would like everyone to be in vital relationships.

Why do you need Link3, exactly?

For users now Link3 gives you a better way for trustworthy and meaningful networking. With more verifiable dimensions aggregated to your profile, now you have a holistic identity that speaks truer about who you are and lets you present yourself in a complete and credible manner. Showcase your affiliations, credentials, assets, and all other records on your personal profile and start exploring the network. Get to know and have trust in someone instantly with Link3 on-chain profile and without all the bothers for third-party reference checks.

Also as context-rich identities and more meaningful connections are built, the network will feature better discoverability. Expect to be reached by more people that better understand your strengths, career aspirations, community roles, and personal tastes. Also quickly find the right person to reach out to and be assured that your requests will be fully communicated as the profile backs them up.

To list a few simple use cases with some features to be rolled out in the near future:

• Share your profile in a specially designed business card format to quickly showcase who you are and why connections will be valuable.
• Use your profile to submit applications and save all the redundant processes of filling out forms and sending documents of evidence.
• Gate your DM by more than payment or assets and instead invite those people with traits, backgrounds, and capabilities that you truly value to come through.
• Delegate your vote to the people with whom you have meaningful connections and whom you have real trust about who they are in the community.

For organizations and projects, Link3 could be your all-in-one link that helps your followers discover everything about you in one place.

Link3 organizational profiles are verified and trusted. To protect users from scams & fake links prevalent on Twitter and Discord, Link3 verifies organizations by their existing official accounts such as Twitter. Organizations can also connect with other reputable entities and showcase it in the backers/partners/team sections. Issuing verifiable credentials or SBTs will also later be enabled for organizations to recognize key community contributors. A fabric of trust composed of such connections and records holds Link3 profiles trustworthy. So users will be sure that the links they’re clicking on and all updates received are official.

Projects using Link3 can also be better connected with the Web3 community. Users log in with wallets to follow projects and such connections are address-based. Projects could build Web3-native communities and unlock the possibility to engage with them through token-gated events, airdrops, and more.

Built on CyberConnect

Link3 is built on top of CyberConnect's decentralized social graph protocol and will contribute back to the data network and the interest graph engine. Link3 stores all profile info and connections in a decentralized and self-sovereign manner. Such profiles and connections are blockchain agnostic and can be ported to any platform, breaking down the walls of siloed centralized platforms and enabling users and projects to fully control their identities and connections.

Focusing on the professional context during the first phase, Link3 will best showcase how CyberConnect’s social graph can foster collaboration and bootstrap network effects in a better-connected Web3.

To join

Link3 is currently in its Alpha 1.0 stage, only whitelisted addresses or those with invitation codes can start building their verified profiles. To make it to the whitelist during this first phase, you will need:1, To either be included by a verified Link3 project in its Team, Backers, or Contributors section. (Like pisofa.eth included in the team section of link3.to/link3). If a project hasn’t got its profile, you should help ask the team to set it up! Or 2, be followed by a super KOL (according to TwitterScan) or a top 100 users on ethleaderboard.xyz.

To stay updated about the coming NFT minting and the series of whitelisting campaigns, join our Discord community and follow Link3 on Twitter.

To explore more about Link3, visit http://Link3.to and join the waitlist here.