Dear friends,
Let’s talk about digital identities.
Before we begin, credit where it’s due: to Mark Zuckerberg, thanks for bringing metaverses into the mainstream consciousness. And while he has his own vision of what the metaverse is, we’re here to present a different vision. A metaverse not of digital dragons and spaceships, but of digital identities, social value, and how real people relate to each other online.
We’ve started trusting pseudonymous identities
Even now, with Web3 in its infancy, there are completely pseudonymous identities that most of us would trust: Punk6529 and Tetranode are just 2 OGs in the crypto space. They are accorded respect by the community for both the length of time they’ve been around, as well as the value of their opinions.
Who are they really? What do they do in their free time? Do they collect stamps or baseball cards? Do they play football or longboard? For that matter, what about Satoshi? Does it matter?
The point is not that we should trust pseudonymous people. The point is that when people consistently show us who they are, we should take note. We cannot just trust anyone, but we can trust their track records and repeated patterns. And yes, when these are verifiable via cryptographic signatures, we can trust even pseudonymous individuals.
The importance of this cannot be overstated. As blockchain technology continues to innovate, more people each day are starting to realize that living online is not a meme. And if we’re able to live online, we also need a foundational framework for understanding who we are.
Growing into our digital identities
Our offline selves have undergone an evolution and will continue to undergo changes.
When we are born, our identity is singularly our parents’ children. This identity evolves as we age, as we start exploring the world and what it has to offer. We take on other identities, some primary (aka more important) like being best friends, as well as secondary (aka less important), like students. As we grow further, we take on even more responsibilities while shedding older ones.
This evolution from a single-faceted to a multi-dimensional identity is limited in a Web2 world because we cannot truly own our identities — different corporations own different facets of our history. Thankfully, with the catalyst that is blockchain technology, cryptographic signatures are emerging as the cement that connects the building blocks that are our identities across multiple platforms.
For Web3 to properly take off, we need to first own our digital identities. Today, we have the technology, we have the skills, and we have the desire to make the change.
There are 2 parts to this letter:
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Defining the issues around Digital Identities
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How we will solve these problems
Digital Identities and their issues today
The problems with Digital Identity today are clear: who we are online, along with our data and history, are at the mercy of corporations in Web2. Our identities and who we are, are being auctioned off to the highest bidder. Data leaks are kept secret until companies are forced to admit it, and all our hard work can be negated with one internal policy change made to please policymakers.
The promise of the Internet was supposed to be a new dawn for mankind, opening new frontiers for self-expression. This promise is what we are reclaiming through digital self-sovereign identity, starting with these 3 issues.
1. Current digital identities are non-sovereign, stored in centralized servers
Autonomy is the primary priority for a true Digital Identity — and it is at risk as long as we keep them in centralized servers. Blockchain technology gives us the first credible opportunity since the invention of the Internet to move away from Big Tech’s centralized servers and reclaim our sovereignty.
Consider the possibilities once we create digital incarnations of ourselves. We’ll have interoperable avatars with full control over our data flow and income from digital sources. Today’s Web2 users face arbitrary gatekeeping at multiple stages. For example, your work on Quora, Zhihu, and similar platforms are stored centrally, meaning a portion of your life work could disappear through no decision of your own. And even if we assume the benevolence of these services, the probability of them being hacked is non-zero.
2. Current digital identities are superficial because they are single-faceted
As Shakespeare said, all the world’s a stage, and each of us has many parts to play.
One less-talked-about facet of Digital Identity is the ability to synthesize multiple parts of our lives. As we grow into our digital identities, there has to be a publicly verifiable history of who we are and what we’ve done — as decided to be disclosed by the user. Given how nascent Web3 still is, the first iteration of such a project should include Web2 as well as Web3 platforms, if only to provide users with a more complete history.
As the digital landscape develops over the next decade, we may see purely Digital Identities emerge, which is a cause for excitement. This would enable anyone from anywhere to create value for the community, make a name for themselves, and make an honest living, purely online.
With a truly Digital-only Identity, you can truly be yourself as a Web3 user. We can build reputations for pseudonymous creators. Whether you prefer to be doxxed, anonymous, or pseudonymous, cryptographic identity is the pathway that allows for a choice to happen. Who knows, Generation Alpha may be the first generation to live their entire lives on-chain, within a bustling economy of decentralized dApps and networks.
3. There is no true individual ownership in the current digital economy
As a direct response to the “real world” economy, where barriers to entry are gatekept by institutional actors, independent digital economies must be created — economies that evaluate parties on merit. For this to happen, we require a better identity system.
The current Web2 model for the creator economy is heavily centralized. Platforms like YouTube and WordPress have an array of options to ensure creators toe the line: they can hard ban (de-platform) or soft ban (shadowban) the creators, and there’s no avenue for recourse except to launch an appeal. This, plus the fact that the creators don’t own the communities they build, makes us think that there has to be a better way to approach the creator economy.
Thankfully, the stars are aligning for this to change. A mere 2 years ago, we had no proof of concept for a decentralized creator economy. Now, with the success of Mirror.xyz, we have at least one blueprint for digital creators to build projects and monetize them in a trustless way — articles, NFTs, and digital assets can be built completely on-chain, with data stored in a decentralized way.
This innovation by Mirror.xyz means that users can now create content in a trustless way, with nothing but a wallet. Because of this, creators, who have been beholden to centralized platforms in the past, are now able to truly own their content, its distribution, and the profits that arise from them.
This opens the door to a user-governed Universal Reputation System, where pseudonymous and/or anonymous creators are judged purely on the quality of their content, free to build and own communities. Digital identities are key to this happening, because like in real life, you only truly own something you buy, not something you rent. Digital assets stored on third-party servers are just that — rented goods.
In the future, if you want to bring followers from a decentralized version of Twitter to a decentralized version of Facebook, it will be frictionless. Everything you do will accrue value to your credibility across all platforms, and across all chains.
How we’re solving the Digital Identity problem
We are working on an open-sourced identity protocol that is the answer to the 3 issues highlighted above: Next.ID.
While it is still in the works, here is how we aim to address the issues in broad strokes:
1. Next.ID will create a completely digital you that exists everywhere you go
One of the primary functions of Next.ID is to be a one-stop platform for users’ Web2 and Web3 identities. This means that it will be as frictionless for users to connect their Facebook as their Metamask account to Next.ID, creating a “galaxy” that houses all an individual’s authenticated and verified Digital Identities.
The user will be in full control of this identity, using it across multiple platforms, while always retaining full control of their privacy and data. Next.ID will also introduce a universal standard for basic identity items, building a uniform platform for future developers to build protocols on, and increasing interoperability across multiple projects.
Phase 1 of Next.ID protocol: Establishing verifiable proofs among a user’s different digital identities
2. Next.ID uses cryptographic authentication to “complete” your digital personhood
While blockchain technology is hogging the spotlight, Next.ID uses a simpler and more robust technology as a basis: cryptography. The use of the private/public key pair to verify and authenticate identities allows for a seamless experience while maintaining the highest level of security.
Verifying then linking accounts to Next.ID confirms that the user has access to the accounts while allowing the account’s activity to stay off-chain. This is important because it maintains the user’s privacy even as it confirms their identity. Think of it as confirming that you work at a company without the details of what you did available on a publicly-searchable database.
Next.ID will then use our proprietary Proofchain, developed in-house, to enable everyday users to verify user’s identities. While on-chain sleuthing would have enabled the technically-minded among us to do this, Proofchain simplifies the process, democratizing on-chain analysis.
3. Next.ID will only build with partners who empower your ownership
The goals Next.ID intends to achieve are lofty and will only be possible with a whole-of-ecosystem push. As such, we will achieve our goals on 2 levels: a primary open-sourced foundational protocol designed in-house to ensure a consistent foundation, and secondary projects built by partner projects who share the same values. As Web3 builders know, the difference between Web2 and Web3 is that the former encourages competition while the latter incentivizes cooperation. It is this ethos that we hope to harness, such that everyone takes ownership and moves together towards a brighter future.
As Next.ID is hyperfocused on Digital Identity, we recognize that there are areas we will lack expertise in. It is in these areas that we will work with projects who have a similar vision. For example, we recognize that Digital Identity in and of itself will not be useful. It is because of this that we intend to work with Social Graph protocols to close the circle and achieve a network effect.
As we continue to map out the pathway that adds the most value to the ecosystem, we will continue to iterate according to sentiment and user feedback, always recognizing that the best projects require the best possible minds working together.
Next.ID: Towards a future that is owned, not rented
We want a future that is collectively owned, not one that is rented by nameless and faceless corporations that have no regard for users. This is the promise that self-sovereign identities powered by cryptographic signatures can give us, and it’s one that Next.ID intends to bring to the masses.
We’re living in a quickly-developing world, and it is anyone’s guess where the next project that will revolutionize the world will come from; 12-year-olds are capable of developing projects, and it won’t matter if they’re based in Asia, Africa, or America. It is within this context that Next.ID’s vision is important, because now more than ever, we need to break away from the Internet landlords that are Meta, Twitter, and other corporations.
I hope you join us* as we progressively reveal and flesh out what Next.ID can do it over the next few months.
Thank you from the Next.ID team.
*We’re currently in alpha testing and welcome trailblazers to join us for early-stage development. If what you’ve read interests you, reach out and say hello, bonjour, or 你好 on Twitter at @NextDotID. For more specific queries, you can also reach out to @YisiLiu (Lead Developer) and @hannah_h2s (Partnerships), and @sohchris (Community).