Decentralized digital identity is still in the early stages, but the combinability of technologies in Web3 and the flywheel effect of crypto finance will accelerate this process. The paradigm transfer of “address + private key” accounts is the first step in the development of Web3 digital identities. With the rise of the SBT concept, is it possible to build a digital portrait of users in the digital space and give them a unique and exclusive digital identity?

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.

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.

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