The human’s need to create and level up their digital identity was proven by the domain names emergency – UNS, ENS.

The Identity narrative actively developed by Worldcoin in the space of the global economy shows that taking control of our money and identity back is a significant challenge that is widely adopted.

DIDs vs Verifiable Credentials

In web3 we all own DIDs - Decentralized Identifiers aka Dissociative Identity Disorder. Collecting all of our personalities - the cool twitter folk, the experienced crypto-investor, the drop-hunter is a challenge on how to not lose our minds and self-perception.

Web3 decentralized identity space is still young and evolving. The Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) projects are testing their way to the users, building all kinds of structures.

If we imagine the on-chain reputation and identity as a molecular structure, the atoms would be the DIDs.

Fundamentally, Decentralized Identifiers are a new type of globally unambiguous identifier that can be used to identify any subject (e.g., a person, an organization, a device, a product, a location, even an abstract entity or a concept). Each DID resolves to a DID document that contains the cryptographic material and other metadata for controlling the DID. – W3C

Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and Verifiable Credentials are two key concepts within the framework of Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI), which gives us control over our own personal information. Verifiable Credentials are a new standard to express and verify qualifications or attributes of an identity digitally. For example, age, driver’s license, on-chain achievements.

They are issued by an entity (Issuer), about another entity (Subject), and are potentially verifiable by another entity (Verifier). These credentials can be presented by the holder to verifiers, who can cryptographically ensure the authenticity of the credential and the validity of the claim.

Verifiable Credentials provide the mechanism by which a DID can be associated with other useful data, including identity data. They can be used to build trust over time, as they represent claims that are independently verifiable by others.

Existing Credential Solutions

Largely, we can divide the existing solutions into categories based on their main use cases and/or technologies utilized.

While there’re differences and unique points about each project, the main categories include:

Community/Events Credentials

These types of solutions are centered around generating credentials that validate participation in events or contributions made to a community. For example, POAP, a trailblazer in proof-of-attendance mechanisms, is widely acknowledged as a standard protocol for certifying participation in various activities such as hackathons, conferences, and community engagements.

Similarly, Guild.xyz is automated membership management for the platforms your community already uses working within the framework of the Guild Model of Requirements, Roles and Rewards. The roles so far are off chain but openly accessible through their SDK.

Focused on the contributions made by developers to open-source communities, SourceCred is another notable solution in this space. Meanwhile, Mintkudos offers a unique way to recognize team or community members by allowing the minting of on-chain "kudos".

Careers/Professional

Kleoverse, Krebit, and Talently cater to web3 professionals, enabling them to compile their on-chain professional reputation into badges, thus creating a unique, web3-inspired "CV". This profile showcases their experience and skills in the form of Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs).

Recently, the web3 ecosystem experienced the shutdowns of Avenue and Mazury, platforms that were also occupying the career space. These changes open up new avenues for research and analysis, underscoring the dynamic nature of the field.

On-Chain Activity

The realm of on-chain activity presents a myriad of potential use cases. For instance, DegenScore offers a unique service where it calculates a score based on a user's activity across different protocols and decentralized applications (dApps) like 1inch, Aave, Lido, Rainbow, and more. This score is then minted as an on-chain asset.

In a similar vein, Gitcoin Passport provides users the opportunity to earn badges reflecting their engagement with various projects. These badges can be earned through a multitude of activities such as GTC staking, conducting zk-sync transactions, participating in snapshot voting, and even verifying their social media accounts.

Zero Knowledge

Take Sismo, for example. It's a modular protocol that issues Zero-Knowledge (ZK) Badges, which users can collect in their personal vaults. Anyone can create their own vault and start adding badges to it.

SealCred also provides a platform for minting zk-proofs based on on-chain achievements, allowing users to validate their data.

Community Loyalty Programs

Platforms like Galxe and Zealy offer projects the ability to create quests for their audience, distributing credentials and rewards for task completion. By doing so, these loyalty programs are enhanced with an additional layer of reputation and credentialing.

Portfolio Trackers Credentials

Long-standing portfolio trackers are also venturing into the realm of identity development by creating their own badge systems. Nansen's wallet labels, for instance, represent on-chain activities, wallet data, NFTs, and more.

After the introduction of  social feed and messaging capabilities, Debank began creating badges to represent achievements such as airdrops, on-chain experiences, and the use of decentralized applications.

Zerion has taken an innovative approach by introducing an on-chain DNA NFT mint feature that evolves with increasing wallet activity.

Reputation is Multidimensional

Our identities are multi-dimensional existing both in web2 and web3 spaces, which brings us to the conclusion that limiting the credentials to the on-chain activity only will not yield a comprehensive and real identity creation.

Our reputation includes the professional experience, hobbies, web3 activity, communities&friends, connections with people, ideas…

In the end, we are all coming from the web2 past. Everyone had their before-crypto world.

At {r}elinkd we are connecting the different dimensions of the identity, uniting the social media identities, connections with people, on-chain credentials with the web2 credentials.

By creating your {r}elinkd profile, you gain the score that evolves as you grow your credentials pack.

While the web3 credentials are available on-chain and the challenge is to take the data and display it, the web2 credentials do not exist in the web3 world at all.

When minting the credentials through the {r}stamp, anyone can get their web2 credentials verified through the DAO and attested therefore.

Of course, there will be issues with verification but as the scores, reputation and DAO evolve, the credentials will be more and more truly verifiable.

Get whitelisted to build your true on-chain profile: app.relinkd.xyz