Original source: Chain Tea House

Original source: Chain Tea House

1. Introduction

In the Web2 world, we are accustomed to log in to different applications with dozens of usernames and passwords, and we are accustomed to controlling our browsing history and friends list in the hands of centralized company servers. Personal accounts do not belong to users in essence, but to platforms. Platforms can formulate recycling rules on their own. Tencent even directly took back a batch of 5-digit QQ numbers that were applied for through normal channels (see appendix for details).

The logic of Web3 is completely different. The open, transparent and permissionless nature of the blockchain makes the ownership of the data return from the company to the user. The previous profit-making model relying on exclusive user data will not be established. Existing popular applications on Web2, such as WeChat, Twitter, Facebook, Tiktok, etc., will be rebuilt in a new model on Web3 in the future.

In the field of Web3, we already have a wallet address as a shared account system for Dapp, but the wallet address is like a bank account number, which can only meet the needs of functional financial activities. We cannot use it to chat with friends, attract fans, To apply for a job.

People need a square where they can display their achievements in Web3 and build their own identity brand, and these achievements are also real and verifiable.

In fact, the concept of DID (decentralized identity) has existed for several years. There are also organizations such as DIF and W3C trying to establish DID standards, but the early definitions mainly revolve around the establishment of identity verification systems through cryptography. With the rise of NFT, Gamefi and more forms, users need to add more data on the chain to DID to enrich their decentralized identities, which has given birth to a new identity track on the chain.

The construction of a Web3 identity has significant implications in itself. First, the data on the chain naturally guarantees the transparency and non-tampering of user identities and behaviors, establishing the cornerstone of identity trust; second, Dapp data can be read and called across projects, unlike Web2, which is isolated and stored in a centralized server In this way, the versatility of user identities in the on-chain world is ensured. For example, the skin in Fantasy Westward Journey can also be used in Glory of Kings.

With the further enrichment of the encryption circle ecology, Web3 identity will also become an indispensable and important module of the encryption circle. Content and social applications that are popular on Web2 will be rebuilt based on Web3 identities in the future.

It is conceivable that in the future, users can log in to different social/content/game applications through the same account, and the user's behavior on the chain can be synchronized to this application to continuously accumulate identity value. Such an identity application ecology is not available in Web2, and it is a brand new Web3 native track.

There are already many applications trying to build users' on-chain identities, and each project has a different way to portray user portraits. Chain Tea House selects some typical projects and sorts them out as follows.

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2.1 ENS: Web3 account and domain name

ENS (Ethereum Domain Name System) is a naming system built on Ethereum, which maps machine-readable identifiers such as wallet addresses to human-readable text such as 'alice.eth', and can be parsed both forward and reverse.

After the user purchases an account, in the transfer scenario, the account can be entered to correspond to the wallet address, which improves the user experience; at the same time, the account also becomes a Web3 customizable identity mark, and the account that is consistent with the Twitter account displayed on the Mirror is definitely better Long strings of 0x characters are more recognizable.

As a veteran project of Web3, ENS has been launched in beta in 2017. It was the first to pass blind auction bidding, and only domain names with a minimum of 7 characters can be purchased. The free lease model to limit speculative possession.

The project first originated from the Ethereum Foundation, received a grant of one million dollars, and later became independent. There has been no financing due to early funding and the cash flow from the annual lease fee model. In November 21, 50% of the tokens will be airdropped to users and contributors. The amount of airdrops is very rare.

In addition to ENS, there are also other projects working on Web3 account systems, such as Namecoin, Handshake, Unstoppable Domain and other early projects, as well as Das, which was just launched in 21 years and will be mentioned later, but currently the largest and most ecologically rich is still ENS.

According to the Kanban made by project members in dune, there are currently 276,000 independent users with 640,000 domain names (https://dune.xyz/makoto/ens), supporting several mainstream projects such as Metamask/Uniswap/Opensea, FDV (full Diluted valuation) approximately $2.4 billion. Simply combing its history, the success of ENS (the project is still very early, it can only be said to be relatively successful) may be due to the following points:

One: It has been recognized by the authority of the Ethereum community. ENS (https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-137) was defined in EIP-137 written by project founder Nick Johnson as early as 2016, and the suffix of .eth was defined as the naming standard. The proposal was later approved, and Vitalik also changed his Twitter name to vitalik.eth, marking ENS's authoritative recognition.

Although many people now question that using the .eth suffix as a general standard violates the spirit of decentralization, and users cannot freely set other suffixes, there is no doubt that this recognition has contributed to the promotion of early domain names.

In addition, ENS is indeed expanding the domain name space. In August 21, the DNS name integration function was launched. Users can enter their own DNS addresses into ENS as the transfer address. ENS no longer uses .eth as the only suffix, but Contains Web2 address suffixes such as .com/.org.

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Kanban made by project members https://dune.xyz/queries/5676/11222

Third: Actively expand the domain name function of the website. In February 21, the team integrated IPFS, which can be imported to websites stored on IPFS through ENS. ENS no longer only represents wallet addresses and personal identification, but can become the original website address of Web3.

Of course, ENS still has various limitations as a website domain name. For example, the native storage technology of Web3 is relatively backward, and the URLs that ENS can guide are usually of poor quality, but its breakthrough from personal transfer addresses to website addresses is beyond doubt.

Despite the above advantages, ENS also faces some problems.

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Polkadot official tutorial demo https://wiki.polkadot.network/docs/ens

Although ENS itself is actively expanding its boundaries and can already support the storage of addresses of more than 100 chains, whether wallets/applications/chains support resolution is another matter. At present, the main ecology is still on Ethereum. This problem is also a common problem faced by all domain name projects.

Imagine the possible future development path without responsibility: either through the cooperation of dead wallet/application/chain, the critical point of network effect is reached from bottom to top, so that most developers of Web3 voluntarily support the analysis of ENS of each chain; or Authoritative organizations such as W3C come to unify standards and popularize domain names from top to bottom.

Secondly, ENS, like DNS, has the problem of domain name fraud. A while ago, the design of ENS supporting "zero-width characters" caused a lot of controversy. For details, please refer to the two articles in the appendix, which are briefly summarized as follows.

Some people pointed out that the "zero-width characters" supported by ENS can insert invisible characters into the .eth domain name, resulting in phishing websites. Although some application interfaces will prompt users of the existence of "zero-width characters", this problem cannot be eradicated, so ENS is worthless in the long run.

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Little fox wallet prompts "zero-width character"

The statement that security vulnerabilities make ENS worthless may be too radical, but the domain name fraud in ENS is indeed a risk that cannot be ignored. Currently, we can only rely on the prompts of the application layer.

Again, ENS as a website domain name may conflict with the current global domain name system: the top-level domain name registration of the Internet is managed and issued by ICAAN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). Currently, .eth is not in the list of registered top-level domain names, so ENS domain name There will be no conflict with DNS yet; however, if there is a conflict with DNS in the future, ICAAN has the right to take it back.

Coincidentally, eth is also the country code of Ethiopia, and the team also hopes to cooperate with Ethiopia to avoid conflicts in the use of eth. With the development and growth of ENS, it is necessary to negotiate with ICAAN in the future to formally establish its top-level domain status without compromising global domain names. In addition to .eth domain names, popular domain names such as .crypto are likely to face a competition in the future.

In addition to product features, ENS's token distribution and DAO governance are also important reasons for its praise. During the 11/21 airdrop, a total of 100 million $ENS tokens were distributed. 25% of the tokens are allocated to users with .eth domain names, another 25% are allocated to contributors, and the remaining 50% are kept in the DAO’s community treasury.

All $ENS token holders can apply to join the DAO, and the DAO has the right to decide the future domain name rental annual fee, treasury usage, etc.

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2.2 DAS: a latecomer to Web3 account construction

DAS is a decentralized naming system built on Nervos, providing a globally unique naming system with a .bit suffix. There are many similarities between DAS and ENS: DAS also strives to provide human-readable address notation.

It is used as the identity of Web3 residents; it supports storage of addresses of different chains, Web2 social accounts, etc.; the model also adopts annual lease to limit speculative permanent possession, and the annual fee is basically the same as ENS. The differences between DAS and ENS are:

First, the registration threshold is low. On the one hand, the handling fee of DAS is low, and no additional handling fee is required when paying with CKB. Compared with the handling fee of more than 100 dollars for ETH, it greatly reduces the user threshold, and DAS supports ETH, TRX, BNB and other payments means.

On the other hand, DAS technically supports registration with any public chain address. Currently, only ETH/TRX/BSC/Polygon addresses are open for registration. In contrast, ENS must first be registered with an ETH address.

Second, DAS emphasizes that .bit is just an account address, not a domain name, so as to avoid conflicts with ICAAN. DAS focuses on the association between addresses and identities, and does not expand to website domain names. However, DAS will automatically assign a .host domain name to each account to display the user's associated account, NFT and other information.

Third, since DAS does not support zero-width characters, it is safer than ENS in address presentation.

DAS also faces some problems:

First, the ecology of DAS is not yet rich, and there are few application scenarios. Dozens of wallets/applications are currently connected, but no particularly mainstream projects have been connected yet. There is no natural way for the account system to be Permissionless. Like ENS, DAS will face the problem of cooperation with wallets/applications.

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Cooperative wallet/application of DAS official website

Second, DAS delineates a domain name reservation range, which is somewhat centralized.

There have been many debates on this issue before, see the appendix for details, here is a brief summary: After someone pointed out the problem of zero-width characters in ENS, some pointed to DAS as an opportunity to market, and then pointed to the problem of DAS itself, among which the most mentioned It is the problem of insufficient transparency of domain name reservations, and three cases are proposed:

1) National domain names are selectively reserved; 2) bitcoin.bit is removed from the reserved list; 3) Individual celebrity accounts are reserved without explanation. Subsequently, the DAS team clarified that the article discussing zero-width characters had nothing to do with the team, and other clarifiers responded to the domain name reservation issue: das retained the accounts of well-known individuals/institutions based on some foreign data sources.

In the above cases: 1) It is not selective retention, but individual country names hit celebrities in the data source; 2) The removal of bitcoin.bit is the result of early community discussions; understandable.

In summary, except for 3), the individual cases raised by the doubters cannot explain its opacity, and it is indeed done in accordance with the DAS rules. However, compared with the handling methods of ENS and DAS, the rule-making of DAS itself is relatively closed.

From the original intention, both ENS and DAS hope to inherit well-known domain names in the real world, so that new domain name holders can conform to user perceptions, so both have taken certain domain name reservation measures. The following two pictures are the original intentions of ENS and DAS, please refer to the appendix for the source:

But the specific practices of the two are different. Before the official version of ENS was launched in 2019 and the registration of 3-6 letters was opened, a protection period of about one month was set. During the protection period, everyone can claim the ENS domain name with their own DNS domain name. The final verification and decision-making is made by The ENS team completed; after the protection period, unclaimed domain names will be open for auction for 1 month.

After that, all 3~6 digit domain names are open for registration. In contrast, DAS refers to foreign data sources and customizes a protection list. During the protection period of about one year, corresponding individuals/institutions can apply for free. The main difference between the two is that ENS only sets the protection period and does not define the protection scope, providing weak protection for all domain names; DAS defines the protection scope and provides strong protection for domain names within the scope.

Take "google" as an example to see the practical difference. The holder of google.eth on ENS owns multiple rare domain names, and should be a squatter rather than official Google; looking at the transaction records on Opensea, it was purchased from ENS for 52.9 ETH on October 16, 2019 , it should be that Google did not claim it during the protection period, so it was snatched away during the auction period. In DAS, google.bit is naturally a reserved account, and it is estimated that there will be no chance of squatting for at least one year.

To sum up the domain name reservation of DAS, its original intention is the same as that of ENS, which hopes to inherit the naming habits of the real world, but DAS independently defines the scope of domain name reservation, unlike ENS, which only sets a protection period and treats all domain names equally. The approach of ENS is indeed more open and decentralized. Of course, it will also bring some domain name squatting, which is more like a free market.

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Official Data Kanban https://das.la/

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2.3 Project Galaxy: On-chain Qualification Certification Platform

Galaxy is an on-chain behavior qualification data platform that provides on-chain qualification proof by collecting user behavior. At present, the main usage scenarios are, one is to help the project party distribute NFT through user behavior, conduct marketing and operation activities such as community gate control, and the other is to help C-end users build their own resume on the chain.

At the data collection level, Galaxy's data includes on-chain and off-chain. For on-chain data, Galxy relies on project parties or other volunteers to provide on-chain query data. For off-chain data, Galaxy will retrieve public data from Snapshot.org, Twitter, Github and other data sources.

In the direction of serving the B-side, Galaxy has implemented a relatively rich NFT-as-a-service infrastructure, which can help projects realize operational marketing activities through a variety of NFT gameplay. For example, for users who have held tokens for more than a period of time, or whitelisted users, the project party can use Galaxy's plug-and-play NFT facility to distribute NFT to users in a targeted manner.

Galaxy provides a very diverse NFT gameplay. Including: random distribution of NFTs, forging multiple NFTs into one NFT to achieve upgrades, financing through INO (initial NFT issuance), adding exclusive content to NFTs, etc.

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Example of NFT forging upgrade campaign https://galaxy.eco/pendle/campaign/112

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Lightweight NFT campaign example https://galaxy.eco/galaxy/campaign/GC4gZUULZD

In terms of serving C-end users, Galaxy has launched the Galaxy ID function. Users can set their own user names, and the qualifications generated on Galaxy will be collected on the Galaxy ID page. The team hopes that with more and more data collection, Galaxy ID can display users' resumes in Web3, realize the platform function of professional social networking, and develop into LinkedIn of Web3.

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Some cooperation projects of Project Galaxy

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2.4 CyberConnect: Social graph on the chain

CyberConnect has overlaps with RSS3 in terms of social interaction, and also has a following function, but CyberConnect focuses more on the construction of social graphs, that is, the data on-chain of social relationships.

Every time a user follows/unfollows, it will be uploaded to the chain, requiring the user's signature but no gas fee. CyberConnect hopes that the social relationship on the chain will become a common facility for other Dapps, such as reading the user's social relationship in the game, or allowing users to see the purchase list of friends on the NFT trading platform. Currently, it has cooperated with some projects to access the social network on the chain Data, the social relationship realized in CyberConnect can be seen in the Galaxy ID of Project Galaxy.

In contrast, the following function provided by RSS3 is not built on the chain, but only for the convenience of users to subscribe.

In addition, although CyberConnect also integrates user dynamics, it does not centrally display the dynamics of multiple followers like RSS3, but can only view the dynamics of a single person. However, CyberConnect integrates a variety of content, including POAP, Mirror, Twitter, which is also available in RSS3, and Galaxy Credentials, which has not been integrated with RSS3. When you use it for the first time, you will feel a bit similar to RSS3. The following picture is the homepage of V God’s CyberConnect:

CyberConnect has also developed an end-to-end communication application, Cyberchat, which allows communication between ENS/ETH addresses. However, the project party did not specifically promote this product, but only displayed it as an application based on a social graph.

CyberConnect received US$10 million in financing in November 21, led by Multicoin and Sky9. Its development is very rapid, and it has ~100,000 users since it was launched (the 400,000 displayed on the official website is the recommendation algorithm data, and the addresses that can be followed are recommended based on public information, so the number will be even larger).

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2.5 RSS3: Information Stream of Web3

RSS3 is a decentralized social and content protocol, defined by the project party as "The Feed of Web3". As the name suggests, RSS3 inherits the mantle of the RSS information reading aggregator, but it is more decentralized.

The current front-end form is a bit like Weibo on the chain. Users can follow other people, and at the same time, they can see the recent developments of themselves and the objects they follow. These developments are the core content supported by RSS3, which integrates the content of multiple decentralized platforms. Such as articles published on Mirror, purchased NFT, etc., as well as public content of Web2, such as Twitter. For example, the following picture is the homepage of the founder of RSS3:

On the home page of the information flow, users can see the above-mentioned dynamic integration of all followers at the same time. The feeling of use is very similar to seeing the dynamics of the followers on Douyin/WeChat on the Weibo follow page. Users can also do simple content screening, such as filtering Web3 content or including Web2 dynamics such as Twitter, and distinguishing between recommendation (Featured) and discovery (Explore) like mainstream apps.

RSS3 also provides an RNS service, users can use a $PASS to receive an exclusive account, and convert long strings of addresses into readable text.

RSS3 was launched in May 21, and currently has ~40,000 registered users.

The governance tokens of RS33 are relatively unique. They are composed of non-homogeneous tokens RSS3 Fruit Tokens (RFTs), each of which is unique, with a total of only 294. There is a 1/7 possibility of obtaining rare RFTs. It is allocated as follows:

73.8% of the shares have been given to the community. The subdivided shares of the community are shown in the figure below. Most of them will be given to developers, community contributors, etc., and only a very small number (0.5%) will be sold publicly.

3. Summary

3. Summary

We can see that each project is structuring users’ on-chain identities differently.

Both ENS and DAS are doing the most basic account application, mapping human-unreadable addresses to account names that can be customized. In addition to account functions, ENS is also expanding the function of website domain names, while DAS focuses on account systems, and Pay more attention to security.

Project Galaxy builds an on-chain qualification data platform by collecting users' on-chain and off-chain behaviors. Its core is the data accumulation of user behaviors. On top of this, the team tries to use data to expand various scenarios. Currently, it mainly expands the provision of NFT for the B-side Operation tools such as distribution and community gate control, as well as the functions of providing qualification integration and displaying Web3 resumes for C-end users. As long as the accumulated data is valuable, the team may expand more scenarios in the future.

CyberConnect provides a social graph on the chain, provides users with a common social relationship on the chain, and is also committed to becoming the infrastructure of Web3.

RSS3 is relatively more like a C-side application, which integrates the on-chain dynamics of the objects of interest for users and makes it a Web3 information flow.

On-chain identity is still in its very early days. These projects all enter the DID field through different entry points. In the future, they may lead to the same goal by different routes, or they may develop in different directions. We don't know what the final mode will be, but the state of contention is always exciting.