Learn about Project Galaxy, which just raised $10 million, and how it tags web3 users

Source: Hive Tech

Recently, a data platform named Project Galaxy has been frequently appearing in the crypto space. On January 25, the platform completed a $10 million funding round led by Multicoin Capital and Dragonfly Capital, with participation from multiple institutions, and plans to conduct a public offering on CoinList on February 17.

The reason Project Galaxy has attracted external attention is that it operates in a unique foundational track— as an open credential data network, it labels each address by issuing "credentials," thereby achieving clear and segmented user profiling.

On Project Galaxy's official website, users can generate a "Galaxy ID" after connecting their wallets. The ID will automatically attach "certificates" based on the historical behavior of the address, such as "Uniswap Trader," "OpenSea Trader," and so on.

These credentials are akin to various professional qualifications in the real world, which can hold value in certain specific scenarios. For example, if a new lending protocol wants to find its target users and distribute airdrops, it can accurately target users with credentials like "Compound Borrower" or "Maker Staker" based on Project Galaxy's classifications.

This way, the new lending protocol can more easily capture its target audience, and users with credentials can receive airdrop rewards due to their prominent historical on-chain behavior.

As each long string of addresses is materialized by various credentials, more use cases will emerge. For instance, DeFi protocols can use this to identify "active users of the protocol" and grant them greater voting power than passive token holders; gaming guilds can prioritize recruiting "individuals who have achieved certain accomplishments in games."

Currently, over 120 projects have utilized Project Galaxy to conduct more than 500 marketing activities, achieving precise connections with target users. It is important to note that Project Galaxy is still an early-stage protocol, and there is significant room for improvement in data accumulation and segmentation capabilities. Additionally, the ability to explore more use cases will also determine its future development potential.

Project Galaxy Builds Web3 User Profiles

In the real world, everyone has a unique identity ID, typically identified and distinguished by personal identification cards. On the surface, an ID card is a physical card with personal information, but in the information age, each ID card is backed by various unique labels.

In the databases of various government organizations and financial institutions, each person is assigned corresponding labels, such as credit ratings, criminal records, marital status, etc. These government agencies and financial sectors use these labels for administrative management and business decision-making; for example, banks strictly review borrowers' credit situations when lending.

In the Web2 era, internet users also have corresponding IDs when using applications. Companies like TikTok and Twitter label each individual based on their historical behavior; for instance, someone who enjoys watching sports events will frequently see sports-related videos on TikTok.

Big data push from media platforms is commonplace, improving efficiency and accuracy across various stages by profiling and classifying users based on their behavior. Unfortunately, users' "credential data" is stored in closed databases of applications, government agencies, and financial institutions, making it inaccessible to individuals, who are unaware of the labels assigned to them. Database leaks can also lead to privacy security issues, while blockchain's encryption algorithms may provide new solutions to the privacy protection problems posed by big data pushes.

On the blockchain, addresses that do not disclose personal identity information can still generate a large amount of interaction data, which holds unique value. For instance, if a new NFT trading market wants to find its target users, it can simply provide incentives to addresses that have previously interacted on OpenSea to attract the target audience's attention.

Recently, LooksRare did just that; the application distributed airdrops to eligible OpenSea trading users, successfully attracting a large wave of traffic.

In this case, each address that has traded on OpenSea essentially has a "OpenSea Trader Certificate" as a data credential. LooksRare only needs to distribute airdrops to users with credentials to achieve precise "customer acquisition," without needing to know the potential users' identity information, only their NFT trading habits.

Distributing airdrops is just a simple and common example. In the blockchain world, as applications become more complex and scenarios more diverse, the "certificates" generated by each address will also increase, and in specific needs, certificates may need to be precisely segmented. For example, an address may hold a "Uniswap Trader Certificate" and a "Compound Borrower Certificate."

However, these "certificates" can only prove that the address has used Uniswap and Compound. If further segmentation is needed, one might find that an address holds a "Uniswap Trading Volume Exceeding $1 Million Certificate," "Compound Borrowing Volume Exceeding $100 Million Certificate," or "Provided Liquidity on Uniswap for Over 365 Days Certificate," and so on.

Each of the above "certificates" is a segmentable on-chain data credential. Since on-chain data is public, collecting these credentials is not difficult. The challenge lies in how to gather a sufficient number of sufficiently segmented data credentials and classify each address that meets the "certificate conditions" into a subset. With various credential datasets, Web3 developers and project teams can more easily build attractive communities.

Founded in May 2021, Project Galaxy aims to build an open and collaborative credential data network to accurately profile and classify each address.

The "Galaxy ID" labels are segmented based on historical behavior of the address

A typical manifestation is that on Project Galaxy's official website, there is a "Galaxy ID" page where users can connect their personal wallets to generate a unique "Galaxy ID." As shown in the image above, the "Galaxy ID" corresponding to the address contains multiple labels, including USDC Trader, Uniswap V2 Trader, SushiSwap Trader on Ethereum, etc.

In summary, Project Galaxy serves as an open big data platform that issues various "certificates" for each on-chain address. Compared to the closed databases of traditional applications, this platform encourages all users to contribute data to the network and build segmented credential datasets. Whenever developers or project teams utilize the platform's data, data contributors can earn income.

Over 120 Projects Utilize Galaxy for Precise Marketing

As the data service infrastructure for the Web3 network, Project Galaxy completed its seed round financing last May, with investors including Multicoin Capital, Divergence Ventures, Blockchain.com Ventures, IOSG Ventures, and some founders of crypto projects.

On January 25 of this year, the project completed another $10 million funding round led by Multicoin Capital and Dragonfly Capital, with participation from multiple institutions. The new funds will be used to develop the credential data network, expand support for multiple data sources, and build robust application modules to help projects utilize digital credential data more effectively.

Why is capital interested in the value of Project Galaxy? This is essentially capital's imagination about on-chain big data applications—when this platform labels each address with various segmented data credential tags, what real-world use cases can it bring?

Mable Jiang, a partner at Multicoin Capital, shared his views on the project. He cited examples in DeFi protocol governance, where active users of the protocol may qualify for greater voting power per unit of token compared to passive governance token holders.

Individuals who help promote projects on Twitter within a specific timeframe may also gain priority in new token distributions; those who have interacted with certain contracts may qualify for rewards in growth activities; individuals who achieve certain accomplishments in games may qualify for rapid recruitment in certain guilds.

In the examples above, "active users of the protocol," "individuals who help promote on Twitter," and "individuals who achieve certain accomplishments in games" all correspond to segmented subsets of data credentials. Typically, project teams need to collect and analyze these individuals themselves, but with Project Galaxy providing user profiles, everything becomes much easier.

In fact, upon visiting Project Galaxy's website, one can find that it is not just a data credential network; it also integrates functionality based on common use cases (such as marketing activities for project teams) and has launched an NFT issuance module. This means that all credentials can be tokenized as NFTs.

For example, on Project Galaxy's "Explore" page, many DeFi and NFT projects have published related activities. For instance, the ALPACA protocol, built on the BSC chain, recently launched a New Year marketing campaign where users who locked tokens in the protocol's governance treasury for at least four weeks had a chance to win New Year NFTs.

In this example, Project Galaxy identifies eligible users for ALPACA, which then distributes subsequent NFT rewards, with this NFT serving as a credential for winning the New Year activity.

Projects like ALPACA publish marketing activities on Project Galaxy

According to statistics, the current Project Galaxy credential data network has 200,000 unique on-chain user addresses across six blockchain ecosystems, including Ethereum and BSC. The network has over 500 digital credential sets, covering more than 3 million users in Web3. Over 120 projects and organizations have utilized Galaxy's digital credential data and NFT infrastructure to launch more than 500 activities.

A typical example is that in January of this year, the well-known crypto asset fundraising and issuance platform CoinList issued an NFT collection named FiatWorks through Project Galaxy. CoinList set two categories of eligible users: one group consisted of loyal users who participated in the platform's experimental products; the other group included CoinList's partners and promoters.

Based on Project Galaxy's data credential classifications, CoinList and its users can accurately find each other, achieving precise connections; at the same time, Project Galaxy's own NFT issuance module allows CoinList to create and distribute NFTs using customized on-chain data.

In addition, the decentralized trading platform Hashflow previously utilized Project Galaxy for precise marketing, boosting trading volume to $600 million; YFI also distributed a series of pug NFTs to eligible users through the platform.

Recently, the multi-chain synthetic asset protocol Duet Protocol also partnered with Project Galaxy to explore NFT issuance, build DIDs, and develop decentralized voting systems.

Investment firm Multicoin Capital anticipates that Project Galaxy will play a core role in application development and cutting-edge marketing activities, interacting with and attracting users in new, truly crypto-native ways.

As an on-chain user data credential network, Project Galaxy demonstrates its value in marketing, governance, and other areas through behavior analysis and profiling of on-chain addresses. It is important to note that this is still an early-stage protocol, and there is significant room for improvement in data accumulation and segmentation capabilities. Additionally, the ability to explore more use cases is a key factor in determining its future development.