30 projects and 9 major sectors take you through the current state of the DID ecosystem

Original Title: 《Mapping the Identity Space：A deep dive into understanding the landscape》

Author: Kerman Kohli

Compiled by: Runsheng, ChainCatcher

For the past two years, I have spent almost all my waking hours thinking about on-chain identity and how to bring it to reality. However, what I didn't realize during this process is that for most people in the crypto space, on-chain identity is more like a meme or a dream rather than something tangible. There is almost no understanding or awareness of how the on-chain space works, who the participants are, and how to conceptually think about its framework.

Therefore, I believe that providing a comprehensive description and explanation of how it works would be most helpful for educating the field and its components.

I took some time to gather and categorize all the companies in this field. If you think I missed any projects, please reach out to us directly—this is the first attempt at sorting, and I am sure some projects will be overlooked.

Badges/Achievements

This is the most common category in on-chain identity. My definition of badges/achievements is tokens or NFTs that you earn by completing on-chain or off-chain actions. The following startups can be categorized here:

Sismo: Sismo is a modular proof protocol focused on decentralization, privacy, and usability. It issues proofs in the form of badges (Non-Transferrable Token/SBT). The protocol runs on Polygon, and you can mint badges on its application.

POAP: POAP is a protocol that preserves memories as digital records, minted as NFTs on the blockchain according to the ERC-721 standard.

Orange Protocol: Orange is a reputation and trust minting protocol that aggregates data and Web3 reputation models to generate comprehensive reputation proofs in the form of verifiable credentials and NFTs.

Noox: A platform that allows you to mint your on-chain achievements as Soulbound NFTs.

Credentials/Proofs

Compared to badges/achievements, credentials/proofs typically require third-party entities to verify facts about yourself. This can range from proving you are a real person through KYC details to proving you are a certified software engineer. There are many protocols worth noting in the certification space, as they often provide the most account information. Each startup working in this area addresses the problem from different angles:

Galxe is a Web3 credential data network that enables brands and developers to engage with communities and build robust products in Web3.

BrightID is a decentralized open-source social identity network that allows people to prove to applications that they are not using multiple accounts.

Gateway is a Web3 credential network that creates proofs of your work and abilities, building your Web3 native resume.

Zorro is a Web3 citizenship solution that allows people to prove they are unique individuals, enabling them to gain voting rights and other benefits in DAOs.

Verite includes data models, protocol recipes, and open-source software that links identity proofs with crypto-financial experiences.

Krebit is a reputation scoring platform that provides fully decentralized and community-verified credentials.

Profiles

Profile projects are often a collection of products that aggregate all available information about your address and display it in a user-friendly interface. The actual utility of this interface may vary depending on the context of the personal profile. Profiles can also serve as aggregators and create a meta-utility program that centralizes everything. Gitcoin Passport is an example, with different use cases listed below:

Gitcoin Passport is a digital ID that uses verifiable credentials to confirm identity from the internet without storing personal identifiable information.

Phi visualizes on-chain identity and creates a metaverse land system based on universal Web3 building blocks, such as ENS domain names and wallet activities.

Social

The social category may be one of the most popular categories in recent months, as it creates social media networks/platforms based on your address as the foundation of your identity. The de-platforming of creators has prompted many to reconsider Web2 social networks. While this is still a small category, it is certainly one of the more exciting ones!

Lens Protocol is a composable and decentralized social graph designed for creators.

Farcaster is a fully decentralized social network. It is an open protocol that can support many clients, much like email.

Orbis is a set of social data models that combines decentralized infrastructure with advanced SDKs and flexible modules to enable fully composable social experiences.

Disco is a profile system and data backpack where your profile displays social media accounts and Web3 credentials.

Single Sign-On / SSO Infra

Replacing cumbersome email addresses, password registrations, and login processes may be the biggest benefit that crypto technology offers in changing the fundamental structure of the internet. Startups in this category help facilitate single sign-on authentication and the surrounding infrastructure.

Spruce is a toolkit for decentralized identity, consisting of its DIDkit, Rabase, Keylink, and Credible, supporting the signing, sharing, and verification of trusted information.

ENS, Ethereum Name Service (ENS) is a distributed, open, and scalable naming system based on the Ethereum blockchain.

PolygonID is a programmable privacy blockchain-native identity system that provides on-chain verification and permissionless proofs.

Scoring and Attribution

In my experience, this is a technically challenging category to implement, but it also opens up the imagination for types of applications. Scoring and attribution involve running continuous computations on large datasets to assign scores or attributes related to a user's wallet. Compared to static badges and achievements, this category is dynamic and has more business use cases. An example of attribution is understanding where your users come from and what value they bring to you.

ARCx is a decentralized credit market based on reputation in DeFi, allowing users to borrow up to 100% LTV ratio loans against ETH collateral using DeFi credit scores.

Degen Score is a scoring protocol that rates users based on their on-chain history.

Spectral is a credit scoring protocol that assesses credit based on on-chain transaction data.

Tasks and User Acquisition

Aside from the witch problem, tasks represent an opportunity to expand channels for acquiring crypto-native users. Users are acquired based on certain aspects of their on-chain reputation (badges, credentials, and/or scores). We have already seen early signs of success in this area, but the biggest challenge that exists is acquiring and retaining meaningful users. Liquidity mining and airdrops are closely related to this category, although there are differences, their goals are the same.

Layer3 is a protocol that hosts tasks in the form of bounties, rewarding Web3 tasks such as sending tokens on Polygon or even lending.

Rabbit Hole allows users to complete Web3 tasks for rewards, with the protocol partnering with RabbitHole to distribute its tokens to users who have proven their value.

Contributors

DAOs and contributors face the same issues as traditional organizations, albeit in different circumstances. That issue is: how to find people to hire and how to ensure they are worth it? This field focuses on startups that deal with identity, fundamentally trying to solve these two problems or their derivatives.

Coordinape is a scalable and permissionless decentralized compensation platform built specifically for the needs of DAOs.

Source Cred is a tool for DAOs and open-source communities to measure and reward value creation.

Storage

With many identity games available, storage is a key component due to the richness of available information. Self-sovereignty and decentralization around data are two major themes. This is a category that is also technically challenging, as it combines consensus issues with larger datasets. There are several solutions to this problem that are actively being researched, and I am personally very excited about it.

Cyber Connect is a decentralized social graph protocol that returns data ownership to users and helps developers build Web3 social applications.

Spring helps store and share sensitive data without disclosing any personal identifiable information (PII) through its patented, ultra-secure encryption and tokenization solutions.

Verida is an interoperability database based on decentralized identity, a multi-chain protocol for storing and transmitting messages, owned and controlled by users.

Ceramic is a decentralized data network that brings infinite data composability to Web3 applications.

Conclusion

As you can see, the on-chain identity and reputation space has numerous approaches to attempt to solve many different problems. This article briefly outlines the characteristics of each category and explains them. In future articles, I will delve into how these categories combine and the value they will ultimately bring to users when they come together like building blocks.