What’s Happening in On-Chain Identity

A roundup from the past few weeks

Nov 7, 2022

Hey all! Given the uptick in everything happening in the on-chain identity ecosystem, I thought I’d write a piece around some of the interesting developments happening in the space and a little excerpt about them. Let’s get into it!

1. DegenScore Launches “Beacon”

The folks over at DegenScore launched a soulbound NFT token that allows you to encode how much of a Degen you are on-chain. The idea is that you can then use this soulbound with various applications to receive various benefits or access to special products/deals. It’s going to become more common to see the use of Soulbound NFTs tied to addresses to grant special benefits. Go check it out if you haven’t already!

DegenScore 👾 @DegenScore

Introducing the DegenScore Beacon 🖲️ A new way to highlight your on-chain skills & access opportunities: - Your native web3 credential - Take your reputation everywhere - Access the best opportunities & enjoy Click to learn more or read on👇 degenscore.com

2. Otterspace raises a $3.7m round

A new identity startup in town has raised to helps DAOs issue badges that recognise a contributor’s reputation. Similar to DegenScore, they use Soulbound NFTs to enable this process. The round was closed with a lot of DAO founders as angels with some more traditional Web2 VCs. Interestingly enough I do feel like this has an overlap with the DAO tooling category but a different lens.

Otterspace @otterspace_xyz

We’re otterly excited to announce our pre-seed round of $3.7M, co-led by @CherryVentures and @inflectionxyz 🦦 Sign up to our private Beta 👇 to hop aboard and bring your community into the Otterverse. forms.otterspace.xyz/waitlist

3. Galxe Launches Quests with Optimism

Optimism has collaborate with Galxe to issue NFTs that are earned as users participate in various apps in their ecosystem. This quests-style approach to growth is one pioneered by RabbitHole and Layer3 as well. While they do captivate large numbers of users the question is always what percentage of newly acquired users retain and how many are airdrop hunting. Regardless, I expect these sorts of campaigns to accelerate in the future as addresses accumulate more valuable identity points.

Galxe @Galxe

The “Optimism Quests” Campaign is live 🚀 This Learn-To-Earn Campaign will introduce you to the @optimismFND Ecosystem in a fun and interactive way! Take quizzes and complete on-chain tasks to unlock rewards! Check it out ⬇️ blog.galxe.com/galxe-x-optimi…

4. ZK SBTs by Sismo

Quite the confusing mix of letters! Zero-Knowledge Souldbound Tokens by Sismo are starting to roll out. The idea here is that you can have use the history/identity of one of your addresses to issue zero-knowledge proof based NFTs that prove one of your addresses contain the trait you claim to have. This badge is around your activity on Github which protects the link between your Ethereum address and your Github username.

Sismo 🎭 is hiring 💜 @Sismo_eth

First Github-bound ZK SBTs! 🎭 In < 3 minutes, create ZK Badges for your users, bound to github accounts! 👉 factory.sismo.io To try it now: 1. Star github.com/sismo-core/sis… (group regularly updated) 2. Get your Sismo Stargazer ZK Badge: playground.sismo.io/sismo-stargazer (more)

5. DNS <> ENS Integrations

This isn’t exactly “news” but really something neat that I found out about ENS and how it can integrate with DNS. The idea here is that you can register a DNS domain, set a record that specifies a Web3 address to manage the ENS record and now you have an ENS that uses a regular domain name. There’s probably some cool things you can do with this but we’ll leave that for another time.