Editorial Notes (vol. 14) – Cryptotesters' picks and identity in Web3

New week, new Explore Screen update. This week, we’ll take a look at a few projects building the future of Identity in Web3. Identity is one of the underappreciated spaces within Web3, however, it holds the key to many interesting use cases that have been envisioned. Some of them are in use already (such as quadratic funding), but with the current infrastructure, it is hard to scale them properly. This is where different identity solution providers come into play. There are many approaches to solving the identity issue and we’ll look at just a few of the projects in this space.

Also, Cryptotesters are back with their new monthly feature. This month they’ve highlighted three projects that have excited their community the most and you'll find them in the Cryptotesters' Picks feature.

Let’s take a closer look at them!

Cryptotesters’ Picks

Nested is a social trading platform allowing you to copy trade the portfolio of other traders or influencers.

Nested allows anyone to create a portfolio of tokens that can be replicated by any other users with 1-click. Each time your portfolio strategy gets copied by someone you earn royalties. Whether you want to copy great traders or earn money by sharing your strategies Nested has something for you!

Angle – an over-collateralized stablecoin protocol and issuer behind the first decentralized Euro stablecoin agEUR.

You can mint agEUR with USDC or borrow it in their lending module using ETH, stETH, or WBTC. Great if you’re bearish EUR/USD or EUR/ETH for example and want to short it. You can also earn yield providing liquidity on agEUR.

Utilize a powerful Multichain DeFi management dashboard provided by Instadapp.

If you manage Aave, Maker, or Liquity positions you will want to manage them through Instadapp as they offer powerful automations like 1-click recursive leveraging (deposit collateral, borrow stables -> buy more collateral and deposit ) or payback and withdraw collateral. You can also move entire debt positions across chains e.g from Polygon to Arbitrum without unwinding first.

Identity in Web3

One of the biggest pain points facing crypto is the lack of social recovery. Once your keys are lost, your funds go into the abyss as well. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

You might be aware of Maple Finance. They offer undercollateralized loans to reputable entities, but why can’t such products be offered to the average Joe? Well, one of the issues is the lack of credit scores and ways to assess one's loan repayment risk. Identity will play a big role in making such products available throughout the DeFi ecosystem. Some of the other use cases enabled by decentralized identity solutions are Sybil-resistance – making it harder to game airdrops and DAO governance, on-chain credentials, creation of private pools for enabling access of DeFi products to regulated institutions, quadratic voting or one-human-one-vote mechanisms, anti-spam tools, etc.

Below are some of the projects pioneering this space and building an identity landscape for Web3. Even though they might use different approaches to solving the problem, they are clearly trying to provide a great service for the broad Web3 ecosystem, which in essence also expands beyond just crypto use cases.

Let’s dive right in!

Control your data across the web with Spruce.

The project behind Sign in with Ethereum, DIDKit, and Kepler solutions is building a cross-chain user data ownership protocol. Their products work seamlessly across various blockchains such as Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Tezos, Celo, and Ceramic. By utilizing different emerging data technologies, including the recent W3C Verifiable Credentials and W3C Decentralized Identifiers specifications, they enable complete lifecycle management for licenses, certificates, audit reports, registrations, and other mission-critical data that must remain secure while passing many hands.

BrightID allows you to prove to applications that you aren’t using multiple accounts.

BrightID is a public good social identity network that allows people to prove to applications that they aren’t using multiple accounts. It is a nonintrusive, decentralized, open-source technology seeking to reform identity verification and solves the unique identity problem through the creation and analysis of a social graph.

Access Everest – a catchall crypto economy platform with a self-sovereign biometric identity solution.

Everest is building an ecosystem that empowers users & businesses to build the future. Through the use of digital identities, electronic wallets, document management, a regulated stablecoin, and a fast cost-effective blockchain, users and businesses can verifiably engage in any transaction.

Their core feature is biometrics-based EverID which enables identity deduplication with proof-of-humanness, and gives a person the ability to record, update, store, and share identity information without the need to own technology or have a network connection.

Buy NFT domains on Unstoppable and use them as usernames or wallet addresses without ever having to renew them.

Unstoppable Domains allows anyone to purchase and own an NFT domain which can act as a website URL, Web 3 username, or wallet address. The domains aren’t rented, so you never have to worry about renewing them or paying additional fees after the purchase.

On top of their domain service, they also provide the Unstoppable Humanity Check. For domain owners, Humanity Check is a way for Web3 users to store, share, and control who has access to their personal data online, while applications can use it as a solution to sybil-resistance, customer communication, and personal data storage.

Proof of Humanity combines social verification with video submission to create a Sybil-proof list of humans.

PoH is a social identity verification system for people on Ethereum. It combines webs of trust, reverse Turing tests, and dispute resolution to create a Sybil-proof list of humans. A part of PoH is its Universal Basic Income (UBI) token. It is a periodic payment program developed by Democracy Earth and Kleros that is given to all people on the sole condition that they prove they are human through registering on their platform.

Create your reputation-based profiles with Disco by collecting and controlling all your accomplishments and aliases.

Disco launched an exciting new feature – Disco profiles in the spring of 2022. Overall, their platform enables users to enjoy a nuanced web3 reputation associated with public identifiers across chains and Web2, while maintaining privacy and user autonomy. At the moment it is only on Ethereum, however, in the near future, you will be able to use Disco with wallets from a number of different blockchains and present credentials issued to one blockchain identifier (like your Ethereum address) from a different blockchain identifier (like your Solana address).

Create your self-sovereign identity and issue claims on another identity with Iden3 Protocol.

Iden3 is a next-generation private access control based on self-sovereign identity, designed for decentralized and trust-minimized environments. It is based on Ethereum and thus inherits its properties such as a high degree of decentralization and a security profile, additionally, the protocol will soon be scalable at Layer 2 thanks to zkRollup technology.

Iden3 will support DID, JSON-LD, and JSON schema to be interoperable with W3C standards for Verifiable Credentials and enable many use cases such as decentralized voting systems, proof-of-humanity, private access control, interaction with private DeFi pools, and more.

Represent your identity without revealing your true identity by using Kilt.

KILT is a protocol for self-sovereign data and interoperability built on top of their permissionless blockchain. The core component of KILT is a digital identity protocol for generating and managing decentralized identifiers and issuing and presenting verifiable credentials.

In essence, it provides a universal identity protocol for individuals, organizations, objects, and intelligent agents, a Self-Sovereign mechanism for putting Credential holders in control of their own data, and a trust market for attesters. With the main goal of generating a level playing field for companies to explore new business models related to trust relationships and data sovereignty.

Civic – Access the growing constellation of web3 services with a versatile identity, owned by you.

Civic is a cross-chain digital identity solution, providing a multi-use identity verification for a variety of use cases that can be adjusted depending on the specific needs. For example, they have a bot prevention tool, which is designed to only discern between humans and bots. Additionally, their platform can prove liveness, perform both KYC and KYB services and enable permissioned markets.