To the co-founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin and its cult following, Soulbound Tokens (SBT) are the future. Proposed by Buterin and his fellow authors through a White paper Titled “Decentralized Society: Finding the Soul of Web3,” the SBT’s vision is for a fully decentralized society (DeSoc) to make use of non-transferable identity and reputation tokens. However, to most, a DeSoc still seems pretty far away, leading one to assume that SBTs must be a long way away as well.
But still, in response to Buterin’s article, many took the cause of making SBTs a reality into their own hands. And now, one such entity has managed to move beyond SBT’s “what if” by planting the seeds of the Soulbound utility on the Ethereum blockchain. With its mainnet launch on Ethereum, finance time has introduced an on-chain standardized Soulbound token protocol to power the Web3 economy.
So let’s break it down.
What Masa brings to the SBT conversation
In theory, SBTs have a solid chance to change society as we know it. In practice, that remains to be seen. However, Masa, who on January 17 announced his mainnet launch, hopes to change this consensus. With the launch, the company aims to empower users to accumulate a variety of Soulbound tokens on its platform, including Soulbound Identity Mass SBTs, Web3 Credit Reports, and unique .soul domain name NFTs.
Let’s break this down further. First, as users use their MetaMask or other software wallets to log into the Masa platform, they will be required to accumulate a Masa Soulbound Identity Token. This is a non-transferable NFT that is associated with a user’s wallet and is said to represent the uniqueness of a user’s Web3 identity. Essentially, it is an SBT that can be minted directly into an existing wallet, rather than being subject to the requirement for a Soul Wallet, as initially stated in the Buterin document.
Then come the use cases of these SBTs. Currently, Masa’s Soulbound tokens have been proposed for implementation in use cases such as proof of stake, Know Your Customer (KYC) verification (which, in the NFT space, was first seen in a massive scale via BAYC), and within the decentralized credit protocol in which Masa has been working for a lot of time. That’s where Web3 credit reporting comes in, as Masa’s protocol innovates on traditional finance by aggregating a user’s Web2 and Web3 activity and using 10,000 reported data points, including FICO score, transaction history from software wallets, cryptocurrency exchange balances and more.
Speaking about the usefulness of Web3 credit reports and Masa’s SBT efforts, Masa co-founder Calanthis Mei stated through a press release that “Masa will help billions of global users build their authentic identity on-chain and leverage your on-chain identity to unlock -world utility.”
Finally, Masa has introduced a naming service similar to the Ethereum naming service NFTs. With these .soul name NFTs, Masa users can create unique identifiers that, similar to a domain name, point to that user’s software wallet. Unlike Masa’s Soulbound identity tokens or Web3 credit reports, .soul names will be tradable through marketplaces like OpenSea. And of course, swapping a .soul name will not affect a user’s Mass SBTs in any way.
What could Masa’s SBTs mean for the ecosystem?
In addition to the above, with the launch of the mainnet, Masa is also looking to empower developers and project managers to build on their protocol by allowing them to leverage Masa as the infrastructure to easily coin SBT for various use cases. While Masa SBT’s capabilities are rooted in Ethereum for now, Masa plans to make his protocol available to those on additional blockchains later in 2023.
While Masa’s Soulbound tokens are undoubtedly still early-stage offerings in SBT’s grand usability scheme, they take a step above the competition by contributing to the conversation around a greater need for accountability in Web3. To this end, Masa aims to bridge the chain with real-world data so that Web3 can gain an easy-to-use, privacy-preserving way to manage and verify identity.
“My vision for Masa is to bring the next billion users to Web3 by building the de facto primitive Web3 identity. At Masa, we want to make identity as simple as minting an NFT, for a user, and as simple as implementing an ERC-20 smart contract for a developer,” Masa co-founder Brendan Playford said in a statement. press. “With our mainnet launch, every sovereign
individual can create their unique Soulbound Identity. Establish and build a decentralized identity that unlocks the full potential of the web3 economy.”
To learn more about Soulbound Identity SBTs, Web3 credit reports, and .soul domain names, as well as what to expect from the protocol, visit the official website Masa Finance website here.
