Soulbound Tokens — the Social Identity for LEGACY

LEGACY is the Web3 platform for creating, preserving and connecting personal and institutional memoirs. The identity of the author and of the people mentioned in the memoirs is a key concept. Memoirs — and the media files they contain — are minted as NFTs and are held in the author’s wallet. A “traditional” anonymous wallet is, however, not suitable for preserving someone’s legacy.

As the memoirs linger after the person passes on, we also refer to the collection of a person’s memoirs as their digital soul.

Glen Weil, Puja Ohlhaver and Vitalik Buterin introduced in their paper, “Decentralized Society: Finding Web3’s Soul”, the concept of a soulbound token as a “social identity”.

While a wallet is a valid technical identity, and “know-your-customer” identity is valid legal identity, they carry little information about the person or institution they identify

Soulbound tokens address exactly this void by being a social identity that establishes provenance and reputation. Technically they are persistent, non-transferable tokens, practically representing a resume.

Soulbound tokens can be self-certified; for example, me claiming to hold a degree from Humboldt University. The concept of soulbound tokens becomes more powerful when these tokens are issued or attested by a person or institution in my social network. For example, Humboldt University issuing a token to me certifying that I received a degree, or confirming my claim of having a degree from this institution.

In LEGACY, every author has a “soul.” This is their wallet that contains soulbound tokens. Memoirs are initially self-certified soulbound tokens. They could, however, be attested by other souls. This could be done implicitly by semantically linking memoirs.

I wrote a memoir about my attempt to race the Tour Divide. So far it is a self-certified account. As other “souls” publish their memoirs of the race on LEGACY and our memoirs are semantically linked, their stories could corroborate mine.

Conflicts could occur, where different people have different memories of the same event. In LEGACY this wouldn’t be a problem, as it is designed as a platform for subjective recollections and personal memoirs. A reader of LEGACY memoirs will, however, notice potential consistency issues, and can form their own opinion.

Now go and create your soul on LEGACY!