Web3 — a New Landscape for Sovereign Identities and the Rise of Professional Reputation
An identity is a complex snapshot of an individual. Ever-changing and constantly evolving, never reaching its final form. The importance of an identity has transformed past the physical world in the last 20 years into a vastly different medium that’s now dominating our culture — digital identity.
We have previously known digital identity in web2 standards — fragmented across platforms and centralized within each ecosystem. Simply put, the form of digital identity we’ve come to know, lives and breathes within the parameters of a defined account on someone else’s database. What if we, as individual users, could own all parts of our identity? And with it, control the way it’s represented and who has access to its contents? With emerging technology, a viable solution has now appeared — melding the two worlds to create a self-sovereign digital identity.
The promise of web3 is innately in itself, a new ownership tenet. As we progress in the complexity of managing both our digital and physical lives, web3 now offers the solution to enabling the rise of self-sovereign identities. With each user holding unique identifiers and tracking contributions at scale — blockchain technology equips individuals with the ability to own the truest version of their identity. Identities can now take the form of digital wallets. Acting as portfolios showcasing interactions long past transaction records — such as token ownership and contributions on-chain. As web3 pioneers continue to build, the world should expect improvements in wallets as social tools and personal expression.
Identity is how we, as humans, view ourselves. Reputation is how others view our identity. A decentralized identity creates and empowers ownership, management, and refinement of our reputation. The reputation that represents you both in the digital and physical world.
However, reputation in the physical world is inherently biased- based solely on a person’s perspective of our identity. Protocols developed on-chain work to replace human error. Reputation, for example in the professional world, hinges on titles, education, and the current status of previous companies you’ve worked for. As a professional in our current skills economy, you truly don’t own your reputation outright. Recruiters make judgment calls on a candidate’s ability to produce efficient work and make an impact within an organization, based on vanity metrics such as the prestige of your education or the name recognition and status of previous employers. In essence, the institutions and organizations talent interacts with along their professional journey — continue to own their skills as a long-standing bias of who they are as a professional.
Big problems require smarter solutions. The Grey Skills Protocol built on the Polkadot network aims to solve the current gap in the skills economy and put skilled workers’ reputations back in their control. By creating assets — users can mint their skills and finally own the management of their entire skillset and professional reputation. A professional can stake their skills asset into learning and work experiences and verify each asset in ownership, upon application of their skill in a project or traditional work environment. Reputational value is stored, earned, and managed through the use of the Grey Skills Wallet which acts as a verified on-chain CV/Resume. Grey’s protocol serves as proof of skill and is tracked and maintained throughout talent’s entire professional career and beyond. Web3 solutions such as Grey, empower professionals to take ownership of their skillset and their reputation by utilizing decentralized networks to bridge the gap created by traditional systems of work and education.
Decentralized digital identity is an evolving landscape — thanks to the potential solutions emerging blockchain technology has presented. The new future looks quite different with the mainstream adoption of self-sovereign identities- as personal value continues to find ways to be unlocked and showcased.
Access the Grey Skills Protocol’s white-paper to learn more about how Grey is laying a disruptive foundation to build the future of professional reputations.
