Masa Mainnet is now live! Mint your .Soul name and credit score today
Masa was founded with the mission to unlock access to capital globally. Founded by immigrants and built by a globally decentralized team, we firmly believe that economic opportunities should not be restricted by where you were born or where you live.
In our initial 1.0 product, Masa was building a truly decentralized credit bureau. Bringing together 10,000+ web3 and web2 data sources and providing individuals, businesses and developers with tools to access credit on-chain. As we were building a more equitable global credit bureau, we realized that an even more foundational primitive is missing in web3: identity. Simply put, there was no standardized web3 identity protocol to easily aggregate, attribute, and permission (credit) data on-chain.
In May, Vitalik published a paper called Decentralized Society: Finding Web3’s Soul, which envisions how Soulbound Tokens (SBTs) — publicly visible, non-transferable, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) — can serve as a web3 user’s identity. We decided to externalize the SBT infrastructure we had built for web3 credit reports and zoom out to an evolved focus on identity management.
On August 10th, 2022, Masa Soulbound Identity became web3’s first EVM-based soulbound identity protocol. The results were above and beyond our expectations: within 3 months, 50,000+ Masa Soulbound Identities and 65,000+ .soul names were minted across Ethereum’s Goerli testnet and Celo’s Alfajores testnet. More than 800+ developers showed interest in building projects on Masa Soulbound Identity, showing a strong gravitational pull in a bear market.
It has become clear to us that in order to onboard the next billion users, web3 urgently needs a composable, user-friendly, and privacy-preserving way to manage on-chain identity.
Enter, Masa: the world’s premiere Soulbound Token (SBT) identity protocol.
We are paving the way for the first standardized soulbound identity protocol in web3. Soulbound Tokens bridge the gap between user activities, personal information, authentication, and permissioned sharing. We use SBTs to represent users’ attributes in web3 and in the real world, enhanced with a protocol-level abstraction that enables the full management, attribution and permission of SBTs. With Masa, metadata attributed to a soulbound token is encrypted and can only be accessed with permission from the identity owner through the Masa Protocol.
Masa Soulbound Identity aims to become web3 user’s digital passport — for DeFi, dapps, communities, games and beyond. In a decentralized society, your .soul name (e.g. masa.soul; 🌽.soul) will be your pseudonymous, unique name which represents your Masa Soulbound Identity — a domain for your web3 identity. You can use your Masa Soulbound Identity to apply for a DeFi loan, build an in-game reputation, vote in a DAO as an authenticated user (anti-Sybil and vote weighting), join an NFT allowlist as an authenticated user, and much more.
With Masa 2.0, we are the first to build bridges to support people all over the world to access the new web3 economy through Soulbound Identity. As we empower users and developers with Soulbound Identities across the globe, we start laying the bricks for a future decentralized society.
Welcome to Masa 2.0.
To learn more, here are 8 things you should know about Masa Soulbound Identity.
What is a Soulbound Token? What is a Soulbound Identity?
SBTs are designed to be the intersection between our unique identities, technology, and how we interact within a decentralized society. They are publicly visible, non-transferable, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that can serve as a web3 user’s identity that is intrinsically tied to their owners.
What are the main Masa Soulbound Identity use cases?
You can now use your .soul name to unlock a wide variety of web3 use cases:
- DeFi loans
- Web3 KYC and ID Verification
- GameFi Applications
- Soulbound Token Single Sign-On
- Soulbound Airdrops — Souldrops
- One-Click NFT Whitelist Registration
- Proof-of-Identity for DAO governance voting
- Masa Green (Proof-of-Uniqueness for Sybil attack prevention)
- Easy-to-share domain name for your web3 identity
…and more
What is a .soul name SBT?
Web3 wallets have become the tool to unlock DeFi but there is a missing piece, Identity. Lack of identity leads to risk with an inability to verify the authenticity of users. Masa Soulbound Identity fixes this by bridging the gap between your wallet address and one’s own identity, while protecting privacy, and ensuring you maintain autonomy and control. Your .soul name is a unique domain name for your digital identity. Think ENS, but for your digital identity in web3.
What have been Masa’s key product launches to date?
Ethereum Goerli Testnet (October 2022): Users can mint a Masa Soulbound Identity, claim a .soul name, and mint a web3 credit score on Ethereum’s Goerli testnet, and trade .soulname on OpenSea. Read announcement blog post
Masa Devnet (October 2022): Select developers and projects can seamlessly integrate SBTs and Identity Management into web3 dapps through the Masa SDK. Select front-end developers can interact with the Masa Protocol through a boilerplate UI implementation of the Masa React SDK. Developers can access our v1 CLI and developer documentation. Read Devnet announcement blog post
SBT Single Sign-On (September 2022): Users can seamlessly sign-up or sign-on to web3 applications, while protecting privacy, and making it as simple as signing a transaction in your wallet. Dapps can authenticate against linked SBTs held in a user’s wallet. Read announcement blog post
Celo Alfajores Testnet (August 2022): Users can mint a Masa Soulbound Identity, claim a .soul name, and mint a web3 credit score on Celo’s Alfajores Testnet. Read announcement blog post, read launch learnings
How can developers and partners build with Masa?
To become web3’s premier soulbound identity protocol, Masa is striving to be the SBT infrastructure powering identity for the next generation of web3 projects.
In October 2022, we launched web3’s first SBT developer program, dubbed Masa Devnet. Starting November 2022, we will integrate and announce our partnerships with a wide range of web3 projects, servicing use cases across DeFi, GameFi, DAOs, NFTs, and beyond. Apply to join the Masa Devnet Waitlist.
On Masa Devnet, developers and projects can seamlessly integrate SBTs and Identity Management into web3 dapps through the Masa SDK. Below are the main types of SBTs we are able to support as of November 1, 2022:
Masa Soulname NFT (MSN)
A human-readable address — a domain name — that resolves to a person’s soul — think ENS for SBTs. .soul names are a combination of letters, numbers, and/or emojis can be used to create a soul name ( for example, vitalik.soul). Soulnames can be purchased on the Masa Protocol and traded on OpenSea. Masa is currently on the Goerli testnet only and will launch on the Ethereum mainnet soon.
Masa Identity SBT (MID)
The soul of a user’s identity in web3. All attributes of a user’s Soulbound Identity are linked and resolved through a user’s Masa Identity SBT.
Masa Web3 Credit Score SBT (MCR)
A web3-native credit score computed from a user’s web3 activity on the Ethereum blockchain.
Masa Green (MG-X)
A token that represents a human verified challenge, for example; Masa Green — Phone verifies that the holder of the MG-P SBT is a unique user who has completed a 2FA authentication challenge with a unique phone number.
Masa SBT Factory (MSF)
An SBT factory smart contract enabling developers to deploy a custom SBT smart contract using the Masa SBT Standard. Deployed smart contracts can be associated with a user’s core MID and are fully manageable using the Masa Protocol.
What is next for Masa?
As a premier identity protocol, Masa’s success is guided by the north star of SBT mints and API calls. We want to become the standard for web3 soulbound identity. Expect to see more Masa Soulbound Identity users; more use cases across DeFi, GameFi, DAO / Community, and user authentication; more developer and project adoption in the coming months.
Who is behind Masa?
Led by co-founders Brendan Playford and Calanthia Mei, Masa is built by a globally decentralized core team and is supported by ~75,000 community members hailing from 40 countries. Masa is frequently featured on premier media outlets, events, and industry whitepapers. Catch us on CNBC, Coindesk IDEAS, Hackernoon, New York Stock Exchange, TechCrunch, Financial Inclusion Week, LA Blockchain Summit, Ethereum World News, PYMNTS, Forbes, Business Insider, FinTech Times and many more.
How can you get involved?
- Join the Masa community on Discord, Telegram and Twitter. Stay in the know of the rapid developments of Masa protocol — we have major drops coming up in 2022 👀
- Want to build on Masa Soulbound Identity? Get access to developer documentations and SDKs by submitting your project here
- The Masa’s zero-knowledge oracle network has been running as an incentivized testnet. It is currently in beta and has completed its second incentivized phase (i.e. Phase 2 in October, 2022). Phase 3 will begin in 2023 and a formal date will be announced in due course.
- Interested in investing in the future of web3 identity? Email us at founders@masa.finance
