Identity In Web3 — Perks & Problems
Identity should be one of the biggest objects to discuss in Web3 as it does not only represent the individual owning it but the pros and cons involved with other stakeholders. This post will try to explain all related aspects of “Identity” issues in web3 that everyone should have a look through it once.
What Can Be Your Identity In Web3?
Let’s briefly clarify the term “identity” and “web3” first before digging deeper into the topic.
- Web3: Web3 is the next step in the web/Internet evolution, and it has the potential to be just as revolutionary and paradigm-shifting as Web2. Web3’s main principles include decentralization, openness, and increased customer efficiency. The following are some of Web3’s important features:
1/ Web3’s architecture incorporates the concept of censorship resistance, allowing anyone on the network to use a service without requiring permission.
2/ No one has the authority to prevent another person from using a service.
3/ Network costs are paid with the network’s native token, known as “Gas” fees.
Web3 is a premise that each internet user will have a unique online identification, similar to an email address, that can be natively connected to any software package and kept on a blockchain. A portion of a person’s internet behavior would then be “on-chain,” meaning that it would be public and easily searchable via their own crypto wallet as part of their “decentralized identity.”
- Identity: The attribute of being identical is defined as identity. Identical to yourself. Identity is “the state of being identical to something described.”
In everyday usage, a credential is an affirmation, evidence, or proof of qualification, capability, or authority provided by a third party with the necessary authority or assumed competence to do so to an entity, either individual or person. This can be proof of authority, status, rights, privileges, or the like. Credentials are essentially a way to authenticate one’s identity.
Identity in Web3:
The rise of Web3, which fundamentally integrated economic transfers, has refocused attention on the development of robust identity systems. Despite the fact that decentralized identity (DID) has received less attention than DeFi, NFTs, and DAOs, we believe it is a fundamental technological primitive that enables native Web3 apps. We can substantially accelerate the speed of invention by generating a larger design space if we create a shared, flexible, and resilient identity layer. This identity is incorporated in one place (could be your wallet) and there is no central authority or hyper-identity provider controlling this personal data.
People would be able to take their entire self with them as they navigate cyberspace if decentralized identity becomes widely adopted: their affinities and experiences are represented in everything they’ve created, contributed to, earned, and owned online, regardless of platform. This would be closer to how things work in the actual world, where our belongings and reputations are tied to us rather than the areas we occupy; we can carry them with us and utilize them whatever we want. Your identity in Web3 seems to be one, but in fact, it is a combination of a diverse package:
- Personal identity — scrutinize your biometrics (fingerprint, eye scan, etc) or legal identity (driver’s license, passport, etc).
- Collateralized identity — proved through what you own (in this case it could be digital assets such as NFTs).
- Transactional identity — utilize your wallet address to look into your transaction history.
- Reputational identity — establish you on the basis of your prior employment, participation, and licenses.
- Data identity — determine your identity based on the data you own or have access to.
- Social identity — art, usernames, social graphs (people you follow online), and other elements can be included in self-curated profiles — define “who you are as a person”.
All of these things shall be included in your identity in web3 and become one, not separate in the web2 era anymore (for example, in web2, you will have 1 Facebook account, 1 Twitter profile, and 1 driver’s license, separately). Users have control, security, privacy, and portability with decentralized IDs.
Identity In Web3 — Decentralized ID & Why Is It Important?
Currently, digital trust is based on frequent audits. A third party is required to certify or verify an attribute or claim in order to prove it. In practice, this means that your information is being shared with a third party, and you have no control over how it is used and preserved. As a result, security could be jeopardized.
Because it’s all developed and controlled by companies rather than individuals, this identity paradigm is fundamentally flawed. Threat actors will find it a utopia in many ways, as they will be able to target data silos and individuals within organizations. Data subjects might quickly lose track of what data is stored and by whom over time. Or, in the absence of notification, which data has been corrupted.
Decentralized identity, unlike other web2 profiles, is not ephemeral. This means that, for example, an NFT of a diploma in your crypto wallet would become a permanent academic accreditation. Similarly, any piece of content you publish on the internet will be eternally linked to you (unless you choose to delete it). Furthermore, public histories could be used to demonstrate that you were early to a movement or involved in a project before it became popular. This means, no one can fake being you anymore, your identity is merely you!
More importantly, no one can actually take control over your traces, what you showcase is one identity proof (e.g. your ID wallet) that contains other important information but only you know what’s inside the wallet. Web 3.0 is about privacy, security, openness, and interoperability first and foremost. As a result, it must be built using open standards, with self-sovereign identity (SSI) and verifiable credentials playing a key role.
Problems Of Identity In Web3 — The Future
However, before we can mainstream decentralized identification, we need to build systems that map people’s meaningful off-chain experiences and affiliations onto the blockchain. Then we’ll need to create processes to standardize, process, and prioritize the data that will be added to the chain. We’ll have to overcome endemic difficulties to decentralized identification along the road, such as the absence of context surrounding on-chain data and issues acquiring access to the decentralized web. This means that the future of decentralized ID still depends profoundly on the development of technology, its mass adoption, and the speed of accumulating users’ digital footprint history at best.
The second thing is when users have total control over data, the marketing teams, and data analysis teams will encounter vast challenges for not being able to proceed to come up with the customer’s insight. Decentralized ID certainly brings huge benefits to users in terms of privacy and security, it requires businesses to quickly adapt or lose track of their customers in long term. Nevertheless, that future is way further from what we could expect, we’re in the middle of the transition from web2 to web3, we have time to work it out and gradually adapt to this change. Moreover, the adoption of web3 does not completely get rid of the existence of web1 and web2, there’s no persuasive evidence for that yet, so the integrated marketing strategies may remain strong.
In fact, decentralized ID is a key component for NFT 2.0 generation that can surely leverage NFT’s experiences. UMBΛLΛ MΞTΛVΞRSΞ is launching the first NFTs collection called UMBΛLΛ NFTs that pledge to be the next bomb in the field with the function of NFT 2.0 incorporated DID as an essential part.
Stay updated with us through our channels! We surely will give you a breath-taking experience with this generation of NFT 2.0.
