The Web3 community has been increasingly focused on improving identity solutions available to consumers. Last year, the introduction of Soulbound tokens (SBT) allowed users to define themselves securely. Despite the initial hype around SBT gradually subsiding over the last months, they remain a focus of the development community. On Mar. 1, Masa Finance, a protocol built on SBT technology, announced that it would deploy its identity solution on the carbon-negative Celo blockchain. This could prove to be a transformative move for identity solutions in the industry.
The Celo ecosystem, boasting over 10 million active wallets, is introducing the Masa “Prosperity Passport” to give users a unique Web3 identity solution. Through this, users can mint a range of SBTs related to their digital life, such as an authenticated user verification token, a credit score token, a community reputation token, and even their .celo domain name. Calanthia Mei, the co-founder of Masa Finance, believes that SBTs are the next breakthrough technology for Web3 user customization. She explains that Web3 needs a trust layer, and SBTs offer a composable and scalable alternative for both projects and users to build trust.
The “Prosperity Passport” by Celo projects is a solution that enables access to various services such as microloans and universal basic income. Mei sees this identity solution as a way to bridge the gap between Web3 and global users, hoping to bring in the next 1 billion authentic users.
To date, 250,000 Masa Soulbound Identities and nearly 300,000 Masa.Soul Names have been minted, and at the end of 2022, the protocol saw a partnership with MetaMask Institutional, Cobo, and Gnosis DAO for exclusive identity verification. Sumitomo Mitsui has also revealed its exploration of SBT technology for social reasons, and the European Union recently proposed zero-knowledge proofs for digital IDs. With these advancements, SBTs are seen as a possible solution to digital identity and citizenship in the metaverse of the future.
