Decentralized Identity: Your Reputation Travels With You - a16z crypto

Likewise, on-chain data could be used to gauge engagement or interest in specific creators or brands. A music artist, for example, could easily identify their top fans based on platform-agnostic, on-chain interactions and reward them with exclusive access or other perks. In the financial realm, decentralized identity could enable an internet-native... See more

In the realm of talent sourcing, decentralized identities promise “open CVs” based on fine-grained records of professional activities and accomplishments. This could allow for a fuller picture of someone’s past work and provide more granular insight into their skills and contributions.

And in addition to organizing the raw data, it’s important to have systems that aggregate and simplify the information contained in a person’s wallet to make that information more clearly interpretable and comparable across individuals.

ontextualizing information explains why you’ve earned or bought an artefact. Earning an NFT for a contribution to a project, for example, should provide context about why you earned it and what skills you demonstrated.

The wealth of information stored on-chain could even upend markets as big as search and discovery. A range of matching algorithms will be enabled by the openly queryable nature of decentralized identities; whereas previously, matching algorithms could only be developed by whoever had access to our data. Additionally, until now we’ve only been able ... See more

To make decentralized identity useful and widespread, it is important to introduce on-ramps for people to record their experiences and affinities on the blockchain, such as their educational accomplishments, professional achievements, or fanships. Some companies are already tackling this challenge. Violet aims to authenticate off-chain, personally ... See more

By moving identities on-chain, we could upend archaic financial processes and provide equitable access to capital, re-architect how talent is matched with projects, and provide entirely new paradigms for recognizing and compensating labor online.

Once all this identity data has been recorded on-chain, we’ll need systems in place to map and interpret it so that it makes sense to the wallet holder and those they interact with. Since wallets are also used for mundane content storage and transactions, this task is especially challenging: wallets accrue a lot of noisy data.

Managing reputation information also requires publicly accessible data standards — agreed upon formats for, say, “what an attestation of a contribution looks like” or “how to formulate an on-chain record.” Structuring these inputs to reputation ensures interoperability, both (1) enabling people to meaningfully combine parts of their decentralized i... See more