A central concern for many in the Web3 community has been improving the identity solutions available to consumers. Last year, the Soul-Bound Token (SBT) introduced a new way for users to define themselves.
While the SBT hype has died down over the past few months, they haven't disappeared from the scene. On March 1, SBT protocol Masa Finance announced that it will be deployed on the carbon-negative Celo blockchain to create new identity solutions.
Over 10 million wallets active in the Celo ecosystem will be able to generate Masa "Prosperity Passports". This new Web3 identity solution allows users to mint various SBTs related to their digital lives, such as Authenticated User Verification SBTs, Credit Score SBTs, Community Reputation SBTs, and ".celo" Domain SBTs.
Calanthia Mei, co-founder of Masa Finance, said that non-fungible tokens (NFT) are the first pioneers of Web3 user customization, and SBT is the next breakthrough technology. The Prosperity Passport solution also allows access to other utilities of the Celo project that integrate the technology, such as microfinance and universal basic income. According to the announcement, the protocol has already minted 250,000 Masa Soulbound identities, and nearly 300,000 Masa.Soul Names.
At the end of 2022, MetaMask Institutional, Cobo, and Gnosis DAO joined forces to create an SBT project to bring exclusivity and identity verification to its users. Back in December, Japanese financial firm Sumitomo Mitsui also revealed that it was researching SBT for social reasons.
These new digital assets are considered as possible solutions for the future of digital identity and digital citizenship in the Metaverse.
While not directly referring to digital assets, on Feb. 9, the European Union mentioned the use of zero-knowledge proofs for future digital IDs.
