Identity’s Discourse I: Core Identity Is the Most Profound Need in On-Chain Self-Exploration

Identity is a subtle social construct that is often deconstructed in a group or political context. By observing the origin of identity, one can find that identity is in essence a coherent, information-composing, social-interaction-generated aggregate. In Symbolic Interactionism, human identity is conceptualized into different levels: role identity → group identity → social identity → core identity. Among them, role identity, such as occupation and education, has a weak tie with one’s self, while core identity has the most profound reflection of the self.

From Group Identity to more identities

PFP projects such as Punk, BAYC, Doodles, Azuki, Crypto Coven, etc., led the trend of anonymous avatar identity. People use PFP to represent their virtual selves, blending personal identity with PFP portraits. PFP creates a new Group Identity and a sense of belonging to its members: to own a PFP is to join a community, to extend one’s personal identity. What’s more, behind the PFP scene is a vivid culture of the crypto circles: Punk is crypto OGs, BAYC is new money/power, Azuki oriental subculture, Coven (largely) female with an artsy taste, etc. Therefore, the nature of PFP community is very similar to a typical Social Club: manifest vibes through art design, story telling, economic threshold, etc., so they can attract people who are congruous with the Club culture. Rooted in a highly vertical culture pattern, or with a clear and unified goal, these communities can quickly capture target audiences and strengthen niche belongingness. However, the verticality of community culture also affects the Group Identity of members, who tend to present self images more in line with the corresponding culture to fit in.

But this type of Group Identity also has significant limitations: cultural verticality is distinct from the multifaceted nature of human. Communities that rely on vertical culture to develop and grow are therefore unable to meet the needs of members for multi-faceted expression and development. There is a similar trend irl or Web 2. In the case of Web 2 social platforms, each platform has its own niche market, with pre-designed metrics, incentives, and algorithms to encourage users to act accordingly. In this way, different social media are like parallel universes, where users form personal portraits that exist separately in different universes.

With Web 3, this level of separation is called into question: we can have identities associations with multiple PFPs at the same time, and we are no longer content with the norm of identity being anchored in a particular virtual space. If the existing group limits us, we have to join and create new group systems to satisfy other identity needs.

Core identity is the most profound need in on-chain self-exploration

The identity in PFP, avatar, DAO member or other group context are all dependent on the medium of “groups”. In addition to these group identities, human also have a higher need — the construction of Core Identity.

Role identity → group identity → social identity → core identity. Level of emotional intensity brought by these identities increases in turn, the level of conscious awareness decreases in turn, and the level of inclusiveness/generality increases in turn. (From Theoretical Sociology)

Core identity is a deep level concept formed by one’s true understanding of self. It is activated by one’s automation and interaction with the reality, and is the external expression of personal feelings, thoughts and desires. In virtual space, core identity includes one’s personality, intelligence, past experience, skills, taste, relationship with others and society, etc.

Core identity is embodied in the form of “identity data”: we accumulate and construct core identity in Web 3 through our expressions, behaviors and interactions. If we consider human identity as a series of coherent, dynamic flows of information, the presentation of Core Identity will be the real-time capture of these information flows, as well as the real-time indexing, processing, computation and presentation of identity data.

Neither Web 2 nor Web 3 currently provides the hardware or software infrastructure to implement a complete and dynamic Core Identity building system. But at the same time, the autonomy and transparency of personal data provided by blockchain technologies, and the bottom-up, inclusive, and equitable contributor economy, present unprecedented opportunities for the development of Core Identity. This also means there are great possibilities in terms of exploring and designing identity systems in Web 3— identity systems that are bound to one’s self-expression, creative exploration, and behavioral trajectory. Systems that record and quantify behavioral data in real time, and that are more capable of selective self-image generation and social display.

6 basic dimensions of designing an identity system

In the process of presenting and extending Core Identity, Web 3 identity system needs to satisfy the autonomy, multi-dimension, richness, dynamic dimensions of identity. Also, product design needs to take more account of the fluidity of identity usage and privacy requirements. These dimensions are the foothold for developing Core Identity and will become important criteria for designing and examining identity products.

As shown in the below graph, game avatar (pink) is highly multidimensional due to its well-designed role attributes and props. Web 2 social identity (yellow) has a high level of richness because of the datalization of partial consciousness; The asset form of PFP identity allows it to be displayed and used across platforms and spaces conveniently; IRL physical identity is highly dynamic because it is bound to physical entities and can track personal behavior and self-understanding in real time.

The six dimensions of core identity are autonomy, multi-dimension, richness, dynamic, fluidity and privacy. The graph shows the measured values of game avatar identity, Web 2 social identity, PFP community identity and irl identity under these dimensions.

Among them:

• Autonomy is one’s independent control of identity, the ability and willingness to express oneself. In Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI), decentralized public key structure (DPKI) eliminates the need for third-party verification of login. Combined with decentralized data storage, they give back users the autonomy and control of wallet address. However, wallet address is only the identifier of identity, and data storage is the carrier. Identity autonomy also involves a more free and inclusive ecological design bound to soul values. Vitalik proposed the concept of soulbound, hoping to enhance the correlation between behaviors on chain and self-identity, and therefore enhance people’s willingness to express their real selves, by adopting non-transferable tokens. Despite the critics, only when the participation in Web 3 can reflect the human self, and this behavior is accepted and positively encouraged, can on-chain identity acquire autonomy.
• Mobility is the ability of identity to traverse different spaces and contexts. Identity in Web 2 is not fluid: the structure of data storage and permissions set on each platform result in identity silos. Web 3’s decentralized data storage architecture, along with the open and transparent indexing methods, enable the aggregation and flow of identities. This concept of identity aggregation refers to the idea that the credibility, contribution, creation, and other identity-related data accumulated in any space can be carried, shared, and utilized across space. As a result, our behavioral histories, identity portraits, and assets are no longer confined to a single virtual space. For example, The Sandbox currently only supports native NFT display, while non-native PFP, item NFT, etc., cannot be displayed smoothly on the platform. YugaLab responded to this by launching a metaverse project that supports multiple mainstream PFPs. However, this initiative does not take into account the flow of identities between different metaverses, which need to be bridged. Just like current chain-to-chain communication (“bridge” or the relay-chain-to-parachain architechture) , identity mobility needs to be considered in the underlying design, so as to enable data flow across metaverses.
• Multidimensionality is the attribute of identity involving many fields, aspects and conditions. Just as people themselves are multi-faceted, people can show their multifacetedness by holding PFPs with different cultures. In addition, as an extension of human identity, PFP can have a variety of attribute settings: by associating PFP with the owners’ behavior, identity data can be computed and transformed into PFP attribute scores, so that PFP can be “developed” to reflect the characteristics of the owner; In DAOs, members can have multiple skill attributes: each proof of contribution (brainstorming, organizing, development task, content release, etc) can be counted toward a member’s attribute score. In addition to the traditional resume sessions such as “work experience” or “project experience”, we now have a more real-time way to quantify members’ contributions and capabilities; Also, when a DAO was first established, it was forming a set of core values, which determined how it screens members: token holding (FWB), task skills (Rabbithole), in-person interview (Bankless), etc. Introducing more diversified screening methods and identity measurement methods can satisfy the multi-dimensional nature of individuals and communities.
• Richness refers to the amount of data that constructs on-chain identity. Ethereum in no doubt has the largest amount of data now, while Solana, Near, Polkadot and Polygon each have their own distinctive developer ecosystems. We have activities on different chains, leaving behind highly dispersed identity data. The richness of identity requires that data be easily stored, indexed, queried, and utilized: data indexing tools that index and create on-chain data set for subsequent query; query tools or APIs that make data processing, sharing and utilization convenient. In addition, Aggregated data services through address linking can enhance the richness of data. By connecting different address of the same individuals, one can aggregate identity fragments across networks.
• Dynamics refers to the process of self-renewal through interaction between human and the outside world. Both PFP and traditional resumes display a relatively static self-image. Although statics allow people to present a consistent and recognizable image to the outside, the information-flow and social-interaction nature of identity determines its high dynamic characteristics. Comparatively, these static forms of identity are rigid. Therefore, to selectively track and record people’s real-time behaviors can better reflect the dynamical changes of identity. For example, the use of POAP to award contribution behaviors and a Point System in DAO to quantify activities. Recording members’ trajectories such as event organization, task complement, volunteering and more can timely reflect one’s identity, and dynamically show it through quantification.
• Privacy refers to privacy preservation in identity data computation, storage and verification. At present, common privacy methods include TEE, ZKP, secure multi-party computing and so on. The main implementation scenarios include private transactions (hiding sender address and transaction amount), KYC authentication (i.e. sybil defense), and assets holding status verification (i.e. proving ownership of NFT without exposing the address). Among them, TEE was first proposed and implemented in hardware support in 2006, so far it is a relatively mature and desirable identity privacy solution. The idea is to provide a trusted execution environment, a “black box,” in which computation tasks are isolated and cannot interact with the outside world. On the other hand, ZKP can tell if a given statement is true without any useful information. It’s traditionally done through multiple interactions of “promise → random challenge → response”. It has high requirements on computing power, but recent year ZKP has become a popular privacy scheme and there are several ZKP general class systems.

Last

The definition and construction of identities has become one of the most urgent issues in Web 3. Identity is not just about wallets, transaction data, credit, or perceived in a political or communal context. It is a data system generated by human beings with conscious expression, interaction and actions. Core identity is the most profound on-chain self need. The Web 3 identity space can only help self-discovery if a meaningful on-chain extension of human identity is achieved.

This is the first article in the series of Identity Discourse. The Series overturns the preconceptions of Web 3 identity through deconstruction, partial dissection and reconstruction, hosting an in-depth discussion of Web 3 identity.

Are you interested in the development of Web 3 identity? Join us at Identity Discourse DAO, a think tank, to research, discuss and create around Web3.0 identity from a humanity and technological perspective.