Soulbound + SSI = ❤️
The more I read the criticism of soulbound tokens, the more I am convinced that this is just the right extension to the SSI that will enable decentralized reputation for people, organizations and things.
Let’s explore how SSI & SBT work together. I want to dig into some of arguments that author poses against SBT technology.
- “Evaluating a claim requires knowing who the issuer is”
Tooling for on-chain reputation is being and will be developed: registry of issuer reputation, revocation lists, Sybil resistance mechanisms, schemas and taxonomies managers
2. “Claims are deeply subjective”
True. This is the task for the application layer, not a protocol. It has to weed out the truth from the not completely truth and outright spam and show it to the user in the sexiest UI possible.
3. “Claims should be as private as possible”
True. Reputation tokens are not automatically public as soon as they have an on-chain representation. You can solve this in a myriad of different way from having a link in SBT that points towards encrypted credential stored offchain (via IPFS, Ceramic, Kepler) to using Lit protocol that ensures onchain encryption, privacy preservation and selective sharing.
4. “Claims should be cheap to make”
SBTs won’t be issued on the mainnet where it costs $50 but using rollups/xDAI where the transaction cost is $0.00001-$0.0001. You can even launch your own Cosmos zone or Polkadot parachain where it’s even cheaper.
5. “Claims don’t need to be in an ordered transaction log and don’t need decentralized consensus”
True. But VCs need to be trustlessly executable & accessible. Otherwise we get a dystopian future of some SSI provider owning and controlling YOUR data on THEIR AWS server.
6. “Many people don’t understand that blockchains can contain false information.”
That’s too bad for those who believe this but keep in mind Verifiable Credentials and ANY other form of digital (and even analog) data NEVER guarantees veracity of the information.
