Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, believes that he has identified the next big thing in crypto. He wants blockchains to help in creating and managing our identities both online and offline, with the help of “soulbound token (SBT).”
SBT Coins to Work Like NFTs, but Not Transferable
In the recently released paper, “Decentralized Society: Finding Web3’s Soul,” which he prepared alongside Glen Weyl (Microsoft) and Puja Ohlhaver (Falashbot), Buterin outlines a cryptographic tool that closely resembles non-fungible tokens (NFTs), but to be used as a type of living, transparent, and unchangeable CV.
NFTs are used to provide other digital media with a type of easy-to-trace identity and a price tag. SBTs will work in a similar way but are designed to be unique to a person’s life and not transferable. The primary goal is to create a type of credentialing system, linked to the blockchain system.
“Imagine a world where most participants have Souls [digital wallets] that store SBTs corresponding to a series of affiliations, memberships, and credentials,” reads a section of the paper. Institutions, such as colleges, would issue their graduates with SBTs to serve as a sort of accreditation, a diploma, degree etc.
The main advantage would be that the transparent record of an individual’s achievements will be impossible to tamper with. Also, the tokens can be plugged into the world of Web3 to open a host of new use cases. The holder would also be in full control over his/her documents. Therefore, it would be a huge improvement to the current system where the documents are maintained by third parties.
Beyond Human: Here is What Will Happen in Metaverse
SBTs and metaverse are all focused on developing online reputation. Therefore, when a board dies out, people get a huge sense of loss. This is likely to get carried over as people integrate their real lives into the digital world. SBTs are the pinnacle of this sort of loss and feeling.
So, what happens when you die on the metaverse? You will continue being a living being. Indeed, Buterin already believes in some transhuman viewpoints. He argues that we might be able to live forever with the correct combination of lifestyle and drugs.
HQ Han, who runs ecosystem growth for Protocol Labs, said that he agrees with Buterin by indicating that “What happens to a person’s belongings when they die in the physical world is determined by legal processes, but in the metaverse code is law.” Han adds that what is more important when one dies in the metaverse is that we are able to leave something behind.
