.bit Rebrands to d.id: DID Shaping Communities and Individuals
Embracing the new paradigm.
Today, we are excited to announce that .bit is transitioning to a new brand identity - d.id. Accompanying this rebranding, we will introduce a revamped official website, complete with a new domain name(d.id), brand design, and an enhanced product matrix. Over the past two years since the inception of .bit, thanks to the joint efforts of our community and team, we have achieved remarkable milestones: about 280,000 .bit names have been registered and over 140 partners have integrated with us. As our grasp of DID (Decentralized Identity) becomes more profound, we have steadily been shaping the future DID ecosystem. With this brand evolution, our perspective on this emerging DID ecosystem and our team's overarching mission will be articulated more clearly.
Three central themes concerning communities and individuals
We have consistently focused on three pivotal themes associated with communities and individuals. We believe that these themes carry long-term significance.
The relationship between the community and the individual.
How can people with shared ideas, values, and hobbies come together to form a community? How will the community recognize its members? And, as part of the organization, how can an individual gain a sense of identity and belonging within the group?
Community governance and collaboration.
When individuals from around the globe come together to form a community, the questions arise: How can these members collaborate and co-create seamlessly? And how can different communities work together and govern effectively?
Proof of personhood
In an age where AI's capabilities are rapidly expanding, what defines our human uniqueness, and how can we ensure it's recognized?
Historically, these universal, persistent questions haven't received satisfactory answers. Yet, the evolution of cryptographic thought and advancements in blockchain technology are offering fresh perspectives on these challenges. We believe that DID holds the solution.
Rethinking Identity
Historically, individual identities and community memberships were bound to centralized platforms, platforms that are operated in isolation from each other, fragmenting our identities across them. Even more concerning, our digital existence could be readily wiped out from a platform's database due to its vague policies, potentially erasing the brand and social connections we painstakingly established.
We assert that our identity should not be confined or dictated by any singular platform; instead, it should stand independent of any application. An individual's personal identity is their intrinsic asset, just as community memberships and relationships are central assets to the community itself. By detaching identity from applications, we are on a path to genuine ownership and control over our own identities. The emergence of Bitcoin marked the first time we could genuinely control our assets, heralding the dawn of the era of programmable assets. Similarly, blockchain-based DID is set to empower us to truly master our identities, ushering in an era of programmable identity. With the combination of programmable assets and identities, the vision of a programmable society starts to emerge, the vision of a programmable society begins to take shape.
So what exactly is DID? It is a subject that has been discussed for quite some time. Various DID products have surfaced, but none seem to address real-world challenges effectively. Here, we present the model that embodies our understanding of DID:
DID = Decentralized Identifier * Soulbound Tokens * Scenarios
DID is a system wherein each individual starts with a decentralized name, like 'tim.swiftie'. When this individual engages in social activities, the corresponding contributions, achievements, and experiences are attached to this name via SBT. This name, now enriched with these contributions, achievements, and experiences, represents their decentralized identity. This identity becomes their credential for participating in numerous other social activities. Various applications or scenarios will then offer services based on this identity information.
This is somewhat similar to our real world: We are born with a name, and our contributions/achievements/experiences are all linked to this name, molding our individual identities and granting us opportunities to engage in other social activities. However, the distinction lies in the fact that a DID is an identity entirely under our control. DID is trustworthy, enduring, and not tethered to any specific platform. It forms the cornerstone of our approach to the three central challenges.
DID-based Solutions
.bit - Paving the way for DID-based communities
.bit is a Barrier-free DID issuance platform tailored for communities, and also a robust DID system for individuals.
Through .bit, communities can issue their own DIDs with a single click, laying the foundation of a DID-based community. In this framework, a DID bearing a community-specific suffix acts as an exclusive badge of membership, solidifying one's affiliation.
For example, members of the Red Cross could have DIDs like henry.icrc, clara.icrc; fans of Tylor Swift could have tim.swiftie, mia.swiftie. These DIDs with the same suffix clearly define community membership boundaries, simplifying intra-member recognition and fostering a potent sense of identity and belonging. Such a DID-based community represents an innovative approach to consolidating like-minded individuals with shared values, principles and interests into a community.
Soulfrag.xyz - The first DID-based reputation management system, ensuring every community contribution is recognized
In every community, members bring value through diverse contributions. For the vitality and cohesion of a community, maintaining a lasting record of each member's input, achievements, and experiences is paramount. The SBT (Soulbound Token) stands out as the premier medium for encapsulating members' reputations.
An innovative design of SoulFrag is that the SBTs issued via SoulFrag are permanently linked to a community member's DID. Additionally, we offer diverse SBT types to record various reputational aspects. When we view someone's DID, it's not just a confirmation of membership; it paints a vivid picture of their contributions and standing within the community. The DID-based reputation system SoulFrag serves as a powerful motivator, encouraging members to collaborate and co-create effectively.
Voty.xyz - The first DID-based governance system, ensuring every voice is heard and valued.
Historically, community governance systems often struggled, leaving us questioning the legitimacy and contribution of the most vocal participants.
Only those holding a DID with the specified community suffix can both introduce and vote on community proposals. Moreover, the significance of each vote is influenced by a myriad of factors, from tenure within the community and role to individual contributions, as denoted by SBTs awarded through SoulFrag.
Voty streamlines community governance, ushering in an era of transparency and efficacy, ensuring deserving voices resonate.
d.id Profile - A DID-based profile, helping everyone express their proof of personhood
In this age, where AI is rapidly advancing, capable of crafting art, melodies, and literature — once believed exclusive to human creativity — it's clear AI can emulate and even augment our cognitive processes to some degree.
Yet, there’s one domain it can't replicate: our personal experiences. Each experience is unique, immutable and it's what makes us human. We, as social beings, innately seek to share our stories and resonate with others with similar tales. d.id Profile is designed to elegantly showcase these very experiences, contributions, and creations.
These DID-based products aim to address the three major issues to a degree. Yet they are just a start. Our ambition is for these innovations to inspire developers, prompting them to embrace the DID paradigm and collaboratively navigate the challenges at hand."
DID as a Service: Giving every community/brand/individual a DID
The concept of a community is vast and varied, encompassing fan clubs, brand loyalists, gaming communities, DAOs, interest groups, NGOs, and clubs. Central to these communities are the members and their interrelationships, assets that DID embodies perfectly. In an envisioned future, every community will proudly bear its distinct DID, unlocking unprecedented opportunities. Yet, for many, the intricacies of issuing a customized DID and ensuring its widespread applicability can be daunting. To bridge this gap, we're thrilled to introduce "DID as a Service", facilitating seamless DID issuance for any community with one single click, while guaranteeing extensive application compatibility.
Before the advent of ERC20, issuing a token meant building a whole public chain from scratch. However, with ERC20, token issuance became as simple as deploying a contract. This has brought about a huge boom in asset issuance, paving the way for the prosperous Web3 ecosystem we see today.
Similarly, before the launch of d.id's "DID as a service", the issuance of DID required deploying contracts and seeking support across various applications. With our service, all it takes is a single .bit to distribute a DID. This innovation greatly lowers the threshold for communities to issue DIDs, opening doors for countless communities to benefit. We anticipate this will surely create a new wave of prosperity and accelerate our progress towards a programmable society.
Barrier-free Web3
We believe that the value and potential of Web3 should be accessible to everyone, not just tech insiders. Therefore, we'd like to propose the principle of Barrier-free Web3. It is both a commitment to our users and an advocacy for the industry. Its core concepts are: Seedless; Gasless; Decentralized. We implement this principle in all our products. This means that anyone will no longer need to care about private keys, transaction fees, or any technical knowledge related to Web3, but just use d.id's products with ease.
New brand, brand new mission
Helping people better organize, collaborate, and share through DID.
After more than two years of deep reflection and hands-on experience, we are convinced that DID will definitely bring new possibilities to communities and individuals. It promises a reimagined definition of communities and personal identities. We see a future society underpinned by decentralized identities as both valuable and compelling. We are committed to building and exploring DID, we strive to help people transcend the existing information societal structures, enabling them to organize more effectively. We envision a place where we can all organize, collaborate, create and share in ways previously unimagined. Our conviction is steadfast, and we look forward to the rise of DID-based communities and innovations. Let us all build an inclusive Web3.0 landscape together.
d.id Team
2023.09