The Future of Identity: From Personal Data to Contribution Graphs

Legacy identity is fragmented across centralized platforms (Google, Facebook) that monetize user data without consent. Users have no ownership and face constant privacy breaches.

• ~$200B+ annual market for data brokers.
• Zero portability of reputation across platforms.
• Creates perverse incentives for surveillance capitalism.

A user-owned, composable record of on-chain actions (governance votes, Gitcoin grants, protocol usage) that serves as a portable reputation primitive.

• Enables under-collateralized lending via proof-of-history.
• Powers sybil-resistant governance for protocols like Optimism and Arbitrum.
• ERC-6551 token-bound accounts make identities programmable assets.

ZK tech (e.g., zkSNARKs, zk-STARKs) enables selective disclosure, allowing users to prove attributes (e.g., "I'm a DAO member") without revealing underlying data.

• Projects like Worldcoin (proof-of-personhood) and Sismo (ZK badges) are early adopters.
• Enables private credential verification for DeFi and employment.
• Reduces on-chain gas costs for verification by ~90%.

Networks like Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS) and Ceramic provide the base layer for creating, storing, and querying verifiable claims about any identity.

• EAS has issued 10M+ attestations.
• Enables trust-minimized social graphs for Farcaster, Lens.
• Creates a universal schema for contribution data, moving beyond soulbound tokens (SBTs).

Contribution graphs become collateral substitutes. A proven history of on-chain income (via Superfluid streams), governance participation, or grant funding can unlock credit.

• Goldfinch-style lending but for individuals.
• ERC-20 rewards tokens become verifiable income streams.
• Reduces capital inefficiency in DeFi by unlocking trillions in human capital.

Without robust sybil resistance (e.g., Proof-of-Personhood), contribution graphs are gamed. Centralized attestation issuers also recreate the data silo problem.

• BrightID, Idena are early P-o-P experiments.
• Requires decentralized oracle networks for off-chain data.
• Vitalik's "Soulbound" vision hinges on solving this.

One-token-one-vote is easily gamed. DAOs need to measure genuine engagement, not just capital concentration.

• Sybil attacks dilute governance and grant farming.
• Voter apathy from whales or mercenary capital.
• Lack of context on a voter's history or expertise.

EigenLayer's restaking cryptoeconomy enables portable, slashed reputation. Builders like Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS) create verifiable contribution records.

• Programmable trust: Reputation is a composable, stake-backed asset.
• Cross-protocol portability: Your DAO rep can be used in DeFi or other governance.
• Slashing for malice: Bad actors can lose staked assets, not just social standing.

Your reputation on Farcaster, contributions to Optimism, and Gitcoin grants are siloed. This limits composability and user leverage.

• No unified score for undercollateralized lending.
• Repeated verification for every new app or DAO.
• Inability to monetize your on-chain resume.

Protocols building the aggregation and query layer for contribution graphs. They turn raw activity into a portable reputation score.

• Graph aggregation: Synthesize data from Lens, ENS, Snapshot, and more.
• ZK-Proofs of Humanity: Prove you're real without doxxing (see Worldcoin).
• Developer SDKs: Let any app integrate reputation-as-a-service in ~100 lines of code.

DAOs and protocols struggle to identify and reward their most valuable members beyond simple transaction volume.

• Top contributors are undervalued and under-retained.
• Retroactive funding (like Optimism's RPGF) is manually intensive and subjective.
• No clear ROI on community grants and incentives.

Algorithmic reputation engines that automatically map and value contributions across Discord, GitHub, and forums.

• Automated cred scores: Weight and score activity based on community-set parameters.
• Transparent reward distribution: Funds flow via Superfluid streams or direct payouts.
• Network effects: High-cred members attract more high-quality contributors, creating a virtuous cycle.

User data is locked in corporate silos, creating fragmented identities and enabling extractive advertising models. Portability is a myth.

• No user ownership or control over data trails.
• Zero composability across platforms like Google, Facebook, or X.
• Value accrues to platforms, not the users generating the data.

Shift from 'who you are' to 'what you do'. A user-owned, cryptographically verifiable record of actions, achievements, and reputations across protocols.

• ZK-Proofs enable selective disclosure (e.g., prove you're a top-100 Uniswap LP without revealing wallet).
• Graphs become collateral for underwriting in DeFi (e.g., Aave, Compound).
• Native composability for building cross-protocol reputation (e.g., Gitcoin Passport, EigenLayer AVS).

Contribution graphs transform reputation into a programmable financial primitive, moving beyond simple Sybil resistance.

• Underwrite zero-collateral loans based on verifiable contribution history.
• Automate governance delegation (e.g., to delegates with proven expertise in MakerDAO, Optimism).
• Dynamic airdrops & rewards that target genuine contributors, not farmers.

The plumbing for this future is being built now by protocols creating standard schemas for off-chain and on-chain verification.

• Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS) provides a standard for on/off-chain attestations.
• Worldcoin's World ID offers global proof-of-personhood as a base credential.
• Chainlink Functions can connect real-world data (e.g., credit score, diploma) to the graph.

Platforms built on contribution graphs monetize via aligned incentives, not ads. Users pay for value, not with their data.

• Protocols charge fees for graph queries and attestation services.
• Users subscribe to premium reputation analytics or curation.
• Value flow reverses: users capture a share of the economic activity they enable.

The architectural shift starts today. Developers must design for verifiable contributions from day one.

• Integrate EAS for any user achievement or review system.
• Use ZK tooling (e.g., RISC Zero, zkEmail) to verify private off-chain data.
• Design for composability: make graph nodes portable assets, not locked states.