The Future of Onboarding: Social Graphs Over Secret Keys

The Problem: Airdrops and governance are broken by bots. The Solution: Proof-of-personhood via biometric Orb verification, creating a global, unique human identity layer.

• Key Benefit: Unlocks fair distribution and 1-person-1-vote governance at scale.
• Key Benefit: ~5M verified humans provides a foundational social graph for other dApps.

The Problem: Social platforms are walled gardens that own your network. The Solution: A composable, user-owned social graph built on Polygon, where followers and content are portable NFTs.

• Key Benefit: User sovereignty: Your social capital is a non-custodial asset.
• Key Benefit: Composability: Enables ~500+ apps to build on a shared social layer, from feeds to monetization.

The Problem: DApps require wallet connections, a massive UX cliff. The Solution: Embed interactive dApp experiences (mint, trade, vote) directly into social feeds via lightweight iFrames.

• Key Benefit: Zero-friction onboarding: Users act from their feed, no extension needed.
• Key Benefit: Viral distribution: Turns any cast into a potential ~10x engagement driver for protocols.

The Problem: Social graphs need verifiable, on-chain credentials beyond simple follows. The Solution: A public good infrastructure for making any type of attestation (KYC, skill, membership) to an Ethereum address.

• Key Benefit: Schema-flexible: Supports everything from Gitcoin Passport stamps to DAO roles.
• Key Benefit: Permissionless & portable: Credentials are chain-agnostic and owned by the user, not the attester.

The Problem: Mainstream users have social logins (Google, Apple) but crypto has wallets. The Solution: Embedded wallets that are created and managed via familiar Web2 OAuth, abstracting seed phrases entirely.

• Key Benefit: <2-minute onboarding: Users sign up like any other app, get a non-custodial wallet.
• Key Benefit: Hybrid model: Enables gradual education, can later export to a traditional wallet like MetaMask.

The Problem: Users won't pay for gas. The Solution: Protocols like Biconomy and Gelato enable ERC-4337 Account Abstraction, allowing dApps to sponsor transactions for users with high social graph value.

• Key Benefit: True zero-cost UX: Users never see a gas fee prompt.
• Key Benefit: Strategic onboarding: DApps can target sponsorship based on social influence or graph connectivity, optimizing CAC.

Social graphs are only as strong as their attestation mechanisms. A compromised or bribed attestor can mint unlimited fake identities, poisoning the entire network's trust layer.

• Sybil-resistance shifts from PoW/PoS capital to off-chain reputation, a softer target.
• Projects like Worldcoin attempt hardware-based proof-of-personhood, but face scalability and centralization critiques.
• A successful attack could lead to governance takeovers or massive airdrop farming draining protocol treasuries.

To personalize onboarding, the system must profile you. This creates a data honeypot antithetical to crypto's ethos.

• ERC-4337 account abstraction wallets powered by social recovery (e.g., Safe) still expose guardian graphs.
• Lens Protocol and Farcaster graphs reveal financial affiliations and influence networks.
• Leaked or sold social graph data enables hyper-targeted phishing, extortion, and discriminatory exclusion from DeFi.

Social attestations rely on validators (e.g., Github, Twitter, Discord). These are centralized platforms with their own terms of service.

• A platform ban equals a crypto identity ban, reversing permissionless ideals.
• Protocols like ENS and Proof of Humanity are vulnerable to coordinated de-platforming.
• Creates regulatory attack surface: OFAC can sanction not just addresses, but the social identities that bootstrap them.

Your social identity becomes your primary wallet. Switching chains or ecosystems may require rebuilding reputation from zero, creating sticky, fragmented liquidity.

• Ethereum social graph is not natively portable to Solana or Bitcoin L2s.
• This balkanization contradicts the interoperability promise of intents and bridges like LayerZero and Axelar.
• Results in worse pricing and reduced composability as users are locked into their initial social ecosystem.

Automated trust scoring using ML models (e.g., for airdrop eligibility) invites adversarial manipulation, creating a cat-and-mouse game that degrades system integrity.

• Attackers use GANs to generate plausible social profiles or transaction histories.
• Defenders must constantly retrain models, incurring high op-ex and risking false positives that lock out real users.
• This dynamic instability makes the trust layer unpredictable and unsuitable for high-value financial primitives.

To mitigate Sybil risks, regulators will pressure protocols to demand KYC-linked social graphs, fully reversing pseudonymity.

• Platforms like Circle (USDC) and Monerium already bridge crypto to legal identity.
• Turns DeFi into a surveilled, licensed activity, destroying its core value proposition.
• Creates a single point of failure: a national ID database breach doxxes a user's entire cross-chain financial life.

Seed phrases and gas fees are adoption killers. The cognitive load of securing a 12-word secret key creates a >90% drop-off rate for mainstream users. Every step—funding, signing, paying for gas—is a point of failure.

• Key Benefit 1: Eliminates the single biggest point of user abandonment.
• Key Benefit 2: Unlocks non-crypto-native behaviors like 'Sign in with Google' for wallets.

Abstract the wallet behind familiar social logins (Google, Discord, Telegram) and leverage MPC technology. The private key is sharded and managed by the service, removing user responsibility. This is the gateway for the next 100M+ users.

• Key Benefit 1: Onboarding time drops from minutes to ~10 seconds.
• Key Benefit 2: Enables seamless, gasless sponsored transactions for apps.

Social graphs solve identity, but users still don't want to think about chains or liquidity. Intent-based protocols let users declare a goal ('swap X for Y') and let a solver network handle routing, bridging, and execution across chains like Ethereum, Arbitrum, Solana.

• Key Benefit 1: User gets optimal outcome without understanding MEV or slippage.
• Key Benefit 2: Creates a new market for solver networks and cross-chain liquidity.

MPC and social logins introduce trusted operators. The battleground shifts from key security to provable security and decentralization of the signer network. Look for projects like Succinct, Espresso bringing light clients and decentralized sequencers to this layer.

• Key Benefit 1: Mitigates the systemic risk of a single MPC provider failure.
• Key Benefit 2: Enables credible neutrality and censorship resistance for mass-market apps.

Social login is the entry vector, but the real value is the persistent, portable social graph. Protocols that own the graph—the follower lists, reputations, and content—become the new platform. This is stickier than any DeFi APY.

• Key Benefit 1: Creates unbreakable user lock-in through network effects.
• Key Benefit 2: Enables hyper-targeted on-chain advertising and agent-based economies.

The winner isn't a single wallet app. It's the infrastructure layers that enable social onboarding, intent execution, and graph portability. The stack is: Social Auth -> MPC/TSS -> Intent Solver -> Cross-Chain Settlement.

• Key Benefit 1: Invest in the picks and shovels serving all front-ends.
• Key Benefit 2: Capture value from the entire transaction stack, not just one interface.