Why the 'Soul' in Soulbound Is More Than a Metaphor

One-token-one-vote systems are trivial to game, leading to governance attacks and mercenary capital. Proof-of-personhood projects like Worldcoin and BrightID are stopgaps, not solutions.

• Key Benefit: Enables one-person-one-vote models for DAOs like Optimism's Citizen House.
• Key Benefit: Creates non-financialized reputation for protocols like Gitcoin Grants.

Off-chain attestations (e.g., university degrees, employment history) are siloed and unverifiable. SBTs enable self-sovereign credential graphs anchored to a persistent identity.

• Key Benefit: Zero-knowledge proofs allow selective disclosure (e.g., prove age without revealing DOB).
• Key Benefit: Enables under-collateralized lending via verifiable income streams, a core thesis for protocols like ArcX.

A 'Soul' is a smart contract wallet (like Safe{Wallet}) that accumulates SBTs. This becomes a composable object for the entire DeFi and social stack.

• Key Benefit: Enables programmable privacy—different SBT subsets can be revealed to Aave (for credit) vs. a DAO (for voting).
• Key Benefit: Forms the basis for decentralized society (DeSoc), where trust graphs replace financial capital as the core coordination mechanism.

Protocols like Optimism and Arbitrum distribute massive governance power via token airdrops, but token-based voting is inherently gameable by whales and sybil farmers. This undermines the legitimacy of 'community-led' decisions.

• Key Benefit 1: SBTs enable one-person-one-vote models by binding voting power to a verified, unique identity.
• Key Benefit 2: Creates sybil-resistant reputation graphs for delegated voting, as seen in Gitcoin Passport and Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS) integrations.

Masa builds a decentralized identity network where users own and monetize their personal data—their 'soul'—via zero-knowledge Soulbound Tokens (zkSBTs). This turns identity from a passive attribute into an active, tradable asset.

• Key Benefit 1: Users can grant selective data access to dApps for rewards, creating a user-owned data marketplace.
• Key Benefit 2: Provides privacy-preserving proof of real-world attributes (e.g., KYC status, credit score) for DeFi and social apps without exposing raw data.

Traditional DeFi lending (e.g., Aave, Compound) requires over-collateralization, locking up excessive capital and excluding users with good reputation but limited crypto assets. This is inefficient and limits credit markets.

• Key Benefit 1: SBT-based credit scores enable under-collateralized loans by staking reputation, not just capital.
• Key Benefit 2: Creates portable, composable credit history across protocols, a foundational primitive for real-world asset (RWA) onboarding and social recovery systems.

Sismo provides a ZK Badge system built on top of the Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS). It allows users to aggregate and prove credentials from multiple sources (e.g., GitHub, Twitter, ENS) into a single, private SBT, without revealing underlying accounts.

• Key Benefit 1: Data minimization and privacy: Prove you're a top-100 Gitcoin donor without revealing your exact donation history or wallet address.
• Key Benefit 2: Interoperable reputation legos: Badges from Sismo can be used as gatekeeping credentials across any integrated dApp, from gated DAOs to loyalty programs.

Social platforms like Lens Protocol and Farcaster create siloed reputation. Your influence and connections on one platform don't port to another, and proving 'real' social capital is difficult, leading to bot infestations and low-trust environments.

• Key Benefit 1: SBTs enable sovereign, portable social graphs. Your follower network and content history become verifiable assets you own.
• Key Benefit 2: Enables context-specific reputation: A user could have a 'Developer' SBT from ETHGlobal, a 'Curator' SBT from Mirror, and a 'Governance' SBT from Compound, all composable in a single profile.

EAS is the base schema registry and attestation primitive for the soul layer. It allows anyone to make trust statements (attestations) about anything, which can then be packaged into SBTs by protocols like Sismo and Masa.

• Key Benefit 1: Schema standardization creates a universal language for reputation, credentials, and approvals across the ecosystem.
• Key Benefit 2: Permissionless and composable: Unlike closed systems, any dApp can read, write, and build upon attestations, preventing vendor lock-in and fostering network effects.