Gated Content

Brands use token ownership as a prerequisite for purchasing limited-edition physical products or unlocking exclusive e-commerce perks.

• Examples: Sneaker drops, fashion collections, or event tickets reserved for token holders.
• Mechanism: A web3 storefront integrates a wallet connector to verify the required token is present before allowing a purchase or revealing a secret store URL.
• Benefit: Drives loyalty, reduces bot activity, and creates verifiable proof of community status.

Developers gate access to software tools, premium APIs, or cloud services using cryptographic proofs of payment or membership.

• Examples: A developer platform offering higher rate limits or advanced features to token holders.
• Mechanism: An API gateway checks for a valid, non-expired Soulbound Token (SBT) or a subscription NFT before processing requests.
• Benefit: Enables transparent, user-owned subscription models that are resistant to chargebacks and easily transferable.

Educational platforms and professional organizations issue verifiable credentials as tokens, which then gate access to advanced courses, job boards, or certification materials.

• Examples: A coding bootcamp issues an NFT certificate that unlocks an alumni network and career portal.
• Mechanism: Completion of a course mints a Soulbound Token to the learner's wallet, which serves as a permanent, verifiable record and access key.
• Benefit: Creates portable, user-controlled credentials that prevent fraud and enable new trust models.

Users can gate sensitive personal data, allowing them to share specific verified attributes (like age or citizenship) with a service without revealing their full identity.

• Examples: Proving you are over 18 to access a site without submitting a passport.
• Mechanism: Using Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) or Verifiable Credentials, a user generates a proof that they hold a credential from a trusted issuer meeting specific criteria.
• Benefit: Enhances user privacy and reduces the risk of data breaches by minimizing exposed personal information.

Access is controlled by proving ownership of a specific non-fungible token (NFT) or a minimum balance of a fungible token. This is typically implemented via a smart contract's require statement that checks the caller's balance before granting access to a function or resource. Common standards include ERC-721 and ERC-1155 for NFTs, and ERC-20 for fungible tokens.

• Implementation: Use IERC721.balanceOf(msg.sender) or IERC20.balanceOf(msg.sender) in a conditional check.
• Consideration: Pure on-chain checks are transparent but can be gas-intensive for complex logic.

A more gas-efficient pattern where access is granted via a cryptographically signed message from a trusted signer server. The user presents a signature (e.g., an EIP-712 typed signature), and the contract verifies it using ecrecover. This offloads the gating logic and user list management off-chain.

• Advantage: Reduces gas costs for users and allows for complex, updatable allowlists without modifying the contract.
• Security Risk: The signer's private key becomes a central point of failure. Compromise leads to unauthorized access.

Many gating implementations introduce trust assumptions that contradict decentralization ideals.

• Off-Chain Verifiers: Relying on a centralized server to sign access credentials.
• Upgradable Contracts: Using proxy patterns where the gating logic can be changed by a multi-sig, potentially revoking access.
• Oracle Dependence: Gating based on real-world data (e.g., KYC status) requires trusted oracles.

Developers must clearly document these assumptions for users.

A core challenge is preventing a single entity from creating many wallets (Sybil attacks) to gain disproportionate access. Pure token-gating is vulnerable if the token is cheap or freely mintable.

• Mitigations:
  • Proof-of-Personhood: Integrate with systems like World ID.
  • Cost Barriers: Use tokens with meaningful monetary or time cost.
  • Behavioral Analysis: Layer in off-chain analysis of wallet history (adds complexity and centralization).
• Without Sybil resistance, gated content can be easily exploited.

On-chain gating can inherently leak user data and behavior.

• Transaction Visibility: Interacting with a gated contract reveals the user's wallet address and the timing of access on a public ledger.
• Token Ownership Exposure: Simply checking in from a wallet exposes all other assets held by that address.
• Mitigation: Use zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) or semaphore-style group signatures to prove membership (e.g., owning a token) without revealing which specific token or wallet. This is more complex to implement.

The user experience for accessing gated content is dictated by wallet interactions and key security.

• Gas Fees: Users must pay transaction fees to prove access, a significant barrier.
• Seed Phrase Risk: Loss of a seed phrase means permanent loss of access tied to that identity or token.
• Smart Contract Wallets: Account Abstraction (ERC-4337) can improve UX with social recovery and sponsored transactions, but adds implementation complexity.
• Poor UX can render a gating system ineffective if users abandon the process.

Soulbound Tokens (SBTs) are a class of non-transferable digital tokens that represent credentials, affiliations, or achievements bound to a single wallet (a "Soul"). They are pivotal for reputation-based gating where access depends on provable, non-transferable attributes.

• Use Case: Gating educational content to users who have earned a completion certificate SBT.
• Key Feature: Prevents the simple purchase of access, tying it to individual identity or accomplishment.

An Access Control List (ACL) is a fundamental security model that specifies which users or system processes are granted access to objects, as well as what operations are allowed. In web3, smart contract-based ACLs manage permissions for gated content, functions, or DAO treasury actions.

• On-chain vs Off-chain: Permissions can be stored and checked directly on the blockchain or managed by a dedicated service.
• Granularity: Can define roles (e.g., admin, member, viewer) with specific capabilities for each.

Proof of Personhood refers to protocols that cryptographically verify a user is a unique human, not a bot or sybil. This is a critical primitive for gating content where scarcity and fair distribution per human are essential.

• Methods: Includes biometric verification (e.g., Worldcoin), social graph analysis, or trusted attestations.
• Application: Used to gate community resources, airdrops, or voting rights to prevent sybil attacks.

Advanced gating systems use conditional logic to create complex, multi-factor access rules. Access may require a combination of tokens, credentials, and on-chain or off-chain data.

• Examples:
  • "Hold NFT A AND have > 100 governance tokens."
  • "Hold NFT A OR have a valid DID credential."
  • "Hold NFT A BUT ONLY IF wallet age > 90 days."
• Implementation: Often handled by flexible smart contracts or middleware like Lit Protocol.