Original Video: "Bankless: Ethereum’s Defense Against AI"
Interview: Ryan Adams, David Hoffman, Bankless
Guests: Bryce Patrick, Steve Dakh, EAS
Translation: bayemon.eth, ChainCatcher
EAS (Ethereum Attestation Service) was one of the four projects that made it to the finals of the Ethereum conference EDCON 2023 Super Demo in May this year. Although this project is not well known to the public, its innovative thinking on the Ethereum identity layer and its breakthrough in on-chain identity verification are significant. EthStorage, which also made it to the finals, completed a $7 million seed round financing at the end of July with a valuation of $100 million. Therefore, we believe that EAS is an Alpha project worth paying attention to.
In the next few years, 99% of content generation work may be replaced by artificial intelligence. In order to continue reliable identity authentication in the era of artificial intelligence, some teams have begun to consider hashing historical content and attaching timestamps to save them on the blockchain. This article will explore the Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS), which is a new public good, an open-source, permissionless, non-token, and free-to-use standard.
In simple terms, current DID applications are still very closed and lack interoperability. EAS aims to build a foundational layer beneath the application layer to ensure the integrity and reliability of on-chain identities through a collection of multidimensional proofs. Without a foundational layer for building proofs, all DIDs will become more limited. Additionally, the existence of this foundational layer can bring more non-financial activities into the crypto space, beyond just transactions and transfers.
Bankless recently invited the creators of EAS, Bryce Patrick and Steve Dakh, to focus on the Ethereum Attestation Service. ChainCatcher has compiled and organized this episode.
In today's discussion, we will explore the key information for unlocking decentralized identity and non-financial uses of encryption, and we will address the following four questions:
- Why decentralized identity is not mysterious and is just a collection of attestations.
- Why social networks like Web2 and Twitter are essentially just storage for attestations.
- Why financial use cases will develop rapidly after the power of attestations is unlocked.
- Finally, we will discuss a range of topics related to decentralized identity, including world coins, privacy, soul-bound tokens, and others.
Bankless: I believe this program will be educational for everyone because the entire Bankless community considers "identity" to be very important. There are often voices in the community saying that we need to solve the currency problem first and then address the identity issue, which seems to be the ultimate destination of the crypto world. In addition, at the Ethereum Waterloo event, we heard many suggestions that we must communicate with the EAS team, as they have done a lot of amazing things in this field, which is a major breakthrough in on-chain identity verification. The characteristics of EAS, such as being "open-source, non-token, free, and a public good," are very appealing to Bankless. By the end of this episode, we hope that we will all have a deeper understanding of EAS and be able to view the future development of "identity" from the perspective of "public goods."
Bankless: What does "attestation" in Ethereum's attestation service mean, and how does it relate to identity?
EAS: Simply put, Ethereum's attestation service is a signed proof that an entity has made about something. With the addition of EAS, participants can provide attestations for anything.
We have always been very interested in solving the problem of decentralized identity and reputation, but we also know that this is a very difficult problem to solve because identity is relative, and reputation is also relative and exists in specific contexts. For example, my reputation with Bryce and David is different. Identity is a very abstract and complex concept, and no one can truly provide "complete" identity verification. At the same time, most projects have fallen into the misconception of identity verification, that is, they have not described the complex nature of "identity" through primitive forms. So when we started to think about the true essence of identity verification and compared all the existing identity verification platforms, we found that most platforms that can perform identity verification are almost all KYC companies. They have built closed identity verification platforms, and for other companies and developers who have to use this platform, once registered, all information will be locked in it.
For example, Polygon ID essentially tests whether it has passed KYC that can only be used within that platform. So if other platforms want to use KYC verification, they must require smart contracts to undergo similar verification procedures on each identity platform, which is meaningless for decentralization because it lacks interoperability, meaning that these solutions have not actually solved the identity problem.
So we have to start thinking, what is identity?
When I was born, my mom named me Steve, so she provided proof of my name; then I went to school, and the teacher provided proof of my grades, and the kids in the class might also provide proof of whether they like me or not; the government can provide proof of my passport and driver's license; the university can provide proof of my degree; the employer can provide proof of my employment status and also declare whether I am a good employee. So, we quickly realize that identity and reputation can be represented as a sum of proofs about someone.
Not all identity protocols are moving in the wrong direction, it's just that there is no foundational layer in the current Web3 world, and each project only represents one aspect of identity. Therefore, if we truly want to solve the root of the identity verification problem, what we need is a foundational layer that allows any entity to make statements about anything, a common language and framework.
Bankless: Although your definition of the primitive is simply someone's statement about something, in fact, this primitive's "elucidation" of identity is very profound. Therefore, when we discuss identity and primitives, many listeners (especially those who have just entered the crypto world) may feel confused about identity verification and primitive expression due to the overly grand expressions and ways of thinking. Please explain in simpler terms how identity is formed and how a primitive like EAS constitutes the underlying basis of identity verification.
EAS: If we completely disregard the blockchain and only consider our interactions in the real world. For example, if I ask Ryan for a loan of $5,000, Ryan might write a promissory note, and our interaction is based on mutual trust. But if David wants to borrow from a bank, he needs to provide all the documents to the bank to prove his ability to repay. This is because there is no mutual trust between David and the bank, and it needs to comply with the relevant regulations for borrowing from the bank. Regardless of the basis of trust, the key to identity verification is that all entities are just providing proof to each other. So the way proof works can be summarized as any attempt to establish trust while ensuring that the other party has some reputation support.
Bankless: Is EAS only focused on identity verification, or does it have broader applications and goals?
EAS: The use of attestations goes far beyond identity. We start with identity for the sake of simplicity in explaining complex concepts. In reality, attestations can be used for supply chains, voting, certifications, ticketing, and various other activities unrelated to identity. In real life, these actions are part of our daily lives, but there is not yet a completely digital, structured, standardized way to provide proof for all these transactions. This is the magic of EAS, as it can create a template to describe the content and process of attestations and provide attestations for various social activities. We believe this is the true revolution that EAS can bring about.
Using the notary service as an example, when you need to sign a mortgage document or any important document, you usually need a notary present, and the notary itself is a proof of the document. However, for the blockchain, we do not have a structured product that represents the "notary" role. Although current digital signatures and timestamp verification can provide support for proving authenticity, we do not have a more versatile and interoperable way to structure them to meet the needs of more people.
Bankless: So, in summary, the concept of proof is actually some people interacting with others on the chain, or making unilateral claims? For example, I own rsa.eth, corresponding to an Ethereum address, and I can sign and digitally verify operations on the chain. When the system prompts me to sign, my choice is to "prove" that these operations are indeed real.
EAS: Yes, it is structured according to the EAS standard, but each proof is signed with the private key of the wallet, so it can clearly point to the entity making the statement. For example, in current social media, posting is also a form of proof, and if David likes a comment, it is also a proof of "liking the post." The problem still lies in the fact that we do not have a core foundational layer that connects social activities with proofs. In addition to on-chain proofs, EAS also ensures that proofs are accessible off-chain in a specific way, so EAS is also an off-chain protocol for digital signatures.
Bankless: The concept of primitives really requires people to think about "what is proof" in a completely new way. So, can it be understood that my identity is the people who interact with me, making statements about me based on the social environment I am in?
EAS: Identity is not only derived from statements, but more importantly, it is the evaluation of these statements by the entities making them. For example, if I show you a statement from Vitalik where he claims that I am a good person, someone who knows Vitalik or has a favorable view of Ethereum might find it valuable, but someone who only uses Solana might not. So, this way of proving is actually very accurate. If I want to borrow from a certain entity, I need to show relevant proofs to that entity, which may meet the requirements of that entity, but for other entities, additional supporting materials may be needed.
To some extent, this feature brings unprecedented decentralization to EAS—the entire world's perception of a person depends on the subject of the proof, but the importance of the proof also varies from person to person. I believe this is the only way to solve the problem of decentralized identity, that is, you cannot predefine what identity is, it can be composed of many factors. Perhaps I have a proof that I was once a member of the Mickey Mouse Club, but the importance of this proof varies among different people.
Bankless: In fact, there have been many attempts to address identity in the early development of Bitcoin, and people at that time were already aware of the relationship between private keys and identity. Subsequently, projects like WorldCoin and Crypto Meta began to seek solutions for identity verification at the application layer. Earlier, you mentioned that these attempts to address identity at the application layer could not fully solve the problem, so a foundational module needed to be built. Can you explain in detail why a foundational module is needed to build more applications on top of it?
EAS: As I mentioned earlier, all identity solutions are moving in the right direction. For WorldCoin, some people are concerned about iris scanning, while others are not interested. However, the iris is only a part of a person's identity. If solutions like Worldcoin and Bright ID operate independently and do not give developers and users the opportunity to choose "whether to trust," they cannot be used effectively. So, although we believe that all identity solutions are moving in the right direction, they often either issue tokens or extract value at the protocol layer. In this case, considering trust and identity is a bit like oil and water, that is, people cannot truly discuss finance, trust, and identity at the same time. But if we truly have a trusted neutral foundational layer where any entity can make various types of proofs, then Worldcoin and other protocols can actually become more composable.
Furthermore, for these companies, without a basic primitive model, different identity verification solutions also have to make multiple assumptions about identity. I believe this is the biggest failure of companies like uPort—they made too many assumptions about "what is identity" and relied heavily on these standards, but as mentioned earlier, a person's identity is a very complex collection of proofs, so these assumptions are not universal. EAS, on the other hand, is different. uPort can preset a template they want to build and test it, but they are still on the same layer, and any smart contract can reuse the template. This is why EAS makes proofs more interoperable and more conducive to building decentralized identity and reputation systems.
Bankless: In what form does EAS specifically manifest? Is it similar to standards like ERC?
EAS: The basic components of EAS include two parts represented in the form of smart contracts: the pattern registry and the proof ledger. The pattern registry allows anyone to register any type of statement, and the proof ledger is used to store proofs, with each proof referencing a specific pattern to describe the data structure and content of the proof. In addition, EAS also supports off-chain statement protocols, allowing statements to be generated and transmitted off-chain without paying fees, and can be timestamped or revoked later. These off-chain statements are also fully portable, can be passed from one party to another, and can be uploaded to a server for verification when needed.
One key point is that these proofs do not necessarily need a recipient, as EAS can also act as self-proof for a person. For example, if Bankless wants to prove the authenticity of this episode, they can generate the hash value of this episode and provide proof that Bankless did indeed generate this hash value, but it does not necessarily involve other subjects. The key is that a known entity is signing a structured data at a certain point in time.
I believe that in Web3, that is, in native crypto technology, the reason we want to record certain content on the chain is to allow smart contracts to interact with it. Perhaps especially in very decentralized communities, we may want to make the governance of the community more transparent, such as how funds are allocated. In this very decentralized world, it makes more sense to put more content on the chain. But there are also many conventional offline use cases that only require proof of the authenticity of the signature, so it actually depends on the goals of the use case, and they are all valuable.
Bankless: This also means that because EAS is open-source, anyone can propose any pattern they want, as long as they can organize enough people to participate and reach consensus, then they can adopt a certain standard to prove whether an individual has a degree from their institution, and use this degree for on-chain proof, and adopt a self-created standard on top of EAS.
EAS: You are right, because I think one challenge faced by previous attempts to create a degree pattern, for example, was that people made too many assumptions about the fields required in the pattern. In fact, it is only necessary to allow the community to jointly develop the correct pattern, and over time, we have seen that even in the field of electric vehicles, for example, a lot of research has been done on issues such as the best charging port for electric vehicles, and then Tesla said, in fact, we will build our own standard, rather than adopt an existing standard. You actually need to focus on what users care about and let the standard evolve over time.
Bankless: EAS gives me the feeling of going back to the first time I learned about HTTP, because it is too flexible and seems to be able to accomplish many things at the same time, with seemingly unlimited capabilities. For EAS, they are the original building blocks of reputation and identity, the cornerstone of organizing the entire social identity proof operation, and "proof" is like HTTP, able to accomplish anything. Are you concerned that we are developing a "broad but vague" functionality?
EAS: I don't think EAS is "broad but vague." This is the nature of these technologies; new technologies can accomplish things that were previously impossible, so there is unlimited potential. Interestingly, it does not necessarily require a large network effect to operate. For example, if an entity decides to start using EAS to prove the ownership of tickets for entities with tickets, it only needs to reach consensus on the proof with that entity and its customers. For many use cases, a large number of signatories are not necessarily required to use EAS for identity verification.
We have been hosting hackathons for the past few months. In a recent competition, 25 teams developed based on EAS. It's interesting to see people building a variety of applications, some involving medicine, some involving cross-chain payment main systems, some involving certification of open-source software, and so on. There are so many use cases, and people are able to integrate them into their applications in some way. Otherwise, they would have to build some smart contracts and test them on their own platforms. Putting all applications that use EAS in a standardized place will make these proofs more valuable.
What we are really trying to do is to lean towards an ecosystem narrative, so even as a foundational layer for building identity, EAS is not just a simple identity protocol. We want to help the identity ecosystem to be more closely connected. EAS brings together developers from different fields, and they naturally create patterns for identity proofs and the convenience of signing digital signatures. When such a universal solution appears in the ecosystem, the entire system will follow suit.
Bankless: One refreshing aspect of EAS is that the team has no tokens, no venture capital, and no incentives like other companies. Can you briefly explain EAS's growth vision and whether there are plans for global expansion?
EAS: Of course, our goal is to create a foundational infrastructure for anyone, rather than owning everything about the users. We hope to bring positive change to the world by creating this infrastructure, making all certifications more valuable. We believe that building more trust in the digital world is very important, whether it's on-chain or online, because the current online experience is full of distrust, false information, fraud, and scams. We believe that using digital signatures and building a trusted network of certifications can help people engage in online activities more safely, while also promoting more decentralized activities, which is very important. Without these trust mechanisms, we will face increasing challenges in the face of growing fraud and false information. Therefore, through certification, we can build trust more effectively.
Bankless: Why do we need certification in this digital age, what will EAS bring to the future world, and will EAS drive the next revolution of human society like the internet?
EAS: With the rise of AI-generated content, it will become increasingly difficult to prove the authenticity of our online consumption and interactions. While we can prove the authenticity of a document through digital signatures, it is difficult to prove whether the characters in an audio file are AI-generated. However, with EAS, we believe that a complete chain of evidence can be established simply by digital signatures and verified timestamps.
Let me give an example. Imagine that currently 99% of video content is recorded in real life, not generated by AI, but in the next few years, there is likely to be a revolutionary change. EAS enables people to store any type of content on the chain and confirm its authenticity. Therefore, we can simply take some historical content, store its hash value and timestamp in the form of proof on the chain, and a thousand years later, the proofs we store can reveal that this content actually existed before we had AI replication technology. So, we can preserve historical evidence in this way, which I think is very important, because the emergence of AI poses a great challenge to the preservation and authenticity verification of historical documents. Imagine that in the next few years, you may receive a FaceTime video call, and the image of a family member appears on the screen, but in fact, it is AI-generated. It will become increasingly difficult to identify the authenticity of the people on the screen. Therefore, as time goes on, digital signatures will become increasingly important and can prevent potential fraud and maintain the authenticity of content.
EAS is completely based on the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine), and one important aspect needs to be completed on-chain. Although it is not necessarily required from a technical standpoint, there is a pattern registry on-chain, and every time a confirmation appears, its content can be immediately checked by checking the pattern registry. I think this is very important.
In general, offline confirmations are not stored, so technically it does not necessarily need to be based on Ethereum, but because it is signed with an Ethereum wallet, it only works when signed with an Ethereum wallet. It uses EIP712 for offline confirmation signing, and these offline confirmations can be verified by on-chain smart contracts later.
We chose Ethereum because we believe it is the most important blockchain infrastructure and the choice of the majority of developers. We also plan to launch on other EVMs, which may be Layer2 solutions for Ethereum, or Layer2 solutions for other public chains, but still based on EVM.
Bankless: Ethereum and similar blockchain technologies are not just financial tools; they can serve as a broader global distributed infrastructure for building decentralized, unstoppable, and permissionless identity and verification systems. This is a potential use that can provide public benefits and services far beyond finance.
In the current internet age, trust and identity verification are crucial, especially in the face of issues such as false information, fraud, and privacy infringement. Ethereum and other blockchain technologies provide powerful tools for building these trust mechanisms. Whether in finance or other fields, distributed identity verification and confirmation can be used to improve users' online experiences, enhance security, and reduce the spread of fraud and false information.
Furthermore, this technology is global and can help regions without stable financial systems or identity verification systems to complete these tasks, supporting public interests and human rights on a global scale. Therefore, Ethereum and similar technologies indeed have the potential to become a global public infrastructure, bringing positive impacts to global society, not just limited to the financial sector. This potential impact may be even more extensive and important than applications in the financial sector.
EAS: I think this is a very important point. In the past few years, the blockchain and cryptocurrency field has indeed mainly focused on decentralization in the financial and asset aspects. This includes cryptocurrencies, decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, and asset management. The development in these areas is very important, but there are still many other non-financial issues and applications that can be addressed through decentralized technology.
Decentralized identity verification and confirmation is a very critical area because it applies not only to the financial sector but also to almost all other sectors. For example, decentralized identity verification can be used for medical records, academic credentials, digital rights management, supply chain traceability, voting systems, and more. These areas can benefit from decentralized, verifiable identity and confirmation systems to increase transparency, reduce fraud risks, and promote innovation.
Due to the universality and security of blockchain technology, it can be a powerful tool for solving various real-world problems. Therefore, developing decentralized identity verification and confirmation systems is an important direction that can bring more benefits to society, not just limited to the financial sector. This also aligns with Ethereum's original vision of creating a decentralized global computing platform that can handle various applications and use cases.
This is a very important point. With more and more people having private keys and using encryption technologies such as NFTs, we are now in a good time for entities to enter the field of identity verification. You mentioned that Ethereum's original vision was to decentralize everything, but in the past few years, despite making a lot of progress in the financial sector, there are still many unresolved issues.
These unresolved issues include identity verification, academic credentials, digital rights management, supply chain traceability, and more. Previously, building applications related to these on Ethereum required developers to write smart contracts, which raised the entry barrier to these fields. However, with the emergence of EAS, anyone, including institutions, can use no-code or low-code tools to create custom identity verification schemes, lowering the entry barrier.
This universality and ease of use make EAS a powerful tool for solving various real-world problems. It is not limited to the financial sector but applicable to almost all fields. This trend will help realize Ethereum's original vision of creating a global computing platform capable of handling various applications and use cases. It provides institutions and individuals with a more open and innovative way to handle identity verification and confirmation, bringing more benefits to society.
Bankless: A sign of a new technology being put into use is that there are already crypto projects integrating EAS for identity verification. Can you briefly introduce the projects currently using EAS to solve problems?
EAS: An important example is Optimism. Optimism is one of Ethereum's Layer 2 scaling solutions, aimed at improving Ethereum's performance and scalability. Optimism has chosen to adopt EAS as its core infrastructure for various confirmations and identity verifications. They have integrated EAS into their local codebase, allowing any new chain deployed on Optimism to automatically inherit EAS contracts. Optimism is committed to advancing the field of confirmation and identity verification, and sees EAS as a key infrastructure to achieve this goal.
In addition, EAS has also collaborated with many other identity verification protocols and projects and has received praise. Due to the universality and flexibility of EAS, it can adapt to various different application scenarios and provide developers with powerful tools to build identity verification and confirmation solutions.
These collaborations and integrations indicate that EAS is gradually becoming a standard in the blockchain field, expected to bring more innovation and development to the field of identity verification and confirmation.
Yes, establishing a standard and ensuring its widespread adoption is a challenging task. You mentioned the concern about becoming another standard trying to be a standard in the early development of EAS, which is a valid concern. However, EAS has already achieved great success in becoming a core infrastructure for identity verification and confirmation. The collaboration with Optimism and their decision to incorporate EAS into their core infrastructure is a significant victory, helping to ensure the use of the same standard throughout the ecosystem, rather than being fragmented into multiple standards.
By establishing partnerships with other identity verification protocols and gaining their support, EAS has gained widespread acceptance and support, indicating that EAS is poised to become a universal, widely adopted standard, addressing key issues in identity verification and confirmation, rather than just a standard attempting to monopolize the market. This collaboration and openness are expected to make EAS play an important role in a wide range of application areas, thereby enhancing the credibility and security of the entire Web3 ecosystem.
EAS smart contracts have become part of every chain deployed on the OP Stack. This indicates that the standard of EAS will become a core component of the OP Stack ecosystem, rather than just an independent project. This integration is expected to provide the capability of identity verification and confirmation for various applications on the OP Stack chain, providing higher credibility and security for a wide range of use cases and users.
Currently, attestations in Optimism cover multiple use cases, including:
Attestations for governance roles: Some projects are attempting to prove different governance roles in DAOs for identity verification in governance decisions.
Attestations for Optimism domains: Projects are attesting to various aspects of Optimism domains and domain registration to enhance domain credibility and identity verification.
Quadratic voting: EAS is used for quadratic voting, for example, in a hackathon, all teams can use EAS for quadratic voting, and anyone can aggregate and verify the votes to determine who will receive rewards.
Gitcoin Passport Stamps: The Gitcoin Passport Stamps program is transitioning to use attestations as a fundamental building block to make it more composable and integrate better with other identity solutions.
Bankless: Recently, blockchain applications related to "identity" seem to include Friend.tech, where verification from Twitter is required to confirm identity. This verification is effective, but technically, because Twitter has access to all identity information, this verification is not perfect.
EAS: Yes, for blockchain, this may lead to keys being controlled by a third party, thus not requiring any other authentication permissions. At the same time, this method of verification does not involve any interoperability. If only one API is used, it is difficult to ensure that it remains updated, and the project may change the code arbitrarily. Therefore, Friend.tech is essentially a very unique use case centered around Web2 social interactions, still following the old path of Web2 social verification, just to some extent moving the social graph to the chain. In short, we still need a way to make people's identity verification more interoperable.
Bankless: I think this really illustrates the need for an application layer on top of EAS. Once the number of attestations increases exponentially, we will need institutions like attestation service providers to help reaggregate the 10,000 different attestations made every day. As we discussed before, there are various attempts at identity verification, with everyone trying to verify their identity in the Web3 world. I think the business model has now been established, that is, direct identity verification cannot be done, it must naturally form. Once there are enough attestations, we will need an application layer to help us provide a lens to view all these attestations.
EAS: Imagine a future where everyone can view the relevant attestations of their counterpart. For example, the entity's previous relationships with me, whether friends have attested to their authenticity.
In the near future, trust networks become more visual, and with devices like Vision Pro, you can start browsing different trust networks. But the difference is that in today's real world, we are assigned a trust score, such as the credit score involved in bank evaluations. In the future world, we can customize the weight of the trust level, corresponding to the fact that everyone's perception of the importance of each attestation is different.
Imagine when a person starts to build a brand new decentralized trust network, everyone's trust score in the network starts from zero, and they all have the right to set the weight of their trust score. For example, because I trust my mother and good friends, I would set a high weight for attestations from them. Applications like MetaMask may display the credit scores of each person on the page, allowing users to form their unique trust network.
This is a huge issue, and we are working with some different teams who typically look at on-chain data from various DeFi platforms, aggregate it, and come up with various scores. But now, if everyone starts making various attestations, you can start defining various scores, connections, and metrics for different categories. For example, what is the individual's DeFi score? What is their social score? What are their other scores? There will be countless categories of scores. Therefore, it will be very important to be able to integrate all this data and understand its provider, and it will be interesting for users to run and integrate attestations and generate scores themselves using open-source tools. This way, you can have other entities provide attestations for the scores of this entity.
So in the example I gave you before, for example, being able to gain relative trust from someone who is not in your network, you may have other trusted entities, such as companies like Equifax in the world, who are now not only doing credit scoring but also starting to integrate attestation data and build different views of entities based on this data.
Bankless: Privacy is also an important topic for Web3. Was privacy protection considered in the development of EAS, or does privacy need to be maintained through an additional application layer?
EAS: Typically, we advise people to be mindful of privacy issues when providing on-chain attestations. If certain content is to be put on-chain, it should obviously not include any private data. For example, if Coinbase wants to perform KYC verification for an address, Coinbase only needs to prove that the address has passed the test, without needing to prove who you are. Therefore, you can create a pattern, such as "KYC passed," and then assign it a true value. Other entities can also use it, and the services accepting these attestations can conduct due diligence, such as trusting Coinbase's attestations or attestations from other entities, and integrating them into their applications. This is also why we have built off-chain attestations, because in the real world, identity documents, passports, driver's licenses, they are essentially attestations, but they are off-chain, not public, and users only show them when necessary.
We have also created some tools that can be used to attest to a large amount of private data. For example, imagine a doctor's office being able to attest to all medical records. We have built a great tool that can create all these records into a Merkle tree and provide on-chain proof of the root hash. Then, anyone can prove a part of that tree to another entity, basically I can prove to my insurance company that I did receive treatment for which they are providing insurance, and only reveal a portion of the medical data for them to verify.
Additionally, there are zero-knowledge proofs that can prove private data without actually revealing the data. The issue with ZK is that so far, each solution has been very specific, and there is no general "ZK everything" solution. Therefore, we do not have a specific view on which zero-knowledge proof system to use, there are many different choices, and we do not presuppose the content of the proofs. The proof can be a complete ZKP, or it can be the kind of privacy-preserving statement we have shown, or it can be off-chain, or even a public tweet. In any case, we focus on privacy and tell everyone in the documentation to carefully choose the content of the proofs, because on-chain attestations will always exist.
We are working with other developer teams to try to build privacy tools to help developers solve these types of problems. For example, there are many teams at hackathons trying to create ZKPs based on attestation data using EAS, which means selectively sharing identity information. We have also received a lot of positive feedback for the Merkle tree mentioned earlier, for example, sismo integrated with EAS can be used to create ZKPs, which also means that as long as I have proof of ownership of a specific item, I do not need to reveal its specific address, just clearly demonstrate my ownership of it. The combination of EAS and ZKP can achieve verification and information sharing while protecting privacy.
Bankless: How will EAS obtain funding without issuing tokens or having VCs?
EAS: Currently, EAS is funded through grants. The key issue we are currently focusing on is pattern coordination, that is, as custom patterns gradually increase, how EAS can educate people on organizing and selecting the correct patterns. Optimism has just provided us with a substantial grant to address this issue. We are also exploring new funding mechanisms, such as retroactive public goods funding. However, so far, EAS's operational funding mainly comes from self-funding and grants.
Bankless: What is the relationship between the concept of Soul Bound Tokens and EAS?
EAS: I remember Vitalik proposed the definition of Soul Bound Tokens in 2020, and at the time, I thought it was a wrong solution. Due to the NFT craze at the time, everyone was able to integrate the viewing function of NFTs into wallets, so when people thought about what tools to use to solve identity or reputation issues, the first thing that came to mind was NFTs. But in reality, we believe that NFTs are not suitable for identity verification. Do I need to redeploy a brand new contract that inherits the SBT interface and then write whether he is trustworthy in it just to prove my trust in a person? Each new SBT can belong to a different smart contract, and each person can design completely different smart contracts with completely different interfaces and non-interoperable functions, so if I want to see if his address has updated identity information, it is not easily accessible.
As a primitive, EAS can provide consistent interfaces and examples of attestations. This is more meaningful for the universality of attestations.
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