Dialogue EIP3525 Proposer Will: Is the 21-gram weight of the soul a burden that Web3 cannot bear?

Author: Hahaho @DAOrayaki.org

Organizer: The Way of DeFi

Today's Ethereum suffers from a series of criticisms such as "over-financialization," deep imitation, witch attacks, implicit centralization, anarcho-capitalism, and excessive collaboration, which has become a consensus in the industry. So far, its main function remains only financial and asset trading, which makes its positioning as a "world computer" increasingly unclear: a blockchain system that has only "addresses" without "identities," purely contractual and smart contract-based, cannot support the construction of effective, rich, and socialized applications. The full text is as follows. Friends who enjoy audio can listen to this episode of the podcast.

Shaun

On May 11, 2022, Vitalik, Glen, and Puja jointly published a new paper titled "Decentralized Society: Finding the Soul of Web3," which focuses on the concept, application, and implementation technology of the new Token SBT (Soulbound Token) to seek a new situation for Web3. After the paper was published, it quickly became one of the hottest topics in the entire Web3 field. DAOrayaki, as the world's first decentralized media community to translate this paper into Chinese and continuously produce three episodes of podcasts for translation and interpretation, has maintained ongoing in-depth reporting and promotion of the subsequent development of SBT.

Today's Ethereum suffers from a series of criticisms such as "over-financialization," deep imitation, witch attacks, implicit centralization, anarcho-capitalism, and excessive collaboration, which has become a consensus in the industry. So far, its main function remains only financial and asset trading, which makes its positioning as a "world computer" increasingly unclear: a blockchain system that has only "addresses" without "identities," purely contractual and smart contract-based, cannot support the construction of effective, rich, and socialized applications.

One of the Mexican cinema triad, González, once used a metaphor for the weight of the soul in his famous film "21 Grams—How Much Can Life Weigh?" "At the moment of death, one loses 21 grams of weight, which is the weight of the soul." Facing the over-financialization of Ethereum, the proposal of SBT seems like that which can allow it to rise from the dead, a phoenix reborn with a soul weighing only 21 grams.

So the question is, how far has SBT come on the road from conceptualization to actual application scenarios today? Is it closer to its original design intention or further away? Has the function of SBT been idealized or does it have more undiscovered potential? Will the Web3 that carries the soul be re-equipped or will it face more difficulties?

With these questions in mind, we have specially invited Will, who has in-depth research on SBT in the industry and has truly participated in its construction, to start today's topic.

Could a soul weighing only 21 grams be the light that Web3 cannot bear?

First, let's invite Will to introduce himself.

Will

Hello everyone, thank you DAOrayaki for organizing this event. I am Will, a co-founder of Solv Protocol, and also the proposer of Ethereum's standard protocol EIP3525. I'm glad to have the opportunity to share and communicate with you today. The content I will share today is, on one hand, a deeper discussion of the SBT content previously shared, and on the other hand, my connection with SBT and the work I am currently engaged in.

Shaun

Before we start the discussion, I would like to congratulate the Solv Protocol team for EIP3525 officially entering the Ethereum standard library. Thank you, Will, and your colleagues for your support in the field of cutting-edge technology.

If we want to discuss something thoroughly, we must first trace it back to its roots. When we discuss SBT, the first question that should come to mind is, how did the topic of "Web3 with a soul" become widely circulated?

Will

This topic may be familiar to everyone, especially participants of DAOrayaki. In January of this year, Vitalik wrote an article about Soulbound, mainly reviewing and summarizing the characteristics of the system settings in "World of Warcraft," and explaining the definition of Soulbound. Shortly after, in May, Glen Weyl, Puja, and Vitalik co-authored the Soulbound Token, extending the concept of Soulbound to Tokens and proposing the concept of a decentralized society, believing that a decentralized society could be realized through the foundation of Soulbound Tokens.

However, from a broader perspective, this topic has existed since the birth of blockchain. The technical system of blockchain wallet addresses and private key encryption is sometimes difficult to map to the real world. Many people, when attempting similar explorations, naturally think of introducing "identity" into blockchain. For example, DID (Decentralized Identity) can be considered a precursor to the SBT concept (or part of the same track).

And later I will introduce that when I researched the topic of identity and contracts, I found that this has been discussed long ago, which is highly relevant to our discussion of introducing identity into blockchain and may also provide a deeper interpretative perspective on SBT.

Shaun

When we were translating Vitalik's paper, some community members inquired about the background of the authors. While everyone is familiar with Vitalik, they may feel unfamiliar and more interested in Glen Weyl and Puja. Could you provide a detailed introduction to them here?

Will

I would like to start this topic from my connection with SBT. The concept of SBT is actually a discussion about the identity topic in decentralized society; the reason I focus on this topic is that in a podcast I did with another partner called "Literature and Science Blossoming Together," we happened to discuss the topic of identity and contracts. There is a British legal scholar, Henry Maine, who mentioned in "Ancient Law" that the progress from ancient to modern society is accompanied by the progress from identity to contracts, meaning that ancient people only had identities based on family, tribe, or race, and due to economic development, a new stage was reached where contractual relationships could be established between individuals.

I believe this topic is very relevant to the current development of the entire Web3 (or blockchain). The development of the Crypto world is also a progression from identity to contracts, as everyone wants to establish a purer contractual relationship and be able to write our contractual relationships using smart contracts. We have discussed the topic of identity and contracts many times, and interestingly, we talked about this topic around early January and published one or two podcast articles, and then shortly after, on January 2, Vitalik published the article on Soulbound, followed by the SBT article in May.

When I first read this article, I was somewhat skeptical. The article clearly aims to establish a system of "identity" through SBT, but in reality, the concept of Token has always existed as a form of "asset" on Ethereum, which is tradable and transferable; therefore, when I first saw the concept of SBT, I felt that this should not be realized through Ethereum but rather through a technology system that transcends blockchain.

However, the influence of Vitalik's article is significant, so I later began to read this article in detail and found that Vitalik is actually the third author, with Glen Weyl as the first author and Puja as the second. At that time, I felt that the name Glen Weyl seemed familiar, and later, while casually reading "Radical Markets," I discovered that Glen Weyl is the author of this book; moreover, I found that in both the Chinese and English communities of the entire SBT community, very few people mentioned that Glen Weyl is the author of "Radical Markets." In fact, the content of the SBT article, in a certain sense, also comes from the reflections of Glen Weyl and Vitalik on their respective work. This brings us to the background: the content of Glen Weyl's "Radical Markets" is about radical markets, which aims to transform modern society through a more economic, contractual, and market-oriented model. For example, he proposed that political voting could be implemented not as one person, one vote, but through a contract algorithm, determining the weight of each person's vote. The book also mentions that data is productive force, which may remind everyone of the domestic notion that data is a factor of production.

The concepts proposed in the book are relatively radical, and the logic aligns very well with the development process from identity to contracts. However, in the SBT article, we find that it adopts a completely opposite argument. From Vitalik's perspective, Ethereum is currently an overly financialized system that consists only of pure contracts (only wallet interactions). This system, apart from the financial (DeFi or others) field, finds it difficult to establish connections with the real world and conversely cannot help the real world establish a more contractual and market-oriented system.

Thus, both Glen Weyl and Vitalik reflected on their respective work and concluded that the idea of connecting everyone's relationships through smart contracts is unrealistic, so they had to compromise and establish an effective correspondence between the smart contract, blockchain, wallet address system, and the real world. The conclusion drawn is SBT, which creates Tokens based on social relationships for blockchain addresses to establish social relationships, rather than purely based on transactions and financial relationships.

Shaun

Thank you, Will. While reading your article, I found that you have particularly unique insights into the concept of "identity" in SBT. Could you share more details with everyone?

Will

When we talk about identity or the identity I advocate, in English, it refers to Status, while when discussing blockchain identity, it often refers to Identity. To use a metaphor, Identity refers to the identity of an ID card, while Status refers to the identity of social status.

This is quite interesting; in Chinese, we use the term "身份" to refer to both, but in English, Identity and Status represent two different ways of thinking. For example, the perspective of DID is to supplement ID through multiple sources of information, operating in the blockchain world. For instance, when you need KYC, you can use this ID to do KYC, which explores identity from the ID perspective.

On the other hand, SBT expresses it from the Status perspective. The logic of SBT is that one address can have multiple different SBTs (it can have many identity information). For example, if I give you an Ethereum volunteer SBT, then you have the identity of an Ethereum volunteer. If you graduate from Harvard University and they send your diploma to your wallet address, you then have the identity of a Harvard graduate. So from this perspective, ID is generally bound to a person's "physical body," serving as a symbol, while social status is complex.

However, in the SBT article, the concept of Status identity is not mentioned; it does not explicitly define SBT as a means of realizing Status. I personally believe this is because he wants to avoid establishing the concept of SBT on a currently immature concept (Status) in the entire industry. People may have a deep sense of the concept of "social status" in their daily lives, but in the current Web3, or even Web2, this concept has not been well connected with technical means.

Therefore, I am also making related efforts to hope that the concept of Status can be accepted by the entire Crypto community. In fact, there has indeed been some progress; I recently saw an English article that cited the two concepts I mentioned: Contractual Status and Relational Status.

At the same time, I interacted with Glen Weyl on Twitter regarding this, tagging him in my article video about Web3 and SBT, and he quickly retweeted it, so I think this may also prove that this viewpoint is gradually gaining influence.

Shaun

Let's continue this topic. What is the dilemma regarding "identity" in today's Web3? Why is the topic of "identity" being discussed in the context of Web3?

Will

I once wrote an article with another partner from "Literature and Science Blossoming Together" titled "Three Pillars of Web3," which mentioned identity. This aligns well with today's topic: "The Lightness of Being," which I find very fitting because the soul dominates a person's life, yet the soul of a person weighing several dozen kilograms is only 21 grams. This means the soul appears very small and insignificant, but it plays a crucial role in the entire system of a person.

This is very similar to the current state of Web3, where the existence of Status is almost invisible. There are also the reasons mentioned earlier; Web2, in a sense, denies the specific identity of individuals. From this perspective, the blockchain technology developed does not rely on an "identity" system. As mentioned earlier, lacking this element is like lacking those 21 grams of soul; the goal of bringing the real society into a more contractual and economic state cannot be achieved, leading to a series of problems.

Therefore, I believe Status will be very important in the future. From our perspective, in the future Web3, identity should be one of three foundational infrastructures (or basic concepts): information, assets, and identity, which can support a meaningful Web3.

Shaun

Let's delve deeper into the three pillars you mentioned.

Will

The earliest concept I had regarding the three pillars was synthesized from Henry Maine's "Ancient Law" and the SBT article. From the perspective of a person (subject or Identity), there are three things that are necessarily related to it. The first is information, which represents the relationship between a subject and information, essentially a Read and Write relationship, which has been largely resolved by the Web1 and Web2 systems.

The second is assets. In the traditional Web2 system, the ownership of physical assets is recorded through information registration, meaning that asset information is entered into a computer, and the registration system determines who owns the asset. In the Web3 and Blockchain era, digital assets are controlled by private keys. Therefore, digital assets and real-world assets (physical assets) have been perfectly solved by the combination of Web3 and Web2. This is also why many people believe that the name Web3 comes from the combination of Read, Write, and Own, believing that "I" can finally "own" something in the Web3 era.

However, this statement is not entirely accurate because in the Web3 era, you can only Own your own digital assets. For example, if you read an article, does that mean you own it? Therefore, the concept of "ownership" can only apply to assets, and in the Web3 era, it specifically refers to digital assets.

So at this stage, the issues of information and assets have been resolved, but the issue of identity has not been solved. The identities of Ethereum contributors, Harvard graduates, and University of Chicago professors are not in a Read, Write, Own relationship with the subject. The relationship between ID and Status is a binding relationship, which is commonly referred to as the You are, I am, He is problem.

How was this problem expressed in the Web2 era? It is also one of the reasons for dissatisfaction with the giants during the Web2 period. Your identity information is registered in the systems of these giants, and the binding relationship is established in private databases, which outsiders cannot access or transfer according to your wishes. For example, no matter how high your Sesame Credit score is, you cannot borrow money from Tencent's WeBank.

And today's Web3 (based on blockchain) has not solved the identity issue either, because you have no identity on the blockchain, and your identity in the real world is monopolized by Web2 giants. They do not share information and cannot create value for you.

From this perspective, if there is a complete Web3, or if we hope to make the real society more algorithmic and contractual, there should actually be a unified identity system (a dedicated Status system). This system should possess the efficiency of information transmission, reading, and writing, while also having the confidentiality and universality of the Crypto field. It represents a middle state between Web2 and Web3, having identity, being a unified public infrastructure, and also incorporating some basic functions for privacy protection.

Thus, the concept of identity, in addition to information and assets, fully qualifies to become the third pillar of Web3. It neither belongs to the information system of Web3 nor can it be completely covered or replaced by the asset system of Blockchain.

Shaun

So, is the existing Ethereum the best carrier for realizing SBT as the third pillar?

Will

In my previous sharing, I opened up a thought experiment. From a fundamental logic perspective, the existing Ethereum has certain capabilities to realize Status because the goal of Ethereum itself is to become a world computer. From the perspective of a world computer, it should have the ability to realize an identity system.

Secondly, everyone should know that Ethereum has a World State. As a new generation of smart contract and digital asset platform, Ethereum is not entirely based on Blockchain; it also has a parallel system to Blockchain: the world state system. This is technically solved through Merkle trees, which gives Ethereum the ability to record global states.

Moreover, the words State and Status clearly share a common root, and in the technical system, the two are often interchangeable. Therefore, from this perspective, the computer system that records and changes State is evidently also suitable for recording the logic of Status.

However, everything has another side. Ethereum has been developing towards a more financialized and smart contract-based direction for many years. Therefore, when you use a system to simultaneously record assets and Status, you will find that it is easy to mix many things together. For example, recently Ethereum has been undergoing a Merge. If the fork is successful, you will find that many of the recorded Assets cannot be split, such as USDC; otherwise, it would lead to two forked chains having the same amount of USDC, which would mean that one USDC could be exchanged for two dollars, which is impossible.

The recording rules for assets and Status are different. If we build a decentralized society on Ethereum, once Status forks, the states on both forks should exist because we cannot prevent everyone from using fork A or fork B to continue recording social data. If you always use one set of technical systems or databases to record them, contradictions will surely arise.

So from this basic principle, if we consider identity as a pillar of future Web3, then Ethereum may split the recording methods for Asset and Status in the future. After all, anything is possible.

If Ethereum does not develop in this direction, then in the case of identity becoming increasingly important, there will definitely be new foundational infrastructures emerging. This is also why my first reaction when I saw SBT was that perhaps SBT cannot be realized on Ethereum. Additionally, since Glen Weyl is a researcher at Microsoft, I wondered if Microsoft is preparing to enter the next generation of data infrastructure and then jointly propose a new concept with Vitalik. Perhaps Microsoft's next generation of cloud will aim to create identity infrastructure. After all, I come from a technical background and prefer to view problems from a technical perspective. Later, after carefully studying SBT and the corresponding logic, my viewpoint not only did not diminish but rather became more solidified.

Shaun

From a technical perspective, how far do you think we need to go to realize SBT?

Will

A more straightforward answer would be to divide it into short, medium, and long-term.

In the short term, the concept of SBT is quite easy to implement. Because the SBT paper mentions its basic characteristics: it is non-transferable and can be revoked by the issuer. This is quite different from the current Token logic, where Tokens based on digital assets can be transferred and cannot be revoked. So in the short term, a smart contract Token that meets these two characteristics can be considered SBT. Many people are currently submitting proposals related to SBT standards. I previously mentioned that ERC3525 might be the best solution for realizing SBT in the short term.

Based on the two characteristics, SBT can be naturally divided into two categories. The first category is badge-type; I give you an identity card that proves you have a certain identity, such as being an Ethereum community contributor. However, under the current technology, issuing an ERC721 would suffice; issuing a 721 Token and giving you a small image would be enough.

The other type of SBT is the example I just mentioned about Sesame Credit scores. The Sesame Credit score is essentially issued by Alibaba, is non-transferable, and can be deducted if issues arise. Therefore, the Sesame Credit score is a natural SBT, but since it is a number, it should be ERC20.

Then the question arises: if we want to realize SBT, should the EIP standard be compatible with ERC721 or ERC20? These two have essential differences. Therefore, when you want to promote a standard, you will find that you need to promote both a badge-type SBT standard and a point-type SBT standard, which is undoubtedly resource-consuming. However, ERC3525 has achieved this; it has both an ID and a Value, allowing for the issuance of both badge-type SBTs and point-type SBTs.

In fact, the proposal of 3525 came about a year and a half before the SBT concept, but why has it become the best solution for potentially realizing SBT? It was not designed to meet a specific application scenario; it can be used for financial notes, deposit certificates, and SBTs. The design structure and philosophy of 3525 are based on more fundamental logic; using philosophical terminology, its design philosophy is more Ontological. Therefore, in this case, any Token that fits the structure of 3525 should be suitable for implementation using 3525.

Thus, in the short term, SBT can effectively simulate its realization on Ethereum by issuing Tokens through smart contracts. I also believe that the ERC3525 model is a strong competitor for SBT or perhaps the best solution.

The medium term is slightly more complex. The latter part of the SBT article discusses at length how SBT should be implemented, such as hashing real-world values on-chain to form a mapping between on-chain and off-chain. In this case, if a certain off-chain relationship wants to go on-chain, for example, if you are a professor at Harvard University and want to put this information on-chain while protecting privacy, what should you do? You can create a hash value and bind it to your ID. Then, you only need to compare the hash of the data with the hash you own to prove it. This is a typical hash-on-chain approach.

Another method is the Merkle tree. In 2019, I proposed a model called a dynamically changing Merkle tree. Later, the SBT article also used a similar model. Upon checking, I found that this model was proposed earlier this year by a project founder, a woman from China, using a dynamic Merkle tree model to collect off-chain data to on-chain. This model is somewhat different from the one I proposed at that time. Interestingly, the model proposed in the SBT paper seems quite similar to the one I proposed, but it is not quite the same as the model from earlier this year. So I think this should belong to the category of converging paths; this is also a characteristic of technology—it does not have exclusivity or confidentiality, and people often grasp a key point of technology at the same time.

Thus, we find that the SBT article's discussion on the implementation of SBT is actually from a medium-term perspective. Issuing a smart contract SBT is too simple and does not achieve the off-chain mapping required for a decentralized society. Because privacy issues are crucial, simply putting everything on-chain makes everything public. Whether through hash-on-chain or Merkle tree methods, these are ways to protect privacy to some extent. Therefore, to realize a systematic world information on-chain, more technology is needed to fill the gaps. This is definitely not something that can be achieved quickly, so I believe the so-called medium term is certainly measured in years.

In the long term, it is more of a vision, which is the emergence of infrastructure specifically for recording identity information. Of course, this could happen sooner, as I just speculated about Ethereum's recent Merge, which may launch 3.0 next year, and perhaps concepts like Status Chain will emerge.

Shaun

For the last topic, if one day Web3 realizes SBT, how do you think it will change our current way of life?

Will

This question is actually quite difficult to answer because, in the Web3 era, our perspective on the concept of life is different. The SBT article also gives an example of so-called unsecured loans, which are based on credit, and naturally, credit requires identity. To have identity in the Web3 era, SBT is necessary. However, the issue of loans is not something that can be solved solely by having an identity; it involves credit and many other factors. Simplifying the problem can lead to misunderstandings. Therefore, it is essential to view specific scenarios differently.

Shaun

We have traced the background of the SBT concept's emergence and deeply analyzed the current development status of SBT. From the overall context, the new situation of Web3 will not only be about building a decentralized society as described in the SBT paper but also about forming a new Web3 world based on in-depth research into the concept of the status internet derived from SBT.

Further research on the SBT concept, along with the accompanying technical implementations, will bring new infrastructure, technical standards, and various application forms to the world of Web3. In addition to innovations and practices at the conceptual and application levels, including the semi-homogenized token standard ERC-3525 submitted by Solv Protocol, there is great potential for significant contributions in the future infrastructure and technical standards of Web3.

To conclude, I would like to quote a passage from Will's latest published article: The realization of the concept of a decentralized society requires the establishment of a new infrastructure, the "identity layer," which can simultaneously support the three pillars of "Web III": "information network," "asset network," and "identity network."

From contract freedom to "Radical Markets," and then to SBT and decentralized society, since "identity" and "contracts" are the bonds that connect all human activities and developments, which had already appeared in Maine's mind 150 years ago, we have ample reason to believe that the realization of "Web3" and a decentralized society, supported by the "contract internet" and "identity internet," is just a matter of time—the difference is who can seize the opportunity, as those who act early may become pioneers, while those who lag behind may be ruthlessly crushed by the wheels of time.

Once again, thank you, Will, for your heartfelt sharing, which has greatly benefited the community members. Thank you, Will. And thanks to the DAOrayaki community.