The third quarter of 2022, brought both headwinds and major milestone achievements across the crypto industry. Overall, crypto losses totaled $428M in Q3, down 36% from the previous quarter. Most of the losses came from two specific incidents (Nomad & Wintermute), representing 80% of the quarter’s losses. In a major step forward, the Ethereum blockchain completed an upgrade to a proof-of-stake model that greatly reduced energy consumption. And, the Solana NFT ecosystem made gains on Ethereum as the number of mints surged in September.
Key Milestones
July began on the heels of launching Civic.me, our consumer-facing identity dashboard, and introducing a company rebrand in partnership with Hoo Koo E Koo at NFT.NYC. With a live alpha product at the show, we were able to collect input and feedback from industry influencers. We put these insights to work with massive updates on both the front- and back-end of Civic.me in Q3, with even more coming in Q4.
Throughout August, we built a strong foundation for Civic.me by adding IPFS for decentralized data pinning and storage, and devising our own encryption solution. This is no ordinary Web 2.0 architecture where your digital assets are stored on a centralized server, like you see with many large pseudo-Web3 companies. Civic.me is Web3 native, which means we’re strongly positioned to collaborate with other Web3 native companies.
In early September, we took another giant leap forward by adding the ability to publish self curated profiles on-chain. Ultimately, Civic.me is a place to privately manage your online presence, reputation and identity. Whether you choose to publish your profile on-chain or keep it private is up to you.
Civic.me now allows you to:
- Set up multiple profiles for you and your alt(s)
- Keep your profile private, or optionally publish your PFP, username and bio on-chain
- Privately view NFTs across multiple wallets
- Link multiple Solana wallets — including Backpack — to the same profile
Soon, you, your alt(s), or some combination thereof, will be able to set up a public or private profile, link multiple wallets cross-chain, and publicly publish and arrange your NFT collections. This is happening organically from the bottom up, in a way that’s driven by the user and does not require the use of a single identifier.
Civic in the News
Decentralized Identity and Soulbound Tokens
Decentralized society and soulbound tokens became a topic of conversation earlier this year, sparked by a white paper written by Ethereum leaders. Civic was founded on principles of decentralized identity (DID), so we’ve been exploring and building in this terrain for several years now.
In fact, our flagship product, Civic Pass, is actually a bespoke soulbound token. Civic Pass provides dApps with the ability to create permissioned environments. Dan Kelleher, our VP of engineering, took to our blog to illustrate how we bring DIDs to life in the real world. After starting with why we issue identity tokens, Dan then explored a set of principles we use to guide our work. He completed this series of articles with the case for an identity layer for Web3, which showcases the architecture of Civic and the open-source ecosystem of Identity.com. Dan also traveled to ETHCC in Paris this summer and the DeData Salon in Berlin this fall for a presentation and panel about DIDs and why Civic Pass is sunscreen for soulbound tokens.
DAOs
This summer, the future became more exciting for DAOs, as a hacker house at AthensDAO produced a Civic Pass integration with the Realms platform for DAOs. This integration was also made possible with great partners from Grape Protocol and Lighthouse DAO, who are also helping build better reputation systems. By using Civic Pass, DAOs may protect their communities with one-person-one-vote decision making, Sybil resistance and account-botting resistance. Since introducing Civic Pass for DAOs, we’ve also made it possible for other platforms and DAOs to use the technology, as seen in this demo video. Realms also became the first platform to introduce user profiles from Civic.me, making the platform the first to offer both Civic Pass and Civic.me to DAOs.
Other Happenings
In addition to speaking at ETHCC and the DeData Salon, Dan Kelleher also gave presentations at the Solana Summer Camp in Berlin and the Solana Hacker House in Paris. Elsewhere, our chief product officer, JP Bedoya, spoke at NFT Expoverse in LA. At the same conference, JP interviewed with Decrypt and talked about our new uniqueness verification product. Civic sponsored an event called Trilemma, which brought together Solana, Aptos and Sui by Mysten Labs blockchains.
Civic was also featured across several industry publications this quarter, including Newsweek, CoinDesk, Blockworks, the Crypto Coin Show, NFT Lately, Crypto Insider Newsletter, and Bankless.
A Look Ahead
As we head into the final stretch of 2022, stay tuned for news from the Solana Breakpoint conference, where we’ll be working on product integrations. We’ll also reveal new features for Civic.me, including the ability to publish and arrange NFT collections and link multiple wallets across chains. Finally, we are having many conversations with partners. If you know a partner that has questions about Civic.me, Civic Pass or KYC, please send them our way.