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Introduction

Galxe Identity Protocol proposes a cutting-edge system that gives our community complete control over their private data and identity, redefining the way credentials are issued and verified in the Web3 world. What are credentials? Credentials live in our everyday life. They are proofs of eligibility in the form of a key, a certificate, a deed, a license, and more. Credentials of onchain activities include your contribution to a protocol’s liquidity pool, your on-chain voting history, and your participation in a Galxe Campaign, etc. These credentials not only aggregate your achievements and value but also represent who you are, your unique onchain identity. All of your current behavioral data in Web2 can be credentials as well. Companies such as Google and Meta run algorithms on your credentials so that they can send you targeted advertisements. The problem is, however, you don’t own these data and you don’t get to decide what they are used for, who they’re shared with, and how you benefit from them. Galxe Identity Protocol is a permissionless self-sovereign identity infrastructure. Powered by Zero-Knowledge Proof, you’ll be able to own, manage, and share verifiable credentials securely and privately. Galxe Identity Protocol also presents a diverse range of opportunities for builders to build Sybil prevention algorithms, reputation systems, credit systems, personal data markets, decentralized review systems, and beyond. Why does this matter to you? First of all, your identity and private data become your assets, including your followers on social media, your avatars, your achievements in games, and more. You get to decide the when, what, and how for your data — because you truly OWN them. You won’t need a notary to prove your house belongs to you. You won’t need to send your whole bank statement to prove you have a certain amount of money. This might seem a little farfetched, but in a world where AIs are writing your emails and cars are driving you to places, this is the future, and it’s near.

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How It Works, the Technical Part

While this all sounds great, how does it actually work? Galxe Identity Protocol aims to improve what Galxe currently offers and separate the functionality into individual and interdependent pieces. There are four major roles in Galxe Identity Protocol: Credential Holder, Issuer, Verifier, and Credential Type Designer. Within the current Galxe platform, Galxe designs and provides a variety of Credential Types for projects to utilize. Campaign owners then verify and issue the credentials to eligible participants, who become the Holders of those credentials. At its core, Galxe Identity Protocol consists of a series of smart contracts to be deployed onchain and SDK tools that allow developers to build and use those contracts to issue or authenticate credentials offchain. A credential schema requires two parts: the context and the credential type. For example, the context is whether you’re over 21 years old, and the type is boolean (yes or no). With its permissionless and decentralized nature, Galxe Identity Protocol constitutes chain-agnostic components catering to all roles to make the system sustainable.
  1. Holders can selectively disclose requisite information for specific verification instances under a deterministic pseudonymous identity.
  2. Issuers can generate revocable credentials and manage them on-chain.
  3. Verifiers have the ability to specify a programmable trust schema, and by using the built-in identity nullifiers, they can use the protocol for various applications requiring access control, both on-chain and off-chain.
Galxe Identity Protocol further enhances verification efficiency by facilitating minting of soul-bound tokens (SBTs) based on typed credential and supporting no-code compositional verification. If that’s too abstract, let’s take a closer look at some scenarios.
  1. You are an active social media user. Your assets include your followers, the content you publish, and your data footprint. Instead of being exploited for targeted advertising, you can now choose to verify and disclose who you are and what you’re interested in.
  2. You are a gamer and you just achieved a certain rank or beat a boss in a particular game. The gaming project can reward you in the game directly with a bounty, limited edition weapons, and more, after verifying the credentials. With Galxe Identity Protocol, your in-game achievements are owned and controlled by you, thus 100% authentic and private. You can choose to disclose these credentials to other games and advertisers in exchange for benefits.
  3. You are over 21 years old living in the U.S. and you need to prove to an alcohol vendor that you’re old enough to make a purchase. Instead of showing them your ID, which discloses all the information including your name, address, eye color, you can show them a verified credential that proves you’re old enough.
Another major problem that Galxe Identity Protocol solves is the digital identity multiplicity problem. The nature of modern digital identities is multidimensional, that a person can have multiple different identities across different platforms. This phenomenon introduces a subtle challenge for designing a credential protocol: which identity should the issuer credential to? The design must allow a user to connect all identities in order to reveal or generate Zero-Knowledge Proofs against a comprehensive profile, while not leaking any privacy, e.g., the connections of accounts, to any other party. If you’re interested in learning more about what Galxe Identity Protocol has to offer, here’s the whitepaper with all the information you’ll need.

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The Vision of Galxe Identity Protocol: Decentralizing Roles

Galxe Identity Protocol envisions breaking down the roles currently embodied by Galxe, enabling various independent entities to assume one or more of these roles. This decentralization allows for a more dynamic ecosystem that brings the Galxe experience beyond the core Galxe platform. For example, third parties are invited to design their own credentials. Instead of being solely reliant on Galxe to introduce new credential types, third parties can step in to design and propose them. For instance, if there’s a demand for a “Threads” credential type, an external entity can design it. Once designed, Galxe or any other platform can opt to support and integrate these new credential types. This approach mirrors the flexibility seen in our current subgraph setup. The design of Galxe Identity Protocol also provides more flexibility to role assumption, allowing other entities, including Galxe, to selectively take on roles based on the specific use case. For instance, Galxe might only play the role of an issuer for certain credentials, leaving the verification to another entity.
  • Scenario 1: Galxe issues a credential. A gaming partner then verifies this credential and subsequently issues a reward directly from their platform or from a third-party like Steam.
  • Scenario 2: Conversely, a gaming partner might issue a credential to a user directly or through Steam, who can then redeem a reward directly on Galxe.

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Why Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP)?

We’ve mentioned Zero Knowledge Proof quite a few times. Here’s why we believe and choose ZKP as the cryptographic method for Galxe Identity Protocol. Selective Disclosure: Imagine a gamer wants to join a gaming guild in a platform integrated with Galxe. The guild requires members to have achieved a specific rank in another game. With ZKPs, users can prove their achievements without revealing all their gameplay history or any other irrelevant stats. This ensures credential privacy. Proof with Anonymity: A user wants to participate in a special event on a platform, but the event requires participants to have a specific reputation score. With ZKPs, participants can prove they’re beyond the reputation threshold without revealing their identities or specific aspects that contributed to the score. Moreover, verifiers can use the nullifier in the proof to prevent double-spending. This addresses the challenge of data verification with anonymity. Efficiency and Security: As Galxe integrates with more platforms and supports more credential types, the demand for verification could skyrocket. ZKPs, especially zk-SNARKs, ensure the verification process to be as speedy and smooth, even with exponential growth in demand. For instance, if a user holds credentials from 50 different platforms, these credentials can be efficiently verified with any combination using ZKPs, avoiding significant computational burden. Into the future, Galxe envisions a seamless integration, verification, and reward distribution process that is interoperable, private, and secure.

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Whitepaper

To view the whitepaper, please visit this link.