Self sovereign identity opportunities

Self sovereign identity solutions could help with creating a range of impactful outcomes for Web3 ecosystem. The following is a list of different opportunities that could be explored.

Elected contributor credentials

If contributors are selected for funding during funding they could be issued a credential to prove they are an active contributor for a certain period of time.

• Read & write access - Credentials could become an access control tool to enable contributors to make documentation changes, code commits and pull requests into code repositories amongst other areas of work.

• Contributor voting - Contributors could conduct votes to make decisions about their allocation of contribution effort or for implementation decisions.

• Reviews & work sign off - A contributor could sign off another persons work an agree that it’s completed or that it meets a certain quality threshold by issuing a credential.

• Proof of payment - Attaching relevant wallet addresses to a digital identity could provide proof of any payments made from the treasury to a given contributor.

Reputation building

Credentials could turn into a great tool set for enabling contributors to build up their own reputation.

• Contribution history - As contributions are recorded any ongoing build up of these contribution based credentials can help with building up someones reputation.

• Impact generated - Credentials can help with linking someones contribution efforts to specific ideas they worked on. This evidence of what ideas a contributor has worked on provides a direct path for a community to identify which contributors have helped to execute the most impactful ideas.

• Exact contribution outcomes - The aggregation of someones credentials could help to provide evidence about the exact total amount of contributions they have made for an ecosystem. This could be useful for understanding the distribution of effort they have made across many different areas whilst working in each ecosystem.

• Total contribution time - The time spent making contribution efforts could be recorded through the usage of credentials such as a monthly contribution log which could be verified by different sources of contribution. This could be used to providence evidence of the total amount of time someone has spent contributing.

Education & skills credentials

• Bachelor, masters and doctorate degrees - University degrees may soon be provided as verifiable credentials that other people can then use to verify someones educational certifications.

• Skills credentials - Credentials could demonstrate someone has competencies in certain skills whether online or from in person verification.

Contributor attestations

Credentials could be issued peer to peer by contributors to each other.

• Mentorship & support - Someone could create an attestation to provide some evidence that another contributor has helped them with mentoring and support.

• Skill & performance - Contributors could vouch for someones skill and performance by vouching for it through a credential they issue them. This could be useful for highly technical pieces of work where there is a more limited number of people who can verify the quality of someones work.

Community attestations

Community members could issue credentials about contributors in the ecosystem to share useful information about those individuals and their contributions.

• Gratitude - Community members could have a gratitude based credential for sharing stories and experiences they have had with a contributor that could be valuable for the community to know about.

• Skill & performance - Community members may have observed certain skills and performance outcomes from certain contributors and want to leave feedback or their thoughts in the form of a credential. This could help with providing the contributor more evidence to show what other people have said about them.

• Impact - Community members may want to document the impact that someone has made by issuing them a credential with that information. This could be useful for situations where the impact is not numerically easy to document and verify. Some contribution efforts could lead to more qualitative outcomes such as improving the culture in the community. Credentials could be a way to record these types of contributions and outcomes.

Privacy preserving

• Zero knowledge proofs - Contributors should be able to prove facts about themselves without fully revealing all of their credentials and personal information. Zero knowledge proofs can help with enabling people to keep their personal information about their health, age and medical history more private whilst still being able to prove certain things such as that they are above a certain age. This extends to professional information where a contributor may want to prove they have worked with certain clients but don’t want to reveal the full details about the agreement and transactions.

Cross-platform identity solutions

• Self sovereign data ownership - Self sovereign identity standards help with enabling solutions that can be more interoperable across many ecosystems. Following these specifications can mean that one contributor should be able to take their credentials and the reputation they have built and then use those same credentials in other ecosystems. This outcome is great for contributors as they now can maintain a single identity and can move to other ecosystems more easily with the reputation they have built up across one or many ecosystems.

Synergies with funding approaches & suggestions

Contribution approaches - Independent submissions

Keeping the submission of information used in a funding process separate means that contributors will be more easily be able to start building their own reputation by making contributions in different areas and recording those contributions immediately on their own profile. Enabling a contributor to build up their reputation regardless of what’s happening in the funding process can better enable those contributors to more easily compete with the existing funded contributors when they request funding in the future.

Decision approaches - All approaches

Having good identity solutions integrated into the funding process could make it easier for any of the different decision approaches that have been already identified. Voters would be able to access more reliable and up to date information about different contribution efforts people are making and what impact they are generating. More access to this information can help with improving funding decisions about where funds could be more effectively allocated. Identity solutions are particularly useful for the delegated idea selection approach as it would help take an already more scalable approach for voters and now make it even more scalable by making it quicker and easier for them to have confidence in the reputation and capabilities of the different contributors. Sophisticated and accurate identity solutions make it easier for community members to participate and become more well informed when selecting contributors to help with execution.

Incentive approaches - Contributor time incentives

If the incentives are attached to an individuals contribution efforts instead of priorities and ideas the contributor is able to direct their efforts towards the most impactful initiatives. Increasing the usage and quality of credentials that can be issued could offer a great way for contributors to prove the value they have been creating by helping in numerous areas across the ecosystem and receiving credentials to prove that contribution. This could mean having attestations about contributor mentorship or for helping with difficult technical challenges across multiple ideas. The easier it is for a contributor to get these credentials the faster they will be able to build up their reputation and provide evidence of the impact they have generated.

Contribution verification approaches - Individual time based contribution logs

Integrating self sovereign identity solutions into a contribution verification process has a big opportunity for making it easier to verify which contributors did which piece of work with a mixture of self attestations, peer to peer attestations and automatically issued credentials from digitally verifiable sources. Increased accuracy of contribution history helps to greatly support the individual time based contribution logs approach by making it easier for this process to be improved, automated and scaled over time once the right tools and processes get developed.

Impact measurement approaches - Contributor impact measurement

Self sovereign identity solutions could help with capturing a wide range of information that can be relevant to a contributor. Being able to attach different pieces of contribution history and evidence about the impact a contributor has made can help a community more easily determine which contributors have been the most performant and impactful. Self sovereign identity solutions can help to realise some of the future impact opportunities that exist with being able to determine which contributors have been the most impactful for the ecosystem.

Voter preferences & opinions - All community feedback

Community feedback about any of the information submitted during funding could help with identifying problems, new ideas and different approaches that are worth considering. Credentials could be a great addition to this feedback process as now community members could verify and prove that they have given feedback to a range of different areas. Community members engagement and participation in the funding process could help them build up their own reputation in one or many ecosystems based on the quality of their feedback and suggestions.