Carry Your Reputation Across Web3

Jun 03, 2022·Last updated on Jun 03, 2022

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Whether it’s for work, entertainment, or social reasons, most of our lives are now spent online on our digital devices. About 50% of our waking hours are spent consuming digital media. That’s about 23 years and four months of our life! And that doesn’t even include time spent on remote work.

Since we’re almost always online, the line between our “real world” and digital reputations is becoming increasingly blurred!

What does digital reputation mean?

Digital reputation is the online footprint you leave behind by everything you do and say online. A reputation system collects, aggregates and distributes data about your past behavior. Because your content, digital assets, and actions online are pieces of data, your digital reputation is a cumulation of all your online data

That data is sacred.

That data represents your online reputation and it affects your real-world relationships, social standing, and even your job prospects. 

What is Digital Reputation Today?

An example of digital reputation today is Uber. Uber collects data on their drivers, such as ratings, where they drove, and other data. The company aggregates that data to create a comprehensive profile of the Uber driver that represents their reputation, which Uber shares some of to both driver and all passengers. There are advantages for drivers with a great Uber reputation, like more trips, increased fares, and better rewards with Uber.  

In today’s internet, these facts are true:

1. Your reputation is no longer tied to where you live. 

Web2 enabled reputation to transcend geographical boundaries. Think about when you go on a job hunt. You’d have to drop off your resume and do interviews in-person. It was difficult to interview for a company across the U.S. or in another country, so people may have looked for jobs in their local area. Today, you email your resume, make connections with possible employers on Linkedin, and conduct interviews through Zoom from anywhere in the world. Your credentials, achievements, and/or accreditations you obtain became easily shareable on the internet to a broader audience. For the first time, your data was shareable to the world. 

2. Your reputation is created in the social reputation system based on user-generated content.

Today, your digital reputation is solely based on the content you create on a platform and how others engage with your content. The views, likes, shares, and comments on your content serve as reputation signals for readers to prove the quality of your work and your expertise on a subject.

The Current Limitations of Digital Reputation 

Web2 platforms have done a poor job of translating your real-life reputation. 

Challenge 1: Today your reputation is fragmented and trapped on each platform. 

Big tech companies created solutions that drive consumers to stay on their platform within their walled garden and over time, your personal data accrued to certain platforms and are kept locked in application silos. 

These companies don’t want you to export your reputation (your data) because it increases barriers to entry for competitors and creates platform lock-in. These companies are not only platforms, but also data aggregators. 

Data fed into their business models, so there was no incentive to let you own your data. It's impossible to manage your identity and reputation across tons of accounts and it puts your data at risk. 

Challenge 2: Although we have hundreds of accounts on the internet, your digital reputation in web2 is not portable and interoperable. 

If you’re an Uber driver with a 4.9 rating and 800 rides clocked in, you can’t transfer your driving history to Lyft, even though they are similar. Or, if you’re a content creator, the reputation you built on Tiktok can’t be added or moved to your Twitter account. 

Your reputation is platform bound. You must start your reputation from scratch for each new site, which means you have to rebuild your followers, your content, your engagement, and your credibility. 

In Web2, it’s about the reputation of the platform and publisher, not the individual.

Your Reputation in Web3

Do you hear that?

It’s Web3 knocking at your door! And it’s introducing you to a familiar concept from the real world: reputation based on participation.

Web3 lets you build your reputation through participating in communities online. You can be an active community member in NFT and DeFi projects, a contributor to a DAO, or a dApp builder. 

Thanks to Web3, your online reputation and digitally-native credentials can reflect that of the real world!

To assemble your reputation in Web3, you’ll need an identifier that represents your digital self. That’s why Unstoppable Domains created Web3 Domains - a powerful self-sovereign data container that you 100% own. Your Web3 domain is your unique digital name. It is a name to login everywhere you go. A name to prove ownership of your data and digital assets. A name to pay and get paid with. A name to prove you’re… well YOU.

Let’s take a closer look at how your digital reputation becomes expansive and powerful with a Web3 Domain.

1. Ownership

Ownership of your data is key to ownership of your digital reputation. 

On the internet, your followers, content, digital assets, and actions are all data and that data makes up your digital reputation. But, the current dynamics of the internet give third-parties ownership of your data. If they decide to deplatform you, there’s not much that can be done to mitigate your losses. Your reputation on a platform can vanish in an instant. 

Owning your personal data means owning your reputation.

And that’s what Web3 domains allow you to do! Web3 domains are stored in your wallet, just like other NFTs. This means you own your Web3 domain and all of your data associated with it. 

You become the owner of your digital name such as “yourname.nft,” or “yourname.crypto,” and the reputation you tied it! The best part, Unstoppable Domains cannot tamper with or delete any data attached to your Web3 Domain because it’s…YOURS!

Don’t let Web2 platforms hold your reputation hostage by keeping it in their systems. Harness the powers of your Web3 domain and own your digital reputation.

2. Permissioning

In order to manage your reputation online, you must have full control over who has access to your data.   

When making your resume, you get to decide what reputational information you want to share and not share with prospective employers. You should be able to do the same on the internet. For example, when you use Google sign-in for a new platform, third party apps demand certain data or you’ll be denied access to the app. If there is specific info you don’t want shared, it doesn’t matter.

That’s not user-controlled, that’s platform-controlled. 

Web3 domains hand you the control you deserve. 

Enter Login with Unstoppable.

With Login with Unstoppable, you’re in charge of the data you want to share (including proof of ownership and metadata) across various wallets, apps, services, and metaverses. Imagine that you sign in to a decentralized app (dApp) and give it access to specific metadata like social profiles and community memberships. Or you don’t because it's up to your discretion!

3. Verifiable

Your digital name, credentials, and participation online becomes verifiable in Web3. 

IRL, you can verify your college degree because they’re issued by a trusted third party, an accredited university. But in Web2, there is no standard way to digitally prove that you earned a course credential. 

In Web3, your credentials are transparent because they can be verified on-chain or off-chain. 

Because on-chain assets and transactions are inherently provable on the blockchain, ownership of digital assets like POAPs (proof of attendance protocol) and your transactional activities such as contribution in a DAO, are proof of your participation in events, activities, and communities. 

Currently, your on-chain activity is not human readable. You want to be able to verify that you funded a DAO or that you minted a Bored Ape. People can’t understand what a long-stream of random characters mean from your transaction history. 

So Unstoppable Domains launched Profile Badges

Badges turn your wallet transactions into human-readable achievements! Now, you can flex your on-chain accomplishments such as what NFT projects you’re part of or cryptos you hold, on your Unstoppable Profile page. 

We made it easy to verify your on-chain reputation and all you have to do is support projects you care about.

If you contributed to the initial funding for the ConstitutionDAO, you get the ConstitutionDAO badge! If you hold Bored Ape, you get a Bored Ape Yacht Club badge! If you watched Oprah back in the day, you get a badge! Okay, we haven’t exactly figured out the last one since it’s not on-chain, but you get the point. 

Off-chain verification is also necessary to host more sensitive information like Unstoppable’s Humanity Check solution.

Humanity Check is a 100% opt-in Unstoppable solution that proves your human without jeopardizing your privacy or security. While your sensitive information from the verification process is kept off-chain, your Humanity Check-approved identity is on the blockchain. 

No more sharing personal identifiers like government issued identification or your face to every platform. They only need to know that you are human.

Make your reputation verifiable and transparent while maintaining privacy and security with your Web3 domain.

4. Portability 

A portable reputation implies that you can manage a single identity and carry it with you throughout the internet.

Web3’s big promise is making your reputation and identity portable, so you don’t have to keep rebuilding your social graph, your content, and yourself from scratch. 

As you navigate cyberspace, you’ll be able to carry your full self. Your affinities and experiences will be reflected by your content, your contributions, and your digital assets, regardless of the platform. This brings you closer to how reputation works in the real world as you can take your reputation with you and use it however you choose.

So that every internet user can tie their reputation to one identity, the Unstoppable Team created Unstoppable Domain Profiles for Web3 domain holders.

Welcome to the beginning of your portable reputation!

Stitch your digital reputation together on one singular identity with your public and shareable ud.me profile page like ud.me/mvwi.nft.

Your domain Profile can host all the reputational information you would want to share with the world like your social profiles, Profile Badges, crypto wallets, and more! Your reputation no longer has to be stuck on one platform. Now, your reputation across the web can be attached to one identity.

Wherever you go, your reputation follows, not the other way around.

Don’t let your social networks and closed systems hold your reputation hostage with Unstoppable Domains.

So what are you waiting for? Get your Web3 Domain today and take the steps to build your portable identity!

Interested in learning more about on-chain reputation and Profile Badges? Check out this episode of the Unstoppable Podcast with Matthew Gould, CEO of Unstoppable Domains.