The rise of generative AI took the world by storm. Today, with nothing but a few instructions written in a prompt, AI can generate astonishing content of any kind, freely and without barriers.
While this sounds exciting and opens the door to endless possibilities, there is also a darker side to this story—one where this technology is used by some bad actors to cause harm. With just a pinch of creativity, it is not hard to imagine a scenario where a bad actor leverages AI to generate a fake video of a supposed CEO of a major bank discussing the insolvency of his institution. How much chaos could that generate if the video goes viral? An instant bank run, panic in financial markets, waves of protest.
In a world where seeing is no longer believing, and where AI can generate or manipulate digital media, particularly video or audio content, and spreading it at the speed of light via the internet, how do you know who to trust?
Ultimately, there are two main paths ahead: 1) having a centralized 'Big Brother' in control of all information to ensure the accuracy of sources and limit deepfakes, or 2) putting people back in control by reinventing the notion of digital identity on the web.
One may argue that if liberty and self-sovereignty are foundational values for creating a virtuous world, then the latter option seems far more appropriate. In this context, it appears that crypto could have its role to play.
If AI breaks the public web, crypto rebuilds a web of trust
The inherent properties of blockchain and crypto technologies offer a promising path forward in the digital identity landscape. If AI can generate an infinite amount of quality content, then crypto can authenticate it. Similarly, if centralized AI takes control over users' data, crypto can restore a sense of data ownership—and that is a big deal.
The first step in this direction is to develop a Web3 digital identity solution to allow for data ownership and security. This is what Solana ID is currently building.
Overview of Solana ID
Solana ID is a digital identity and reputation platform that combines both Web2 and Web3 activities and credentials. To do that, they are leveraging blockchain as well as Zero-Knowledge (ZK) technology to link every identity credential to a public-private key wallet that can be neatly carried around the internet in a private, secure, and scalable manner.
In that way, each user can be linked to a reputation score and every source information can be verified using this system and linked to its related user reputation score. An ideal solution for installing trust in trustless systems and fighting against bots, fake accounts, or even deepfakes.
The full tech architecture
The tech stack of Solana ID incorporates various components and technologies to ensure privacy, interoperability, and usability. Here's a detailed breakdown of the main elements:
- On-chain analysis and off-chain credentials: Solana ID is using various on-chain APIs and, at a later stage, data indexing directly from RPC nodes to receive on-chain profile data on wallet accounts. Additionally, they are leveraging different technologies to validate data from any HTTPS website into the Web3 world by on-ramping data-points into a secure on-device storage or merkle-tree database. On top of these data-points, ZK-proofs can be queried by verifiers and are received by the protocol scoring module.
- SOLID scoring module: Using advanced AI models and multi-party-computation (MPC), Solana ID ensures accurate and private data handling when computing its reputation scores. These scores function as “prediction scores” similar to how credit scores work for the traditional financial industry.
- Wallet bundling: Solana ID supports multiple blockchains, allowing users to connect wallets from different blockchains, enabling cross-chain reputation scores.
- APIs and SDK: APIs enable seamless integration of its reputation scores and credentials into third-party applications. These features facilitate communication between Solana ID and partner apps for authentication and data verification.
Source: Solana ID
A focus on targeted ads
Jack of all trades, master of none. Although Solana ID's global mission is to create a Web3 of trust—where every piece of content on the internet can be securely linked to a digital identity in a private and secure manner—the project has narrowed its scope and is currently focusing on disrupting the current ad-based model of the internet.
Through its decentralized ID profile solutions, Solana ID aims to help businesses deliver much more personalized offers while ensuring they target only real users—no bots or fake accounts. More importantly, these models protect the privacy of end users and ensure that they are fairly rewarded for the information they choose to share. A win-win situation for everyone.
Source: Jupresearch
Solana ID started their journey by targeting this specific sector because they believed that helping dApps find sustainable ways to attract and retain more users were the biggest use case for web3 digital identity at the moment. But in the future the project will expand its use cases and we believe that this could find overlap with the decentralized AI movement.
Strong traction
As of writing this, over 40,000 users have signed up to Solana ID priority pass holders and already 1,000 users have already paid to mint their Priority Pass to secure their lane number. This is some good early signals of strong traction for Solana ID.
Moreover, the protocol has secured partnerships with major pillars of the Solana ecosystem such as Orca, Jupiter, Solana Superteam, and many more.
Source: Solana ID
Team
Two things characterize the Solana ID team: they are passionate and they understand well the problem they are tackling. With that in mind, here is an overview of the main leadership positions:
- Simon Molitor - CEO
Simon went from the healthcare industry to working in a venture capital fund before finding his calling in the crypto sector. He has deep expertise in product development and sales. - Marvin Splitt - CTO
Full stack blockchain developer with more than 5y experience as software engineer. He already built several start-ups and scale-ups as a lead developer in the past. - Pierre Stoll - CMO
Pierre is a seasoned performance marketing professional, who brings his strategic acumen and expertise for creating conversion-optimized sales funnels to Solana ID. - Dr. Marco Besier - Head of Research
With a PhD in Mathematics and Physics and experience in web development and machine learning, Marco is in charge of the scoring algorithm.
Tokenomics
The token powering the Solana ID ecosystem is $SOLID, an SPL token on Solana. It is set to have a maximum supply of 1 billion with an initial circulating supply at launch of 22%. Token distribution details are as follows:
Source: Solana ID
$SOLID has different utilities within the Solana ID ecosystem:
- Data-2-Earn: The Solana ID protocol generates revenue when applications access underlying wallet data by querying it and paying in $SOLID. Then, value accrues to both the protocol and users who choose to share their data.
- Reputation staking: This can be compared to normal staking to secure a PoS network, except that here, users are securing their own reputation. The more $SOLID staked behind a SOLID score, the more trust can be established between verifiers and users. This leads to a “trustless” user experience with trust established privately—users back their word with financial value and get “slashed” if they misuse their trust scores.
At a later stage, token holders will also be able to participate in protocol governance and decide on the direction of the protocol, such as algorithm changes for score calculation, credential issuance, and related systemic design decisions.
Market opportunity
Short-term expectations
As its name implies, Solana ID is currently focused on the Solana ecosystem. Hence, it is fair to assume that, in the short term, the market opportunity for this project is limited to current users of the Solana network.
Source: tokenterminal
Under this set of assumptions, we believe that Solana ID could attract between 98,000 to 490,000 unique users to its platform in the next year. But here, we didn’t even take into account the expected growth of the Solana ecosystem itself, which will grow the pie from which Solana ID is cutting pieces and could lead to even more positive numbers.
In any case, if we assume that a significant portion of the intrinsic value of Solana ID is directly related to the growth of its user base, then this appears to be an interesting opportunity.
Long-term expectations
On a longer-term horizon, Solana ID is in direct competition to capture a share of the global targeted ads market. According to optimistic projections from the team, Solana ID could potentially capture a market size worth $195 million.
Source: Solana ID
