Blockchain
Manta Network, a layer-1 blockchain running on Polkadot, has teamed up with Linea, a rollup-based scaling solution, to offer users zero-knowledge soulbound tokens (zkSBT).
Due to the inherent transparency of open blockchains, Manta’s team had to address one of the biggest concerns of today’s cryptocurrency projects, privacy.
“The problem we’re trying to address here is that authentication is only limited to certain on-chain activities, rather than sharing all the data with an app,” said Manta Network co-founder Victor Ji. Decrypt.
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He added that instead of completing know-your-customer screenings, users must verify their identity using Manta’s zkSBT solution.
Souldbound Tokens were first proposed by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. They work much like an NFT, except they cannot be traded and are tied to the identity of a person or entity. They can also be used for medical records or certificates.
Starting today, users can purchase the new zkSBTs through Manta Network’s NFT Private Offerings (NPO) platform, as long as they have completed one of the two Linea NFT campaigns.
These zkSBTs will “provide users with a decentralized, reliable and private way to verify their real identity without compromising any information or data leakage about their on-chain activity,” the companies said in a statement.
The innovative tokens use Linea’s zkPioneer – alongside a unique Manta innovation called Proof Key – to enable any Web2 or Web3 application (mobile or desktop) to verify the user’s information without having to connect to a wallet.
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“We think mobile users have the biggest [daily active users]but now have the worst experience in crypto, and we can enable them without having to connect wallets to verify their on-chain and off-chain credentials,” Ji said, stating that the team’s main focus is socialFi and GameFi is.
The risks are minimal, Ji added in an exclusive conversation with decrypt, acknowledging that users may have “leakage of private data”, although their assets on EVM addresses will still be safe.
Whether full digital privacy is possible in today’s internet environment is a wide debate, but Ji thinks it is “not necessary”. Rather, he says, the need is for “great UX for certain privacy use cases rather than a completely private smart contract platform with terrible interoperability.”
