Gitcoin Passport

At Gitcoin, we’re building an alternative to the extractive way web2 platforms treat user data: Gitcoin Passport, your citizenship pass in the decentralized internet.

Passport is a decentralized identifier. Users collect “stamps” from different authenticators around web2 and web3, such as Bright ID and Proof of Humanity. Stamps are verifiable credentials – by aggregating several of them in one place, Passport distributes trust across multiple entities. After integrating with Passport, instead of relying on a middleman to verify someone’s identity, dApps can verify it themselves with a customizable algorithm that weights different stamps according to their preferences– essentially allowing communities to create a customizable visa with their participation requirements. Are you a developer community that requires a Github sign-in or an artist collective that requires a Foundation sign-in? You can require those stamps with Passport while we handle the registry system for you, so you can save development time and focus on building features your community will value. With Ceramic, Passport data is also composable and interoperable, providing security across blockchains.

We’re building Passport because we believe digital identity is a public good. We won’t be able to create an open web at scale unless community-driven decision-making processes are secure and trustless.

Passport’s SDK aims to help builders verify digital identity with a few lines of code – no matter what blockchain they build. This allows people to determine if someone is gaming the system with multiple wallets and verifies their membership in different communities and participation in different experiences. What results is a new way of viewing online identity that recognizes the value that people add to the online spaces they frequent and allows them to build a digital reputation as easily as they can build one offline. Just as the collective record of a college degree, bills paid, and awards won leads to a solid offline reputation, we believe that verifying online identity through participation in communities and dApps – now trackable through blockchain – should lead to the development of an online reputation.

One use case is Sybil resistance. Our Trust Bonus integration with the last Gitcoin Grants round demonstrated that decentralized identifiers could successfully defend against Sybil attacks while preserving user privacy. The key was agency: participants were the ones with ownership over their identity data, not a third-party middleman, and they could determine if they shared it through a smart contract instead of opaque terms of service. Passport’s scoring algorithm and verifiable credentials allowed Gitcoin Grants to check someone’s identity without viewing their personally identifiable information. With over 11,000 contributors creating Passports and adding stamps, we could streamline our identity authentication process and ensure fair distribution of matching funds, all while allowing individuals to increase their impact with a 1.5x matching bonus.

Despite our initial wins, we know our protocol is still a work in progress, and we want more people to be able to take advantage of benefits like Trust Bonus. We also want to double down on exploring new use cases for Passport beyond Sybil resistance. We’re taking an iterative, community-first approach to develop Passport to ensure communities across the open web can trust it as a leading decentralized identity solution.


Expanding Ecosystems

With over 70+ ecosystems actively growing, they are equally deserving of your attention.