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On-chain identity On-Chain Identity — ENS, Soulbound Tokens & Your Web3 Resume Your Ethereum address looks like: 0x8f3a...d91c Great for machinesOn-chain identity On-Chain Identity — ENS, Soulbound Tokens & Your Web3 Resume Your Ethereum address looks like: 0x8f3a...d91c Great for machines

On-Chain Identity — ENS, Soulbound Tokens & Your Web3 Resume

Author: Medium

Source: Medium

2026/01/03 16:17

ENS$10.604+2.23%

On-chain identity

On-Chain Identity — ENS, Soulbound Tokens & Your Web3 Resume

Your Ethereum address looks like:

0x8f3a...d91c

Great for machines, terrible for humans.

No founder wants to say “Send it to 0x8f3a…” in a pitch. No friend wants to triple-check every character when paying you back for coffee.

DAY 24 is about turning that ugly 0x into a name, profile, and reputation layer that actually feels human.

The problem: Wallets are usernames nobody can remember

Blockchains gave us ownership but forgot one thing: identity UX.

Right now:

Your address is your “username”
It’s long, random, and easy to mistype
It tells nothing about who you are or what you’ve done

Compare that to Web2:

Emails + usernames + profiles
LinkedIn-style resumes
Domain names instead of IP addresses

Web3 needs something similar, but user-owned and composable.

Enter ENS and Soulbound Tokens (SBTs).

ENS: Turning 0x addresses into names

ENS (Ethereum Name Service) is like DNS for Ethereum.

Instead of sending money to 0x8f3a...d91c, you send to ribhav.eth.

Under the hood, ENS does a simple job:

Maps human names → machine addresses
Example: ribhav.eth → 0x8f3a...d91c

Why this matters:

Fewer “oops I sent to the wrong address” moments
More trust in payments and tips
Better branding for builders, DAOs, and projects

Think of ENS as:

Your crypto email (name.eth)
Your Web3 domain (can point to IPFS sites, profiles, etc.)
A starting point for your on-chain identity

One ENS name can store:

ETH address
BTC, SOL, LTC addresses
Website, Twitter, Telegram
Text records (bio, links to your portfolio)

So ribhav.eth can become a tiny, decentralized business card.

Soulbound Tokens: Badges that can’t be sold

ENS gives you a name.

Soulbound Tokens (SBTs) give you a reputation.

A Soulbound Token is:

A token that is non-transferable
Once minted to your wallet, it stays there
Used to represent credentials, achievements, memberships

You can think of them as:

On-chain diplomas
Attendance badges for events
DAO role or contributor badges
Reputation points you can’t buy on OpenSea

In a world where everything is tradable, SBTs are the things that prove who you are, not what you can flip.

Real protocol examples (identity in the wild)

These ideas aren’t just theory — there are live protocols already playing with on-chain identity.

ENS + social / DeFi apps

Many wallets, dApps, and even social platforms show your ENS (name.eth) instead of your 0x address.
Some dApps resolve ENS avatars and records directly into their UI, turning a bare address into a mini profile.

POAP (Proof of Attendance Protocol)

Events and hackathons give attendees POAP NFTs as digital badges proving you were actually there.
Some communities use POAP collections to unlock private channels, raffles, or governance perks.

Gitcoin Passport

Collect “stamps” from different identity sources (ENS, BrightID, Proof of Humanity, etc.) into one Sybil-resistance score.
Projects can check your Passport instead of doing KYC-style checks, to filter bots from real humans.

Lens / Farcaster social graphs

On Lens, your profile is an NFT; your follows, posts, and collects live on-chain.
Apps built on Lens or Farcaster can read the same social graph, meaning your identity travels with you instead of being locked in one app.

These are all early examples of identity + reputation as primitives, not just add-ons.

ENS + SBTs = A Web3-native resume

Put these together and you get something powerful.

Imagine:

ribhav.eth is your ENS name
Your wallet holds SBTs for:
“Completed 60 Days of Web3” badge
POAPs from hackathons and conferences
“Community Moderator” SBT from a protocol
“Audited Smart Contract Course” SBT

Now when someone looks up ribhav.eth, they don’t just see:

A random 0x and some ERC‑20s

They see:

A history of contributions
Proof that you actually did the things you claim

That’s a Web3 resume: machine-readable, verifiable, and composable.

Why this matters for builders

For devs and founders, on-chain identity solves real problems:

Better UX for users

Send money to alice.eth, not 0x1234…
Easier onboarding for non-crypto friends

Less Sybil/spam in communities

Require certain SBTs or Passport scores to join a gated Discord or governance channel.
Example: “Only wallets with ‘Hackathon Participant’ SBT can vote on this feature.”

Reputation-aware apps

Lending based on on-chain reputation instead of only collateral.
Airdrops targeting real contributors, not pure farmers.
DAOs rewarding long-term contributors, not “join today, dump tomorrow.”

For future DevRel work, this is huge:

You can design programs where contributions mint SBTs.
Your community doesn’t have to “trust your word” — they can check wallets.

Risks and open questions

On-chain identity sounds powerful, but it also opens a box of tricky questions.

Privacy vs permanence

Putting your achievements on-chain is cool; putting your entire life there might not be.
Once something is attached to your main wallet, it’s hard to hide later.

Doxxing and safety

If name.eth is clearly linked to your real identity, anyone can see your balances and history.
Builders need patterns like burner wallets, split identities, and selective disclosure.

Lost keys = lost identity

If your ENS and all your SBTs sit on one wallet and you lose that key, your “Web3 resume” is gone.
Social recovery, multi-sigs, and account abstraction will matter a lot here.

Who issues the badges?

If anyone can issue SBTs, spam and low-quality badges become a problem.
Reputation for issuers becomes as important as reputation for users.

We’re very early on standards, best practices, and culture here.

The future of on-chain identity

Some directions that feel almost inevitable:

Cross-chain identity

Today, ENS is mostly Ethereum. Tomorrow, we’ll see identities that work seamlessly across L2s, app-chains, and even non-EVM ecosystems.

Reputation-backed finance

Imagine undercollateralized DeFi loans where part of your credit score comes from SBTs and Passport-style stamps.
Your long-term participation and repayment history become on-chain signals.

Jobs and hiring

Instead of sending a static PDF, candidates could just share an ENS and a viewer link.
Recruiters filter for real contributions to open-source repos, DAOs, or protocols.

Social and gaming

Game achievements as SBTs, portable across titles.
Social feeds ranked not just on follower count, but on provable, earned reputation.

The big shift:

Identity stops being something platforms hold about you, and becomes something you carry with you into every app.

Reflection: From “just another NFT” to “this is my story”

At first, ENS felt like a vanity flex (vitalik.eth vibes) and SBTs sounded like a buzzword.

The shift happened when it clicked that:

ENS = your name on the door
SBTs = the certificates hanging inside the office

The address is still there in the background, but your identity becomes:

Easier to remember
Harder to fake
Richer than a list of tradeable JPEGs

As someone trying to break into DevRel and community roles, this changes how I think about credentials:

Instead of another PDF resume, imagine saying:

Key Takeaway

What to do next

If you’re learning:

Search your handle on ENS and see what’s free.
Sketch your ideal “SBT resume”: which skills, courses, and communities would you want as non-transferable badges?

If you’re building:

Ask: “What part of my product could benefit from identity or reputation?”
Could you issue SBTs or POAPs for early testers, contributors, or community mods?

Join the journey: