Soulbound Tokens (SBT) & Metaverse
How do SBTs improve the metaverse & web3 ecosystem
Souldbound Token (SBT) is first proposed by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin in January 2022. But it wasn’t until May 2022, Vitalik and two other authors, E.Glen Weyl and Puja Ohlhaver, further develop the idea and officially put it down in a whitepaper.
What is a Soulbound Token (SBT)?
As the name suggests, SBT is a token bound to the soul of the wallet. It is a non-transferable non-fungible token (NFT).
While NFTs are already widely used in the digital art space and also as assets in blockchain games, they cannot fully reflect the wallet owners’ identity because of their transferable nature.
Do note that the identity here does not necessarily refer to doxing the wallet owner in real life, such as name, age, address, and all other private information. For now in terms of identity, NFT can only temporarily reflect the wealth status of the wallet owner, unlike SBTs, which can express the owner’s actions or achievements.
“Such tokens would be like an extended resume, issued by other wallets that attest to these social relations,” explained in the whitepaper. SBT can be a digital certificate issued by universities and institutions, an attendance record of a global exhibition, a membership of a clubhouse, and many more use cases.
With the unique characteristics of being non-transferable, SBT cannot be bought or sold*. That’s why it is perfect to represent the social identity of the holder.
*(technically, of course, we may argue that the owner can bribe the issuer to acquire an SBT, or even hire somebody to log into his wallet to participate in the tasks)
How Does Soulbound Token (SBT) Relate to The Metaverse?
The term soulbound was actually coined by the popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game, World of Warcraft.
The introduction of soulbound items ensures the game is challenging and interesting, as players are not able to buy or sell soulbound items, they will have no choice but complete difficult missions to acquire the sacred items.
SBTs in the metaverse serve similar purposes.
- Soulbound Items
Untradable items such as a transit pass issued by the official project developer. Allowing the buy & sell of this kind of item may throw the metaverse off balance, users can maliciously buy off a large amount of supply and make public transport become unaffordable. We do not wish to see some of the items become privileges of the resourceful ones. Instead, we wish to see users put efforts into the metaverse to earn the items.
It also drastically reduces or even eliminates the “pay-to-win” scenario. Those with more resources will gain an advantage for sure, afterall the metaverse is a miniature of society. But with soulbound items, we could at least make the metaverse more balanced.
2. Achievements
Owning a cryptopunks NFT doesn’t make you an NFT O.G., you could have bought it from someone. Even if we are able trace all the onchain records to prove that you mint the NFT on the very first day, it still doesn’t mean that you’re an important contributor to this NFT collection’s community.
But imagine if you hold an official SBT of achievement that is issued by the project and is specifically dedicated to the O.G.s for their contribution, the SBT speaks for your identity.
Many other achievements can be denoted by SBTs. They help tell the stories of the wallet owner, while keeping the anonymity.
3. Others
There are many more possibilities for us to explore, such as NFT minting whitelisting, admission to restricted areas, etc. The SBT technology is not limited certain use cases. The non-transferrable property, where needed, can naturally emerge from the design itself.
Soulbound Tokens (SBT) in GigaSpace Metaverse
Soulbound Tokens (SBT) will be vastly used in the GigaSpace metaverse. The technology is already included in the blueprints of a lot of different modules. In fact, we’re going to reveal one of use cases real soon. Stay tuned to our social channels for the exciting announcement.
About GigaSpace
We’re building the world’s first Web5 metaverse with a unique ecosystem to facilitate business activities and communities by combining the worlds of Web2 and Web3.
