Real-World Passions to Ride the Next Wave of Crypto Adoption | Opinion
In Web3, we still struggle to effectively connect our real-world activities to our online presence through on-chain mechanisms—yet.
Real-life experiences say as much about who we are as what we've done or achieved. They're the workouts you completed in CrossFit as an enthusiastic athlete. They're the Comic-Cons you attended as a Marvel fan. They're the raids you completed in World of Warcraft as a dedicated gamer. Even with such a high level of detail, passion itself is inherently limited by nature; it's the experiences that truly drive identity.
But in the Web3 space, which touts digital identity as a catchphrase, we struggle to effectively connect our real-world activities to our online presence through on-chain mechanisms—truly capturing our holistic selves in virtual media.
In the domain of Web3, digital identity must become more than just changing your social media avatar to a new JPEG you bought to boost engagement in app X.
Repeatedly, we see one-dimensional attempts to bring passionate audiences onto the chain through identity mechanisms, and these attempts are consistently insufficient due to walled garden ecosystems lacking depth, reach, and connectivity.
The Behavioral Steering Wheel The way forward involves broadening our approach to digital identity, focusing on real-world experiences rather than technology-centered labels.
The question is not just how to record or provide proof of experience, but also why we should, in the first place, engage in this exogenous behavior and what to do with it once acquired. There's a need for a behavioral steering wheel where real-world passions power digital identity, enriching both the online and offline aspects of life.