For Users, Why Mercle?
TL;DR
Mercle is a self-sovereign privacy-preserving decentralised identity and reputation layer. Users can interact with the Mercle Network to transfer their digital identity and reputation data on-chain, unlocking exclusive rewards from on-chain communities.
What is identity?
Identity refers to the information or attributes that uniquely distinguish an individual, entity, or thing. It can include a range of personal details, from basic demographic information to more complex identifiers. Let us take an example of a user Eddy.
Personal Identity (Offline)
This information uniquely identifies Eddy in government and official documents.
Full Name: Eddy Shukla
Date of Birth: May 15, 1990
National ID: 123-45-6789
Driver’s License: ABC-1234-XYZ
Digital Identity (Online)
These digital identifiers help authenticate Eddy on various platforms and services online, facilitating her engagement in social and economic activities.
Email: eddy01s@example.com
Social Media Profiles: @niceguyeddy on Twitter
Online Banking Username: eddyisrich1990
On-Chain Identity (Blockchain Network)
Wallet address: 0x3a86E9C1947f9ff49Abf2bCC3301008165636a5D
Lens Profile: bob.lens
ENS: bob01.eth
What is reputation?
Reputation refers to the perception or opinion that is generally held about someone or something, based on past actions or performance. Reputation is inherently social and dynamic, influenced by the actions of the individual or entity and the interpretations of others.
Personal Reputation (Offline)
This reputation can influence her professional opportunities, promotions, and relationships at work.
Workplace Reputation: Alice is known for her punctuality and reliability among her colleagues. Her reputation in the office is that of a diligent worker and a supportive team member.
Online Reputation (Online)
This online reputation influences how other users and businesses perceive and interact with her in digital environments, impacting her influence, networking opportunities, and trustworthiness in various online communities.
E-commerce Platforms: Alice has a buyer rating of 4.8 out of 5 on eBay based on her transactions, showcasing her as a trustworthy buyer.
Social Media Influence: On Twitter, she is recognized for her insightful posts about sustainability, earning her a reputation as a knowledgeable and respected voice in environmental circles.
On-Chain Reputation (Blockchain Networks)
DeFi Apps: Alice actively uses DeFi protocols such as Aave, Balancer, Trader Joe, etc., and has provided more than 1 million in liquidity.
Trading apps: Alice trades $100,000 into various MEME coins on a weekly basis.
Why do I need my identity and reputation data on the Mercle Network?
Currently, most user data is not readily usable or is stored by large corporations for their own benefit. By storing this data on a self-sovereign decentralized network like Mercle, ownership is returned to the users. This approach allows users to directly access financial benefits from their data, according to their preferences.
I love it. Tell me how to get started?
Join the Mercle Incentive Marketplace.
The Mercle Incentive Marketplace is a platform where web3 companies run exclusive incentive programs to engage and acquire users best suited for their ecosystem.
Here, you will have the opportunity to discover and participate in early token projects and their incentive programs.
In the future, there will be more decentralized applications (dapps) on Mercle. We believe that, once we can fuel the network with high-quality user data, more powerful use cases can be unlocked. These could include recommendation, feed and discovery for social applications, financial risk assessment, collaborative lending for decentralized finance (DeFi), and smarter governance for Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs).
How is Mercle different from other identity and reputation projects in the space like Worldcoin?
As AI development progresses, a crucial feature of any identity and reputation system is the ability to distinguish between bots and humans.
We believe there are primarily three ways to achieve that:
KYC: Use existing government-issued documents such as passports for human verification.
Web of Trust: Extract useful information about the user from existing platforms to create reputation graphs. This can predict the likelihood of the user being a human.
Biometric Verification: Implement real-life verification using biometric data, such as fingerprints, iris patterns, DNA, or other unique human body data, to distinguish individuals.
Worldcoin is following the Biometric verification approach while require a lot of capital to scale and also legal and compliance regulations while capturing the human data of citizen of a country.
Mercle is currently implementing the Web of Trust path. We understand that the Web of Trust doesn't guarantee 100% certainty of human identity, and we plan to include KYC or biometric verification in the future. However, considering the current use-case requirements, we can extract enough user identity and reputation signals from existing internet interactions.
Other reasons not to include KYC and Biometric verification at the beginning:
KYC might work well in developed nations like the US and Europe, but it may exclude the majority of the population in developing parts of the world, as many users don't have a passport.
Biometric Verification: This method can be very expensive and encounters regulatory hurdles when dealing with a country's citizen's biometric data.