Hey there, thanks for stopping by! We’re Kai and Marcus, we’re currently working on Trust Protocol. We’re building a robust data indexing, structuring, and correlation engine to enable a more fair, global, and informed crypto ecosystem. Below, you’ll find more information on what we’re working on and how you can collaborate.
To date, we’ve built incredible trust machines but, as Charlie Chaplain reminds us: “we are not machines, with machine minds, nor machine hearts.” For crypto to deliver on a life that is “beautiful and free,” we are missing underlying infrastructure to bridge the machine and the human.
As we seek to build more complex systems of peer-to-peer interactions that fundamentally require high degrees of context to unlock the next wave of web3. These engagements range from unlocking new DeFi protocols, integration with real world assets, enhancing the state of sybil resistance, creating engaging values-aligned communities, among a number of other use cases (which we dive into further below).
As more of the world’s data comes on-chain, we need better ways of understanding and leveraging the rich social context that the data provides. Users interacts with each other through different protocols, communities and social media. The current data indexing in Web3 is however very siloed. The Graph protocol has set the underlying infrastructure to index and query blockchain data. Web3 projects are indexed into subgraphs, where most commonly each project is represented by one subgraph. However, we believe that users in Web3 could leverage an even richer social context that is cross-dApp, protocol and chains. We are working on bringing further maturity to the web3 ecosystem by developing a privacy-centric data analytics protocol that leverages social graphs, data indexing, and off-chain/on-chain data porting to enable robust protocols and environments.
At Trust Protocol, we believe the following:
We’re building the infrastructure for composable trust graphs for on-chain data. We want to bring more visibility to user data on-chain by focusing on structuring the data that is captured into a deeply rich social graph. This enables us to see not only how protocols are being used on-chain, but also who is using them, and what their wider social context is as well. An example will be The Graph protocol, which is the current de facto indexing solution for on-chain data. The way they organize the data is separated as one subgraph for each protocol, so making sense of the relationship between these different protocols is not straightforward. Our solution is to index the data in a Facebook like social-graph, where it is easy to derive relationships between different users and the common ground that they share simply by zooming in to the social graph. Our approach is centered around composability and modularity, whereby we can enable anyone to build graphs on top of our infrastructure - unlocking infinite possibilities for our users. Therefore as compared to centralized data provider that only offer limited API endpoints, we can support more customized solution for projects that want to understand their users.
By creating richer on-chain data aggregation and analysis, we’ll be able to provide massive unlocks to web3 and beyond. Below, you’ll find a few examples of use-cases that we’ve outlined. This is just the beginning of high-context relationships in web3 powered by trust and social graphs; and we’re so excited to build this alongside you!
Sybil resistance is an ever-increasingly important facet of our online worlds. By drawing on rich social graphs, we are able to provide base-layer infrastructure that sits across identity solutions, proof of personhood applications, as well as draw on vastly rich on-chain data to verify the extent to which users are truly human.
Imagine logging into a decentralized social platform, where you’re able to automatically know who from the communities you’re participating in is on the platform. Further, the context that is presented to you online would be tailored according to the information that you’re putting out into the world, which would allow you to find deeper resonance with the content you’re seeing, according to your on-chain activity.
In its current form, DeFi is a relatively nascent ecosystem. Whilst we’ve built some really important infrastructure to facilitate over-collateralized lending and are now dipping our toes into more mature DeFi protocols, being able to connect your data from a variety of source from across your on-chain activity would give you a much better idea of who you could extend under-collateralized lending to, or which platforms you could use that your trusted community members are using. Further, platforms would be able to understand where their users are coming from and what types of on-chain activity they are engaging with.
As user-facing applications, marketplaces and wallets can provide even higher resolution offerings to their users by leveraging on-chain social and interest graphs. For example, these platforms can provide their users with specific NFTs to acquire, platforms to engage with, among a number of other personalized recommendations.
For DAOs to be able to provide rich social context into their governance modules, analyzing the relationships that exist on-chain across each of their members will provide governance modules with deeply valuable analytics on not only who voters are, but also develop better governance modules.
Whether its a DAO or an NFT PFP project, congrats on launching your community! The question is - what are your participants up to? Imagine being able to create richer experiences for them based upon their interests and on-chain activity, enhancing the sense of closeness with your community.
For those working in the DeSci world, how great would it be if you could know more about the knowledge that your project is producing, and be able to prove its reputation on-chain, whilst also attributing all the authors and reviewers of the knowledge. Moreover, you’d be able to trace the relationships that exist across the data that are produced during the research and prove its validity on chain as well.
Kai is a researcher and blockchain engineer. His research focuses on privacy, zero knowledge primitives, decentralized reputation and identity. He has worked and launched a number of projects in the space, focusing on smart contract development as well as the backend infrastructure. His professional background spans across the identity space where he has worked on building privacy-centric digital identity tooling that aims to bridge real world identity with interoperable blockchain infrastructure that falls within the bounds of regulatory compliance. He is the winner of a number of global hackathons, including some in the Filecoin and Polkadot ecosystems. He is a graduate of the University of Edinburgh where he graduated with a degree in Computer Science and published a paper on computable trust and on-chain reputation.
Marcus is an entrepreneur and researcher. He is a Fellow at the Ethereum Foundation where he is currently researching how we onboard the Next Billion users into the ecosystem leveraging DeFi as the underlying infrastructure to enhance livelihoods, you can read more of his research here: https://ef.marcus.am. Marcus is working closely with leading DeFi protocols, thought-leaders in the space, DAOs, and on-the-ground communities in emerging economies to understand the role of crypto to enable more flourishing livelihoods. He has also worked with crypto-native data indexing and analytics platforms, was a founding core contributor to CityDAO, among a number of other leading social and investment DAOs, with security token issuance/regulatory compliance for a Techstars-backed project, and has worked at the intersection of the real world and crypto for a number of years. He holds a degree in Economics and Governance from the University of Oxford, where his research focused on the role of establishing new means of value (beyond purely financial) to bring systemic social and environmental change in society.
So, like what you’e read so far? If you’re interested in supporting us building the trust and interest graph or integrating it into your project, we’d love to connect. You can either: