On Identity with ERC 6551

NFTs may not have been Ethereum’s core focus, but what they do for identity cannot be denied as a testament to the tangible elements of community.

An audio reading of the article, how it should be heard, as a story.

The contents of your backpack or whatever you carry your daily essentials in, says a lot about where you are going, the kind of person you are and what you value most in that moment. I know a group of friends who use the PWP rule; Phone, Wallet, Passport. All of these are identifiers of who each individual is. If you were to take it a step further by opening the wallet, scanning through the phone or browsing through the passport, you would be able to learn a lot more about each person.

NFTs are in many ways social markers, if you see a Punk pfp for example, there are certain social conclusions you make about the owner of that account. Now what if similar to Punk 4762, it was an extension of its owner, with say a curated collection of what they deem to be their personality or credibility markers?

What is ERC 6551?

ERC 6551 is essentially your NFTs ‘backpack’, it is a permissionlessly deployable registry, which gives each NFT, a wallet. For more in-depth definitions, the EIP 6551 proposal and tokenbound docs site are great places to start, Galverse also has a more practical tailored thread. Currently live on mainnet, ERC 6551 increases the inherent value of your tokens and gives you space to populate a specific token bound wallet with other collectibles. These token bound wallets can sign into dApps using WalletConnect (once deployed), hold other ERC 20, 721 & 1155 tokens, where the ‘parent’ NFT has full custody, with you the holder as the executor. Think of it as account abstraction for NFTs.

An illustration created by Galverse, showing a possible parent tree of tokens within a token bound wallet

In the illustration above, the Devin Dimension Galverse NFT owns some ETH, $FWB tokens, a lens profile NFT and a soulbound token (SBT). Below, the Anahira Amalthea Galverse NFT, holds a collectible titled “‘I Like You’ Superstar Extras” in its token wallet. Below that, you will see that the “‘I Like You’ Superstar Extras” collectible, which also has an address & could have other collectibles in that token bound wallet.

A screenshot of the Galverse NFT ‘Anahira Amalthea’, showing a collectible “‘I Like You’ Superstar Extras” within Anahira’s specific token bound wallet

A screenshot of the “‘I Like You’ Superstar Extras” collectible’s token bound wallet, which was created to commemorate Anahira and the other Gal’s short cameo in Tove Lo x Galverse’s anime music video

Why would anyone want this?

To give you the opportunity to redefine identity & creativity on your own terms, you become your NFT and it becomes you. Here are some of the use cases — outside of being fun — that I think could be incredible implementations of ERC 6551:

• Social Presence ~ if by some fortune one were able to get a lens profile for a specific NFT’s wallet, that NFT could build a people facing identity where ‘it’ — well really its just you, facing as the NFT — could post, perhaps even build a following.
• Airdrops & ‘POAPs’ ~ a project or curated event can airdrop commemorative stickers or something similar, by easily viewing the NFTs wallet address via the Tokenbound website or more intentionally for a bulk drop using the GitHub client SDK repository.
• Gaming inventory ~ in games where players can collect assets for their characters, a wallet inventory could make the storage and assigning of these assets more transparent and concise, where selling the character would also transfer the character’s collected assets with ease.
• DAOs/Collectives ~ since each NFT has a unique wallet which can only be accessed and used by its owner, a DAO or a collective can assign certain NFTs as signers to a multisig
• Not exactly a use case but as it stands, a project can customise the wallet implementation of its collection using this GitHub repository

There are of course, glaring security risks here as well.

• If you were to burn your ‘parent’ NFT, you would be burning along with it, all the other assets in that NFT’s wallet.
• If the security of the wallet within which your NFT was held were to be compromised, the security of the assets within that NFTs wallet/backpack would also likely be compromised, causing a dangerous death spiral.
• The scammy beavers don’t rest, so one would have to exercise extreme caution when purchasing NFTs with other assets already in the ‘backpack’; you can verify using tokenbound or opensea.
• The Schrödinger’s cat equivalent of sending an NFT into its own token wallet. In this case, the NFT still exists, but it now has autonomy, it essentially owns itself, meaning it ‘exists’ somewhere between being burnt and lost into the ether.

There are always cons when a new era of development, and yet each time, the resilient communities innovate to steel themselves against the horrors of greed.

Identity is a concept of being, of defining oneself. It is shaped by values, experiences and beliefs, it is also flexible and fluid. In the era we live in, how one identifies can be deemed as tantamount to who one is. ERC 6551 brings with it an era of social identity that personifies ones assets, giving rise to the freedom and ability to define oneself as one sees fit. A new luxury that not many have, but in this frontier, anything is possible.