What are Soulbound Tokens: Everything You Need to Know
You are reading this article because you have heard a new term – Soulbound Tokens. But you have doubts, as you don’t know if it’s another fancy term or a real thing that will change the world. You are in the right place at a suitable time. I’ve gathered everything you need to know, so keep reading to understand all the buzz.
Table of Contents
What are Soulbound Tokens?
Soulbound Tokens, also known as SBTs are non-transferable NFTs. Once they are in a wallet, they become bound to their owner forever like a soul to a body – literally staying in a Soul wallet. Only the issuer has the ability to burn them.
What are Soulbound Tokens Used For?
Soulbound tokens will contain your whole digital and real-life credentials like education and degrees, work experience, achievements, etc., and represent your reputation. Instead of transferring your personal information to different organizations and companies to store it, you will be the one keeping it safe and sound. So, how will it affect different aspects of your life?
Education
Education is one of the industries that will be greatly affected by Soulbound Tokens. Instead of issuing paper or digital certificates, they will issue SBTs as a verification of a degree that a student obtained. You will store all your lifelong achievements, training, and knowledge in your wallet as proof of your qualification and expertise. You will be the only person to store your data, meaning that you will easily prove your credentials to a potential employer.
Work and Career
You will be able to store your expertise, experience, references, and past workplaces in one place. You will be able to grow your authority in your industry and grow as a professional. There will be no need to collect references from your previous workplaces or try to prove that you are the best fit for the job. All your career and expertise will be available in your Soulbound Wallet. Companies like RabbitHole and 101 are already using this system.
Lifelong Reputation
Soul Tokens will not only affect your education or career but also your everyday life. Your whole life and reputation will be stored in one place. You will get tokens from other “souls” or organizations that will vouch for your achievements, social work, skills, environmental impact, etc.
For example, SBTs will be used by Curious.xyz to allow the users to answer questions for building an on-chain reputation.
When Will SBTs be Realised?
According to Vitalik Buterin SBTs will be available by the end of 2022. If you want to learn more, read his predictions about Ethereum’s future, proof of humanity, etc.
If everything goes according to the plan, then you will hear another term very soon: decentralized society.
What are Concerns Behind Soul Tokens?
What to Do if You Lost the Key to the SBT Wallet?
What if you lose your wallet’s key? How you are going to restore it? Is there even a chance to get access to your “soul”? The only suggestion, for now, is to recover it through the community. The details and the procedure aren’t clear yet, and the solution will only work for the people who are already involved in a lot of projects, are a member of communities, and have some track record.
Online Spam
What to do if you got spammy SBTs. You can’t burn them, so the only solution is to hide them. Although, it’s not really a solution, so the matter
Privacy and Free Speech
If there will not be a Hide option, the idea may be useless because we all have personal information that we don’t want to share with everyone. The access must be limited to secure our privacy and protect online data.
Forever Soulbound: Predictions and the Future
There is nothing clear yet and no one knows how this new term will work out. Does it have a future or not? Will it work exactly as it is designed, or will adapt to the needs of society and evolve by itself? There is no correct answer. Predicting the future is not an option these days.
There will always be people who will say, “NFT is dead,” “blockchain is dead,” The Metaverse will not work,” etc. And there will always be people who will make a fortune on new things and concepts.
So I’m not going to predict anything. My advice is to be flexible, as the world around us is changing very rapidly. Stay updated, and collect as much information as you can to adapt as fast as possible.
