Soulbound tokens: the future of NFT and Ethereum

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin released a 37-page paper in which he explains that the future of Ethereum will be centered on a new ecosystem called Decentralized Society.

This new future is going to be known as “soulbound tokens (SBT)” whose name possibly has an assignment to the soulbound items from the “World of Warcraft” video game, which is expected to be available for use later this year.

The SBTs are NFT that a person can obtain based on their work and educational history, the main difference with the classic  NFT is that they are not transferable but revocable and they will be stored in a “Soul” wallet forever. The goal of SBTs is that they represent a person’s history and achievements functioning as an extended resume.

In addition, the Ethereum document explains that if a Soulbound token is lost, it can be recovered through community recovery, meaning that Soul is the “intersectional vote” of its social network.

The idea is to use these tokens as a kind of unique badge which represents people’s social identities being personalized and not interchangeable. These tokens could help with problems such as scams and theft.

The STB tokens could encourage Web3 by decreasing reliance on centralized companies and people gaining greater ownership of their digital identities.

What new uses would Soulbound tokens have as compared to regular NFTs?

An example could be with university degrees since the university could grant them as SBTs which as it is non-transferable, the graduate would not be able to sell, unlike if this degree was given as an NFT.

The SBTs could equally serve as tickets for an event or festival since this way the organizers could ensure that a specific person would attend a conference or event since they would have an SBTs to back it up

Another technology proposed by these new tokens are Soul drops. These come as typical crypto Airdrops but are based on calculations on SBTs and other tokens within a Soul.

It is expected that Soulbound (SBT) to be available for use later this year.