New year, new challenges! As we move into the new year, we want to send a big THANK YOU to the Next.ID community for your continuous support. We’ve come a long way since the alpha test of Next.ID in April of 2022. Thanks to the projects and developers in our community, we learned everyone’s take on identity, privacy, and valid use cases around DID and have spent the last couple of months laying the foundation and framework necessary to lay out our roadmap in 2023!

Here’s a look back at 2022 and what’s in store for Next.ID in 2023.

Our Team

The Next.ID team is globally distributed and remote-first, with members mainly in the US and Asia. Rather than having a physical office, we gather in different locations whenever possible for team events and workshops. If you need to reach out, we are active on Twitter, Telegram, and Discord.

How Developers Use Next.ID Today

Next.ID is a decentralized identity aggregation protocol that integrates all Web2 and Web3 digital identities, offering a verifiable identity database for open-source developers and projects to innovate and build dApps on.

4 Main Services For Developers

ProofService — Ensure data integrity with cryptography

ProofChain follows a blockchain-like model to retain data integrity, using cryptography and the private-public key pairing system. Only users with the right private keys can add to the data in each “block”.

ProofService and every change in its history are fully visible on Arweave, true to the Next.ID community’s commitment to complete transparency for its protocols.

KVService — Organize and make sense of the data provided by users

As users and protocols read and write data using Next.ID, KVService sets up a framework to organize the information neatly. This enables smoother frontend usage of Next.ID, as well as allowing developers a clearer understanding of how Next.ID can be utilized.

RelationService — Enable comprehensive identity queries and social use cases

RelationService takes all Web2 and Web3 IDs and aggregates them into a database. Having Next.ID as the ID layer, social dApps may use this database to perform internal functions. As more projects onboard with Next.ID, more data points are collected and the limit to the database is boundless. Developers can access the RelationService server here.

AuthService — Self-hosted service that provides authentication and authorization for web apps and dApps

Social dApps may use Next.ID’s AuthService for ID authentication. Think of it as the Web3 version of “Sign-in with Google/Twitter”.

Integrated with Web2 and Web3 platforms

Community Engagement Efforts

Over the past few months, there has been a myriad of different marketing and community engagement efforts dished out by the Next.ID core community. Ranging from Twitter Spaces, Discord AMAs, and Hackathons, to IRL panel discussions. Here are some of the key highlights:

• DID Summer #1: Being Human in Web3 — We hosted our 1st Twitter Space and invited renowned DID projects and Web3 builders such as Collab.land, Ceramic, KNN3, .bit, and Unipass. The topic of discussion was the importance and use cases of DIDs.
• Hacktoberfest 2022 — We participated in Hacktoberfest, an open-source event where developers were rewarded for contributing to Next.ID’s repository.
• Ethereum Foundation Devcon 2022 — We participated in a panel discussion in Devcon, Bogota, which was geared toward Ethereum and Web3 builders. The keynote dialogue was themed around AI games, gaming identity, personal data ownership, and how to collaborate with local communities in South America.
• Social Hour Hackathon — We organized a virtual hackathon in conjunction with Gitcoin to encourage open-source developers to get remunerated as crack their brains and problem-solve.
• Bangkok Identity Meetup — We hosted a panel discussion in Bangkok where Web3 & identity thought leaders gathered to exchange ideas and discuss the concept behind DIDs. We had guest speakers who areDID enthusiasts, along with representatives from Port3 Network and AC Capital. Great way to connect with fellow Web3 builders in the budding city.
• Gitcoin Educational Bounty — We decided to engage our community members by getting them to channel their creative juices and partake in content creation for Next.ID. We had a fun time reviewing the video and article submissions and were blown away by the effort that was put in. Definitely looking forward to organizing similar events in the future!

Content

Apart from being hyper-focused on building the best-in-line DID protocol, we also place a strong emphasis on educating the general public on the concept of DIDs. Even if you are a Web3 native like us, there are constantly new ideas to be learned as boundaries are being challenged every single day. You may refer to some of our thought pieces below:

• Why We Need To Own Our Digital Identities In A Decentralized World
• Digital Identity: What It Is, What It Solves & What Lies Ahead
• How Digital Identity Evolved Over The Years — Web1, Web2, & Web3
• Is a DID a wallet? Let’s debunk myths about identities in Web3

Partnerships

Since Next.ID is a DID infrastructure layer, our key metric of impact is to get dApps to entrust us with their backend identity management and social graph integrations. Next.ID will provide these dApps with our comprehensive social graphs and best-in-class user authentication so that they can have ease of mind and focus on building their product.

Here are a few success stories:

• DID partner of choice with Mask Network and Firefly
• Alpha Test Partner with SwapChat, KNN3, .bit, and RSS3
• Next.ID’s identity graph service supports 0xScope and Web3.bio

Outlook For 2023

Let’s take a look at what Next.ID envisions to achieve in 2023. The main gist would be to reduce and consolidate the existing 4 main services into 3 — ProofService, RelationService, and CoreService. Below is the list of plans moving forward.

Proof Service — Smoother DID Verification & Management

To give a short summary, Proof Service ensures the legitimacy of users’ identity data during on-chain and off-chain interactions, by using cryptography and a private-public key pairing system. Here are some of the key features that the Next.ID will look to build or further improve on.

1. Support more Web2 and Web3 platforms
2. Remove platform API dependency for proof verification
3. Design Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) for users to better manage their keys for different purposes in different scenarios
4. Identity bindings will be segregated into either public (existing) or private as discussed here
5. Onboarding of more EOA wallets
6. Self-Recovery of Avatars can be replaced/recovered in a multi-authenticating manner
7. Zero-Knowledge Proof
8. Oracle Services for Blockchains

Some key ProofService data

1. 16023 binding records to date (Twitter: 12802, Ethereum: 3219)
2. ProofService was called 29.8M times within a week (3 Feb — 10 Feb)

Relation Service — Open Identity Graph To Build Personalized Reputation

Relation Service takes all Web2 and Web3 IDs and aggregates them into a database. Having Next.ID as the DID layer, social dApps may use this database to perform internal functions. As more projects onboard with Next.ID, more data points are collected and the potential of the database is limitless. In 2023, Next.ID would like to:

1. Include more data sources from Web3 and Web2 platforms
2. Ensure 100% credibility of data sources
3. Improve graph algorithms by Heterogeneous graph mining, Weighted node score, etc.
4. Develop a dune-like open dashboard for backend access
5. Optimize graph database for better performance

Core Service — Self-hosted Tech Stack To Expand DID Use Cases

You are in for a treat as Next.ID is looking to launch a new module named Core Service soon! As you may already know, Next.ID uses Arweave as a 3rd party decentralized data storage solution. Moving forward, we would like to allow our end users to self-host their DID and network of data so as to minimize external risks and regain absolute control over their own database. Keep your eyes peeled as we will release more updates soon.

Closing

We’re growing! Our core team has evolved in a major way and we’re gearing up for a big run in the new year. In addition to our current core contributors, we’ve also been actively onboarding talents across the different functions of the team.

We look forward to branding Next.ID as the leading DID infrastructure and key opinion project by building out benchmark use cases, content reservoirs, and leading industry discussions.

Also, the team is laying the groundwork for Next.ID to eventually operate as an open-source community governed as a DAO. We call for more builders to join our mission of making decentralized identity the gateway to interconnected and fair cyberspace.

Intrigued? Find out more at docs.next.id or reach out to us at developer@next.id. Follow us on Twitter: @NextDotID