28 / Soulbound

In this episode, we discuss soulbound tokens, its characteristics, and how it connects to a soul. We also talk about China's social credit system and the use cases of soulbound tokens.

Timeline

00:40 Pushing Ether sends control

02:38 Full disclaimer if you want to push ether

03:31 Soulbound tokens, good or bad?

04:52 Can soulbound tokens be fungible AND nonfungible?

07:51 Star of David is a soulbound token?

08:32 What tattoos are soulbound tokens? not all

09:28 Should soulbound tokens be transferrable?

13:54 Soulbound does not require immutable

14:13 How do you connect to a soul?

15:38 Deep into the metaphysics of souls

20:00 China social credit system

20:47 The SBT use cases

25:54 A personal, question did you overestimate or underestimate what was coming?

Participants

Episode notes

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Push versus pull models of sending things from TW@tomiwa1a
- Push implies change of control, including the send function in Solidity for Ether and the safeTransferFrom in ERC-721.
- Best practice: https://docs.soliditylang.org/en/v0.8.14/common-patterns.html?highlight=withdrawal#withdrawal-from-contracts
- Actual safety measure is: every time you send away control from your contract using a message send or safeTransferForm etc. make sure that from the possible ways that the recipient could enter back into your contract OR affect the global state does not violate any of your assumptions or preconditions
“Not a shill and chill”
On-chain and off-chain digital identity–soul bound tokens
- Basic definition of soulbound token
  - 1. It’s a token—it’s not intrinsically valuable, “it’s just a number”
  - 1. It’s nonfungible? comes from games, tattoos that meaning derived without, achievement badges? stolen valor?
  - 1. not transferable (OR should be identified with ONE person?!)
  - ENTRIKEN’S LAW: Your ownership of assets on a ledger is only as valid as your trust in the custodian who has physical control of the assets. // The ISSUE is the trusted party
  - What is a soul? This is a fundamental question for SBT. And how does something on a blockchain connect to a soul? Deep into the metaphysics.
- Extensions?
  - Nobody says these have to be immutable / non-revokable
- Others models
  - “immutable resume or report card” // incompatible with “right to be forgotten”
  - “permanent ratings”
  - “badges”
  - star ratings // people get sued over these
- Technically, to implement this:
  - ERC-721 with transfer disallowed
  - “soul”
  - Send only to externally-owned accounts “wallets”, not smart contracts
- History of ERC-721
  - Thousands of discussion posts
- Vitalik SBT / https://twitter.com/fulldecent/status/1527686122163384321
Is NFT more or less than Will expected