Why Gitcoin Passport?

Gitcoin Passport is a sybil resistance protocol and identity aggregation dApp built on the Ceramic Network. Users can collect various identity attestations, called "Stamps", from web2 and web3 authenticators all in one place.

Many systems, like Gitcoin Grants, assume each participant is a unique human, and offer rewards for these participants. This makes them vulnerable to sybil attacks, where a bad actor creates a large number of pseudonymous identities to subvert the service’s reputation system, gain a disproportionate amount of influence, and direct rewards towards extractors.

Credible identity verification and reputation mechanisms are essential to combat this. Applications liked BrightID, ENS, and POAP each help suggest whether an account is associated with a real human, but they are only truly powerful when they compose with each other.

Projects need a way to evaluate these disparate "identity providers" altogether.

That's where Gitcoin Passport comes in.

We originally created Passport for Gitcoin's own needs: to defend Gitcoin's Grants program from sybil attacks (opens in a new tab) so that only real people can help decide which projects receive funds from a shared matching pool.

One thing we have learned from defending the Gitcoin Grants program is this: Sybil defense is complicated and resource intensive. Yet it is essential for any web3 project that hopes to have longevity, because users will not stick around if your project is filled with scammers.

As we developed years of in-house expertise in sybil defense, we saw a responsibility to help other web3 projects protect their communities from bots and bad actors.

Because we believe that private identity verification is a public good, we decided to turn Passport into its own product.

With dozens of identity providers using Passport to protect their communities, Passport is on track to become the leading, open-source identity verification protocol in the world.