Author: LXDAO

This article is the final chapter of the "Blockchain Civilization Trilogy," aiming to outline the prototype of a decentralized society (DeSoc). We believe that civilization is undergoing a fundamental shift: from the atomic age to the bit age. In this context, Ethereum demonstrates its potential to become a meta-framework for civilization—an "error-correcting system" that allows social institutions to continuously iterate in a low-cost, programmable environment.

The upper limit of this framework begins with its most basic unit—the human being. This article argues that as RWA (Real-World Assets) on-chain reaches a certain scale, the overall mapping of ideas, culture, and RWO (Real-World Organizations) will be premised on "human beings on-chain." Individuals' rights, such as identity, credit, abilities, and social relationships, must be reliably mapped, freely transferred, and combined in order to achieve the on-chain reconstruction of social structures.

Accordingly, this article elaborates on DeSoc, which is centered on "sovereign individuals," from the three-layer system of identity, economy, and governance. Individuals can migrate between multiple DAOs (digital cities) at low cost by virtue of their digitized on-chain rights and assets, thereby driving governance optimization and ultimately forming a competitive governance pattern, opening a new chapter in the digital age.

Keywords: decentralized society; sovereign individual; human on-chaining; data assetization; universal basic income; the digital age.

Introduction: The Eternal Migration: The Path to Freedom from Geographic Frontiers to Digital Domains

Freedom of movement is one of humanity's oldest and most fundamental rights. Before the formation of nation-states and fixed borders, tribes and families could migrate based on their needs for survival and security, choosing better environments. This mechanism, with migration as a feedback loop, is a primitive constraint on power—it does not eliminate power, but rather ensures that power can always be replaced.

Agricultural civilization and state-building tightened this freedom: population was tied to land, and power anchored individuals to their birthplace through "irrevocable authorization," transforming the social contract from a dynamic reciprocal relationship into a static constraint. The cost of individual migration was high, and the recovery of power was difficult.

However, the pursuit of individual freedom has never disappeared, and has given rise to two major trends:

1. Vertical escape: Individual immigrants seek freer, more prosperous, and law-abiding societies, enabling them to actively choose governance and services.

2. Horizontal integration: nation-state integration to obtain higher-level public goods and broaden the boundaries of mobility and markets.

These two trends both point to a core demand: people are always seeking a space where they can "vote with their feet" at a lower cost and with higher efficiency.

Today, blockchain technology, especially DeSOC on Ethereum, is opening up a third path: building a completely new digital realm. Here, the right to "vote with your feet" is natively and cost-effectively re-empowered to every individual.

This article aims to demonstrate that DeSoc, which starts with "human beings going on the blockchain," is the latest chapter in the eternal free migration of mankind in the digital age. It will achieve the ultimate deconstruction of "irrevocable authorization" and accelerate the evolution of civilization towards the digital age.

Identity Layer – From “Data Naked” to “Sovereignty Resides in People”

1. Theoretical Foundation: From SBT to the Vision of "Social Composability"

In his articles such as "Decentralized Society: Searching for the Soul of Web3" and "What Are My Thoughts on Biometric Identity?", Vitalik Buterin laid the theoretical foundation for the next generation of identity systems. His proposed concept of "Soul-Bound Identity," with its core carrier SBT (Soul-Bound Token), is not another financial asset, but rather a non-transferable certificate carrying an individual's social history, credit, and contributions. The ultimate goal of this system is to build social composability—allowing each independent "person" to have an identifiable, trustworthy, and incentivized social foundation on the blockchain.

2. Technical Architecture: Sovereign Identity Stack and Standardization Process

The vision of "humans on the blockchain" is moving from theory to engineering reality through a series of Ethereum community standards (EIP/ERC). Its core technology is a three-layer "sovereign identity stack" driven by community consensus:

2.1 DID: The Root of Sovereignty and the Standardized Identity Anchor

Decentralized identifiers (DIDs) conforming to the W3C DID standard provide individuals with the ability to generate and fully control their "root identity." On Ethereum, this concept is embodied in EIP-4361 (Sign-In with Ethereum, SIWE). This standard allows users to log in directly to third-party applications using their Ethereum accounts, achieving decentralized authentication and representing a crucial step in returning identity sovereignty to individuals. Meanwhile, EIP-712 (Structured Data Signatures) provides security and user experience guarantees for DIDs when signing complex, readable off-chain claims (such as identity credentials).

2.2 Zero-Knowledge Proof: A Shield for Privacy and a Verifiable Credential Engine

Zero-knowledge proofs (ZK) are a privacy-enhancing layer in the identity stack. They ensure the authenticity of identity claims (such as "I am 18 years of age or older") without exposing all data (such as date of birth) through a "verifiable but invisible" cryptographic mechanism. Although ZK is a cryptographic primitive, its application in the identity field is being driven by exploratory proposals such as ERC-5833 (a privacy-compliant combination of soul-bound tokens), which aim to address the compliance and privacy challenges of SBT.

2.3 SBT: The Soul of Society and On-Chain Resume Container

As a data container for identity and a module for social record, the form of SBT is being defined and optimized through multiple ERC proposals. Its core idea originates from ERC-721 (Non-Fungible Token Standard), but the key characteristic of "non-transferability" is endowed by specialized extended standards: ERC-4973 and ERC-5192 (Minimum Soul-Bound Token) are two competing proposals aiming to define the core logic of SBT. Both inject the token with the attribute of "non-transferability" and bind its metadata to identity. Furthermore, ERC-1155 (Multi-Token Standard), due to its efficient batch processing capabilities, is often considered for issuing and managing large numbers of composable SBT credentials, thereby constructing a programmable social DNA for individuals in the digital world.

This community-standard-based technology stack, consisting of DID (EIP-4361/712) + ZK (privacy enhancement) + SBT (ERC-4973/5192/1155), is the underlying, interactive architecture that enabled DeSoc to move from the white paper to smart contracts.

3. Ecological Practices: An Early Map of Personality On-Chain

Currently, identity experiments within the Ethereum ecosystem are characterized by "fragmented exploration".

A series of cutting-edge projects are working to map abstract identity theories into concrete digital personality networks:

• Lens Protocol/Farcaster: Putting social graphs on the blockchain, making social relationships and influence portable and verifiable assets.
• Worldcoin: Despite its controversies, its attempt to verify "human uniqueness" through biometrics reveals a path to resisting Sybil attacks and achieving universal identity distribution.
• Proof of Humanity / Idena: Through different "human proof" mechanisms, it is committed to distinguishing real individuals from fake identities on the blockchain, safeguarding the authenticity of DeSoc.
• Gitcoin Passport / ENS: By integrating on-chain contributions, domain identity, and reputation credentials, it builds a quantifiable foundational profile of an individual's social capital.

These practices, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, have achieved breakthroughs in single dimensions such as social interaction, identity, and biometrics, objectively forming "multi-source reputation fragments," but have not yet realized the "composable digital personality" required by DeSoc.

Against this backdrop, the explorations of projects like Credinet are particularly important. They move beyond simply describing a single attribute of "humanity" in isolation; instead, they integrate tools like MAI (a verifiable computation tool for manipulable interactions) to attempt to build a digital identity framework that allows users to carry and prove their multi-dimensional credit fragments. Starting from multiple independent ZK proof modules, this project creates a sustainable, verifiable, and composable "Lego-like" profile of individual rights to achieve the goals of "unified profile + fragmented rights + privacy against coercion + decentralized governance."

4. Real-world motivation: From addressing industry pain points to building civilized infrastructure

Building decentralized identities is not only a technological evolution, but also a rigid requirement for the practical development of blockchain.

Industry-driven: Advanced financial applications such as insurance, credit, and decentralized governance all rely on trusted identities to achieve accurate risk pricing and incentive allocation.

Civilization-Driven: In the grand narrative of Ethereum civilization, DeSoc is not a simple extension of DeFi, but a paradigm revolution in social structure. Establishing a trustworthy identity infrastructure is the foundation for building a new civilization.

Competition-driven: The next growth curve of the industry should not be trapped in the involutionary competition of DeFi, but should turn to building underlying infrastructure such as identity layers with positive externalities and network effects, giving full play to Ethereum's irreplaceable advantages of trust and neutrality.

In conclusion, when an individual's credit, abilities, and social networks become portable and freely movable digital assets, humanity has regained a crucial freedom in the digital world—migration.

The construction of the identity layer is therefore far more than just a technological upgrade. It is the ultimate confirmation of individual rights and a historic starting point for Ethereum civilization to move from a "capital contract" to a "social contract." From now on, people are no longer prisoners of algorithms, but truly sovereign nodes in the on-chain world.

The establishment of this identity layer makes "humans" unique entities with complete history and reputation, and unmistakable, for the first time in the digital world, providing credible atomic units for all subsequent socio-economic activities.

Economic Perspective: Ecosystem Reconstruction from "Financial Lego" to "Social Lego"

When credible and rich digital identities become a reality, a credit-based market system will emerge. Individuals will be able to break free from the constraints of geographical boundaries, evolving from "digital nomads" to "digital citizens," living and creating in a new economy built on algorithmic trust.

3.1 Credit as Capital: The Rise of Personal Finance

When credible identities become a common reality, a financial market based on personal credit can be built.

• Members of the DAO can issue "reputation bonds" (a type of debt instrument backed by future labor or contribution income) with SBT.
• Open source developers can obtain "trust loans" based on their contribution records;
• Highly reputable communities can even issue stablecoins backed by collective credit.

The barriers to finance have been completely dismantled. Trust is now dynamically defined by algorithms and real-time behavior. Finance returns to its essence—the quantifiable expression of social trust. From now on, financial activities are no longer the exclusive domain of capital, but a natural extension of personal credit.

3.2 Reputation as Productivity: The Birth of the Marketplace of Ideas

When a credible identity carries a rich individual resume, a completely new "marketplace of ideas" is unlocked. All creative units, interactions, and evaluations are deposited as a portfolio of reputation assets for the producers. Knowledge can be securitized, influence can be invested, and collaboration can be quantified. In this new market, those who are trusted become the most productive. At this point, a "marketplace of ideas" with trust as the unit of settlement is formed.

3.3 Identity as Institution: On-chaining the Real Economy

A trusted identity system provides an institutional bridge for the integration of the real economy and the blockchain economy.

Enterprises, communities, and other organizations can map their legal structures to on-chain sovereign identities, enabling complex relationships such as equity, governance rights, and asset rights to be automatically executed through smart contracts.

• Corporate DAO-ization: Equity and voting rights are represented by NFTs/SBTs.
• Community financialization: Governance rules and profit distribution are encapsulated in code.

This represents a paradigm shift from "legal trust" to "algorithmic trust," laying a trustworthy foundation for blockchain in the real world.

3.4 The Paradigm Shift in the Economy: Endogenous Trust and Reconstruction of Order

When trustworthy individuals become the basic units of the economy, the entire economic paradigm shifts. This is manifested in two key ways: transaction costs approach zero, and the cost of wrongdoing approaches infinity.

Transaction costs collapse: Trust becomes an endogenous mechanism

On-chain identity and credit systems eliminate three core frictions: information asymmetry, lack of trust, and difficulty in fulfilling obligations. Trust transforms from a costly external factor into a cheap, intrinsic algorithmic attribute, thereby transforming the economic system...

A high-friction society transitions to a low-friction society.

The cost of wrongdoing is soaring: credit becomes a permanent constraint.

The non-transferability of SBT permanently binds an individual to their behavioral record. A single act of fraud can damage on-chain trust, resulting in the loss of all opportunities for cooperation before the damage is repaired. Under rational calculation, maintaining trust becomes the only optimal strategy.

The Arrival of a Civilized Society Based on Trust: From the Rule of Law to Self-Governance

When transaction costs approach zero and the cost of wrongdoing approaches infinity, the foundation of social order shifts from external coercion to internal constraints. The rule of law evolves into "trust and self-discipline," and regulation gives way to "reputation constraints." We are moving from a "contract society" to a "credit civilization."

3.5 The Rise of Digital Nomads

When "human beings" are established as credible and abundant digital entities, "digital nomads" who are free from geographical limitations truly evolve into digital citizens. Their basic economic resources (UBI) consist of two parts.

Data asset revenue

An active and trustworthy on-chain identity is itself a data asset that can sustainably generate revenue. Individuals can use data marketplaces to authorize the use of their data to users who require it, such as those for AI training and market analysis, while protecting their privacy (e.g., through zero-knowledge proofs), thereby obtaining stable and passive data rights income.

Node network revenue

Individuals earn network maintenance revenue by providing basic resources to the network (such as PoS staking and storage/computing power for DePIN devices). This revenue, along with data asset revenue, forms the foundation of universal income in DeSoc that ensures basic economic security.

Governance: From "Full Authority" to "Bit-Based Authorization"

The essence of power is the appropriation and control of the rights of others. Since the birth of political society, this power has originated from the relinquishment of individual rights.

In the era of imperial power, the transfer of power was a one-time, irrevocable act, and even the rights of future generations were permanently transferred; in the era of constitutional government, the transfer of power occurs according to the election cycle.

What these two models have in common is that the transfer of rights is long-term in time and comprehensive in scope.

When rights are transferred entirely and permanently, individuals lose their fundamental bargaining chip for checking power. Freedom of movement then becomes the ultimate defense mechanism for individuals against power.

When individual rights become decomposable, composable, and transferable on-chain data, no longer locked by geographical boundaries, this defense mechanism is technically and permanently activated. The millennia-old pattern of political power is thus fundamentally restructured: power is forced to shift from monopoly to competition, from coercion to service. RWO and RWE (Real World Things) will be redefined and rapidly iterated under this new power paradigm.

4.1 DAO: An Institutional Experiment as a "Digital City-State"

Each DAO, whether its goal is to manage protocols, operate a community, or make investments, can be considered a miniature "digital city-state." They possess:

• Written constitution: Articles of association and governance rules encapsulated in the form of smart contracts;
• Independent finance: a community treasury managed by code;
• Citizen group: a rights holder composed of token holders and contributors.

4.2 The Refinement of Freedom: "Chain Migration" and Multidimensional Identity Configuration

In the physical world, immigration means a one-time, bundled shift in political affiliation, economic environment, and cultural life, which is costly and difficult.

In DeSoc, "chain migration" enables both freedom and refinement. Individuals can gain high reputation in technical DAOs due to their programming contributions, while simultaneously becoming core members of cultural DAOs due to their artistic taste. They can choose to exercise governance rights in DAOs that share common ideals, while allocating assets in DAOs that provide better financial services.

This ability to precisely allocate multidimensional individual rights across different digital city-states marks the first time humanity has achieved low-cost, comprehensive freedom of choice.

4.3 Governance Competition: The "Attractiveness Race" of Institutions and Culture

The extremely low cost of "chain migration" has enabled competition among DAOs to transcend traditional paradigms and evolve into a comprehensive "institutional attractiveness competition".

To attract and retain high-value "digital citizens," DAOs must continuously optimize their institutional offerings:

• Political appeal: more transparent governance, fairer voting, and more reversible empowerment;
• Economic attractiveness: a more reasonable tax system, more abundant income opportunities, and stronger public services;
• Cultural appeal: a more inclusive community atmosphere, more distinct values, and a more vibrant creative ecosystem.

This competition will spur unprecedented institutional innovation, much like the prosperity of free city-states throughout history. Ultimately, the quality of governance and the vitality of culture will directly determine the rise and fall of a digital city-state.

System Integration: The Emergence of DeSoc – A Dynamic, Organic Social Ecosystem

When a person's identity is fully confirmed on the blockchain, and their identity, credit, and governance participation continue to evolve in a data-driven and composable manner, society begins to exhibit a dynamic and emerging structure.

It no longer relies on central planning or macro-design, but is generated by the free choices of billions of individuals and the automatic collaboration of smart contracts.

The essence of DeSoc (decentralized society) is precisely this bottom-up mechanism for generating order.

• At the individual level: Each person, as a sovereign individual, possesses a digital identity that carries all their rights, obtains basic security through data assets and node income, achieves personal development through proof of contribution, and enjoys unprecedented autonomy and security.
• At the governance level: DAOs compete for talent and attention through institutional competition, driving continuous optimization of governance models and forming an "open market for governance".
• At the system level: the entire society exhibits dynamic and organic vitality. Power is effectively tamed (through reversible authorization), innovation is greatly incentivized (through proof of contribution), and individual dignity and economic autonomy are fundamentally guaranteed.

In this system, power becomes temporary authorization, institutions become updatable code, and the social contract has, for the first time, the possibility of real-time evolution.

This is a reboot of human civilization: a society no longer bound by territory, identity, or system, spontaneously reborn in the world of bits.

Conclusion: Towards a digital age of ownership, autonomy, and self-enjoyment

The development of the "Blockchain Civilization Trilogy" converges here, forming a solid logical closed loop:

We have revealed a tool for taming power—reversible delegation, which transforms power from a monopoly into a service that individuals can control;

We laid the foundation for civilization—Ethereum’s trustworthiness, neutrality, global consensus, and programmability—which provided the permissionless and trustless underlying foundation for DeSoc.

We have outlined a blueprint for a new society—starting with "people going on the blockchain," and through the confirmation of identity, economic autonomy, and competition in governance, ultimately arriving at a human-centered digital civilization.

This marks a profound shift in the foundation of civilization: from the atomic age, based on matter and energy, to the bit age, built on data and information.

The laws of the atomic age are geographical binding, resource scarcity, and centralized power. Social structures and institutions are constrained by the "atomic logic" of the physical world—everything has a place and weight, and migration is difficult.

The paradigm of the bit era is global mobility, infinite replicability, and decentralized power. All elements of the individual and society—identity, assets, trust, and relationships—are deconstructed into programmable, composable, verifiable, revocable, and freely transferable bit units.

It transforms "identity" from being a fully authorized agent to being owned by the individual;

It transforms "governance" from monopolistic management to self-governing service;

It transforms the "profits" from being exclusively owned by capital to being enjoyed by the creators themselves.

Lincoln's ideal of "of the people, by the people, for the people" in his Gettysburg Address is given a completely new contemporary meaning. From a grand narrative at the collective level, it is concretized into the life practice of each sovereign individual: "of myself, by myself, for myself".

This is the era of bits.

think

1. If "people going on the blockchain" becomes mainstream (identity, resume, and credit are all on the chain), will your most fundamental "freedom" be amplified or weakened? Which freedoms will be amplified (right to choose, right to migrate, right to participate)? Which freedoms will be quietly tightened (right to forget, right to start over, space to make mistakes anonymously)?

2. In the narrative of "sovereign individual", what you fear more is: others not treating you as an individual, or the system taking you too seriously as a "calculable person"?