Masa announces soulbound ID tokens for Coinbase’s Base Network

Masa Finance’s soulbound tokens will soon be available on Coinbase’s Base network, according to an April 4 announcement from Masa Finance. The new tokens will allow users to link identifying and reputational characteristics to their wallet addresses, making credit underwriting possible on the blockchain, the company said.

Masa had previously released its Soulbound Token protocol for Ethereum and Celer.

In its announcement, Masa stated that the protocol can be used for a wide variety of applications, including human-readable domain names, membership badges, loyalty programs, achievement badges, decentralized captcha bots, and more.

It will release a Base SBT Developer Toolkit within the coming weeks that “will support the seamless deployment and interaction with SBTs on Base,” which will include a quickstart guide, Masa command line interface, software development kit, REACT developer tools, and examples of how to build applications using Masa soulbound tokens.

Related: Coinbase wants devs to build inflation-pegged ‘flatcoins’ for ‘Base’ network

Coinbase is the largest centralized crypto exchange in North America. It launched its Base Network testnet on Feb. 23, planning to implement it as an optimistic rollup layer 2 for Ethereum. On March 23, Coinbase issued a Request for Builders asking developers to create several protocol types for Base, including an on-chain reputation system.

In response to this request, Masa began developing a Base version of its soulbound protocol, the company said in its announcement.

The announcement of Base Network’s creation has contributed to bullish sentiment within the Ethereum community, with some users expressing hope that it will lead to greater onboarding of Coinbase users to Ethereum. In an interview with Bloomberg Radio, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong claimed that “centralized players” on Base will need to implement some form of identity verification for users.