Hey everyone, I’m curious, have the ideas of Web3 and NFT’s been looked at much for future versions of Discourse?
For example, verified NFT ownership through a wallet connection to get access to a specific forum or forums.
Or just verified NFTs as avatars (set up differently than normal image uploads).
I see a lot of potential for implementing this type of new tech and was curious if others agree or not. I saw a thread on crypto tips being considered, which I think could be a good thing to explore too.
I’m not sure about NFTs for login, but someone recently created a plugin for NFT avatars, similar to how Twitter is doing it: NFT avatar plugin (discourse-nft-avatar) ⛵
The intricacies of the internal mechanics and layout of a platform like discourse are a world by itself, it’s extremely complex and ever-evolving. Just the protocols and interfaces alone. To enter the blockchain world would definitely take as much effort, which can then only be addressed by a separate full dedicated team.
That said, we can play freely with speculation about what can be used for what. And we can see what existing work we can profit from. In the following list I’m only citing open-source projects whose code can be used as a basis.
NFT’s can clearly be used to uniquely identify a user, and all of it’s attributes:
Name
Avatar
ID
History
Keys
As stated in the above post, this is already on the works.
Crypto-currencies can be used as:
Internal Governance Token (which in turn can be used to implement quadratic democracy within a community)
Actual Currency, which would be used in a community to support initiatives
The blockchain technology itself can be used to decentralize the hosting itself of a community, rendering it fully trustless and censorship-resistant. That’s a step further from federation.