With the high inflation rate and the Fed’s continuous interest rate raising, the crypto market has entered a bear market. And in such an unpromising environment, many developers are still actively BUIDL, and I would like to explore some interesting early-stage projects and wait for the next bull market to witness their breakouts.
In this article I would like to share a very innovative infrastructure project that I found in the last round of Gitcoin Grant Event, A3S Protocol – the next generation of transferable address. The ‘Transferable Address’ caught my attention, so now let’s deep dive into what ‘transferable address’ means, how it is realized, and what its significance is.
Product review of A3S
The address is the first stop for users to enter the on-chain world and is the native crypto component on a large scale. All kinds of assets, rights, as well as all interaction records, are expressed with addresses as carriers. The control of existing addresses can only be carried out safely by one single operator and the addresses cannot be integrated, which confines their application scenarios, making them illiquid and difficult to be priced. In addition, there is a significant security risk caused by the leakage of private keys in the process of creating and using addresses, which affects the continuity of their usage.
A3S Protocol focuses on the liquidity and composability of addresses and builds the next generation of address standards, whereby users can mint addresses with no private keys but are controlled by NFTs. To transfer control in a way of transferring NFTs allows users to securely trade, lease and escrow addresses for the first time, as well as makes it possible for the valuable interaction records carried by addresses to continue. This paradigm of expressing address control in NFT enhances the ease of use and security of addresses, while equips addresses with liquidity and integrability, enabling them to be priced as the basic on-chain service.
In GR14, A3S Protocol received grants from over 1,000 users, which is an impressive achievement among the new projects in the Gitcoin Grant. The protocol is currently undergoing an audit by Certik and is 99% of the way there. Its social media following also continues to grow, with 5k twitter followers and 6.5k Discord users.
A3S Protocol has now launched on Polygon Mainnet, and users can gain whitelist qualifications by completing a few simple tasks. Qualified users can then mint the Owner NFT on the official website and get their transferable addresses.
The current version of A3S address support sending and receiving assets such as tokens and NFTs, and transferring addresses. And it is expected to support interaction with other Dapps in the near future.
Current using scenarios
Although A3S addresses do not yet support interaction with other dapps, they already have some usage scenarios based on their transferable feature.
1. Bulk Transfer of On-chain Assets
There are various kinds of tokens and NFTs, and when users want to transfer multiple assets, they often need to make multiple transactions and pay multiple gas fees, which are tedious and expensive operations.
With A3S’s transferable address, users can directly transfer Owner NFTs with one simple transaction, thus only one gas fee is needed. This is convenient and cheap for users to bulk transfer assets. In addition, A3S also supports bulk transfer of Owner NFTs, which means that users can transfer multiple addresses in one transaction.
Such convenience operation is especially helpful when the private key of user’s EOA leaks, and the assets need to be transferred urgently.
2.Premium for Collectible Addresses
The ownership of the A3S address is tied to its Owner NFT, and thus the address is no longer bound by the private key. Then the address itself will likely have value beyond the assets it carries.
One scenario is that just as one would want to buy an NFT that has been held by a web 3.0 celebrity, an address can also capture the celebrity effect. Users can now collect addresses used by Elon Musk, Vitalik Buterin, CZ and others.
Another scenario is that some addresses with fancy forms can also have collection value. For example, the address: 0x1111111111111111111111111111111111. Holding such a fancy address can satisfy some users’ social demands. With A3S transferable addresses, the collection value of address can then be priced.
Potential Usages
According to the roadmap, A3S Protocol will support multi-chains and the interaction of other Dapps in the near future. This will be a major advancement for the protocol and will bring more imagination to transferable addresses.
1. Alternative Liquidity
Since addresses can be transferred, all assets, equity and other values attached to addresses will also be able to rely on addresses for liquidity.
l The non-transferable tokens designed in some protocols (for example, lock CRV in Curve to obtain veCRV, veCRV has voting rights, but cannot be traded), will be able to trade by OTC or leases through address transfer.
l For VCs, they will be able to sell the address with the locked or vest tokens.
l After the user’s address has obtained a certain qualification (for example, obtained a whitelist for NFT subscription), the transfer of the qualification can be realized by transferring the address or temporarily lending the address
2. Secure Address Custody
Currently asset custody can only be achieved through complex contracts or relying on a decentralized union. To isolate the risk, users may need to transfer all assets to other addresses before and after the custodianship, leaving all interaction records of the original address behind.
The A3S protocol makes it possible to securely custody addresses. Users can transfer Owner NFT to others and entrust them to conduct on-chain operations such as claim interests on Defi, gain revenue in Gamefi, etc. And once the address is transferred back to the original owner, full control of the address will be regained without the potential risk from the agency.
3. Complete DID
While current addresses can record users’ on-chain behaviors, they cannot directly serve as users’ decentralized identity.
First, users often have multiple addresses, and it is difficult to demonstrate their unified control over these addresses. As a result, their on-chain experiences and SBTs based on these experiences are fragmented in multiple addresses. In addition, even if a user uses only one address, when the private key is leaked or stolen, the correspondence between the old address and the single owner will no longer exist. Users often need to transfer assets to a new address, while all historical interactions on the old address will have to be discarded, resulting in an incomplete on-chain identity.
However, A3S makes addresses transferable, so that the interaction records carried by the addresses are continuable. With transferable addresses, users will be able to build a more complete on-chain identity.
4. Basic On-chain services
When users occasionally need a large number of addresses to interact with protocols, users can simply buy or rent the addresses in bulk, thus eliminating the tedious and expensive operation of transferring small assets in and out.
A marketplace specifically for transferable addresses may be necessary, because the NFT marketplace such as Opensea cannot show the assets in the transferable addresses.
Summary
The increasing Web3.0 protocols have opened rich usage scenarios for users, and stimulated many users’ demands yet to be met. Security, ease of use, and multi-chain support are no longer the only criteria for users to choose an address management product.
A3S Protocol enables the exploration of value for the address itself and on-chain records, empowers the addresses with liquidity and composability. As described in its Medium article, A3S cuts an opening on the “cocoon” that is trapping every single address. Let’s wait and witness what kind of a free butterfly will fly out of it.
Media Contact
Company Name: A3S Protocol
Contact Person: Jeff
Email: Send Email
Country: United States
Website: www.a3sprotocol.xyz
