Looking forward to the trends in 2024, I think Attestation is likely to be another important milestone for Mass Adoption, serving as a more specific user application scenario besides PWA and AA.

At the moment, there is no particularly appropriate Chinese translation for Attestation. It means "evidence or proof of something." This proof of something sounds very much like the problem that Web3 wants to solve. This concept can be extended to many currently familiar directions, such as RWA, Oracle, prediction markets, etc.

There are several related protocols, notably EAS, Sign Protocol and Smart Layer.

EAS will not be elaborated in detail. It is extremely abstract and more like a public good. Sign Protocol and Smart Layer can directly target end users after designing appropriate Schema and logic. Moreover, these three actually solve the problems they care about from completely different dimensions and ideas, and they are not in a competitive relationship.

Sign Protocol

@ethsign

Originated from the EthSign application, it has received investment from three Sequoia companies. At first, their product was similar to the Web3 version of DocuSign, and later expanded to provide token management solutions TokenTable for start-up teams. The next Sign Protocol will be a network carrying various Attestations. Application developers can design Schema for different application scenarios to solve the needs of various authentication scenarios.

Smart Layer Network

@SmartLayer

Originating from ERC-5169, TokenScript and AlphaWallet, the team has had a deep understanding of Token-centric user scenarios for a long time and was the first to promote the concept of Attestation. They have created many solutions for off-chain and on-chain interactions, such as using NFT as car keys to unlock, as tickets, etc., as well as pure on-chain token-based usage scenarios, such as the recent Smart Cat. The next Smart Layer Network is their more complete solution to realize the utility of tokens in a decentralized network.

I will also conduct a more detailed development and research on this topic and several projects in the future. There is also another important information: these projects all have the possibility of airdrops (Smart Layer has been made public). It is recommended that you track their latest progress and find the most suitable strategy, or at least try their products.