Original title: Camp: The World's First Identity Layer
Author: Camp
Compiled by: Elvin, ChainCatcher
Camp aggregates online user data, enabling users to own and monetize their identities while providing protocols with the insights needed to build immersive user experiences.
Building product-market fit is extremely difficult. Everyone agrees that this is the most significant challenge facing Web3 teams today. It’s no coincidence that no Web3 app has achieved sustained organic growth or engagement to date. This has left the industry wondering — why hasn’t a widely adopted consumer app been built on the blockchain?
Data is king
This is because teams lack an understanding of who their users are: their interests, preferences, and behaviors. Without understanding who their users are, teams can’t deliver meaningful, personalized experiences.
The solution is data. When protocols have information about their users, they can create tailored and immersive experiences. They can build algorithms that respect user interests and create onboarding flows that are universally understandable to Web2-native users. With these tools, protocols can organically find product-market fit and build self-sustaining ecosystems.
Unfortunately, user data is currently off-chain and inaccessible. Without access to consumer data (limited by strict data provisioning barriers), protocols often have to resort to premature airdrops to attract initial followers. The problem is that this attracts users who are more interested in short-term monetary rewards than the protocol itself. The result? Massive sell-offs and a large loss of users after the token launch.
The Problem with Centralized Data Ownership
Web2 companies are able to build dynamic and immersive user experiences because they have a ton of information about their users — interests, purchasing habits, and preferences for everything from music to games and everything in between. Unfortunately, this information is aggregated and controlled by a handful of tech giants, including Google and Facebook, who retain the data, which poses a huge security risk. Think of the Capital One hack in 2019, which compromised the personal information of over 100 million customers (including SSNs), or the 2021 hack of Microsoft servers that compromised approximately 300,000 accounts. The centralization of data exposes huge issues around user privacy, resulting in not only a loss of data, but more importantly, a loss of user trust. Additionally, because data is concentrated in the hands of a few players, it gives these incumbents a huge advantage in the industry, inhibiting innovation and competition.
To solve this problem, user identities must be brought on-chain. Web3 is premised on decentralization and assigning ownership to users; however, existing Web3 solutions fail to achieve this by focusing on on-chain data. Due to the lack of truly compelling consumer-friendly Web3 applications, on-chain data is scarce and generally low-activity, failing to fully reflect a user's identity. Instead, what matters is data on where users actually spend their time online - across Web2 platforms like YouTube, X (Twitter), TikTok, Instagram, Spotify, and more. Understanding and leveraging this valuable on-chain data will bring huge opportunities to the Web3 ecosystem.
Camp offers a new approach
Enter Camp Network, the world’s first identity layer. Camp aggregates online user data, enabling users to own and monetize their long-established identities in the Web2 world. Camp is the only team in Web3 with access to verified Web2 data, which not only helps teams build better experiences, but ultimately benefits users who own this data.
Think of the following products as an analogy: LastPass is a password management service that securely stores and encrypts passwords, allowing users to seamlessly manage their credentials across multiple devices. LastPass makes money by offering different plans to individuals and institutions. Camp effectively acts as a single sign-on for Web3, where users can store their digital identities on-chain. The difference is that users don’t have to pay, but are rewarded with tokens when they choose to share their data with our ecosystem.
In the Web3 ecosystem, having access to this level of verified data would be a true game changer. Imagine a Web3 streaming platform that struggles to attract users. With Camp’s data, the platform could integrate social login, allowing users to create accounts using their Spotify credentials. This would allow them to seamlessly bring their favorite artists and preferences to the platform — no awkward onboarding or waiting for algorithms to relearn social data. Or imagine a dining app where users can be rewarded for sharing their experiences.
Camp enables easy Instagram integration, allowing users to connect their accounts and get rewarded for posting about their favorite restaurants — data that stays on-chain. Camp’s data integration uniquely puts the team in control of the “data algorithm,” which determines that the more a company knows about its users, the more successful they will be at attracting and retaining them. This alone will be an opportunity to attract the next 100 million people to blockchain.
Why choose us?
If you believe in long-term mass adoption of crypto, you believe in Camp. We have the best team to achieve our mission of web3 ubiquity. We have experts in every field - scalable applications (Figma), blockchain (CoinList, WalletConnect), oracles (Chainlink), and entertainment and media (The Raine Group), as well as the best investors in the world (Maven 11, OKX, Paper Ventures, Alchemy, etc.).
join us
Follow us on Twitter and join our Telegram and Discord to stay up to date on our progress, new initiatives, and rapidly growing ecosystem. Apply to join our Ambassador Program and become an active member of our community. Share our Builder Program with the entrepreneurs in your life. Camp is paving the way for a new era of Web3, where data and identity seamlessly integrate to create richer, more engaging user experiences. We invite you to join us on this journey.
