Digital identities allow companies and protocols to link users actions from the top of the marketing funnel (engaging with a post on a decentralized social media site) to the bottom (connecting their wallet to a dapp, purchasing an NFT or token, etc). 

Accumulate aims to establish a communication and audit layer for all individuals, entities, and blockchains to transact with each other using Accumulate digital identifiers or ADIs – human-readable addresses similar to website URLs that are chosen by individuals or assigned by organizations to represent their presence on the blockchain.

We view digital identity as a core piece of Web3 infrastructure that provides legitimacy to the concept of ownership and property rights in the digital world.

In pursuit of this goal, a recognized challenge of Web3 is the lack of connectivity between the dozens of other blockchain-based identity solutions, each of which is vying for the same goal of achieving a universal identity layer. 

The ultimate purpose of a digital identity is to serve as a single source of truth and a standardized form of accounting for all on-chain and off-chain activities that the identity holder has participated in and for all digitally native and digitized (or tokenized) assets that they hold. 

Under this description, it is essential that a digital ID be integrated into every Dapp or blockchain that a user has adopted in order to represent that user in the most accurate and complete way possible. 

To this end, the Accumulate network is not just focused on creating its own digital identity layer for users to adopt, it is also focused on partnering with existing digital identity providers in order to consolidate these services under one universal indeed layer that can most accurately represent the Web3 space in its entirety. 

We believe creating a universal digital identity layer is the first step to enabling web3 marketing and advertising programs to become feasible, as companies and protocols will now have the means to understand who their users are at a much deeper level due to their consolidation of wallet addresses and decentralized IDs under a single digital identifier.  

.ENS (Ethereum)	.Sol (Solana)	ADI (Accumulate)	ADI (Sub-ID)
johnsmith.eth →	j.smith.sol →	acc://johnsmith →	acc://j.smith

Multi-chain advertising and loyalty programs 

A unified digital identity layer can unlock massive potential for multi-chain loyalty programs. These are programs that would enable users to earn loyalty points by using Dapps across different blockchain networks. As the largest Dapps like Uniswap and Aave extend their utility to layer 2 networks and EVM-compatible chains, it only makes sense that many of the same users will be accessing those Dapps from different chains. 

The same thing can be said for app-chain ecosystems like Cosmos and Avalanche that are building a highly interoperable experience for users to migrate between games, NFT marketplaces, and DEXs.  

If these protocols want to reward users for their continued support of their products, they need a way to track which wallets from which chains belong to the same user. 

ADIs would massively improve the ability for companies to target users with ads that are most relevant to them based on their on-chain behavior, which will become more clear as their various wallets from different chains are tied to a single ADI. 

In line with the ethos of web3 and digital ownership, we can expect this experience to be one that benefits not only advertisers but also the end user by enabling them to monetize their data in a variety of ways. 

For example, we could see the emergence of decentralized advertising networks (DANs) that serve as an intermediary between ADI holders and the brands that wish to reach them based on their on-chain activity. 

These DANs could reward ADI users for opting into promotional campaigns by receiving a cut of the revenues the network earns from brands that pay to gain access. Plus, as a potential bonus, users could also receive a cut of the revenues generated from the sale of new products or services sold by those brands through the ad network.

All the user would need to do is connect their ADI to a smart contract, which would reveal to the DAN the history of Dapps and networks that the user has interacted with, enabling them to direct brand ads toward the most relevant users based on their on-chain activity. 

Over time, as on-chain activity amongst ADI holders grows, and as DANs are able to peer into the activities of more ADIs, their routing process will become even more tailored and sophisticated, resulting in more targeted ads and better ROI for brands.  

In another example, we could imagine a scenario where an ADI holder gets shown an ad for a new NFT based on the DAN being able to deduce that there is a 70% correlation between ETH addresses that minted a previous NFT they currently own and the addresses that are now minting this new NFT. Such analysis would significantly raise the chances of the ADI holder being interested in clicking that ad and purchasing the NFT. 

ADIs would also be a game changer for referral programs. Traditional online referral programs lack transparency, are easy to manipulate and are incapable of providing the type of sophisticated, second-order analysis that would make it possible for referrers to get rewarded over the course of a referred customer’s lifecycle with the product and affiliated products.

With decentralized digital identities and on-chain affiliate links, brands can easily verify where a user has come from and show proof to the referrer of how many people have interacted with their links. As the referred customers migrates from the first product to other on-chain products, this creates a trail that can be traced back to the original affiliate link, meaning the referrer can potentially reap the rewards from other affiliate programs simply by starting the user on a path to adopt one product, which leads to multiple over time. 

Multi-tiered affiliate programs would create a lot of value in the Defi space.

For example, Instead of getting rewarded one time when a referred user makes a trade on a DEX, referrers could receive multiple tiers of rewards based on that user trading on a DEX, then deploying capital on a lending protocol, then staking their assets on a different blockchain. All of this could be easily trackable using ADIs that consolidate wallet addresses and other decentralized domains. 

Ultimately, online marketing and advertising decisions have always been driven by insights brands gather through data. Blockchains provide a new medium in which the bulk of user data is transparent for everyone to see, yet brands have been unable to make commercial sense of this data due to the disparate nature of a multi-chain world and the challenges of dealing with pseudonymous addresses. 

ADIs represent a major step in the direction of enabling users to consolidate their on-chain activity under a single human-readable address. This presents a major opportunity for brands to connect the dots between users’ on-chain activity and their preferences as a consumer. 

With these insights, companies may finally begin to understand how to market to web3 consumers, a major catalyst that could drive the top brands in the traditional economy to embrace blockchain technology.