BitBadges, Helping you Build your Digital Identity

GM GM everybody. Welcome to what's going to be another great DevNTell. So if you didn't know, DevNTell is a 30-minute podcast allowing founders and developers to come on the show and showcase something they've built. Whether you are a big-time Web3 company or a weekend hacker, or anything in between, this is the show for you to come and demonstrate what you've built. And today, I'm ecstatic to welcome back on the show Trevor Miller, who's co-founder of BitBadges.

If you didn't know, BitBadges helps developers build multi-chain apps, all with one interface. You can build your BitBadges portfolio and have it become your universal multi-chain account that travels with you to any application. So if you stick around for today's show, you'll learn all about BitBadges, how it works, and how to get started building with it today. Additionally, Trevor has a special treat just for DD members, which you'll definitely want to stick around to see. And all right, let's get into it.

GM GM. Welcome back on the show Trevor. Ecstatic to have you back on.

Yeah, thank you for having me.

My pleasure. Yeah, so Trevor is an awesome, awesome case in that this is I believe his third time back on the show and progressively he's been showing the development of BitBadges as he goes along, which is really, really awesome to see. And I would encourage many DD folks or Web3 folks in general who are watching the show to take Trevor as a great example here. But yes, welcome back to the show, Trevor. Happy to have you back on. I guess for folks who haven't tuned into the previous DevNTells, did you want to give a brief introduction about yourself?

Yeah, sure. So I'm a recent college grad from Virginia Tech who majored in Computer Science with a focus on blockchain technology. And basically ever since college, I've been building BitBadges, which kind of helps developers build multi-chain applications all with one interface. So it kind of becomes your digital identity and I'll explain all about it in the show.

Excellent, excellent. Love to hear that. And I guess what kind of drove you to technology and going the CS route? Like, what drove that passion for you?

I don't know, I've just always been a math or science guy and it was kind of next, like I took a class in high school and it kind of just was the logical choice for me. In terms of like how I got into blockchain, it was just kind of, you know, during the 2020-2021 like crypto craze, I kind of just learned about it and saw like how much potential it had, how much potential it still has, and was excited to, you know, kind of make that my niche or what I wanted to focus on.

Awesome. And I guess was there like a moment during you taking on the Web3 space that kind of inspired you to create BitBadges?

I think it was mainly just I was big into NFTs back in the day. But what I really saw with NFTs is their potential, but there was kind of a mismatch between, you know, their potential and what they were being used for. Like they were just at the time and even still now they're just used as like speculative on art, you know, JPEGs and all that. But I mean, once you actually go down to the core technology, there's so many applications, so many use cases, but the infrastructure wasn't there for it. So that's kind of what drove the initial idea of BitBadges, basically more applicable use cases of NFTs and then we kind of evolved from there, added different pivots and we're here now. Excellent. Love to hear it. And yeah, definitely, the space has evolved quite a bit in the last two or three years in terms of just having all the infrastructure in place now for folks to build apps. Definitely agree. Yeah, I guess this is a great segue to find out exactly what BitBadges is and how it's evolved since the last time you came on the show. So let's get into it. Cool.

And folks, as Trevor is going through his presentation and demo, if you have any questions, please bring them up as we go along and we'll get those questions answered as we go. All right. Just make sure you can see it.

Yes sir, the floor is yours.

Cool. So I'm Trevor Miller, founder and CTO of BitBadges. And yeah, let's get started. So the problem that we kind of identified is that apps and tools are natively single-chain by default. So this is a poor experience for pretty much all parties: developers, users, service providers, because there's a different interface for every single different ecosystem. So you know, Solana NFTs are not compatible with Ethereum NFTs, for example. So our goal is to help developers build multi-chain applications with one interface.

And you can think of an app or like a multi-chain app in like a stack. Personally, we feel that payments and wallets are sufficiently being kind of worked on nowadays, there's many different multi-chain projects, but the rest of the stack is kind of being untouched at the moment. And that's where BitBadges kind of focuses and comes into play.

So in your BitBadges account or portfolio, you can think of it, there's kind of four main like data structures or services kind of that we offer. So the first is Badges or NFTs. These are on-chain tokens with backed by like an innovative token standard that I'll get into later, but just you can mint, claim, transfer, sell, whatever, all on-chain, all decentralized. Next, we have Attestations or Credentials. You can think of these more as like the more credentials that have like private information attached. So maybe like your diploma, you don't want to reveal your GPA on-chain, attestations kind of lend themselves nicely to those use cases. Next is protocols. So these are key-value maps on-chain that allow you to kind of just store data for users or have users set their own like preferred data. So for example, like if they have a preferred language, preferred if they prefer dark mode or not, you can set that in an on-chain protocol and have it reused across applications, across chains, whatever. And it's all kind of in your universal account which is your BitBadges portfolio. And lastly, we have Lists, which are just a kind of a streamlined alternative to the rest. Just instead of dealing with the complexities of the rest, you just have a simple list format.

Just pretty much four different ways to store data, but there's different tradeoffs for each one. And so over time, you know, you collect more badges, you get more credentials, and your portfolio grows and it kind of becomes your digital identity in a sense. And so what I want to highlight is that all these are the same interface for all users from any chain. So for example, an Ethereum user and a Solana user can own the same badge. Similarly, they can be on the same list, they can set the same set values for the same protocol, and so on. Again, this is kind of new in the blockchain or crypto space because it's no longer fragmented across ecosystems, it's all in one place, which is super beneficial for developers, you know, because then you don't have to integrate with every single ecosystem and which every single ecosystem has their own way of doing things.

So I'm not going to go into too much detail about like the tech behind this, but it's super easy to use, no code, no smart contracts by default, super developer friendly, and you'll see that in the demo. And pretty much what we did with all these is that we built them all from the ground up. So we kind of saw what was good with existing interfaces, saw what was bad, and just, you know, built everything the right way in our opinion. And we just added so many more features, so much more functionality, and a lot of them are innovative and never seen before. So again, you'll see some of these in the demo, but it's all built from the ground up with our own blockchain.

So as I mentioned back here in your like account or portfolio you have these four kind of data structures that you collect and own. We also offer an authentication service, so Sign In with BitBadges. Basically, this is a universal place for you to authenticate your users and you can, you know, one it proves address ownership, so you prove you know verify user owns a specific address, but also you can tap into a user's account, see like request certain credentials and so on. This uses industry standard OAuth 2.0 and there's both a digital flow, so for example like gating websites, and also an in-person flow, so think like an Apple Wallet equivalent where you you know you pre-generate a QR code and then present it at authentication time. So for example like a ticket booth or like again like getting on an airplane kind of thing. And again it supports users from all chains with one interface.

So Claims are the kind of the backbone of developing with BitBadges. So Claims are just a way to check criteria. So you can create custom claim flows that check certain sets of criteria and then you can perform an action based on if the claim criteria is met. So for example like you claim a badge if certain criteria is met or you know you gate access to your event if certain criteria is met or sign into a website if certain criteria is met. And what BitBadges offers with the claim interface is that you can tap into A: a user's portfolio. So this involves like checking badge ownership, if they're on certain lists, what values they have for protocols, and so on and like certain credentials. B: you can authenticate users with sign in with BitBadges. And three, we have a suite of integrations, apps, plugins that allow you to completely customize this claim flow. So again you'll see that later on.

But the overall picture is that you can leverage the tools that BitBadges offers to kind of outsource all the gating logic, the checking criteria logic to you know all the services we offer like badges and all that. Plus, you know, your authentication, which leaves you just with implementing the core utility for your app. And again, it's all when you hook into BitBadges it's all with one interface, so it's super easy to implement.

So with claims there's a couple ways that you know users can claim a badge. They might see something like this in-site on a for example like a badge page and then you know you claim this, meet the claim criteria you get a badge, or for example you claim a spot on a list.

We also have a Zapier integration. If you're unfamiliar with Zapier they have over 7,000 apps that basically you can set up a custom trigger to kind of await certain criteria from any app that you want and then when that criteria hits you auto complete a claim in BitBadges. So this kind of bridges that Web2 and Web3 integration, the bridge there. So for example maybe when a Google Calendar event ends you know you automatically issue an attendance badge to a user. And this is all super easy, no code, and I'll show you a little bit of that later. And then lastly, it's also completely customizable with just a single API call. So you can pretty much do whatever you want with claims and hook into whatever app or implementation you want to build.

Before I go into the demo I'll show these links. So the site is bitbadges.io, you can see the doc site there. For DD members we're actually doing an airdrop giveaway good for 250 in-app credits. So if you go to the link there you'll be able to claim it and then get you kickstarted on with development. And then lastly if you want to claim an attendance badge for today you can go to the last link and enter the password and claim. So I will now go to the site and show you a little bit more about what you can do with BitBadges. So that was kind of a high-level overview and now let's kind of show you what's possible.

So again I am just on bitbadges.io right now. And it takes you to the landing page and pretty much explains everything I was telling you before in the slideshow. Let's get started with claims. Start with claims. So as you see here, it connects with users from any ecosystem: Ethereum, Cosmos, Solana, whatever. I'll just use MetaMask.

Yep, so now you can see I'm signed in. And if we just were in the developer portal right now and we're just going to the claim tester tab, so just creating test claims you can experiment with stuff here.

And this is the interface to create claims. And basically we have the three approaches I told you: in-site, Zapier, and API. With the in-site option, you have access to all these integrations that BitBadges supports, maintains, and offers. All with no code. So for example you can gate to certain addresses, you can check certain badge ownership, you can issue unique claim codes that you give out to your to your users, you know anything from checking Ethereum NFTs to gating with a unique password. Super customizable, super integratable, and you can combine any set of plugins to create you know complex claim flows. So these are the ones that are created by BitBadges. Over time we also hope to support a directory of published plugins from developers and whoever wants to add. So really customizable and again no code it's all directly in the site for you to create such claims. And the last thing I want to note is many of these plugins are kind of universal. So for example if you're integrating a specific app you might not need a plugin for that specific app. You know you might just issue claim codes which can be used by any app or you know a lot of apps use email as an identifier, so you can just use the email plugin. So you can get creative with customizing the flows and reusing existing plugins.

So that is the in-site option. You can see like users would be walked through something the process of claiming and then they'd you know claim the badge or claim a spot on the list, whatever action is associated with the claim.

The second option is Zapier or Zapier, and as you see here you can all no code you can hook into any app that Zapier supports and you can see they have over 7,000 apps for you to choose from, all the popular apps that you may already use or your users may use, and you can see all the apps here. And so just pretty much when criteria is met or like when something happens in another app you complete the claim on BitBadges.

So yeah let's show that in action. So if we actually go to the airdrop badge, you can see here that this is the airdrop badge and you can see that the claim has certain criteria here. So for example it's limited to this number of claims, you must be signed in, and also it's gated to all the developer DD members as of a snapshot.

So if you actually go through the claiming process it would walk you through everything, proving you meet the criteria kind of. The cool thing I want to highlight with the DD badge is that the balances are actually stored off-chain, which is a neat new feature. It's optional but it gives you different tradeoffs and so on for storing stuff. It outsources a lot of the maintenance to be off-chain so like users don't have to interact with the blockchain and so on. So as you see here we're just on a simple DigitalOcean CDN and you know it's alternative to an on-chain badge but different tradeoffs like I said but it's a really cool innovative feature that I don't think has been seen before.

So that is an example of an off-chain one. Here's like an example on-chain one. You can see this is like a sample verification badge. You can see that certain criteria might be checked on-chain like approvals you know amount restrictions who the sender is and so on, but then some might be checked off-chain like you own certain badges or certain integrations or you know must provide a valid password or so on. So it kind of bridges like I said that Web2 and Web3 gap because now these on-chain badges or tokens can now be you know seamlessly connected with pretty much any app that you already use.

So next I'll show the sign in with BitBadges feature. So as you see here, this might be on a site similar to how you might see like sign in with Google, sign in with Facebook, whatever. So you click it, you get redirected to the BitBadges site and you can see it's like a normal sign-in site, it tells you what what app's signing in, what permissions there are. But the cool and very powerful feature is that you can attach claims to it. So you know you can check anything from a user's portfolio like they own or don't own certain badges in this case. You can gate it by any of the apps integrations and plugins that we offer. So very powerful because all that logic is now outsourced to BitBadges.

The other thing you can also do with the sign-in flow is to attach attestations. So attestations are private by default but you can selectively reveal what you want to reveal to the app or like verifier. So as you see here this is like a simple course completion attestation, but like here's a different attestation, a diploma one. But as you can see that there are different messages that you can selectively reveal to the app. And it's all with zero knowledge selective disclosure, it all stays cryptographically verifiable behind the scenes so it's basically you don't have to trust BitBadges in this sense, you can verify the data integrity on your end. So in this case we might not want to reveal our attendance to the app, so we don't reveal it and we just reveal what we want to reveal.

The last thing that we can do with the sign-in flow is you can as I mentioned generate QR codes. So as you see here it uses the same screen, same flow, but instead of getting redirected to your application or digital something digital you will generate a QR code and you know you can you will present this at authentication time. It is stored in your BitBadges account but you know you can also add it to Apple Wallet, Google Wallet, save it wherever you need it to for presentation at the time. So yeah it's stored over here in your QR codes tab, as you see here.

So yeah I mean I know that was a lot. It's all super easy to use, super easy insight to claim everything and super developer friendly. Everything can just be done with the create tab, you know it just walks you through simple easy to use forms that you don't need to even be a developer to you know create badges. There's no smart contracts, it's all no code by default. Of course you can extend the functionality with custom implementations but you don't need it by default. So super easy to use, super easy to integrate, implement, and kind of build whatever use case you want. So yeah I know that was a lot. I'll stop there for any questions.

No, no, this is amazing, man. The sheer amount of features that are packed into this is quite outstanding. Excuse me. So circling back to there's quite a bit I want to get into. But just circling back into the credits. Do people need to have credits to be able to do certain things with BitBadges? Or is there like things that are credit, don't need credits and things that do need credits?

Yeah, so also I apologize if there's background noise, there's like construction or something going on. But credits are in simple terms they're the token of the blockchain so for gas fees and all that. So anything on-chain will probably require credits. At the moment they don't because the chain's not busy, so you don't even need to pay a fee. But in more busier times you will. But it also depends on what you're implementing. So for example with like badges, everything like the collection itself is stored on-chain, but if you use the off-chain feature as I mentioned with the DD airdrop, let me go to it. The thing is that when the balances change because they're only changed on a server, right, nothing on-chain actually changes so there is no fee attached to actually claiming this type of badge because the balances are stored off-chain. When you do like an on-chain transfer yeah you will need credits but so the answer to your question is it really depends on what you're doing. Like attestations are all off-chain so don't require credits, protocols do because they're on-chain, and lists are there's an option for both so. Pretty much at every step of the way we kind of offer kind of decentralized option for like fully decentralized option that you can just you know don't have to trust us at all, or if you want like a hybrid thing that maybe optimizes user experience a little bit but you know sacrifices a little of the centralization, we offer that too. So super flexible in terms of like how you want to design your whatever you're building.

Gotcha, gotcha. That was a great explanation, thank you for that. The next thing I want to dig into was the sign in with BitBadges. So people can actually configure that to basically request whatever whatever information they want. So say for example I'm a BitBadges user, I haven't provided an email on my account, but can I create a sign-in flow that will take in whatever information like attestations or something the user has and request more info from them? Or is it kind of like a sign in with Ethereum flow where you just connect the wallet and whatever is there you get automatically?

Yeah, so there's a couple a couple ways to answer that question. One a lot of the stuff is public already, right, because it's on-chain so you can just look that up publicly. But two you have the option as this is like the quickstarter repo, the cool thing with sign in with BitBadges is like if you don't actually need to connect or interact with wallets besides the authentication, so think of this maybe like a simple just a simple app that you're using you know addresses as usernames, you actually don't need to you know connect to any wallets because all the connection and handling of the authentication will be on BitBadges side. So you can see here you can optionally have the connect wallet flow in your app or you can outsource all that to BitBadges if you don't need it beyond the authentication. To answer the other part of your question, you can configure pretty much with the flow you pretty much configure whatever you want to request. So you can choose to request specific attestations, you can choose for the user to prove they own certain badges, whatever. So it's not like you need to it's not like sign in with Ethereum in the sense that it's done on your end, it's done on BitBadges end and it makes it easy to implement in that sense. Of course, you can also implement you know a signature authentication thing on your end but we just try and make it as easy as possible for developers.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. That's great great to know. And on that bit on developers, you also offer an SDK API. If developers who are watching this today want to start hacking with BitBadges, what do they need to do to get up and running? Do they need a API key or how does that work?

Yeah, so I'll start by saying that our goal is to have everything possible in-site. So you'll find that a lot of the flows are developer friendly, so if I go to like you know create an address list, there's many different options like you know you can you can like you can enter your own JSON for the metadata, you can enter your own URI, you can self-host where needed. So I'd say the first step is to actually experiment with the site and see what is possible and because in most cases what you want to implement is already implemented in the site and possible in the site. If you do want to create or extend functionality you know create custom apps whatever you can go to the documentation page and it's a pretty thorough documentation of everything. In regards to the API you can just go to the developer portal and get an API key yourself. So um you just go go here and then create your API key here.

Excellent. Excellent. And we're more or less at time here but just curious for folks folks to know like how many folks are behind BitBadges? Like how what's the team like? Is it just you doing the development development work or is there other folks helping you out?

Yeah, so I have a co-founder and I'm more on the development side so I've just been building this for the past year or two and he's more on the marketing business side. But there is just two of us, we haven't you know raised any VC money or anything like that. We want to do things the right way and especially in the US, you know with obviously regulation it's a bit weird, so that's kind of why we're going away from like the token model and doing more like the credits. But yeah it's only us two and we're just at the stage where now we're ready to launch and you know get users, get developers building with it because we just think it's these tools are necessary for you know crypto and Web3 to advance and they could become you know the infrastructure to help build multi-chain applications. So yeah, but it's just the two of us for now. That's amazing. That's quite a lot of features baked into BitBadges from only two folks, which is awesome to see. And yeah, folks, like Trevor mentioned in the beginning, if you want to get started, they are graciously offering a free credit drop, which is linked in the YouTube description below if you want to claim that if you are a DD member. And I guess a final question before we leave off here, Trevor, is if folks want to connect with you or learn more about BitBadges, how can they reach out?

Yeah, I think the best way is probably through Discord. That's kind of where I'm most active but at the bottom of the site you can see all the different socials that we have. We're not too active on a lot of them quite yet because we just launched but if you want to interact directly with one of the co-founders yeah Discord's probably the best way to go. Excellent. And yeah I guess with that I just want to thank you again for coming on the show Trevor and giving us this awesome overview of BitBadges and yeah I'm looking forward to seeing how developers and Web3 folks start to interact with it. Yeah thanks for having me again. Yeah my pleasure. And yeah with that I just want to wish everybody a very happy weekend, happy Friday, and that we will catch you all back here again next week for another great DevNTell. Till then, have a good one. See you folks.