Shifting authentication from renting access to owning your identity

Web3 is creating a shift from social logins to self-sovereign identity with ENS, Farcaster, and ZK tech — own your access, reputation, and digital self.

For most of the internet’s short but impactful life, identity has been borrowed. We log in with Google, Facebook, or Apple — not because we trust them, but because it’s easy. In the world of Web2, authentication is outsourced. Identity is centrally managed, leased out in exchange for behavioral data and attention.

But now, a new authentication paradigm is emerging — one that’s native to the internet itself. Tools like ENS, Farcaster ID, and Worldcoin are unlocking self-sovereign identity: portable, composable, and user-controlled.

Renting access with Web2 authentication

When you “Log in with Google,” you’re entering a lease agreement. Your digital presence, your reputation, and your social graph live on someone else’s servers. This model has some serious limitations:

Control: If the provider revokes access, your identity disappears.
Privacy: Your activity is surveilled, monetized, and often sold.
Portability: Your identity doesn’t move with you. Each platform is a walled garden.

Web2 authentication systems are built for platforms — not for people. They trade convenience for control, and access for ownership.

Web3 flips the model to identity ownership

With self-sovereign identity (SSI), authentication shifts from centralized gatekeepers to open protocols. Instead of logging in through Google, you log in as yourself—cryptographically verifiable and persistent across apps.

Here are a few onchain authentication primitives reshaping this landscape:

ENS (Ethereum Name Service): Your human-readable identity, anchored onchain. ENS names are more than wallet aliases—they’re internet-native usernames, profiles, and discovery endpoints.
Farcaster ID: A decentralized social identity, portable across apps in the Farcaster protocol. It's social login without a platform monopoly.
Worldcoin: Biometric uniqueness verification (via iris scan), aimed at proving personhood without leaking identity.

These tools are interoperable by design. They give users keys—not to a single platform, but to an identity they can carry across the open internet.

identity as infrastructure

Self-sovereign identity is more than a login mechanism—it’s a foundation. As we build more composable applications (in social, finance, governance), owning your identity unlocks a new kind of network coordination.

Consider a few examples:

Reputation systems: Onchain activity can generate provable reputation—useful for lending, employment, or DAO participation.
Access control: ZK-passports can prove eligibility (e.g. over 18, in a certain jurisdiction) without compromising privacy.
Social graphs: Instead of recreating your friends list in every app, Farcaster lets you port it across frontends.

In this world, identity is a protocol, not a product.

The future is user-owned

We’re at the beginning of a transition. Most people still rent access to the internet through centralized logins. But the tooling for self-owned identity is maturing quickly. As more apps integrate ENS, Farcaster, and ZK-based verification, users will start to expect authentication to work differently.

Owning your identity doesn’t just mean greater privacy or security —it means unlocking a new kind of internet. One where identity is composable, reputation is earned (not bought), and access is owned (not leased).

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This post is part of the Open Money Project, an ongoing series that forms the basis of a longer work. Subscribe to get a weekly update as it unfolds.