A Deep Dive into Project Galaxy: Digital Credentials For Web 3

Project Galaxy is on a mission to build an open, collaborative credential data network that helps Web 3 developers use digital credential data and NFTs to build better products and communities. We sat down with several Project Galaxy contributors to break down what they are building, their recent traction, and how GAL, their native token, is used within the Project Galaxy ecosystem.

1. To begin, what is Project Galaxy and what problem does it solve?

Project Galaxy is the leading Web3 credential data network. Built on open and collaborative infrastructure, Project Galaxy helps Web3 developers and projects leverage digital credential data and NFTs to build better products and communities.

Project Galaxy’s base framework includes its Application Modules, the Credential Oracle Engine, and the Credential API for developers (data consumers) to leverage credentials. Because the use of credential data will be charged based on the amount of usage and most of the fees collected will go to the credential data curators, such data curators are rewarded when credentials are used in Galaxy’s ecosystem.

2. Can you describe your target audience? What types of users and use cases are best suited to use Project Galaxy?

There are mainly three types of users for Project Galaxy:

1. The first are the data curators. These are users who leverage Galaxy’s credential data engine and contribute credential data sets to the Galaxy data network. By doing so, data curators will get rewarded when their credential data is queried through Galaxy’s application modules.
2. The second group of users are developers who want to leverage credential data to build better products and communities. Examples of use cases include NFT loyalty programs, targeted marketing campaigns, customized voting strategies, credit scoring, sybil attack prevention algorithms, etc.
3. The third group are end users who interact with the Galaxy product to collect NFT badges, showoff achievements, receive targeted airdrops, etc.
   

3. What advantages does Project Galaxy see with using open infrastructure for credential data versus traditional infrastructure used in Web2?

Credential data today is segregated across closed databases that are owned and permissioned by applications, government organizations, and financial and credit institutions. This has led to a fractured landscape that is not open to the individuals who should own that data or the applications that need it.

Project Galaxy aims to solve this problem by aggregating all credential data on-chain and off-chain into one network. The Galaxy infrastructure supports curating credentials through multiple data sources. For on-chain credentials, curators can contribute with subgraph queries or static snapshots. For off-chain credentials, Galaxy has integrated with data sources such as Snapshot.org, Twitter, and Github. With this open and collaborative credential data network, Project Galaxy is able to help Web3 developers leverage credential data to build better products and more engaging communities.

4. What is the inherent use case for the Project Galaxy native token, GAL?

The GAL token is an essential component to such infrastructure as it functions as the governance token, incentivizes user participation, and serves as the primary payment token of the Project Galaxy ecosystem. Here are the utilities of GAL:

• Governance: GAL is used for voting & governance in Project Galaxy DAO. GAL token holders have the ability to control the amount of the platform fee collected by the protocol, and control funds held by the Project Galaxy Community Treasury.
• Paying for Application Module Fee: Developers who aim to utilize Galaxy’s credential data through Application Modules will be subject to a platform fee which is charged in GAL. The platform fee is set up such that every interaction with the Galaxy Protocol will incur a fee in GAL. Most of the fee will go to the curators, and Galaxy Community Treasury will collect the rest. Currently all Application Modules fees are waived during beta testing.
• Paying for Galaxy Oracle Engine and Galaxy Credential API: Developers pay GAL to query our credential data through Galaxy Oracle Engine and Galaxy Credential API. Currently all query fees are waived during beta testing.
• Curating Digital Credentials: Curators can utilize the GAL token to signal a credential data set’s value. Each credential data set will include a revenue stream that will be split between credential stakeholders pro-rata. Curators can purchase stakes of a credential data set from its corresponding bonding curve. Because of the nature of the bonding curve (price of credential stake increases as more users purchase it), in the event a curator purchases the credential stake of a popular data set early, the cost of credential stakes will be low so its future revenue stream will be relatively high. When the price of the credential stake increases along the bonding curve, the curators can also choose to sell the credential stakes back to the bonding curve in exchange for GAL. As a result, this incentivizes curators to help identify valuable credential data sets by using GAL to exchange for credential stakes through the bonding curves. In the long term, the more credential data in the network, the more GAL will be locked in bonding curves for data signaling. Currently the curation system is under development.

5. Looking ahead for 2022, what trends are you most excited about in the crypto space and within NFTs specifically?

We are really excited about empowering the Web3 space with credential data. Currently, the Galaxy data network has more than 600 credential data sets curated, covering more than 5 million users in Web3. There are already more than 120 protocols leveraging these data sets and we believe many more will be empowered to build better products and communities. In terms of NFTs, we believe more NFTs will accrue value through utilities instead of rarities. This is what Galaxy is building because there are several use cases for credential-based NFTs. Examples of NFT use cases include NFT gated communities, NFT based voting structures, NFT based loyalty programs, etc.

6. What is the best way for the community to get involved with Project Galaxy

To get more product updates and engage more with our community, join our Discord and follow us on Twitter. If you want to contribute credentials to the Galaxy data network, or leverage Galaxy Credentials in our product/community, you can apply for access for Closed Beta here. We are super excited for the journey ahead.

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