Twitter + NFTs: Now You Can Verify Yourself

For years, Twitter users have coveted the Blue Checkmark. Beyond being a proxy for popularity, this verification helps users detect spam accounts. Now users have a new way to prove/verify themselves.

The web3 community was abuzz yesterday after this Tweet.

Twitter Blue @TwitterBlue

gm! You asked (a lot), so we made it. Now rolling out in Labs: NFT Profile Pictures on iOS

In fact, the popularity at launch that it took down the Opensea API.

Jane Manchun Wong @wongmjane

OpenSea is down Twitter uses OpenSea’s API for loading NFTs Therefore, Twitter’s NFT feature is down #decentralization

Ok, so what’s the big deal? To me, this represents one important piece in the stack that allows users to self-authenticate and verify themselves across the web3 and web2 ecosystems (instead of relying on Twitter’s private staff to determine who to authenticate and how to do it).

Let’s Put It All Together

Let’s say that I, Rick Manelius, want to provide end-to-end proof that I in fact am the one who controls twitter.com/rickmanelius vs an imposter at twitter.com/rmanelius. How could I do this without the blue checkmark?

• Verify I’m a real human being through proofofhumanity.id.

• Connect that address to my purchased ENS domain rickmanelius.eth.

• Configure my ENS to include a specific NFT as a global profile pic.

• Configure my ENS account to connect to my Twitter account.

• Connect my Twitter account to my ENS profile NFT.

What just happened? My humanity, domain, avatar, and NFT are now connected and authenticated against a single Ethereum Address. It’s provable in multiple directions and anyone can validate this at the click of a button.

Additionally, any other web3 service that I use Ethereum as a single sign-on solution will carry that connection. I verify myself once, and that verification carries through to every service. I am Rick Manelius @rickmanelius, and @rmanelius or @rickm or anyone else is not.

This is huge. Twitter has 200 million daily active users, but lacks the resources (and motivation) to verify that everyone is who they say they are. With connect NFT, users can verify themselves (if they wish).