Ultimate Digits

Inspiration There are 320 million domain names in the world but 6 billion phone numbers. This makes phone numbers the largest social graph to exist. This begs the question – why isn’t your phone number your primary Web3 username?

With Account Abstraction and ERC 4337, implementations of 2FA for crypto wallets will increase – since >80% users use 2FA with SMS one-time passwords, there is an obvious utility to having phone numbers be virtual Web3 usernames. These can be complementary (initially) to Web3 domains but may eventually render the Web3 domains less useful, since most Web3 domain holders, with the exception of brands, don’t actually care of owning a decentralized website but merely use their Web3 domain as a payment address and social flex. This makes it lucrative for people to own blockchain-based virtual phone numbers which can unlock their access to decentralized VOIP, secure messaging, 2Fa and Web3 notifications, logins, payments as well as hashkey/USSD-based functions.

Broadly, the inspiration behind Ultimate Digits came from the increasing need for secure, decentralized, and user-centric digital identity solutions as Web3 technologies continue to evolve. We recognized the limitations of traditional Web2 digital identity systems, which relied on centralized authorities and exposed users to security risks. By offering a familiar, decentralized alternative based on personalized phone numbers, we aim to revolutionize the way people perceive and utilize digital identities, emphasizing individual liberty, privacy, and decentralization.

What it does Ultimate Digits provides users with personalized virtual phone numbers that serve as unique, permanent, and self-sovereign digital identities in the Web3 ecosystem. It offers three types of virtual phone numbers to cater to diverse user needs and turns phone numbers into tradeable NFTs, allowing users to capture the economic value of their unique identifiers. The platform also enhances users' communication experiences by offering features like notifications, USSD codes, communication preferences, decentralized VOIP, and secure messaging. These numbers start with the unique +999 country code – making everyone possessing a +999 a part of the fast-growing Web3 culture.

How we built it For the hackathon, we built a landing page on Framer and a basic react app. We also minted some NFTs on Solana with random phone numbers as Token IDs. Used a fetch function to lookup wallet that holds the NFT by searching the NFT contract address, then mapped that ownership wallet public key as the payment address mapped to that specific user.

Challenges we ran into The main challenge we faced was around honing the idea down to specific actionables and deciding what we wanted to show for the demo at the end of the hackathon period.

Accomplishments that we're proud of We interviewed over 30 ENS holders/whales to get their critique and this helped us hone our value proposition. We also built a working prototype and might be able to make/show a phone call using the NFT phone number.

We also made a landing page for the Web3 Number Alliance, a proposed alliance to work with various ecosystem stakeholders to advance the adaption of NFT phone numbers. This page is at www.web3numberalliance.com. We also “leaked alpha” in a few Discord servers comprised of NFT degens, and quickly validated that the NFT community loves our idea! We quantified this by counting how many Discord and Twitter followers we gained, rapidly post-announcement.

What we learned We quickly figured out the utility of Ultimate Digits is directly dependent on the number of applications that we can partner with that can agree to integrate our NFT phone numbers as identifiers in their ecosystem. The tech part is much easier to tackle than the adoption challenge. There are still several unknown unknowns that we’re yet to figure out but will do along the way. Even got a promo video made using Adobe Premier Pro.

What's next for Ultimate Digits We’re going to continue building this post the buildathon and are targeting a beta launch in a couple of months. We will build integration APIs and build a network of partners to integrate with. We will also study the pros/cons of building on various chains but will start by deploying on Ethereum's main net and the gasless SKALE chain.