The Glass Pass

The Glass Pass
Introducing .glass
... we might see a web3 version of YouTube where the videos don’t belong to the platform, but to the creator. So the creator could bring their videos with them to any online space and reap any value tied to those assets.

— Scott Kominers, a16z crypto

The goal of Glass has always been to let creators own their videos. And by that, we mean truly own your videos.

If the Glass platform goes down tomorrow, your videos stay with you.
If someone builds a better video platform, your videos stay with you.
When we say “your videos,” we really mean your videos.

The promise of decentralized identity is for people to carry their activity, connections, and creations with them wherever they go on the Internet, no matter the platform. It almost mirrors the physical world, in that our property and possessions are attached to us rather than the space they physically occupy.

Glass is not new to experimental ways of representing creator identity— in the past, we’ve explored ways of decentralizing multi-chain identity data on permanent storage via Arweave.

This time we’re being intentional about making creator identity the core of our protocol. It’s the centerpiece from which videos, Web3 experiences around those videos, and connections to other protocols blossom. And the best part — all of it is stored on-chain, on Ethereum.

The Glass Pass is your identity on Glass.

Everyone who’s either created or collected ANY Glass video on our original ETH version or SOL version will have access to claim a Glass Pass, as well as everyone who signs our Manifesto before the Pass claim opens on Monday, March 20.

Starting Monday, people allowlisted for the Pass will be able to claim a unique .glass username that’s represented as an NFT.

For example, if I claim varun.glass, my profile on the new Glass will be represented as glass.xyz/varun. I will receive an NFT in my wallet that represents my Glass identity.

The Glass Pass is your key to creating videos on Glass.

When the new Creator Studio and Glass Protocol launches in a few weeks, it will only be accessible to creators who own a Glass Pass. All the videos you create with Glass will be linked to your Glass Pass on-chain.

The Glass Pass lets you invite other people to the protocol.

The Most OG of .glass holders.

The Genesis claimers — the addresses allowlisted to claim starting Monday — will get the Special Edition BLAZE Glass Pass. These Genesis Glass Pass holders will be able to invite other people to claim Glass Passes via special links.

One of the best people to invite to Glass if you know him.

The people invited to claim from the Genesis holders will receive the Curated BLACK Glass Pass.

The art and metadata for the Glass Pass are all generated and stored on-chain. This is what allows them to be dynamic with changing background colors and unique usernames.

In the future, we plan to give Pass holders governance and voting power over curated feeds, video competitions, film festivals, and more. Think of them like ‘the Academy’ of Glass. More details on how the Glass Pass interacts with the rest of the protocol will be explained as we prepare to launch the Studio.

Interoperability

The Glass Pass (.glass) is designed to complement other decentralized identity networks, like ENS (.eth) and Lens  (.lens). We believe that pulling together data from these existing networks is a powerful new way for Web3 social networks to break the cold start problem.

ENS was my gateway into the Ethereum community. That’s often true for a lot of people that are onboarded to crypto. ENS names provide a much more user-friendly way to transact on the Ethereum network, and are interoperable across different dApps.

If ENS represents your on-chain identity for transactions, Lens represents your on-chain identity for social interactions. Lens is designed to empower creators to own the links between themselves and their communities, and take that social graph and interactions with them across different applications.

Similarly, the Glass Pass represents your on-chain identity for video creation on Ethereum. Just like Lens and ENS integrated one another, we plan to work with the .lens and .eth communities to bring them to Glass. On Glass profiles, we’ll display data from all 3 identities. More information on those partnerships coming soon.

We believe that people will have different types of on-chain identities that serve different purposes. A single person is a combination of multiple identities that represent different types of activity. And you should be able to be able to carry those identities with you wherever you go.

We’re excited to see the identities you create on the new Glass Protocol.