With the tokens, people will be able to join building projects on the BNB chain after they have successfully completed their KYC checks.
A public announcement says that the cryptocurrency exchange Binance plans to give all users who meet “know-your-customer” (KYC) requirements a “soulbound” token on the BNB blockchain.
Soulbound tokens, which in this case act as an identity passport across the BNB chain, are unique and can’t be given to anyone else. Users can choose not to use the token if they don’t want their identity to be shared with the whole network.
Binance’s soulbound token, called binance account bound (BAB), will let users take part in “building projects” and earn rewards, according to the release.
Vitalik Buterin, who helped start the Ethereum blockchain and wrote a blog post about it in January, was the first person to talk about soulbound tokens. He said that the new asset class was made up of digital tokens that can’t be traded and are used to show social identity in a decentralized society.
This week, the use of KYC in crypto came under a lot of scrutiny when the decentralized exchange dYdX asked its users to do a “liveness check” using a webcam. Several users commented on how decentralization and KYC are the exact opposite of each other.