Credential protocol
Private credential issuance, presentation, verification, and revocation are implemented in the current protocol work.
Modulo 59 // Developer infrastructure
Second Name
The name you earn.
A privacy-preserving reputation layer that lets people prove what they have earned without revealing who they are.
Communities and applications can issue verifiable credentials based on real participation or behavior. Users reveal only the proof a service needs, rather than handing over a permanent identity profile.
Your reputation, without your identity.
Working name: Nym
Public product: Second Name
First application: Nym Arena
The problem
Why does proving one thing require revealing everything?
Online trust usually forces people into a bad trade. Stay anonymous and start from zero everywhere, or reveal identifying information to prove that you are legitimate.
Second Name explores another model: prove the thing that matters without proving who you are. Prove that you have participated for six months, earned a credential, or met an application requirement without exposing your legal name, unrelated wallet history, or a universal profile.
Don't prove who you are. Prove what matters.
How it works
Separate reputation from identity.
An application attests that something happened. The user receives a private credential. Later, the user proves that the required condition is true without handing the verifier their entire identity or history.
- 01
Participate
- 02
Earn credential
- 03
Hold privately
- 04
Prove requirement
- 05
Access
Why Solana
Public trust infrastructure, not public identity.
Second Name does not need a person's identity or private reputation history on-chain. Solana provides an independently verifiable coordination layer for the pieces that should be public, including program rules, issuer authority, trust anchors, and application authorization. Private credentials and proofs remain off-chain.
Public layer
Authority, policy references, program rules, and application-level trust.
Private layer
Credential contents, holder state, selective proofs, and unrelated history.
Built, not just proposed
The protocol work already has real enforcement behind it.
Verifier security
Challenge-bound proofs, replay protection, signed policy, authorization controls, and fail-closed verification paths.
Issuer controls
Protected signing-key lifecycle, credential status handling, and explicit production release gates around trust configuration.
Solana programs
On-chain authorization and application infrastructure for the first interactive test environment, Nym Arena.
Production hardening
PostgreSQL privilege separation, durable state, backup verification, security-event logging, monitoring, and migration controls.
Application testing
Nym Arena provides a controlled environment for testing earned reputation and human-participation signals through games.
First application
Nym Arena
Second Name is the infrastructure. Nym Arena is one place we are testing it. The Arena uses games and interactive challenges as an experimental environment for reputation, participation credentials, and human-verification systems.
The goal is not to turn game performance into an identity test. The goal is to explore how applications can issue useful attestations about activity without constructing a permanent identity dossier.
Human verification without KYC
Humans shouldn't need passports to participate online.
Second Name is exploring ways for communities to build confidence that an account represents an established human participant without requiring a government ID, face scan, legal name, or centralized KYC profile.
No single signal can perfectly prove a human. The direction is to combine earned, privacy-preserving reputation signals so applications can make better decisions without demanding unnecessary identity data.
Privacy principles
Prove enough. Reveal less.
01
No universal identity number.
02
No public reputation score.
03
No requirement to reveal a legal identity.
04
No need to put private credential history on Solana.
05
Applications ask for the proof they need, not everything they can collect.
Security
Designed before launch, not added afterward.
The current build has been developed around explicit threat modeling and fail-closed behavior. Security work includes replay resistance, credential revocation, signer and key isolation, database least privilege, release verification, dependency auditing, security-event monitoring, and incident response planning.
Public documentation will describe protocol and conformance surfaces without publishing private anti-abuse heuristics, operational secrets, or signing-key infrastructure.
Current status
Active development and security hardening.
The credential protocol, verifier, revocation system, database security model, and Arena integration are implemented and undergoing continued security review and remediation.
The public product, developer SDK, and production network are not yet launched. Live release remains gated on production infrastructure, deployment verification, and final external review.
Where it could be used
Infrastructure for applications that need trust without unnecessary identity collection.
Online communities
Recognize established participation without requiring members to reveal a legal identity.
Games
Carry achievements, permissions, and earned reputation without exposing unrelated account history.
Marketplaces
Prove a qualification or history threshold without handing over an entire identity profile.
DAOs and decentralized communities
Use eligibility and participation credentials without turning wallet history into identity.
Developer platforms
Ask for the proof an application needs instead of collecting another permanent identity database.
Anti-Sybil systems
Combine privacy-preserving reputation signals without treating KYC as the only path to trust.
Road ahead
NOW
Finish security remediation, finalize protocol boundaries, document the developer surface, and complete Arena integration.
NEXT
Publish the protocol-facing surface, build reference integrations, and test with partner applications and external users.
LATER
Expand cross-application credential portability and continue privacy and human-verification research across Solana and adjacent systems.
Built by Modulo 59
Interested in building with privacy-preserving reputation?
Second Name is being developed by Modulo 59, an independent technology and research studio working across privacy infrastructure, Solana, interactive systems, markets, and digital history.