To Combat Solana's Bot Problem, Civic Unveils Free Digital ID for NFTs

Read the full article by Jason Nelson here

Bots are a growing part of the decentralized experience. But they can also manipulate markets and cause massive headaches for blockchain developers.

Key points:

On September 14th, the Solana blockchain went down for 17 hours due to network congestion.

The main offender was a group of bots who’s software programs crypto traders use to make automated trades, attempting to buy the GRAPE token sale on dex(decentralized exchange) Raydium. In the words of the Solana foundation called it, “in effect, a denial of service attack”- through the bots’ intended use was to outmaneuver other traders, not take down the network.

Exchanges are not the only ones having these issues with bots, the software behind them can also be used to bid on NFTs.

To deal with this growing concern, San Francisco-based Civic, a protocol used to be a digital identity protocol announced today the launch of Ignite pass, a free version of it’s Civic Pass.

The protocol aims to have NFT buyers have to prove their “liveness”, making NFT drops more fair for everyone to secure a slot and also makes for a much more transparent decentralized community.

Chris Hart, the CEO of Civic Technologies, has called bots nuisances that destroy the trust communities have built. “Civic believes that a more level playing field is beneficial for all,” Hart told Decrypt via email. “In the places where bots are negatively manipulating NFT markets, we see an opportunity to help put guardrails in place.”

“We think it is important that genuine supporters of NFT projects control the marketplaces and not bots,” Hart said. “So our goal in distributing tools like Civic Ignite Pass for free, is to help cut the growing threat off at the pass and allow users to focus on creating and collecting art.”
Civic says it also offers a paid upgrade option to provide KYC & AML capabilities for high-value auctions. According to an October 2021 report by DappRadar, in the third quarter of 2021, the NFT space generated over $10.67 billion in trading volume, a 704% increase from the previous quarter.

And as it grows, expect the bot problem to get bigger.