Digital identity in crypto: A conversation with XGo ID and ENS

cointelegraph.com:

Cointelegraph’s latest X Space gathered Web3 experts to discuss the challenges of building innovative blockchain projects, the convergence of Web2 and Web3, and ways to lower the barriers to entry in crypto. The invited speakers were Khori Whittaker, executive director at ENS Labs (Ethereum Name Service) and Josh Cowell, head of product at XGo ID.

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One of the solutions to improve the crypto user experience that Whittaker talked about is ENS, which allows randomly generated letters and numbers from crypto addresses to be converted into more easily recognizable words, such as a person’s name or a brand. This can replace dozens of wallet and website addresses, receive any cryptocurrency, token or NFT, and store an avatar or other necessary data for use across multiple services. “Instead of logging into a DApp with a wallet, you use just one name. This human-readable phenomenon is crucial to create a better UX,” he said.

XGo focuses on crypto-payment infrastructure, or as Cowell describes it, “it’s the glue between different service providers in centralized finance (CeFi), decentralized finance (DeFi), smart contracts and people.” XGo is leveraging ENS’s advanced top-level domain technology in its minimal viable product (MVP), allowing users to use an XGo ID across 12 networks, with more to come.

“I’d love to get people right into Web3, but it’s hard to do that,” Cowell said. “It’s not just a bad user experience. Before you can operate in the crypto world, you have to get over technical hurdles and get some understanding of Web3, so it makes sense to take intermediate Web 2.5 steps."

He cited XGo as an example of Web 2.5, where users can link different chains and wallets within a mobile app under a