Shane Mac explains how XMTP lets you attach any identity you own—passkeys, ENS names, Base names, Bluesky handles—to a single messaging inbox. Rather than forcing one identity system, XMTP acts as a neutral layer where multiple identity brands can coexist, like fashion choices.
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I view identity and what we've really done at XMT. I don't know what's going to happen or who's going to win or what it's actually going to be. I'm obsessed with what people want and what's easy for them and what gives them the power of the next internet without them having to understand it. And so the way we've actually thought about it at XMTP is a universal identity. And what that is, is the ability for the XMTP protocol. We don't have a namespace. There's not a chris.xmtp. We don't have a namespace. There's tons of namespaces out there. We allow you to, as a builder or a user, to bring any identity you want to the network. And you can associate that to the SMTP inbox ID. And so from a builder perspective, I can just have a passkey at the core. It can literally just be a passkey, and I could have a peer-to-peer communication that's as secure as Signal between Shane and Chris just using that passkey. And I could make a username on the Convos app because we use ENS off-chain resolvers. But all you have to understand as a user is just a username like everyone else knows. But I can also import, I could bring a Base name, I could bring, you could even bring a Bluesky name in the future. And whatever identity you own, you can bring to the network and then use that to be discovered, to see into social graphs, as well as to send messages to other people. And so I think the way we've thought about it is a flexible model where we we don't need to have a strong opinion, and we can adapt and work with any of the identity solutions, visions that are going to happen, or really which ones start to kind of take hold. Uh, and we really thought about it in a universal identity model where XMTP can import and bring in any identity, and we can also promote them. So if you're going to use an identity on the XMTP network, it helps that identity owner or provider get more distribution of their identity, get more people to know about it, get more people to see it, get more people to use it. And so XMTP actually becomes a network to allow you to get more visibility and growth into— of your identity through the network. I think the future though, maybe something that's a different view of what could happen is the identity of the past was really username based on the brand that owned the network. So Instagram handle, but really it's Instagram is the brand and I have a handle. The future might look a little different, which is, I think of it more like wearing shoes. It's not that one global identifier is going to win this next phase as a single global network. It's that these new identities actually can work on single networks like XMTP, and there could be 30 different identity types. And those become the, the like brand. That's the social status. That's the signal. Right? And so if one person wants to be, hey, I'm, you know, ShaneMac.bluesky.app, and you're actually Chris.ens, it kind of shows who we associate with. And if there's anything happening in the internet right now, it's that macro trends or these communities and belief systems are actually driving people to join new networks. And those identities are becoming the signals. I mean, you're seeing the Blue Sky, you know, identity on X all day, or the Mastodon identity on X all day. And these identities are becoming almost, you know, your status symbol. It's your credibility. It's your, what community are you a part of? And I think that's actually going to get bigger, not less. So it's not all of us using a single network anymore. It's actually Imagine there's a network underneath this, like an XMTP, but everyone's using different identities in that messaging network to kind of show, you know, who they want to be a part of their community. And so I think it actually looks more like brands and culture and status of the way the world works when you think about clothing and fashion and shoes and kind of that whole culture. And now it's possible to do that where we can all be using the same messaging network, but all have a different identity that we show up with. And so we're trying to focus on like that flexibility. I think we're focused on what we don't know. Like we don't have all the answers here. We're not sure on how it plays out. But, you know, I think about technology in a way of we don't have to know as long as we have the foundation to be able to adapt quickly. And so right now we just allow you to bring any identity you own. We allow you to connect that to the XMTP inbox ID, and we don't really have to force anyone or any builder or any developer on like our own namespace at all. You can bring whatever you use and we're compatible with almost all of them today.
