Lattice is excited to announce our investment into Lit Protocol, we believe Lit will be a key piece of the rapidly expanding infrastructure stack within Web3. The Lit Network provides web3 developers with a decentralized access control protocol for gating digital and real world experiences based on on-chain data including ownership of both fungible and non-fungible tokens.
What is Lit?
Lit (Lockable Interactive Token) Protocol is a decentralized access control network that provides infrastructure for granting permissions between blockchain users and the world they interact with. In order to understand Lit, one must understand Access control lists (ACL). In modern computer security, an access-control list (ACL) is a mechanism used to define who has access to your data and objects, as well as what level of access they have. An ACL specifies which users or system processes are granted access to objects and actions that users can take on specific data and objects within it. Lit acts a decentralized ACL which leverages on-chain data from user's wallets to grant access to certain content or software. The easiest way to think of Lit is middleware that enables gated experiences based on what's in a given users wallet.
Why does it matter?
The rise of web3 and decentralized infrastructure is requiring radically new thinking for how people interact with content & software. Today, businesses rely on companies like Okta, a $30B behemoth in the identity and access management space to provide user authentication as a service. In open operating systems without centralized login credentials, people still need ways to unlock access to specific experiences and web3 developers will need a way to easily enable permissioning without reliance on siloed data. In the future when humanity's collective data moves on-chain (financial, identity, social, etc), we will need infrastructure that allows developers to access that data in an encrypted way. We are already starting to see rudimentary examples of this where web3 businesses are looking for ways to control access based upon on-chain credentials. Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis launched a new show called Stoner Cats where users need a specific NFT to watch it and you can’t get into a Bored Ape party unless you’ve got an Ape (at least that is what they try 😂)
The Lit protocol has many different applications and future use-cases for developers to explore:
- Crypto login credentials to web2 services (e.g.Zoom & Google Drive), e.g. accessing a DAOs google doc based on holding a specific ERC-721.
- Permissioned access to content (e.g. streamable videos) that becomes unlocked with a NFT
- Credentialed access to sensitive data records (e.g. health or financial)
- Think anywhere you login to a service today with email, Lit can replace that in web3
The computing stack is being rapidly re-architected for a permissionless decentralized world and Lit protocol accelerating that transition. David and Chris are incredibly experienced builders with a proven track record having sold their previous startup to Linkedin and Lattice is excited to back them in building critical infrastructure for the web3 world.