Solana Launches Identification Verification Service: Discussing the Difference Between AS and Oracle Machine

Recently, the Solana ecosystem has welcomed an important update. The Solana identification team and the foundation jointly announced that the Solana Authentication Service (SAS) has officially launched on the mainnet. This is an open, permissionless verifiable credential protocol aimed at providing a more comprehensive identification verification solution for the Solana ecosystem.

The core function of SAS is to allow trusted issuers to associate off-chain information with user wallets. This information may include KYC verification results, geographical qualification, membership status, or other identification statuses. Through SAS, this verification information is signed and can be verified, while also being reusable across different applications without having to expose sensitive data or repeat verification steps each time.

The launch of this service brings a neutral and permissionless proof layer to the Solana ecosystem, promising more efficient compliance management, access control, reputation systems, and programmable identification throughout the ecosystem. For end users and developers, this means a higher quality and more convenient experience.

However, when we talk about bringing off-chain information on-chain, it is inevitable to compare SAS with Oracle Machine. Although both aim to bring off-chain information on-chain, they have significant differences in positioning, use cases, trust models, and how they operate.

The following is a detailed comparison between SAS and Oracle Machine:

1. Main Use:

   • SAS: Converts off-chain identification, status, behavior, and other subjective or static information into on-chain certificates.
   • Oracle Machine: Provides objective, dynamic data from off-chain (such as prices, weather, etc.) to on-chain applications.

2. Data Type:

   • SAS: Handles subjective or event-based information, such as age verification, organizational identification, etc.
   • Oracle Machine: Processes numerical or factual data, such as cryptocurrency prices, API data, etc.

3. Data Structure:

   • SAS: Generate reusable, wallet-bound verification "seal".
   • Oracle Machine: Provides real-time data used in trading, such as price information.

4. Source of Trust:

   • SAS: Relies on specific trusted publishers (such as KYC institutions, DAOs, device manufacturers) for signature verification.
   • Oracle Machine: Typically gathers information from multiple data sources, aggregates it through the network, and publishes it.

5. Update Frequency:

   • SAS: Updates are infrequent, usually valid for a long time after generation.
   • Oracle Machine: High-frequency updates, possibly updating data every minute.

6. Composability and Reusability:

   • SAS: Supports cross-application reuse, such as one KYC verification can be used by multiple applications.
   • Oracle Machine: The data is primarily used for specific trading activities and does not emphasize reusability.

7. Privacy Processing:

   • SAS: Focuses on privacy protection, only verifies "whether passed", without disclosing detailed information.
   • Oracle Machine: Usually does not involve user identification privacy issues.

8. Representative Project:

   • SAS: Solana Attestation Service, Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS).
   • Oracle Machine: Chainlink, Pyth, Band Protocol, etc.

Through a simple example, we can more intuitively understand the difference between the two:

The application scenario of SAS may be: after the user completes identity verification on the Web3 platform, they obtain an "adult" on-chain verification stamp. This stamp is stored in the user's wallet, and any dApp in the future can verify it without needing to submit identification documents repeatedly.

A typical use case for the Oracle Machine is that a DeFi protocol needs to know the current ETH price to determine liquidation conditions, and it will read the real-time ETH/USD price through the Oracle Machine.

Overall, the Oracle Machine mainly serves as a "data feeding" mechanism, focusing on off-chain "objective facts"; while SAS is a mechanism for "verification of identification or status," focusing on off-chain "subjective or conditional trust." These two technologies are not mutually exclusive, but play complementary roles in the Web3 ecosystem, jointly promoting the development and improvement of blockchain applications.