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Looking for a login solution? Be a part of our [partner program](https://plurality.network/blogs/plurality-partner-program-dapps/) and get special benefits. Sign up for [early access](https://forms.gle/5f43c51GPaALoPzv8) 🚀🚀
Identityon Web3 is a rollercoaster for an average newbie user. We’ve moved from email/password logins and centralized accounts to self-custodial wallets, which are permissionless, composable, and portable across decentralized blockchain networks.
This shift has massive implications for privacy, security, and user agency. But it also creates a blind spot. Because while web3 wallets are powerful keys, they’re contextless. When you connect wallet to a dApp, you reveal a public address and nothing else. While good for complete anonymity, it is not the right fit if you want to do anything that requires information about who you are, what you can do, or what you are interested in. The dApp doesn’t know who you are, what you’ve done, what you care about, or what kind of experience you expect.
Unless you’ve previously used the decentralized application, it treats you like a brand-new user every single time. This isn’t just an inconvenience. It’s a core UX problem and a major blocker to Web3 wallet integration and mass adoption. Ideally, user context should be used to connect wallet with user’s persona.
What is User Context?
In web2 systems, user context powers relevance. It includes a user’s prior behavior, preferences, engagement signals, device characteristics, social graphs, and more. These data points drive recommendation engines, adaptive interfaces, and predictive models.
Context lets Spotify infer taste, YouTube personalize feeds, and Amazon streamline checkout flows. In Web3, none of this is portable. A new dApp cannot infer whether a connected wallet belongs to a power user, a DAO contributor, or a first-time explorer. It cannot access past activity across chains. There’s no way to detect social proximity or behavioral traits unless the dApp rebuilds that context from scratch.
This gap results in frictional onboarding, redundant flows, a lack of personalization, and difficulty distinguishing between real contributors and Sybil entities. High-value users and bots are treated identically.
“The user brings a rich history. The wallet just doesn’t carry it.”
Why User Context Is Critical Infrastructure?
Context is not cosmetic, and it’s foundational to intelligent systems. The infrastructure can be spot on, but if it is contextless, it serves no purpose. In web3 wallet integration, modular user context enables:
Contextual onboarding: Tailor entry points for newcomers vs. experienced users.
Dynamic access control: Gate features or governance rights based on credentials, activity, or contributions.
Trust inference: Surface reputation signals without revealing identity.
Cross-chain continuity: Allow users to carry roles, credentials, and preferences across ecosystems.
“User context doesn’t mean surveillance. With decentralized storage and encrypted credentials, context can be privacy-preserving and user-owned.”
It allows applications to become adaptive without needing centralized control. And the biggest challenge is that embedded wallets do not natively support this feature.
Can the Wallet Carry Context?
Is it possible for the wallet to carry the context? Yes, it can, but it doesn’t do it directly. Web3 wallets validate ownership of an address and sign transactions. That’s by design. They don’t store off-chain metadata, behavior logs, or identity overlays.
But what if the wallet connect flow was a trigger for more than authentication? Plurality Network launched an MVP that extends connect wallet login with a context resolution layer. When a user connects their wallet, the dApp requests user-approved context: encrypted metadata stored off-chain and modularly structured via Smart Profiles.
The user context may include interests, usage patterns, credentials, or contribution signals.
Data is encrypted and managed with Lit Protocol and Ceramic Network.
A personal agent, tied to the Smart Profile, intermediates context sharing and consent.
This turns a wallet connect event into a semantic handshake, enabling personalization and intelligent UX without breaking trust boundaries.
Smart Profiles With Modular Context Infrastructure
Smart Profiles are decentralized knowledge graphs tied to wallet addresses. They serve as an extension layer to the embedded wallets, not replacing them but complementing them. These profiles store modular, permissioned context:
Cross-chain behavioral data (if the user opts in)
DAO participation, on-chain reputation signals
Credentials, badges, and attestations
Social graph overlays or off-chain identifiers (e.g., Farcaster, Lens handles)
Consent flags for data exposure
Each data module is independently verifiable, selectively shareable, and built with interoperability in mind. Profiles are chain-agnostic and composable, designed to work across L1s, rollups, and modular chains alike. Developers can fetch context based on user consent through Plurality’s open infrastructure and tailor dApp behavior accordingly. Users retain full data sovereignty and granular control over exposure.
Context Unlocks Composable Reputation
One of the most valuable applications of Smart Profiles is in trust minimization and Sybil resistance. Governance systems today struggle to distinguish between civil participation and incentive farming. Sybil attacks distort quorum, dilute the signal, and undermine incentives.
Plurality’s model allows users to carry credentials that attest to:
These credentials can be queried without revealing identity or metadata, enabling governance frameworks to weigh votes, grant access, or segment users based on trust, not token balance. Reputation becomes portable and programmable. Community design gets sharper. Incentives get more precise.
Context Enables Cross-dApp Personalization
With a modular context layer, personalization becomes inter-dApp. Consider a scenario: a user is an active contributor in a DAO, a frequent NFT collector on another protocol, and a delegate on a governance aggregator. Each dApp treats them as a new wallet connect event by default.
But with Smart Profiles, the dApp can query with permission and prior activity. The user might:
Skip onboarding steps in dApps where a similar setup was already completed
Be surfaced with tools relevant to their usage pattern (e.g., advanced analytics or DAO tooling)
Receive contextual UI changes depending on which credentials are present.
Personal Agents For Operationalizing Context
Smart Profiles are structured storage. But acting in that context requires an interface, which is where personal agents come in. These agents mediate between the user and dApp and/or other agents, interpreting context and enforcing consent policies. They decide:
What topics is this user most interested in?
Based on the user’s past activity, would they prefer X or Y?
How should the UI be adapted according to this user? What mode? What font size? etc.
Instead of the dApp needing to ask for everything, the agent provides what’s needed, when it’s needed, based on logic aligned with the user’s preferences and governance rules. This model introduces programmable consent at the interaction layer. Users don’t just own their data, they control how it flows.
Just a Wallet Is Not Enough!
Web3 wallet authenticates ownership. But they don’t represent the user. They don’t signal intent. They don’t carry a story, credibility, or trajectory. Smart Profiles fill that gap. Personal agents operationalize it. Together, they make connect wallet interactions intelligent, not just cryptographic.
This enables a new class of UX primitives:
Context-aware onboarding
Reputation-weighted governance
Identity-aware personalization
Semantic coordination across DAOs and dApps
And all of it can be built without centralized databases, without tracking, and without compromising privacy.
Web3 UX + User Context = Accessible Web3
Web3 primitives gave us composability, trustlessness, and ownership. The next chapter is about coordination, which requires user context. At Plurality Network, we’re building the infrastructure for contextual UX. Smart Profiles, personal agents, and an open graph for modular user context.
The wallet isn’t going away. But in a contextual web3 wallet integration landscape, it won’t be enough. Join the discussion on Twitter and Discord to let us know how important user context is to you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why connect wallet to the user context in Web3?
When you connect your wallet, dApps can use encrypted context to deliver personalized, yet privacy-preserving Web3 experiences.
What is user context in a Web3 wallet?
User context includes behavior, preferences, and credentials linked to your Web3 wallet, enabling smarter dApp interactions.
Do embedded wallets support user context by default?