Torus, a blockchain protocol that adds logins of Web 2.0 sites like Google and Facebook to Web 3.0 apps, launched out of beta yesterday. Torus is also making its codebase open-source, and it announced nine new partners to operate the protocol, among them Binance, the Ethereum Name Service, and Zilliqa.
Primarily, Torus is a way to log into the decentralized web using your Facebook, Google, Discord, Reddit, or Twitch accounts. If integrated into a dapp, it means that you could use your Gmail account to log into, say, a crypto wallet.
Correspondingly, you can also recover your account using your email address; if you lose your seed phrase or backup passwords, your crypto’s gone forever.
Torus also lets you send Ethereum-based tokens to any Google, Discord, or Reddit account, including those accounts that aren’t registered with Torus. It claims to be compatible across all browsers and platforms. Over 100 companies, among them Augur and Kickback, use the service.
The nine operators running the network are Binance, ENS, Etherscan, Matic Network, Ontology, Skale, Tendermint Core, Torus, and Zilliqa. It plans to add at least 10 more members by the end of the year.
In a statement, Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance (and one of Torus’s partners), said: “User onboarding is one of the biggest hurdles holding back Web3.0 adoption today. The status quo of key generation and wallet linking does not scale for millions of non-technical users.”
In July 2019, Torus raised $2 million in a seed round in 2019. Multicoin Capital, Coinbase Ventures and Binance Labs took part in the investment.