Permission-less Identity = Customer Segmentation

From kermankohli substack by Kerman Kohli

I’ve been working on trying to solve the problem of on-chain identity/reputation for close to 4 years now (started working on it originally in 2021) and something I’ve often come up against is people asking: “do we really need identity/reputation?” “what does identity even mean in crypto?” etc.

However as the years have gone by I’ve realised a simpler and more approachable way to frame the problem is simply around customer segmentation.

To illustrate my point and an eternal truth, I’d like to present a story of a Chad who time travels, courtesy of ChatGPT:

Chad’s Timeless Rizz: How Customer Segmentation Has Always Been the Move

Chad wasn’t just some guy—he was that guy. One day, he found a magic hourglass that let him time travel. But every time he landed somewhere new, he realized the same rule applied: if you don’t know your audience, you’re getting cooked.

Ancient Hustlers (2000 BCE – Marketplace Mayhem)

Chad spawns into a dusty bazaar where everyone is screaming about their “best deals.” The real sellers, though? They’re playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers.

The Spartan warriors are buying swords, the Egyptian queens are hoarding eyeliner, and the philosophers? They don’t actually buy anything, they just stand around debating whether value even exists. Chad doesn’t waste his time pitching to the wrong people. Instead, he sets up shop selling premium bronze daggers to the Spartans and gold-trimmed kohl to the queens.

The philosophers try to haggle for some scrolls using "theoretical currency." Chad tells them to get a job.

Industrial Revolution (1900s – One-Size-Fits-Mid? No Thanks.

Fast-forward to a smoky factory town. Everything is mass-produced, and Henry Ford is out here acting like he just invented cars. “You can have any color you want, as long as it’s black.”

That works for a while—until GM pulls up and says, “What if… different cars for different people?” Now there’s a cheap, practical one for factory workers, a fast one for rich playboys, and a big comfy one for suburban dads who peaked in high school.

Chad sees the vision immediately. He launches “Worker Chad’s Tough Truck” for the factory guys and “Sigma Coupe” for the corporate finance bros. Money printer goes brrr.

Mad Men Era (1960s – The Original Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss Era)

Chad stumbles into a boardroom where a bunch of chain-smoking dudes are planning ad campaigns between sips of whiskey. At this point, selling is no longer about what you make—it’s about who you’re making it for.

Dads get truck ads where a guy wrestles a bear. Housewives get detergent commercials that subtly imply their husband will leave them if the laundry isn’t fresh. Kids get cereal mascots that are clearly unhinged.

Chad catches on quick. He drops an ad for his new men’s cologne: a guy BASE jumps off a cliff, lands in a Ferrari, and immediately gets swarmed by models. The cologne smells like gas station bourbon, but it sells out in a week.

The Digital Age (2000s–Now – The Algorithm Has Entered the Chat)

Chad wakes up to a world where nobody is watching TV anymore. Instead, the internet is watching them. Google and Facebook are tracking clicks, likes, and how long you stared at that one product at 2 AM. Ads don’t just appear—they find you.

Instead of “people who like coffee,” brands now go for hyper-specific targeting like:

Chad starts dropshipping LED lights that sync to sad music only to teens who have posted at least three crying selfies. Business is booming.

The Eternal Truth

Chad puts down the hourglass and sighs. Turns out, business has always been about knowing your audience. Whether it’s Spartans in a marketplace, suburban dads in the ‘60s, or TikTok doomscrollers in 2024—if you understand the customer, you get the bag.

And with that, Chad logs into Shopify to cook up his next move.

As you can understand from the above, a core principle of business is that knowing your customer base. This is the only way that markets stay competitive and relevant to consumers.

In crypto we are at the complete opposite of that. No one knows anything. Is it because everyone is dumb and incompetent? Not really. The market is desperate for something like this and has been for years, maybe even a decade.

If you think the current state of crypto analytics is great then you should read my past articles  or pull up a standard crypto analytics chart and tell me the behaviour of the wallets that make up that data. You won’t be able to. It’s all one big mess.

So why has this problem not been solved?

Because it is insanely hard to do so.

Many have attempted to do so. Over the past few years the number of web3 data/analytics platform that come and go is astounding. Since 2022 I’ve probably tracked all of them myself and they fail, not because they didn’t want to build something that customers want, but because they weren’t able to.

Why is that? Because the  scale of data and challenges  with enabling effective customer segmentation in crypto is unlike anything we’ve seen and requires a very cross disciplinary team with a long term time horizon and millions of dollars in funding to actually build.

So does that mean it’ll never get built? Of course not. I’ll be sharing more of what we’ve spent the past few years building to share that pathway. However, this is probably one of the most challenging puzzles to solve on Earth right now.

“But who cares if you solve crypto customer segmentation?”

This is what most people cannot see. Technology that enables effective customer segmentation unlocks outsized value for society, as it has since the beginning of human society. I’d even go as far to argue that without identity/reputation/segmentation crypto will stay stagnated in the shitty form it is now where everyone plays circular ponzi games.

Maybe this is a far fetched thesis…

… but I’m willing to bet big on it.