A clearer Profile

The new Profile reorganises everything you have already verified, surfaces the gaps, and shows which data dimensions qualify for active campaigns. The point is simple: you should be able to see, at a glance, whether you are ready to participate the moment a campaign opens.

Verified credentials remain on your device. They follow the W3C Verifiable Credentials standard, and they leave your wallet only when you choose to authorise a third party. Selective disclosure means you can prove what is needed without giving away what is not.

New data dimensions: ONTO Steam verification arrives

Alongside the social accounts, email, and personal data we already support, v4.10.0 adds a Steam verification flow. Connecting a Steam account turns years of gaming activity into a verifiable signal: hours played, library size, spend history, account age. For game enthusiasts, that history has been sitting idle on a single platform. From today, it can travel with you, on your terms, to campaigns that pay for it.

This is the first move in a wider data verticals push. Steam goes first because the audience is engaged, the signal is rich, and the verification is clean.

The first PALZ data campaign

PALZ Game will launch the first data monetisation campaign on ONTO. Verify a small set of data dimensions, meet the campaign criteria, and you are in for a share of a prize pool of over $2,000. The eligibility is straightforward: $5+ spent on Steam, 10+ hours played, and a follow on PALZ’s X account. The ground rule on the data side is shorter still: anything you submit must be genuine, reliable, and verifiable. Verifiable Credentials are how we enforce that.

Up to 500 qualifying players will be rewarded. Full eligibility, dates, and reward mechanics will be pinned on the ONTO and PALZ X channels.

Celebrate the launch: $500 Steam giveaway on X

To mark the v4.10.0 release, we are running a quick 2 week long giveaway off the back of the launch tweet on X. The mechanic is light: retweet our launch post and comment your favourite Steam game underneath it. We will pick 100 random winners from the comments and send each one $5. Total pool: $500.

The giveaway is open from launch and the closing date is announced on the pinned post. Whether you win or not, the better outcome is connecting your Steam account in the new Profile while you are there: the moment you do, you are eligible for the PALZ campaign and the data campaigns that follow.

Get started

Update ONTO to v4.10.0 from the App Store or Google Play, open Profile, and start verifying. If ONTO is new to you, download the wallet and create yours first. Connect Steam from the new Profile screen, then check the campaigns tab to see what is open.

This release is one move in a longer arc. The platform is built so the next campaign, and the one after that, can plug in without you redoing your work. Verify once, qualify many times, sell on your terms.

Meet AI Soulforge, a 14 day campaign to mint your first AI profile inside ONTO Wallet, share it with the world, and split an $800 ONG prize pool with the community.

What is an AI Profile?

An AI Profile is the visual and data signature of you, generated from a multi dimensional profile you build inside ONTO Wallet. Personal details, languages, education, career, and skills come together into a single, user authorised record. ONTO then turns that record into a customised AI avatar you actually own.

It is the first visible step in ONTO’s transition into a data wallet. The avatar is the fun part. The profile underneath is the asset: structured, permissioned, and ready to power the data economy we described yesterday.

How to Forge Your Soul

Four steps, all inside the ONTO app:

1. Enrich your profile. Open ONTO, head to the Profile tab, and tap Generate Your AI Profile. Fill in Personal Information, Language & Education, and Career & Skills through the Complete Your Profile tab.

2. Generate your avatar. Confirm your details and sign the message. ONTO builds your customised AI avatar on the spot.

3. Go premium (optional). Every device gets one free image avatar every 24 hours. For extra image avatars or a video avatar, pay a small fee and enter the Premium prize pool.
4. Share on X. Post your avatar template with #MyONTOSoul, then drop your post link under the official campaign tweet to enter the Social Amplifier raffle.

The Prize Pool: $800 in ONG

Two pools, one goal: reward the users who commit.

Premium Prize, $500 100 winners, $5 each, drawn at random from everyone who paid to generate an avatar during the campaign.

Social Amplifier Raffle, $300 100 winners, $3 each, drawn from users who generated an image or video avatar and shared it on X with #MyONTOSoul plus their post link and wallet address under the campaign tweet.

Each Device ID can only win once, and you can only win once across both pools.

You Own the Output

Everything you generate belongs to you. The profile data stays user authorised, the avatar is yours to post wherever you like, and any future data monetisation flows back to the wallet that owns it. That is the whole point of a data wallet: your data, your permission, your upside.

Get Started

The campaign is live now and runs for 14 days. Don’t have ONTO yet?

Download ONTO Wallet

Open the app, tap Profile, tap Generate Your AI Profile, and forge your soul. Share it with #MyONTOSoul and come find us under the campaign tweet.

Your data has always had worth. Now it has a face.

Why ONTO Is Making This Shift

The ONTO data wallet is here, and it changes how you relate to your own information. Every app you use collects data about you. Your preferences, your behaviour, your identity. That data gets packaged, sold, and used to train AI models, target ads, and build products. The value flows in one direction: away from you.

The AI training data market alone is projected to grow from $7.48 billion in 2025 to $52.41 billion by 2035. That growth is built on human data. The question is whether the humans producing that data should have a say in how it is used, and whether they should benefit from it.

ONTO was built on Ontology’s decentralised identity infrastructure: ONT ID for verifiable credentials, and Orange Protocol for reputation scoring and cross-chain data aggregation. Those capabilities already give users portable, self-sovereign identity across Web3. The next step is to make that identity productive: to let users contribute their data, verify it, and earn from it on their own terms.

That is the shift. The ONTO data wallet evolves Ontology’s existing identity tools into a platform that puts your data to work.

How It Works: Use, Earn, Control

ONTO’s data ownership model follows three stages. Each one builds on the last, and together they create something that has not existed in Web3 before: a user-controlled data economy.

Stage 1: Use

You submit your data to access real services that benefit you directly. The first example is AI Avatars: upload your profile information and ONTO generates a personalised AI avatar using your own data. It is not a gimmick. It is the first practical demonstration that your data has value, and that you are the one who should benefit from contributing it.

This is a deliberate inversion of the current model. Instead of platforms quietly harvesting your data in the background, you choose to contribute it, and you receive something tangible in return.

Stage 2: Earn

Once you have verified your data, it becomes more than just information sitting in a profile. It becomes something meaningful, something the ecosystem recognises as yours and rewards you for contributing. Instead of having your information silently extracted, you receive corresponding incentives for the data you choose to share.

Stage 3: Control

This is where the model reaches its full potential. Users decide which third parties can access their data, for what purpose, and under what conditions. Authorisation is granular and revocable. You might allow a gaming studio to see your play history but keep your financial data private. You might sell anonymised behavioural data to an AI training company while retaining full control over your identity credentials.

The key principle: your data, your terms, your revenue. ONTO facilitates the connection between users and data buyers, but the user always holds the keys.

The Product Vision

The vision behind the ONTO data wallet is straightforward. Today, platforms use data. Tomorrow, users should decide how data is used. The whole model shifts from passive participation to active ownership, where individuals shape where their data goes and how it gets applied.

This reframes data as something owned by users rather than something exploited by platforms. It introduces user participation into a technological equation that has, until now, largely left them out. AI Avatars are the first proof of that principle. The rest of the roadmap builds on the same foundation.

What Is in the New Release

The new ONTO update (v4.9.23) is the first release built around this vision. Here is what it includes:

AI Avatar Creation. Submit your profile data and generate a personalised AI avatar. This is the Use stage in action: your data powers a service that benefits you directly. Avatars can be static images or animated, with animated versions available via ONT or ONG payment.

Enhanced AI Profile. Your ONTO profile now functions as a structured data profile. Personal details, preferences, and activity data are organised in a way that makes them valuable and verifiable. This is the foundation for the Earn and Control stages that follow.

Data Contribution Framework. The underlying architecture for submitting, verifying, and managing your data is now in place. This release focuses on the user experience of contributing data and receiving immediate value. Future updates will expand the types of data you can contribute and introduce the full reward and authorisation systems.

How to Get Started

Once the new version is live on iOS and Android:

1. Update ONTO to the latest version from the App Store or Google Play.

2. Open your AI Profile and complete your profile information. The more data you contribute, the richer your avatar and the stronger your profile for future earning opportunities.

3. Generate your AI Avatar using the new creation tool. You can save it, regenerate it, or upgrade to an animated version.

4. Stay tuned for the next updates, which will introduce data verification, ONG rewards, and the ability to authorise data access to third parties.

What Comes Next

AI Avatars are the starting point, not the destination. Here is what is on the roadmap:

Data verification and rewards. The next step is verifying the data you submit and rewarding users for contributing verified information. This is where the Earn stage comes to life.

Third-party data authorisation. After that, the Control stage: choose which third parties can access your data, set your own terms, and revoke access whenever you want.

Campaigns and activities. Alongside each release, we will run campaigns and community activities designed to give early users additional ways to engage with the new features.

The vision is clear: a world where your data works for you, not against you. ONTO is building the tools to make that real, one feature at a time.

Download ONTO and build your profile today. The future of your data starts with you.

Download ONTO Wallet  |  Learn more about Ontology

The Indie Takeover

Web3 gaming has been through a brutal reset. In 2025, over 90% of gaming token launches failed to hold their initial value, studio closures accelerated, and the venture capital that once flooded the space dried up. The era of raising $50 million for a blockchain game that might ship in three years is over.

But something interesting happened on the way down. While the big-budget projects struggled, a new wave of indie Web3 studios kept building. Smaller teams, leaner budgets, gameplay-first design. According to industry analysis from GAM3S.GG, indie titles are expected to account for roughly 70% of active Web3 players in 2026, up from a fraction of that two years ago. The $500K game is beating the $50 million game, and the market is starting to reflect it.

This is not just a Web3 story. It mirrors a broader trend across gaming: smaller studios with focused mechanics and dedicated communities consistently outperform bloated productions. But in Web3, this shift exposes a critical problem that traditional gaming solved decades ago.

The problem is data.

The Data Gap: Flying Blind

When EA launches a new title, it plugs into a mature analytics stack built over years: player segmentation, churn prediction, lifetime value modelling, behavioural cohort analysis. These tools let studios understand who their players are, what keeps them engaged, and where the monetisation opportunities sit.

Indie Web3 studios have none of this. Most can see wallet addresses. They can track on-chain transactions. But that tells them almost nothing about the humans behind those wallets. Is this player a competitive grinder or a casual explorer? Are they a whale who will spend on cosmetics, or a free-to-play loyalist who adds value through community participation? Are they about to churn, or are they deepening their engagement?

Without player segmentation, indie studios cannot personalise experiences, cannot target retention efforts, and cannot build the sustainable economies that the post-token-crash market demands. They are flying blind in a market that has already punished guesswork.

The Web3 gaming market is projected at $48.55 billion in 2026, growing at 22.4% CAGR. But the studios that capture value from this growth will not be those with the flashiest tokens. They will be those that understand their players.

The Player Side: Fragmented and Invisible

Flip to the other side of the equation. A typical Web3 gamer in 2026 plays three to five titles. They have wallets on multiple chains. They participate in Discord communities, follow creators, and generate behavioural signals across every game they touch: session length, genre preferences, spending patterns, social connections, skill progression.

None of this data is connected. Each game is a silo. Each platform captures its own slice. The player has no unified profile, no portable reputation, and no way to carry their gaming identity from one title to the next. Every new game starts from zero.

This is a Web2 problem that Web3 was supposed to solve. Wallets gave players ownership of assets, but they did not give players ownership of their identity or their data. A wallet address proves you hold a token. It says nothing about who you are as a player.

The result is a lose-lose: studios cannot see their players, and players cannot leverage their own history.

Beyond the Chain: Why Off-Chain Data Changes Everything

Most Web3 analytics tools focus exclusively on on-chain activity: token transfers, smart contract interactions, NFT ownership. This data is useful but shallow. It captures transactions, not behaviour.

The richest player data is off-chain. It includes play session duration, in-game decision patterns, social engagement, community contributions, content creation, platform preferences, and spending habits in traditional gaming. This is the data that powers player segmentation in traditional gaming, and it is almost entirely absent from Web3.

This is where decentralised identity (DID) wallets become relevant, and where the conversation shifts from analytics tools to identity infrastructure.

A DID wallet is not just a place to store tokens. It is a portable, verified identity container. It can aggregate both on-chain and off-chain activity into a single profile: gaming history, credentials, reputation scores, behavioural patterns. Critically, this profile is controlled by the player, not the platform.

ONTO Wallet, built on Ontology’s decentralised identity infrastructure, is an example of a DID wallet designed for exactly this kind of aggregation. Its identity framework can bring together on-chain transactions, off-chain activity, and verifiable credentials into a unified profile. The player decides what to include, what to share, and what to keep private.

For gaming, this means a player’s identity can carry context that no single game could build alone: verified play history, cross-title reputation, social proof, spending patterns across platforms. Not just what you bought, but how you play.

What Player Segmentation Looks Like with Portable Identity

Imagine an indie studio preparing to launch a competitive tournament. In today’s Web3 landscape, they would promote it broadly and hope the right players show up. With portable DID profiles, the picture changes.

Players who have built verified gaming profiles, including credentials from past tournaments, reputation scores from sustained engagement, and behavioural data indicating competitive play style, become visible as a segment. Not because a platform tracked them, but because they chose to build and share that profile.

The studio does not need to build analytics infrastructure from scratch. The identity layer already holds the player intelligence, structured and verified, with the player’s consent at every step.

This model works for any segment. Casual mobile players. High-spending collectors. Community builders. Content creators. Each segment emerges from the data players contribute to their own profiles, not from surveillance, but from participation.

For players, the incentive is straightforward. A strong gaming profile unlocks access: early invites, exclusive content, recognition within communities. The more you contribute to your identity, the more valuable that identity becomes. Not just to you, but to the ecosystem around you.

The Opportunity Ahead

The Web3 gaming market is maturing. The industry reset of 2025 cleared out speculative projects and forced a reckoning with what actually sustains a game: engaged, understood, and valued players. The shift from play-to-earn to play-and-own reflects this new reality.

But ownership without identity is incomplete. Owning an in-game asset is meaningful only if your identity, your reputation, and your data travel with you. This is the layer that Web3 gaming is still building.

DID wallets are the infrastructure that closes this gap. By giving players a portable, verified identity that aggregates both on-chain and off-chain data, they solve the data problem for studios and the fragmentation problem for players at the same time.

Ontology’s identity infrastructure, and ONTO Wallet as its user-facing product, is positioned squarely in this space. With decentralised identity, verifiable credentials, and reputation scoring already built into the wallet, the foundation for a portable gaming identity is not theoretical. It is available today.

The question is not whether player data will become central to Web3 gaming. The market has already answered that. The question is who controls it: platforms that extract it silently, or players who own it and choose how it is used.

Build your profile. Own your identity. The data is yours.

Start building your identity profile with ONTO Wallet. Learn more about Ontology’s decentralised identity infrastructure at ont.io.