Decentralized SSO is a great use case for blockchain tech and there are so many ways you can do it. There has been a lot of hype around NFTs due to the crazy prices we've been seeing for "digital artwork NFTs", but you can also use them for auth and it's actually pretty slick.
Here is a project[1] that a friend of mine is building that does exactly that. It's basically a collection of TailwindCSS components that he originally built in the "web 2.0" way, as in: buy a subscription (via Stripe) and now you have access to his collection of pre-built components. But then he realized this is actually a great use-case for web3. So instead of signing up for an account with an email + password then using your credit card to buy a lifetime deal, you can connect your MetaMask wallet to his website and "mint" a pass for 0.08 ETH (approx ~$350 atm) which is just an NFT on the Ethereum blockchain. Then as long as that NFT is owned by your wallet you can use it to login to his website. The benefits are: it's actually faster for the user (your wallet is your identity and you access pass is attached directly to that wallet on the blockchain) and also pretty simple for him to integrate on his end. The other benefit is you can trade these passes at will without his oversight – so if he adds more and more Tailwind components to the collection the value of this lifetime access to them hypothetically goes up. But let's say you no longer are interested in building anything with Tailwind components – well you can just sell the NFT that gives you access to someone else via any of the 3rd party decentralized marketplaces.
Anyway there are a lot of cool ideas and use-cases that aren't just decentralized lending (which I'm still pretty skeptical of) or generic gambling (still most of crypto). The main problem right now is that a lot of the coolest stuff has been built on Ethereum (due to the flexibility of its smart contracts) but the transaction fees and throughput are pretty terrible at the moment.
Finally, it gets a lot of hate here on HN, but Brave Browser actually has a MetaMask-equivalent (I think it might actually just be a fork of MetaMask) that is built right into the browser, alongside best-in-class ad-blocking so I'd consider using that too. Though installing MetaMask is super easy as well.
Thanks for sharing the NFT-as-access-token example, it's far and away the strongest example of a relatable use for NFTs that I've heard, and is compelling both in its value to the issuer (as a verifiable access token) and to the buyer (for both immediate use and due to its resale of residual value after having been used).
I imagine that your friend's NFT contract stipulates he gets a cut of resales, but I'm also curious if/how your friend deals with potentially bad actors that, say, scrape the entire content then resell the token for most of what they paid for it having extracted the content it unlocks. Obviously the contract could help offset a part of that trade, but seems tricky nonetheless?
Edit: I suppose part of the premise is that there are only 500 passes and content continues to be produced, so if you want access to the current library after all passes have been used trading the pass is actually a key attribute of others gaining access to the content.
Here is a project[1] that a friend of mine is building that does exactly that. It's basically a collection of TailwindCSS components that he originally built in the "web 2.0" way, as in: buy a subscription (via Stripe) and now you have access to his collection of pre-built components. But then he realized this is actually a great use-case for web3. So instead of signing up for an account with an email + password then using your credit card to buy a lifetime deal, you can connect your MetaMask wallet to his website and "mint" a pass for 0.08 ETH (approx ~$350 atm) which is just an NFT on the Ethereum blockchain. Then as long as that NFT is owned by your wallet you can use it to login to his website. The benefits are: it's actually faster for the user (your wallet is your identity and you access pass is attached directly to that wallet on the blockchain) and also pretty simple for him to integrate on his end. The other benefit is you can trade these passes at will without his oversight – so if he adds more and more Tailwind components to the collection the value of this lifetime access to them hypothetically goes up. But let's say you no longer are interested in building anything with Tailwind components – well you can just sell the NFT that gives you access to someone else via any of the 3rd party decentralized marketplaces.
Anyway there are a lot of cool ideas and use-cases that aren't just decentralized lending (which I'm still pretty skeptical of) or generic gambling (still most of crypto). The main problem right now is that a lot of the coolest stuff has been built on Ethereum (due to the flexibility of its smart contracts) but the transaction fees and throughput are pretty terrible at the moment.
Finally, it gets a lot of hate here on HN, but Brave Browser actually has a MetaMask-equivalent (I think it might actually just be a fork of MetaMask) that is built right into the browser, alongside best-in-class ad-blocking so I'd consider using that too. Though installing MetaMask is super easy as well.
[1] https://rareblocks.xyz/