# What is a soulbound token (SBT)?

> A soulbound token is an asset locked to one wallet: it cannot be sold or transferred. What SBTs are used for, and how a gated chat room checks one.


A soulbound token is an asset locked to one wallet: once it arrives, it cannot be sold, gifted, or moved to another address. The short form is SBT. Cherry (cherry.fun), the wallet-to-wallet messenger and community app for crypto, cares about the category because a gated room there decides membership from what a wallet holds, and a soulbound holding answers that question better than a balance anyone can buy for an afternoon.

## How a soulbound token works

The restriction lives in the token, not in the app reading it. Vitalik Buterin opened a post titled Soulbound, dated 26 January 2022, with the World of Warcraft version: "A soulbound item, once picked up, cannot be transferred or sold to another player." The SBT abbreviation arrived with Decentralized Society: Finding Web3's Soul, the May 2022 paper by Puja Ohlhaver, E. Glen Weyl and Vitalik Buterin, which argued for holding credentials, memberships and affiliations as non-transferable tokens.

Two standards make it concrete. ERC-5192, a final Ethereum standard created on 1 July 2022, adds a lock flag to an ordinary Ethereum NFT: while a token is locked, every transfer function on the contract has to fail. On Solana, Token-2022 carries a Non-Transferable mint extension, which Solana's developer guide describes as making "every token account for that mint non-transferable". Minting and burning still work. Sending does not.

What people bind this way is what a purchase would ruin: diplomas, club memberships, proof that you attended an event, proof that one device sits behind an address.

## Why gated rooms care

A token balance is a snapshot. Somebody can buy the minimum, pass the check, and sell an hour later, so a room gating on a balance has to keep looking. Cherry re-checks holdings in the background, and a wallet that sells is paywalled, though catching up can take a few days.

A soulbound requirement retires that problem. The holding cannot leave the wallet, so the answer at the join screen stands forever and Cherry verifies it once. Nor can it be borrowed for the length of a join flow: there is no way to hand it over and get it back.

## Example on Cherry: the .skr name

`.skr` is the name a Solana Seeker owner claims during phone setup, issued alongside the Seeker Genesis Token, and it is the soulbound holding a Cherry room can require. Nobody sells one, so a room asking for a `.skr` name is a room of Seeker owners.

The Seeker Club is that room: 8,640 members in September 2026, with a requirement line that reads "Hold a .skr domain".

[Seeker Club on Cherry](https://chat.cherry.fun/@seekerclub)

A Cherry room combines up to five requirements under all or any logic, so a soulbound one can sit beside a token balance, an NFT collection, or a paid membership.

## What a soulbound token does not prove

It binds an asset to a wallet, and a wallet is not a person. Whoever holds the keys presents the credential, so a seed phrase that changes hands takes the badge with it. Hardware moves too: Solana Mobile's docs say the Seeker Genesis Token moves between a user's own accounts, on a permissioned basis inside the Seed Vault Wallet, when the primary account changes.

Read a soulbound requirement for what it is: proof that this wallet received something and never sold it, not proof of who is typing.

## Related terms

- [.skr domain](https://cherry.fun/learn/glossary/skr-domain/): the soulbound Solana name a gated room can require.
- [Seeker Genesis Token](https://cherry.fun/learn/glossary/seeker-genesis-token/): the soulbound NFT minted once per Seeker.
- [Token-gated chat](https://cherry.fun/learn/glossary/token-gated-chat/): the definition, and the two ways a holding gets verified.
- [Token gating on Cherry](https://cherry.fun/learn/features/token-gated-chat/): the full list of requirement types and how they combine.
- [Seeker Club](https://cherry.fun/learn/guides/seeker-club/): how to join the `.skr` room from a Seeker.

## FAQ

### What is a soulbound token?

A soulbound token is an asset that stays in the wallet that received it, because the chain refuses the transfer. People use them for credentials, memberships and proof of attendance, where being able to buy one would defeat the point. SBT is the usual abbreviation.

### Is a soulbound token the same as a non-transferable NFT?

For most of them, yes. Soulbound is the idea and a non-transferable NFT is the common implementation, by ERC-5192 on Ethereum and the EVM chains or by the Non-Transferable mint extension on Solana. Fungible tokens can carry the same restriction.

## Sources

- [Vitalik Buterin: Soulbound (January 2022)](https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2022/01/26/soulbound.html)
- [Decentralized Society: Finding Web3's Soul (May 2022)](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4105763)
- [ERC-5192: Minimal Soulbound NFTs](https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-5192)
- [Solana developer guide: Non-Transferable token extension](https://solana.com/developers/guides/token-extensions/non-transferable)
- [Solana Mobile: Solana Seeker](https://solanamobile.com/seeker)
- [Seed Vault Wallet help center: What is a Seeker ID?](https://wallet-help.solanamobile.com/en/articles/11727929-what-is-a-seeker-id)
- [Solana Mobile docs: Seeker Genesis Token](https://docs.solanamobile.com/solana-mobile-stack/seeker-genesis-token)
- [Seeker Club on Cherry](https://chat.cherry.fun/@seekerclub)