CONTEXT & MOTIVATION
Decentralized identity is rapidly gaining importance and the COSMOS ecosystem even launched its own funding category for it. Based on our experience of working on decentralized identity with major public and private ecosystems for a couple of years, we believe that the most important thing for unlocking identity is to provide solid open source developer tooling. This is exactly what we offer: The development of open source identity and wallet infrastructure that makes it easy for developers to build all kinds of identity-enabled applications and use cases from “learn to earn” over “credit scores” to “web3 LinkedIn”.
This proposal is perfectly aligned with our core expertise and the work we have been doing over the last years of building holistic open source on-chain and off-chain identity and wallet infrastructure for various ecosystems like “EBSI” (by the EU Commission and member states), Ethereum, Polygon, Tezos, Flow, NEAR, IOTA, Ocean protocol, Velocity Network or even the COSMOS chain “CHEQD”.
ABOUT THE PROJECT
The project will consist of four components:(1) Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) infrastructure – Solution that enables developers to use SSI – particularly to create, issue, request and verify so-called “Verifiable Credentials”. This approach is most suitable for any use cases that involve “personal data” because data is handled “off-chain” to ensure compliance with data protection regulations (e.g. GDPR). This approach is also being followed by the European Union and major internet standardization bodies (W3C, OpenID Connect). We plan to use COSMOS chains – potentially “CHEQD” – to anchor metadata required for data verification. (2) Token-based identity (NFTs/SBTs) infrastructure – Solution that enables developers to use non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and non-transferrable tokens (SBTs) – particularly to mint, manage and verify (ownership and metadata). This approach is most suitable for use cases that either require “on-chain” verification of data that is not problematic from a privacy/compliance perspective (e.g. information about legal entities) or for use cases where authentication/access to a product/service depends only on token ownership instead of the actual identity of a person (e.g. tickets, vouchers, memberships). We plan to use COSMOS chains – potentially starting with an EVM compatible chain – to anchor tokens and metadata.(3) Wallet infrastructure – Solution that enables any application (e.g. crypto wallet, web2 application) to request, manage and share “off-chain” identity data (Verifiable Credentials) as well to display “on-chain” identity data (NFTs, SBTs).(4) Identity Provider – Solution that enables backwards compatibility of these new technologies (SSI, NFTs/SBTs) with traditional/web2 applications and identity infrastructure. For example, this component enables businesses to authenticate users with their existing identity and access management tools (e.g. KeyCloak, Auth0) based on SSI/Verifiable Credentials or NFTs/SBTs. Following the development of these infrastructure components, we plan to submit follow up projects aligned with COSMOS needs, for example, implementations that enable use cases like ”proof of humanity”, “proof of personhood”, “proof of KYC/KYP”, “proof of liquidity/credit scores”. (We are working on such use cases with another major L1 and specialized partners like a leading identity proofing company. The goal would be to bring these building blocks to the COSMOS ecosystem.)
ABOUT WALT.ID
After working on decentralized identity since 2018, building projects with governments and enterprises as well as co-authoring/shaping global identity standards and even regulations (e.g. EU’s new eID regulations). We founded walt.id to make it as easy as possible for developers and businesses to leverage decentralized identity.
Since we started walt.id in 2021, we – built a strong core team (12 people; mostly engineers)- built 5 industry-leading open source products in the decentralized ID space (SSI Kit, NFT Kit, Wallet Kit, Storage Kit, IDP Kit)- attracted thousands of developers and a wide range of organizations who use our solutions:— governments like LUX, NL and most EBSI early adopters (+10 govs), City of Ghent, …— public authorities like EUIPO (EU Intellectual Property Office), EQAR, …— major players in web3 (DAOs, blockchains) like IOTA, Tezos, Polkadot, NEAR, Flow, …— enterprises like the Boston Consulting Group, SAP or Raiffeisen Bank International, …— start-/scale-ups in different verticals like yes.com, BCDiploma, workpi, Fundingbox, …- partnered with/built solutions for most major blockchains/L1s and identity ecosystems- grow revenue tenfold from +45k (2021) to +500k (2022)- attracted funding by a leading early stage fund (Speedinvest; EO 2021)
