Decentralized, independent and anonymous user-owned identities will be a part of the Web3 stack, but only if we stay conscious of the pitfalls.
Despite a few hopeful signs for those looking for spring, crypto winter remains. Pundits and analysts addressing the market woes often point out the hopeful upsides. These hard times will likely shake out bad projects and leave a more robust ecosystem. Like most parts of evolution, it’s an elegant system to contemplate but not always pretty to watch.
It’s an excellent time to return to the fundamentals — projects that deliver real utility and address human needs with actual use cases. One of the fundamental parts of any Web3 ecosystem is identity, and it’s a big deal to people.
A recent survey of 8,000 respondents by Opinionium showed that 80% of consumers prefer online brands with strong digital identity verification. Web3 promises a new host of expanded services, some transactional, so there is good reason for the Web3 community to focus on the promise of a blockchain-protected, decentralized identity (DID).
Ontology Network (CRYPTO: ONG) has been working on this issue since before its network launch in 2018, as part of its stated mission of “bringing trust, privacy, and security to Web3 through decentralized identity and data solutions.”
We spoke with Humpty Calderon, head of community at Ontology, to learn more about the state and future of a truly decentralized, user-controlled, independent and anonymous identity system for Web3.
BZ: Why is self-sovereign identity an important feature for Web3 development?
Calderon: “With Web2 identities, like Facebook identity or Google identity, you create identities, and they are user services, but those identities are not yours. They are owned by those organizations. Data that you produce using those products is aggregated, mined, and monetized by these companies. You have neither a say in how your data is used nor a share of that revenue.
In Web3, we see an opportunity for individuals to own their identity to create richer user experiences in this ecosystem, but also for them to own the data on the backend. So currently, member identity is centered in, for all intents and purposes, your Web3 wallet, your MetaMask, is your Web3 identity. You sign in with them, and you do transactions. All the data that’s on the back end is accessible via the private key via your wallet.
Decentralized identity takes it a step further. So DID is not a new concept. It was developed by the Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF) and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for quite some time. It allows you to take the identity that is currently siloed within one blockchain and take it across multiple blockchains. So my identity, and more importantly, the reputation that I build using this identity on blockchain, …
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