UNIFID Digital Identity Platform

Identity: regain control

Identity is the most valuable asset in the current digital age. The tech giants (needless to mention their names) have been successfully monetising this asset with little or no conscious consent of identity holders, i.e., YOU, ME, and other 7billion + users

How many of us know-

• Who holds our information
• What are the purposes for using it

Inadequate tools (for individuals and institutions) to manage and secure identity is a primary factor contributing to — individuals and institutions having less over their identity in the digital world.

Service providers, such as telco, banks and others collect identity documents for the sake of verification and KYC. The process is siloed, which requires users to submit documents to every service provider for verification again and again. This process is cumbersome for individuals and an expensive exercise for the service provider. It is a no-win situation.

Issues with Identity in digital era

Some of the key issues with the handling and processing of identity info include:

1. KYC Collection and Processing — collection and verification of documents is cumbersome and expensive.
2. Identity Drift and Sync — because KYC efforts are siloed combine with the fact that some identifiers and not static, organisations end up in a situation whereby they have the same identifier associated with different users at the same time .e.g. a mobile number.
3. Identity Theft — due to poor controls &policies, many firms have fallen victim to data breaches which have cost both the firms and their users billions of dollars annually.

At UNIFID, we believe there is a better way to manage identities by handing over the control; back to the users through Decentralised Identity (DID) based on Self Sovereign Identity principles.

What is UNIFID’s approach?

UNIFID is on a mission to empower individuals and institutions with Decentralised Identity; a Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) that will seamlessly integrate into the existing market landscape.

Self-Sovereign Identity is a portable and perpetual digital identity where individuals or institutions (often referred to as holders) retain control on their personal data — who they share with and what they share.

SSI is built on the founding framework of blockchain to provide trust among the interacting partners while removing the need for intermediaries or centralised players to hold/manage identities.

We aim to issue 2 Million globally verifiable decentralised identities across individuals and institutions over the next couple of years.

UNIFID — Digital Identity Infrastructure plays a vital role in realising this target. The infrastructure stack primarily contains:

Identity wallet

• A secure and privacy by design wallet allows individuals and institutions to receive a decentralised identity verified through a national or federal government-issued document such as Passport, National ID, SSN, etc.
• This Identity Wallet will be the foundation and springboard to add other credentials such as Driving License, Address Proof, etc.
• Eventually, UNIFID Wallet becomes a simplified and a secured place to hold all the credentials digitally, which can be shared and accepted by service providers in place of the current paper-based documents.

Ecosystem

• Leveraging the principles of blockchain to build trust across boundaries and parties, UNIFID wants to power the internet of trust through decentralised identities and verifiable credentials.
• Part of our vision is to democratise the infrastructure, allowing partners and developers to build new processes and tools using this identity and credentials network.
• We will soon release APIs and SDKs to power an ecosystem of the next-gen applications and applications based on UNIFID — Digital Identity Infrastructure.

How does this work?

Whilst there are tons of material on DID and SSI, will try to simplify the workings of the UNIFID ecosystem.

There are four key participants in the governance — issuance, management and use of digital identities and credentials

1. Issuer

• Issuers are institutions (like National Identity Office, Passport Office, Universities) who will issue attestations to individuals and institutions as Verified Credentials (VC).
• Issuers will be registered with Sovrin Ledger, whose identities can be globally verified to establish trust and authenticity in a decentralized manner.

2. Holder

• Holders, using Identity Wallet connects with Issuer(s) to request identity and proofs in the form of Verified Credentials.
• Holders present VC’s to service provides aka Verifies to prove identity, ownership and such others for service provision.

3. Verifier

• Verifiers are service providers such as Banks, Telcos, FinTechs, etc.
• They validate and use Verified Credentials (VCs) as the true source of information for identity verification, KYC and etc.

4. Sovrin Ledger

• Sovrin Ledger is a public utility ledger for self-sovereign identity governed by Sovrin Foundation https://sovrin.org
• It is a public-permissioned blockchain, where the nodes are maintained by trusted institutions around the world, called Sovrin Stewards.

We are launching the mainnet in few weeks stay tuned and connected with UNIFID on Medium, Twitter, for further updates