Solving the identity silo problem begins with a digital identity that you literally own, not just control — a “self-sovereign” identity.
When combined with verifiable claims, it enables any person, organization, or thing to interact directly with any other person, organization or thing, with trust and privacy.
If anyone other than you can “pull the plug” or change the rules for your identity, it isn’t self-sovereign, it is siloed – even if it uses ‘blockchain’ technology.
True, globally scalable self-sovereign identity requires an open source, decentralized network which no single entity owns or controls. Until the advent of distributed ledger technology (DLT) this was impossible. Not any more.
With Evernym, trust is established using verifiable claims. Verifiable claims open a limitless new world of trusted authentication. Paperlessly, passively – instantly.
A verifiable claim is exactly what it sounds like: a claim shared by any person, organization, or thing that can be instantly verified by the receiving party.
Not restricted to specific data types, mechanisms, or contracts imposed by a central hub, anyone can present identity information of any type to anyone else in the world, and the recipient can unpack and verify it instantly, with no need for hundreds of complex APIs and commercial contracts.
Verifiable claims, along with all private data, are stored off-ledger by each self-sovereign identity owner, wherever the owner decides. No private information is ever stored on the ledger, in any form.
The combination of self-sovereign identity and verifiable claims enables highly advanced privacy-enhancing techniques, such as zero-knowledge proofs (for selective disclosure) and anonymous revocation, to be made available to the world.