Salt Lake City, Dec. 13, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Sovrin Foundation, an international nonprofit dedicated to enabling self-sovereign digital identity for all, today announced the addition of four new Founding Stewards: Anonyome Labs, Dativa, regio iT, and Unveil.Social. In the last year, the Sovrin Foundation’s total Steward count has grown by 150 percent with Stewards now located on every continent.
Sovrin Stewards maintain and operate validator nodes on the Sovrin Network — an open source decentralized digital identity network administered by the Sovrin Foundation. The four new Stewards join more than 60 diverse organizations with backgrounds spanning Banking, Blockchain Development, Education, Cyber Security, Engineering, Entertainment, FinTech, Government, Healthcare, Legal, and Technology.
“Our Steward program has grown significantly in the last year, more than doubling the number of enterprises who operate nodes running the Sovrin Network,” said Heather Dahl, Executive Director & CEO of the Sovrin Foundation. “With 31 new Stewards joining Sovrin in 2018, we see the adoption of our network gaining traction around the world. Our Stewards help champion the Foundation’s mission to transform how we manage our digital identity. We are pleased to welcome Anonyome Labs, Dativa, regio iT, and Unveil.Social as our newest Stewards, knowing they will each contribute to the success of the Sovrin Network.”
Anonyome Labs is a software development company dedicated to providing people with the resources to protect and control their personal information online through mobile and web applications. As a Steward, Anonyome Labs hopes to enhance the privacy of its digital identity- based applications by leveraging the capabilities of the Sovrin Network. Anonyome Labs will increase the geographic diversity of the network's nodes by being the first Steward to operate a validator node in Australia.
“Giving consumers control over their personally identifiable information sits at the center of Anonyome Labs’ mission and our Sudo based applications,” said Paul Ashley, PhD, CTO of Anonyome Labs. “Our desire is to help enable the widespread adoption of self-sovereign identities. We’re thrilled to be a Founding Sovrin Steward and join Sovrin’s community of global privacy innovators.”
Dativa, a data science and data engineering consulting company, believes in the ethical use of personal data and sees the Sovrin Network as a viable framework to accomplish this goal and apply it globally.
“With consumer privacy at the front and center of the future value of data to both media owners and brands, we are delighted to be supporting Sovrin as a Founding Steward,” said Tom Weiss, CTO and Chief Data Scientist of Dativa.
"With the explosion of captured data points that we are witnessing through Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things solutions, Dativa’s expertise in predictive analytics remains at the forefront of our business,” said Paul Knowles, Innovation & Emerging Technology at Dativa and Chair of the Hyperledger Indy Semantics Workgroup. “Joining the Sovrin Network as a Founding Steward further cements our commitment to self-sovereign identity and the semantic data modeling work that we continue to support within the Hyperledger Indy community.”
regio iT is an IT service provider with the goal to build blockchain-based services for its customers in the German public sector and for energy utility companies. The organization is looking to develop software solutions in the decentralized identity management space through the Sovrin Network.
“Blockchain technology has great potential for interaction between citizens and government,” said Dieter Rehfeld, Chairman of the Board at regio iT. “Together with national and European partners regio iT is working on services for the public sector using digital identities. We are pleased to join the Sovrin Network.”
Unveil.Social is a software development company focused on developing a digital social platform that enables customers to create meaningful connections without having to sacrifice the control or privacy of their personal data. By becoming a Steward, Unveil.Social hopes to improve the performance of their user-facing tools and services, and intends to make one of the first consumer-facing products for self-sovereign identity.
“The world needs self-sovereign identity,” said Russ Haywood, CEO and Founder of Unveil.Social. “I believe that the web before and after self-sovereign identity will become the distinct watershed moment that historians use to make a clear division, like the invention of the steam engine and the internet itself. Users owning their identity and data is like empowering serfs to their own lives and property — taking back control from distant landlords with extractive interests. More private data is more meaningful data and sharing more honest data helps us all. We at Unveil.Social are excited to be the first drop of a massive wave of change just starting to ripple.”
In addition to operating nodes on the Sovrin Network, Stewards have the right to vote on any changes to the ledger-specific portions of the Sovrin open source code. Anonyome Labs, Dativa, regio iT, Unveil.Social, and all other Stewards have agreed to abide by the principles and requirements established in the Sovrin Trust Framework, the legal foundation of the Sovrin Network.
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ABOUT THE SOVRIN FOUNDATION
The Sovrin Foundation is a nonprofit organization established to administer the Governance Framework governing the Sovrin Network, a decentralized global public network enabling self-sovereign identity on the internet. The Sovrin Network is an open source project operated by independent Stewards and uses the power of a distributed ledger to give every person, organization, and thing the ability to own and control their own permanent digital identity.
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