Salt Lake City, UT, Oct. 23, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Evernym announced today a new collaboration with fellow blockchain identity experts, China-headquartered Ontology and the US-headquartered Sovrin Foundation. This new partnership will work together to conceive and ensure international standards and interoperability across the globe when it comes to decentralized digital identity.
In today’s online world, we do not own our digital identity. We borrow this identity from different organizations, provided we adhere to specific conditions. In other words, compromises. In exchange, our behaviors are tracked and regularly sold to advertisers. Sensitive and personal information is stored in large data silos, creating treasure chests which are attractive to malicious attackers. The result is a system of broken trust for consumers and fraud-related expenses, topping $4 trillion each year for organizations.
By bringing blockchain-based digital identity solutions to market, every person, organization and connected device on the planet stand to personally benefit.
The Sovrin Network is a blockchain ledger built for the sole purpose of enabling a new global public utility called Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI). Evernym designed and developed the initial code for the Sovrin Network before donating it to the nonprofit Sovrin Foundation. Evernym builds decentralized digital identity solutions for real world business, consumer and humanitarian use cases. Ontology, a high-performance public blockchain project and a distributed trust collaboration platform, is seen by Evernym as a strategic partner and a true expert in the effort to establish global standards, such as interoperability.
“The real problem in cyberspace is that we don’t actually have an identity. At best, one is lent to us, but there is almost always someone in between and in control. In real life, we carry identity credentials that work everywhere and we’re working with Ontology and the Sovrin Foundation to make the same thing possible in cyberspace,” said Timothy Ruff, Evernym CEO.
Evernym will work with Ontology and the Sovrin Foundation to coordinate development around the use of decentralized identifiers (DIDs) for Verifiable Credentials (VCs), as well as Zero Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs). Evernym and the Sovrin Foundation are contributing to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in the creation of this new type of internet-wide digital identity standard. Today the Sovrin Network uses DIDs for both secure, off-ledger network connections as well as anchoring identity to the public ledger.
Speaking to the partnership, Daniel Wen, Director of Business Development of Ontology, said, “After meeting with the Sovrin and Evernym teams, we realized we have the same vision of developing DIDs and bringing trust to the internet. Our collaboration will ensure the highest standards of self-sovereign identity and we are excited to work together as a leading consortium in the industry.”
Sovrin CTO Nathan George added: “Digital identity is a global problem that requires a global, interoperable solution. The Sovrin Foundation is delighted to be collaborating with Evernym and Ontology on the development of the open-source Hyperledger Indy codebase. This mutually beneficial effort will help drive the development of self-sovereign identity forward and ultimately supports Sovrin’s mission of creating a system for identity for all.”
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About Self Sovereign Identity (SSI)
Self-sovereign identity enables people, organizations and things to securely and privately store and control their own identity data, and to connect directly with other people, organizations and things.
About Evernym
Founded in 2013, Evernym develops software solutions that leverage cryptography and blockchain technology to establish trust in the interaction of people, organizations and things. Learn more about Evernym and its self-sovereign identity solutions at evernym.com.
About Ontology
Ontology is a new, high-performance public multi-chain project and a distributed trust collaboration platform. Ontology provides common modules on the underlying infrastructure for different kinds of distributed scenarios, such as those for the distributed digital identity framework, distributed data exchange protocol, and so on. Ontology is committed to building an open-source and collaborative distributed trust ecosystem and will continue to develop new common modules. For more visit Ont.io.
About the Sovrin Foundation
The Sovrin Foundation is a nonprofit organization established to administer the Trust Framework governing the Sovrin Network, a public service utility, enabling self-sovereign identity on the internet. The Sovrin Network is operated by independent Stewards and uses the power of a distributed ledger for giving every person, organization and thing the ability to own and control their own permanent digital identity. For more visit Sovrin.org.