Genfinity recently interviewed Ankur Banerjee, CTO and Co-Founder of cheqd, a groundbreaking startup revolutionizing data management. cheqd’s platform puts users in control of their data, offering secure exchanges and effective monetization. With a focus on verifiability, portability, and privacy preservation, cheqd empowers users to streamline experiences and boost operational efficiency.
Explore further to uncover all the intricate details regarding this unique platform! And, if you missed our podcast, you can listen to it here.
cheqd
cheqd revolutionizes data management by offering a platform where you control your own data, exchange it securely, and monetize it effectively. With a focus on verifiability, portability, and privacy preservation, cheqd empowers you to streamline your experiences and boost operational efficiency.
Transitioning from traditional data paradigms, cheqd provides a public permissionless network built on Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) and blockchain technologies. This infrastructure establishes payment rails, decentralizes identity, and offers customizable commercial models and governance structures for trusted data. Notably, from consumer credit data to Web3 lending environments, cheqd also serves as the foundation for businesses across various sectors, enabling ownership, portability, and interoperability of data and identities.
Furthermore, cheqd’s expertise spans a wide range of digital identity topics, including SSI, blockchain, governance, and technology delivery. Whether you’re an SSI vendor, consultancy, enterprise, government agency, or Web3 company, cheqd offers tailored solutions to address your specific use cases and problem statements.
Our Interview
Empowering Individuals with Decentralized Identity and Privacy
Ankur Banerjee, CTO and Co-Founder of cheqd, began their crypto journey in 2016, leading to the co-founding of cheqd three years ago. With a background in crafting digital identity solutions, Ankur recognized the potential for decentralization in the Web3 space. cheqd’s mission revolves around empowering individuals with control over their data and privacy, addressing the current lack of control individuals have over their data in various online experiences.
Creds.xyz
Ankur discussed the genesis of the creds.xyz protocol, recognizing a gap in the decentralized identity space focused primarily on traditional use cases. He highlighted the significance of Web3 reputation, encompassing various identifiers like ENS domain names and crypto wallet handles, as integral aspects of one’s identity. Understanding the importance of reputation within crypto communities, Ankur and his team embarked on building creds.xyz to enable individuals to carry their reputation across different crypto projects seamlessly.
They illustrated how creds.xyz served as an identity wallet, aggregating both on-chain and off-chain reputation data to provide a comprehensive profile of an individual’s crypto activity. This allowed users to showcase their involvement in various projects and communities, transcending mere financial metrics like token holdings. Ankur emphasized the importance of democratizing reputation by offering a portable format that reflected the true value and contributions individuals brought to different ecosystems.
Creds.xyz, unveiled at the 2023 Web Summit, offers a solution for users and organizations to gain control and portability of their data. It operates in tandem with cheqd, providing a platform for creating Verifiable Credentials and enhancing community trust and security.
Protecting User Privacy in Web3 Through Cryptography
Ankur elaborated on cheqd’s approach to ensuring data privacy in decentralized identity networks. Unlike traditional crypto transactions, cheqd employs cryptographic techniques to maintain privacy. By storing cryptographic proofs on the blockchain and keeping sensitive information off-ledger, individuals retain control over their data. This approach balances privacy concerns with data portability, offering a nuanced solution where users can maintain privacy while still leveraging the benefits of blockchain technology.
We asked how cheqd ensures that data is only revealed to the people that it needs to be shared with. Ankur explained that ensuring data privacy in a decentralized identity network was a top concern. Unlike token transfers or dealing with NFTs where data was typically fully written onto a ledger or blockchain, identity required a different approach.
By storing cryptographic proofs or keys on the blockchain and keeping sensitive information off-ledger, individuals retained control over their data. This combination of on-ledger and off-ledger storage struck a balance between privacy concerns and data portability, allowing users to selectively share digital credentials while maintaining control over their identity. While some digital credentials could be written on-chain for public access, individuals had the autonomy to choose what information to disclose.
Nuklai Partnership
Banerjee also discussed the strategic importance of partnerships with specialized AI and ML startups like Nuklai marketplace. By focusing on their expertise in identity solutions, they aim to collaborate with domain experts across various industries, such as healthcare and education, to ensure the development of tailored solutions for specific use cases. This approach underscores their commitment to providing robust infrastructure and toolkits while empowering experts to innovate within their respective fields.
The CHEQ token
Discussing the interoperability of their layer-1 blockchain, Ankur pointed out its compatibility beyond the Cosmos SDK ecosystem to include traditional web and mobile applications, as well as other blockchains. They stressed the importance of bridging identities across various ecosystems for true interoperability and portability, underscoring that an identity solution confined to a single ecosystem lacks utility. This vision aligns with their utility token, CHEQ, which facilitates identity interactions on their blockchain by covering fees associated with cryptographic operations like signatures and hashes.
Ankur highlighted a unique aspect of their token model: it goes beyond merely covering write actions on the blockchain to also encompass exchanges of information between parties. Furthermore, they introduced a freemium model where verifiable credentials can be shared for free, akin to presenting a physical driver’s license.
However, for additional assurance, such as verifying the validity of a credential, users can pay using the CHEQ token. This payment mechanism not only benefits data holders but also compensates credential issuers, fostering a more robust and sustainable ecosystem for identity management.
Industry Adoption, Collaboration, and Future Trends
Banerjee also reflected on the evolution of decentralized identifiers (DIDs) and verifiable credentials over the past few years. cheqd’s vision involves creating a financial ecosystem where entities are motivated to issue and accept secure digital credentials. By enabling payments for trusted data, cheqd aims to foster a culture of data portability and incentivize the adoption of decentralized identity solutions. This approach empowers individuals and companies to exchange verified data seamlessly while promoting innovation and competition in the digital identity space.
Additionally, we discussed the industry’s shift towards realizing the importance of public permissionless blockchains, facilitated by legal and regulatory clarity. Partnerships with specialized AI and ML startups aim to provide tailored solutions across various industries.
Looking forward
Looking ahead, trends that may drive a rush into decentralized identities include concerns about AI influencing elections and the complexity of managing identities across multiple states. Decentralization holds the promise of unlocking novel experiences and fostering greater autonomy for individuals.
Ankur emphasized the importance of demonstrating real-world scalability to attract developers and showcase the viability of their identity solution. With daily and monthly active users ranging in the thousands to tens of thousands, they expressed their commitment to continuously increasing these figures to drive adoption and innovation in the space.
Notably, Ankur discussed an upcoming mainnet upgrade scheduled in about two weeks, which aims to expand the platform’s capabilities to accommodate non-human use cases. There is much excitement about enabling digital credentials to be utilized autonomously by AI agents or during AI dataset training! Moreover, there is ample potential for significant volume growth in this emerging area. This development into non-human use cases represents a fresh and untapped opportunity, distinct from traditional identity documents like passports or driver’s licenses, offering a huge space for exploration and innovation.
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