Gate.io AMA with KILT-To Provide Secure, Practical Identity Solutions for Enterprise and Consumers

2023-04-12, 06:35

Time: Apr 7th, 2022, 13:00 UTC
Gate.io hosted an AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) session with Ingo Ruebe,Founder of KILT Protocol in the Gate.io Exchange Community.
Official Website: https://www.kilt.io/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Kiltprotocol
Follow KILT Protocol on Telegram and Discord

Guest

Ingo Ruebe — Founder of KILT Protocol

Q&A from Gate.io

Introduction: Ingo will not be able to join us today, but his colleague Christine will be here.
To give everyone a brief introduction about Christine.
Christine Mohan is Vice President of Business Development for KILT Protocol, where she manages Polkadot eco partnerships as well as PR and growth marketing.
Earlier Christine was Chief Marketing Officer at Web3 Foundation and Polkadot, where she worked with eco founders on 100+ announcements (DeFi, identity, privacy, gaming, IoT, supply chain, storage, wallets).
She started in blockchain in 2017 as Co-Founder of Civil Media, a news syndication platform funded by ConsenSys and built on Ethereum.
Christine has experience in launching blockchain, emerging tech and digital media companies, and spent 11 years at The New York Times and Wall Street Journal managing websites and content distribution platforms.
Now that we all know a little bit about Christine, why don’t we kick things off.

Q1: Christine, tell us, what is digital identity?

Christine: KILT Protocol is a for maintaining digital identities. Identity starts with an identifier (like a person’s name), which is what credentials like passports are linked to. Identity is built by adding more and more credentials to an identifier, like a driver’s license or a university diploma. If you want to build a digital identity you need both an identifier – for people or things – and then you need different types of credentials which are linked to the identifier. Then step by step you produce a digital identity.

This can also be done for machines. The identifier of the device could be a very long number for example. This device can be identified by this number because this number is unique to it. And then, step by step you add more and more credentials to it. Then the device gets a digital identity.

Q2: Why did you start KILT Protocol - what problems did you want to solve?

Christine: When you look at digital identity in Web2, this identity is basically held with big companies and social networks. These monopolies aggregate your data and keep this info in their databases. This becomes really dangerous because it’s not only your data that’s aggregating, everybody’s data is also in there. So this is a huge honeypot for hackers.

I saw that blockchain had the potential to address these situations where users have lost control over their own data. I wanted to build a solution that could be implemented on a large scale by corporations and the government, but flexible enough so developers could quickly build their own businesses around identity and verifying credentials.

We were an early adopter in 2018 of Substrate, a modular powered by Parity Technologies that makes it easy to build customized blockchains. Substrate allows seamless integration with Polkadot, a network that overcomes the previous problems of security, scalability, and interoperability that have slowed down blockchain adoption so far.

Q3: What is SocialKYC and how is it useful for gamers?

Christine: SocialKYC is a service for regaining control over your digital identity that is built on KILT. KYC or “Know Your Customer” is standard practice while opening an account with a bank or exchange, where customers must prove they possess government-issued credentials like a passport. SocialKYC gives users the power to extend trust by building a digital identity using their email address or social accounts (Twitter, Twitch, Github, Discord).

Gamers and gaming companies can use SocialKYC for:

Developing registries for pairing players and tracking awards
Issuing educational credits and age verification for youth gaming
Providing KYC for rewards and payment s
Tracking performance across multiple game platforms and networks.

Q4: What are DIDs and how can they be used in business?

Christine: A DID is a decentralized identifier and it looks like this:
did:kilt:4s8kEBWV9nwU5znxmfR7DVA31DdBoqYGj49SAiAPzzigwJDm

This is a unique set of numbers and letters that uniquely identifies an identity (like a digital fingerprint) in a verifiable, decentralized way. In KILT, identity is built by adding credentials to the DID. Developers can use KILT to create identifiers and credentials for humans, machines, services, IoT use cases, and anything that needs identity.

For example, our partner Authtrail will integrate KILT DIDs into their platform, to improve its trustworthiness and transparent data Flow for their enterprise clients. Another partner Attarius Network will use KILT DIDs and verifiable credentials in their NFT marketplace for the gaming industry.

Q5: How is DIDsign different from Web2 signing software?

Christine: DIDsign is decentralized. Only the sender and recipient have access to the files; they are not stored anywhere else. Other signing software like Docusign is centralized and stores the documents you are signing.
DIDsign is flexible. You can sign any digital file — PDFs, audio, video, software — directly in your browser using a unique decentralized identifier (DID). Web2 signing platforms typically sign PDFs only.
DIDsign is verifiable. Several people can sign the same document separately and confirm that each party signed the document in its original form.
DIDsign is convenient. You can download your signed file together with the signature to your device as a zip file and send it to anyone via email, Telegram, WhatsApp, etc. The recipient can then easily verify that the file has not been tampered with.
DIDsign is free. Signing, sending and verifying files is always free.

Q6: What’s next for KILT? What are you building now?

Christine: Next week we will launch a new application for creating unique custom DID names. This name is a personal way to represent your on-chain decentralized identifier (DID), which is a string of letters and numbers that form the core of your KILT digital identity. For instance, validators and collators can customize a name that makes them easy to identify. This name can also be used with DIDsign, adding an extra layer of verification when you share digital files you have signed.

We will reveal the name and demo the application next week at Paris Blockchain Week.

Author: Rio Fu., Gate.io Community

*This article represents only the views of the researcher and does not constitute any investment suggestions.

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