VERIFIABLE CREDENTIALS with Fraser Edwards of Cheqd

Transcript

we're live my guest today is Frasier Edwards He's co-founder and CEO at checked they're building infrastructure for verified credentials in today's conversation we will discuss what is decentralized identity and reputation and the different approaches why did is important in the context of AI identity and privacy and why they must go hand in hand and also we'll talk about the creds verifiable credentials platform I'm also dying to find out why he thinks identity and credentials will save us from the AI apocalypse so before we get started make sure to hit the like button hit the notification Bell And subscribe to get notified when I go live every week and remember that none of what we discuss here on the interop is investment advice if you enjoy this content please consider

sticking with us we're validating on Atmos Quicksilver osmosis in Juno just look for interrupt in the active set and I hope you've booked your tickets for Paris this summer for nebula Summit I'm freaking excited about this conference Brazier and his team will be there and you're also sponsoring we're very happy with that it's happening on July 24th and 25th it's two days of technical talks about Cosmos IBC and The Interchange no panels no just Tech talks or workshops to get your minds going the second batch of early bird tickets is still up they're still early bird tickets available you can get those at nebular.builders my guest Frasier Edwards is coming up next right here on the interrupt foreign [Music]

how's it going hello good good how are you doing I'm good I'm good thanks for coming on yeah so we are going to be talking about did today it's a topic that I've been kind of following for years you know and I it's a topic also that lots of people have been working on for years and and I almost want to say like here's another guy working on did but I hope you're going to solve the problem uh sort of the issue of did and um and seems like check is uh is sort of you know taking all the boxes there to you know get some uh to to get the ID sort of in um in the hands of people in ways that are actually useful for folks

um but before we dive into all of that yeah tell me a little bit about how you became so interested in this topic cool yeah yeah love to and uh I guess to to reiterate what you said there like yeah we really hope that that's the bit that we're solving and we're gonna actually break this wide open so that's that's really what we're here for um so yeah really like I um I could have left uni went to work at Accenture and just bounced around tech for a while so went through things like Biometrics a little bit of AI when it was still just like machine learning um went into like blockchain cdbc stuff um like cross blockchain payments all that kind of stuff and then fell into SSI maybe like four or five years ago um SSI decentralized ID

and uh I just I know just like it it felt natural in terms of like it's almost like a backlash against like be able to like having all that data siled off where you can't use it and you can't do anything with it and it's locked away from you um and but I think the the real thing for me was seeing like demonstrations of the tech and seeing like how smooth the user experience was and what it could impact so it was a weird thing of like I bounced I was changing technology maybe every year and a half while I was there and then I landed on this I was like this is cool and I think it's going to completely change like the data Paradigm around the world across everything and it's just waiting just waiting to come

through um and it also felt that there was like that slow wave of like people being like Oh I don't like the fact that all my data's with like Facebooks and Googles like I want to have more control so it felt like there was a bit of a like as a philosophical like wave coming that was ready to Anchor onto and then um the real thing that got me into it though was I was uh I ended up leading a program like a project where we're trying to do um self-sover decentralized ID for international travel like Aviation and so you like digitize the passport it would go onto your like mobile you'd bring your boarding pass in there you'd bring anything else that you need and then you'd share it in advance to like

all the touch points on both sides of the journey on in the air in the airport and you do the entire Journey based on Biometrics like you'd share everything in advance so you'd have the control then you'd walk through and that was just like so one it was like such a big vision and transformational but the user experience was also like it was so good just like whenever we showed it to people like oh this is how travel should work so I think that was that was kind of where I fell into it was just like mostly a bit of a philosophical wave but also just like loving the user experience when you see it done right um which is something I hope we will go and execute on creds as well yeah the the um the promise I think of of did is so it's so vast and there are

so many use cases that this this concept or even the standard because there was a standard we'll talk about that a little bit um can solve or so it can can be applied to and people in crypto have been talking about this use cases for about 10 years so uh you know back in the days when I was running this um this uh Enterprise blockchain company in in France and around 2016 you know we were talking about leveraging did to do kyc and this sort of thing and like this these use cases have been kind of floating around since forever people have tried to do it and like this is the thing right like you know a digital identity to one kyc to solve them all and you could just kind of take that kyt token and move it to a different place

and trust me I'm I'm starting a fund right now so I'm right in the middle of like all of this kind of process of doing kyc but um but it hasn't really materialized and and I I wonder why like what do you think are the are the big barriers for real decentralized identity or or digital identity sorry we shouldn't confuse did yeah although it can be it's digital identity why hasn't it taking off in the way that we would hope to yeah it's probably three things um I think one of them like you you gave the example of kyc and the reality is like up until very recently and it's still only just coming through now the regs aren't there like the the regulations of legislation is not there

to allow you to go down that path um that's changing like now but it's one of those things that like everyone was trying this like five to ten years ago be like this is the one to solve but it's like well even though the technology worked you just couldn't sell it because like from a regulatory standpoint it was Dead on Arrival I think the other thing is and realizing now this might be four points rather than three the other thing is that um everyone was going after these like super super high Assurance use cases so going after like passports driving license stuff that like you need regulatory Clarity you probably need the governments involved like it just it's super hard stuff that takes a long time and actually like there's a load of cool

stuff that I think we're gonna do with creds which like it's more fun it's like more frequent you're using it on a daily basis and like it doesn't require such a length lengthy phase is going to deploy it the other two things I think are like um all of the like all of the did like decentralized ID like positioning has always been focused on individuals and giving that that power back and like I think I'm not going to argue that's great but it's missing the angle which is like it's got to be viable and like attractive to companies to shift from the way that they're doing stuff now to the way that everyone thinks that they should be doing it so all of the positioning was like yeah get your data

back and take it wherever you want you're like well it doesn't matter if I believe that like I can't do that unless the company or someone or is is allowing me to do it and then the final one which is really closely related to that is like making that commercially viable so that's a bit that checked was founded to do which is like incentivize people like incentivize whether it's a company or an individual to release that data to whoever the subject is and then like collectively share in like the value of that as it moves around and so I think like that's a long there's yeah there's kind of those four points there um and I think it's It's a combination of all of them I think personally it checked we think it's the last one is the most pressing

one but yeah um it's probably a combination of all four somewhere yeah my my hypothesis for for years has been that we only really care about ID that is issued by state actors I mean to the extent that we use ID that most people are comfortable or sort of used to using ID it is in the context of using a state issued ID to prove something to a most mostly time like private sector actor um like you know going through going through an airport and proving who you are to the to the flight attendant I mean mostly like that is also because of Regulation right so they're they're sort of deputized to enact regulation that

comes from say the FDA the FAA or whatever but my point is that until uh States uh begin issuing did it would be difficult for it to take off unless we start rethinking what we think is ID being and I think this is where Czech really comes in with this idea of decentralized reputation where it's not like who you are so much as what uh what you've things you've done or um or actually you've taken or things you're involved in or this sort of thing yeah yeah and I think it's um like SSI and decentralized ID always had the same like a similar problem which is like you you point it out like identity and people for example don't think about

receipts when they think about identity but the reality is like if you think instead about credentials or trusted data like the use of a receipt can actually be really really useful important like the sheer number of people who will be say buying stuff like a great example would be like if you're traveling for work and or you buy something and you get a receipt being able to share that to someone else to either get it insured or get reimbursed like right now that's people scanning PDF like scanning like piece of paper or getting emails to themselves like and then having to go through this massive process whereas actually like all of that could be solved with credentials and it's not identity at all because it's almost done itself a

disservice by just like focusing on like decentralized ID where really it could just be credentials which could be used for anything and and so like I think that's where I got move away maybe from decentralized ID or just identity as a thing and shifting more towards like generic trusted data whatever that happens to be is gonna just that I think that's where the adoption is going to be and it'll be so much quicker I think than like waiting for nation states to like issue decent like digital College some of them are already doing it but like it's going to take time for it to be Global um so I think there's yeah that's definitely the shift in where we're expecting to see adoption and then to your point like not just blending stuff like receipts or like memberships and stuff but like

really social proofs that you're taking like I think everyone watching probably knows at least a few people who like are sending five to six digit like sums in crypto to each other and they're operating on like just telegram handles and the fact that they've known each other for five years like and it's not based on anything to do with identity traditionally it's all based on like trust and knowledge and history and I think that's where it's going to head to you more is like can I trust this person in this interaction rather than like yeah do I know everything about this person where they live that kind of stuff yeah it sounds like I feel like we are we're going around say we're abstracting

away a little bit of the uh the trust that has traditionally been imbuted in um institutions and state actors delivering ID right like okay so we trust this this and this this nation state or whatever like to issue an ID or we trust like the the utility provider to have an accurate um idea of like where someone lives um but with with what you guys are doing and this idea of credentials uh we we move that trust like onto another it's almost like the trust is displaced somewhere else or we spread the trust across you know different um different points so you may uh have

like a a point of trust with like a a merchant or you might have a point of trust with a social uh login or maybe several social logins is that a right way to think about it yeah yeah absolutely um I think it really comes down to like that decentralized part of it is you to your point you're getting that trust from different anchors so rather than it in the kyc example it's typically coming from the fact that you're like passport or driving myself is the word I was looking for yeah yeah yeah and then like you're then shifting that to multiple anchors so what are the things we want to get through with creds is like having almost every project every Dao like at least in Cosmos and probably a lot wider issuing credentials to people that they

can then go and take elsewhere and so like suddenly that trust isn't just like driven by one place it's driven by loads and we might touch it on touch on it later on but like that's one of the major reasons why like this will be useful against like fraud or AI where it's like historically that's going from like one area of trust rather than something really decentralized um so you're exactly right it's like it's just diffusing that trust out to different anchors which is going to be really cool and then the fun starts on like well who do you trust who do you not trust like how do you start making that visible there's ways to do it but it's like that's the fun stuff um as kind of we'll touch I guess maybe

touch on a bit but like where you start getting into decentralized reputation skills that kind of stuff and like who cares about what how that gets tailored is it Dynamic like who chooses like these things independently is it on a peer-to-peer basis which we think it is like yeah that's all the fun stuff that like I think is coming along with the next couple of years yeah can we talk about the standard the standards a little bit because I I I'm like I like geeking out on web standards because I think they're cool and you know they're they're a great public resource so you know tell me a little bit about how the did standard works and you guys are using the web 3 or web3 though yeah uh the other three cdid standard yeah yeah

um so like for those that don't know like did gets used like pretty it gets used for a couple of things um so you've got like decentralized ID but did also stands for decentralized identifiers and what that basically is is like uh almost a representation or an identifier um that can be used for for kind of two things um you typically will have like a public did and a private did um is is how a lot of like decentralized ID works and the idea with the public did is it's more like it's something on Ledger it's typically associated with like a company or an organization or a Dows or something that has like a

structure and then off Ledger like peer-to-peer you can have decentralized identifiers again and what you can use those for is like I can identify myself to you via this did and I can share some credentials to you and then I can go off elsewhere and then I'll have a completely different did so like and if I share a completely different credentials to that person those two people can't collude they've got nothing about me that like brings that identity together so you can kind of maintain your privacy a little bit better that way and that like there's no unique identify bringing it all together but the um certainly like at The Ledger layer the public did like we use the w3c data model

um and I think there's like W's there's the sorry the standard there's also I think about to be and this is like an area that Alex from our team is way better than I am um there's a w3c uh VC um standard coming out as well um I think that's it's either in draft or like going through and so I think maybe that's a point that we missed like I missed earlier in my four points like the other thing has been the like the WPC did like did standard only I think was approved last year as a standard so there's despite all this work like it only was last year where it actually got put through and then there's all this other stuff like these like um verifiable credential models um

there's probably gonna eventually be one around like revocation and how you manage that so it's it's like it's also super early days in terms of like how the technology stack is going to work out and how all these things fit together um every single year there seems to be like a new implementation or a new standard that's coming through um so it's also I think a little bit like the crypto sphere in terms of like everyone is experimenting and figuring out what works um but yeah it's the fact that like that's now a standard is super helpful to just coalesce around yeah no that's cool I didn't realize that it had only come uh become a standard last year uh because I know that there's been working groups for for many many years but I guess I was on the page a while ago and

it had 2022 up there so sort of figured yeah uh yeah cool well let's um let's dive into checked a little bit so for for those who are not familiar with checked what is checked we know it's a cosmos chain you know we uh we we know that it deals in decentralized identity and credentials um yeah explain to people what what it is and what you guys are building here yeah absolutely you know I'll kind of refer back to like the problem that like that I think has stopped adoption going as quickly as it should have done so the the founding Story You've checked is that myself and Ankara at the same time as we were delivering stuff like big SSI decentralized ID projects we were also

doing like loads and loads of sales um into Enterprise and pretty consistently we're hitting the same wall which is like the Tech's amazing this is really cool um we love the user experience we love like putting um data into the power of individuals like one of the interesting things when you're speaking to companies is like they're still made up of individuals and they still just kind of grab onto that idea but the bit where it always fell down every single time was like where's the money like how do I make money from this like if I have to spend let's say it's half a million putting the system in and all of this happens like what's my return on investment where does that come from

and so after like after like six months of going through that process like and no one's solving it we're like okay we're gonna have to go and solve that ourselves and so basically what checked is is payment and Commercial infrastructure for credentials so the key thing to understand is like the credentials move off Ledger we can then enforce a payment on Ledger for anyone to like like let's say I give you your data you go and take it elsewhere like when that data gets reused me as the original issuing party can kind of derive some value from the fact that you're reusing that data elsewhere which then kind of incentivizes like me as a company to give you your data back and allow you to

take it wherever you want as well as you can like participate yourself in that value flow too so really the the key thing there is like it's payment infrastructure for credentials which is still privacy preserving so some of the things you'll you'll see with like maybe so bound tokens is like the data's on Ledger which is dangerous on its own but also you can see exactly who everyone is interacting with and like basically the graph of like their social like interactions whereas what we've managed to do we believe is like have that entirely privacy preserving so you can go off and live your life take your data wherever you want to and neither the like the whoever issued that data in the first place will have no idea we won't

have any idea and no one else should either um and that's kind of the the key differentiator for us and the real I guess the mission for us is like use this as incentives to release data out from companies get it back in the hands of individuals and actually like make SSI adopted um because I think going back like that's one of the main problems was it just wasn't commercially viable and so that's really where check does come in and then I should say as well like we um we then have like I think 49 Partners worldwide who do different Industries and different verticals so some of them are doing stuff in like supply chain some of them are actually looking at the reusable kyc so we're working with one of our partners on that

um right now yeah exactly and I know exactly what the process you're going through it's horrific like and especially just every single time you're opening up another account and just to labor the point as well you're probably I would imagine you're probably finding in certain scenarios you're like going through the same onboarding process with different companies but they're actually under the hood using the same company as a supplier so like this happens quite a lot on like retail kyc for exchanges like all of them are using the same people so you're just you're just it's insane the whole thing is inside it makes no sense yeah yeah no I mean currently my what we're

going through right now and I don't know how interesting this is to people but in the process of onboarding you know service providers law firms Etc but it's not only just doing like kyc for one entity it's doing kyc for you know all the entities that go up to the beneficial owners and and there's like a couple of layers there because we have holding companies Etc you know and then and it's such a mess like I've got a whole like notion document that I just share with everyone that has probably I don't know 70 PDFs attached to it you know like something crazy like that right um but yeah it's it's a mess and like I and this this is like a very unique use case right but even just for uh for kyc like opening accounts exchanges and

things like that you're right I mean like how many times have if you opened an account at some exchange or some fintech bank or something like that you're like you recognize the same interface this is the exact same difference you've done this process before with the service provider they have the information at least they verified it and because of uh because of compliance and and so the the burden put on the financial sector in financial institutions to to make sure that you are who you say you are you're not laundering money or whatever um there that that burden's so high that every single company that is going to interact with an individual or company is going to want to it's going to be incentivized to to do that work again and again and again until we you know have strong enough standards or

um you know sort of regulatory regulatory backing uh or buy-in of some sort of rubber stamping you know system that allows your identity to be verified once and then you're carried over into the different Realms yeah and the good thing is is it's actually coming through um so that is changing so like um the company that we're working with is more focused on like individuals um and reusable kyc for individuals but like they're speaking to a load of people across the U.S and then wider um and that's really cool to see like it is starting to change um and there's things like eidas um I can't remember what the acronym stands

for but it's basically like yeah European European digital signature and identity uh regulation which I also don't remember what it stands for but yeah but that's but that's yeah but that's like that's coming in across Europe and like that's suddenly giving all this Clarity that like yes it's happening like this is absolutely coming which is so good it's just gonna take time you know the thing with Adas is that it it it exists in theory but it doesn't exist in practice uh and yeah you know I I live in France and I mean like I'm a strong proponent of digital signatures and Adas but but mostly you know if you show up with look if you have if you're working with a company that doesn't within their processes isn't going to accept a

digital signature even though it's a binding signature you're giving them a document that they've essentially sort of signed on there and you've digitally signed it they may ask for what signatures and there are also and I mean like these are educations right but like for instance in Germany if you're doing any sort of thing that has to do with transferring shares between a com like if you're selling shares like that the law requires wet signatures and notaries will hold you to it I've done this and so yeah you know it's um it's it's insane like we've um we've had something similar where um we've got a holding company we've been at like this there's full three or four board members um we've been asked to like sign this document and to your point they're like wet signature and we're like none of us live in the same country like how the

hell like are we literally gonna have to get the same piece of paper and Courier around the world to like just to get this done it's insane it is absolutely insane of course of course you gonna do that right you know maybe we need to get back to the faxing um yeah sorry go on no but so I want to talk a little bit about about you know this this idea that digital identity you go so it turns into digital reputation and I think in crypto in the last couple years at least there there has been this um well like projects or products that are building uh these kind of reputational credentials uh a lot of times it's I think it's in the context of doubts

right so you want to um be able to identify you know members that are you know having sort of virtuous Behavior with regards to the Dao so it could be like staking tokens or it could be voting in governance or you know participating in Discord or whatever um and that I think starts to paint a picture of how this decentralized reputation thing could work um so and you know and I think coming back to your earlier point also about you know how we're we're sort of decentralizing or to some extent spreading the anchors of trust right instead of having one anchor of trust we're spreading those anchors of trust across across different uh

you know domains and and sort of third parties but like the question here is you know with regards to if you think of if you think of identity like reputation as identity we have an example of that and that's China's social scoring system yeah and how closely those two things are tied and and I've heard people talk about how they're worried that this this shift that's happening here or this idea of you know decentralized reputation is an implementation of that just run by the private sector but that has the same end you know so in the end you just end up with the same result um yeah sorry that's like that's a lot

but for context maybe maybe addressing that and then and it's and it's important like it's it's probably one of the most like potentially dangerous and dystopian things that like that could happen um so I think a lot of it is like is based on the architecture of how you design the stuff so a great example is like all of the stuff that we're building all the data lives off Ledger and you decide what you share and who to and obviously there's a trade-off like someone's going to be asking you for certain stuff for like whatever that interaction with is like if you're let's say it's your friend who wants to borrow like 10 grand like as long as it's like the handle that's coming in and like you've got a history and you can tell

it's actually them you're probably fine but then if it's like I don't know an exchange they're going to want to move off that and they're going to have like kyc data so I think that's where like it's the the decentralized reputation side I think if you're putting something that's Universal and you're putting that say on a ledger that is where that is scary um because like anyone can see it it is completely visible to everyone everyone can operate off it um and you have no control on what feeds into that and how it's perceived um and so like it's one of the dangers where like if people are using uh Soul

bound tokens for example for identity like it's super dangerous because you can start profiling people based on like what they hold that is public um and so that's one of the reasons why I like having this data off Ledger in private is like super important and then it comes down to like like um like peer connections I guess and I think maybe the best way of articulating it is like making sure it's truly decentralized and what I mean by that is that like the whole stack is like you can move bits about you can move that around wherever you want to and there's nowhere where there's like a single Source or record of what is going on that is visible to anyone else like

if you're writing that to a ledger if you're making all of that public like that is a problem whereas what we focus on is being able to like have peer-to-peer interactions where you're sharing different data to different people and theoretically like if I was interacting and say with you and I was doing it over like Twitter and I shared some credentials over that channel but then I shared some completely different credentials to like uh Eduardo I had marketing like YouTube wouldn't know like you wouldn't be able to tell that you wouldn't be able to collude basically and you could even ask for completely different things based on that interaction and so you you could be scoring like even though it's kind of a reputation

you're it's like a reputation for that interaction rather than your reputation as a whole so like a good example would be like my reputation at work versus how credit worthy I am two completely different things and neither of those things should be completely like should be public in the same realm they should only be public when I decide to share them so I think like the the really the big the big thing this comes down to is like architecting it properly making it so that like it's individuals deciding what they share how much they share who too and also that they can tear that down afterwards if they if they want to pull it back so like they can share some credentials and be like probably wish I didn't share that and then just cut the link so when we roll creds up that'd be one of the things

that like you'll have links that will have like sets of credentials tied to them and one of the features will go on to like later on the line will be like breaking that link so that no one can see it anymore so they've even if they have the hyperlink they can't get anything from it um and that's but to your point earlier like it is it's so crucial we get it right because if we get it wrong like it's a dystopian nightmare um I think the the good thing for us is because we're going privacy first and peer-to-peer first it's almost impossible to build that up and go wrong based like as long as we maintain those principles in that direction so let's let's walk through how this works so I mean maybe from the perspective of a of a user that's

sharing credentials that's using checked can you describe a use case that that may be relevant and maybe also helping understand how how that kind of transaction flow works right when you're sharing credentials and how someone verifies it Etc yeah great a great yeah so um let's use like an example of like let's say someone has worked for like a dow and then they want to go and apply and get like or maybe they've actually been working for like let's say it's they've been working for an influencer or Dao and then they want to go and apply for a job with like a specific project to go and do something for them so in this

scenario you'd have like the original Dao or the influencer would have like a public did so that would be on Ledger everyone can see who that is they like all of that is visible who that organization is um and then the the next bit would be like the Dow could issue say like um a credential to the to whoever that person is to say like this person works for us like they represent us currently this is what they do like this is their role and they can like maybe add some stuff onto that of like what their seniority is like what capacity they're employed in like and just stuff like a title that person can then share that credential to whoever they want so what's happened there is like the um the

credentials been signed by the did or it's related to the dead um of the the Dao the data then goes completely off ledger to the individual like it's stored in a private wallet that they hold on like their mobile or like in some whatever storage they want maybe on something like storage ceramic like anything there um what they can then do is share that credential onto someone else and so in this scenario like let's say that they've been employed by this Dao like um they've done great work like they've even got like an employment like a review that says like they're awesome at what they do they can then share that credential onto like a prospective employer to be like look I've done all this work for this Dao they like his

proof I was employed and proof that I've like executed well and what happens is when the like receiving organization receives that data they can check who originally signed it so they know that they've got it from the right person and that it was signed by the right Dow in the first place and they can check that against The Ledger and what that means is the if the let's say the individual is working for like multiple dials and maybe influencers they can pull all of these from different places and then start sharing whichever ones they think are relevant so let's say it's a guy who's like got a mix of front-end Dev and is a pretty good like UI designer and he's applying for like a Dev roll or like all let's

say just the UI role um or you actually will Design the role he can just share the credentials that are relevant so he can like collect all of them himself have them in like in a wallet and then whenever he goes elsewhere he can start sharing the credentials he thinks are relevant and then build them up over time um so the key thing there is like basically the individual is completely in control of like what they're sharing in that scenario and yeah the project or dial is going to ask for like oh could you share me stuff to back this up and that's on the individual to like decide if they want to meet that criteria or not um cool thing there is that you can come by from so many different places so what I'm looking forward to seeing is like I know people taking their crew 3 or

zeli reputation from checked and maybe be able to go into a different Dow and be like look I can prove I'm a legit person and I'm a good actor because I've done all this other stuff for another project um and be able to move that around so that's the kind of like the flow but the key thing at all times like the the person is at the center and they're the ones in control and they're the ones who control their privacy as well like that's the obviously key maxim of all of this is like we've got to keep it centered around that okay so if I were to really oversimplify this um and I think my camera just uh decided to stop working uh we'll fix that in a second if I were to oversimplify this

um thanks Sony for selling me a camera that can't stay on for 30 minutes uh yeah the the idea is that with with checked the the credentials are off chain they are they can be created and shared at one's will it is the it is up to the the holder of those credentials to uh how to share them revoke access to those credentials what the blockchain does itself is it allows any party to verify the issuance of credentials uh by essentially being I mean maybe this is not the right term here but a sort of register of of of of

of um of signing authorities so you know we may even oversimplify this even more and say it's kind of a decentralized certificate Authority that's that's Perfect Analogy um and actually to your point on like registry um you'll find that like a lot of people for for networks like ours that maybe don't have the payment side of things they call them vdrs um and I think that stands for verifiable data Registries and that's exactly it and to your point like it is very very analogous to like decentralized uh pki and certificate authorities like it's it's re like conceptually like spot on um yeah and the the the kind of bit that

I left out which is really like checks USP which maybe works less in the in the like employment example is the ability for like whoever issues that data and releases it to like get paid in the future um so it's almost a bit like nft royalties where like whoever mints like can basically collect in the future um and the argument for doing it this way is that it basically incentivizes people to just get get credentials out the door um even if the price is low like super super low because the data is reusable it kind of works out all round like it's cheaper who for whoever gets the data that individual like can monetize that as well they can have a much better user

experience but also Whoever has like this data in the first place can start giving it back and it still commercially makes sense so like that doesn't necessarily like you could do it in the employment example but it's a like commercially maybe it doesn't make so much sense whereas in other places like kyc is a great example where like that the only way that that industry is going to change is if there's a commercial construct behind it um because otherwise they've got no interest in cannibalizing their own industry yeah no that makes sense I think like so much of this has to do with aligning Market incentives yeah and yeah sometimes sometimes regulation sort of forces that on you right so in the case of things like gdpr for instance there

was a a regulatory incentive to to uh to implement certain processes um and and certainly this this could also be the case yeah yeah and um I think I've almost started thinking of like decentralized ID SSI as like the philosophical end point of like gdpr where gdpr you're kind of like you're kind of consenting even though it's a pain and you're just forced to do it whereas like decentralized ideas you're taking control and ownership you're not just consenting like you have the control yeah um and I just on the on the business side of like the incentive side of things like one of the ones that I think is

that was an absolute slam dunk in terms of like the numbers that it was working on was uh there's a company called true so TRW um and they were doing credentials for doctors and inside the UK if you move between different hospitals you basically have to re-register and present all your documents from like your degree to like everything you're certified in they worked out that it was something like a hundred thousand doctor days a year across the NHS were literally just lost to like people turning up and having to preserve paperwork and they were like this is mental yeah and so like and if you imagine how much like a doctor gets paid per like day in per hour they're like the numbers are just

absurd like and it's just it was such an easy business case to be like if we put this in we all collectively save money and we get better outcomes like this is just a no-brainer um so I think that's where the incentives like are so so important on this stuff because if you get them right like that for example that's running on credentials um it's running on VCS and has done for years um and yeah it didn't need any legislation to put through it didn't need like any higher authority they just need to go and roll it out like that's the power of like getting the incentives right yeah and I mean I I hate to beat a dead horse but they're coming back on kyc this feels like such an easy problem to solve I mean

we we kind of have Solutions so it to this already and it's it's fairly simple at least in Europe right where we have somewhat you know modern identity systems and you know like government and Enterprise that are you know fairly well aligned very very very closely tied uh you know whether that's a good thing or a bad thing you know but it does it does provide I think the framework for for this to be Implement for the sort of thing to be implemented and kind of yeah well but yeah and that's where that's where like I I don't want to name who it is but like they're basically working on exactly this and I'd hop in

that's a couple of months like I could actually start showing and demoing this out but it would be like yeah you go through that process once and you can just share it repeatedly um and it could be anything from like into banking or like telcos or even like exchanges um so it could be anywhere so like it's coming it's definitely coming um and so I'm looking forward to the point where like actually start showing this stuff off because to your point like everyone knows it's there and it's possible it's just like just give me it as a solution like that's the Gap right now yeah so let's talk about the Privacy aspect a little bit and you guys actually I'm gonna spoil it I think this is probably gonna be the talk that you're

giving at nebula you're talking about you know ZK ZK credentials and using uh using zkps in the context of credentials um can you describe how you're using ZK to well I mean to to implement that something that I think is like uniquely important very very important to to to to Identity which is to be able to keep one data private and um and out and and also I think there's another aspect here that I'd like to ask you about is how do we use ZK to uh to infer information about one's ID without revealing the ID so this you know this age-old prove that you're over 18

without giving me your your date of birth sort of thing yeah exactly um and I think probably one of the most unusual things about what what we have is the zks are off Ledger so um like on Ledger basically there's no personal data there's a good reason for that and it's like everything we spoke about before so what we're using is basically zk's off Ledger for um basic the proofing side so of the sharing side so if you if you think of that triangle of like company or organize it like organization individual organization again like this second leg is kind of like the proofing or sharing part and that's where like zk's come into their own so you you kind of alluded to it

already like being able to prove age that kind of thing and I've got like an inbound like email in in into us that like I think is perfect as an example which is um it's a company that wants to put people through like that basically they have to onboard people and take them through almost like a kyc like process but then after that they don't want to either hold that data and they only want to know certain things about an individual that that individual shares it's a really unusual use case um at least like the thing that they're doing and so what they're looking at is like they want an individual to be able

to prove that they're like say male over the age of 30 and have a potentially a specific um like employment or job title and so they don't really care like they don't they don't know like date of birth um and they don't want to know a bunch of other stuff like they don't even then not for example interested in even the company that the person works for they just want to know like job title and so in that scenario you can start using ZK where you're like I can prove that I'm over the age like over a certain age without exposing anything about like the um the sorry anything about my like date of birth or like having to even send

like you could also do this thing where like you don't even need to share like let's say a full driving license or a passport you're just sharing the fact that you're over 30 with the fact that it's like coming from a trusted source and then you can also share like for a credential which producer you work for but all they'll get is just the job title and so you can we call it like selective disclosure so you're just reducing down the data that you're actually sharing across to the other side to the bare minimum that's required so the example that's always given for for um sets of discussion ckps it's like going into it off license and buying like booze or cigarettes or um

a lottery ticket that's the one that's always given but it has so much other like use outside of that you can use it for pretty much like whatever you want so um basically it's being used for all all of the bad things we we joke about it people shouldn't be doing yeah we call it the degenerate use cases uh yeah yeah the D gen use cases but they that yeah that's that's what it's there for and I think another example which is more like web free crypto focused would be like if you're a DEX or an nft Marketplace or you're doing an airdrop prove you're not from the US like because that's the jurisdiction that everyone is concerned

about and you don't need to know like that person's name you don't need to know their address anything really about them they just need to be able to prove that they're not a US citizen and therefore you can interact with them in that way and I think that's a that's a hard one because proving your something is one thing but proving that you're not a U.S citizen so a lot of people you know know that I'm Canadian but they all they don't know that I'm French and a lot of people know think that I'm French but they don't know I'm Canadian so you know it's it's uh and even even in the context of you know to Other Nation States so people get passports uh while their other country doesn't allow them to get second passports and so

that's like much harder to do I think than simply proving that you are of a circle oh yeah yeah it's it's a it's definitely complex it's um I think what I like about it is it's a bit more at a substantial or like I don't know a bit more web free than walking into an off license and be like I'm definitely above the age of 18 um which is the one that's always given out so that's I think the cool thing about it as well is that you can using that employment example from before you can take data from like as many places as you want like different credentials from different completely different issuers and creators uh bring them together and then like issued and sorry and then select which

bits from each one so you could take like five credentials take five attribute like an attribute from each credential and then no one else sees the rest of whatever else is in there and so that has the potential to be really really powerful because you're just you're reducing the data down to exactly what's needed um it's why I I don't know if you do this but um I I use Strava for cycling and now they've started cutting off like the last eighth of a mile in terms of your location so it if someone sees your rides they don't know exactly where you live um yeah and I think it's likely to be the same with like things like uber where like it is helpful to not always be exposing where

you live um there's obviously horror stories that you hear around that so it's enabling that kind of thing yeah I know that that's interesting and um with with regards to the the ZK stuff um you you mentioned in in conversations we've had before that you talked about penumbra and I wonder are you guys working with them or are you leveraging their their uh their chain or I mean with that I mean that's their loss yet but are you intending on leveraging the chain um I don't think so but it's something where but like you just don't know what's going to get built out like we've we've

got um we've got a separate team that is um so this is in our team this is like one of our partners who's looking at um bringing credit like bringing credentials on Ledger in a privacy preserving way so you could say interact with a DEX or liquidity pool or like whatever you want and bring that credential in so that could be like collateralized lending where you bring something off Ledger on Ledger that then allows you to say reduce the collateral that you need to post and I think that's where there's more stuff like like obviously Secret's been around for a while but like secret penumbra um I think I need to remember how a Noma works but like starting to combine all these things together nobody knows how a

normal works but even I don't know how it works but um exactly so like but like it's a true zero knowledge project I love that um so be able to bring all these different like Parts together so that's where like I don't want to name check them yet but like I think they're about to start unveiling what they're doing and how they're going to do it and that could be something that I absolutely see like where ourselves this partner and someone like penumbra start working on like okay for penumbra what would be interesting to bring on as a credential that suddenly enables something you weren't able to do before um so I don't have an answer yet but I'd love to in like the space of six months to a year where it's like okay let's go combine some stuff and see how it works

out cool I'm also going to spoil uh your well this isn't this isn't set in stone yet but probably what will be your your your workshop at nebular which is about Telegram and Discord um and uh and preventing spam so can you explain how uh we can leverage check to to uh to uh prevent spam and Discord and telegram yeah that's um yes and that's really where I like like we're kind of launching threads and bringing that into beta um over the next couple of weeks so that's really closely related to that um and the idea behind creds was was kind of two streams one is around like

learning and engagement and the other one was around protecting people um and I think it was like Akash and maybe stargaze that had um their discords like compromised recently and we see like that happens all the time and the other problem is then um like fraudulent moderators and admins and team members like it's it it is re it is an unusual week where one of our teams isn't messaged by someone pretending to be me or our CFO or our CTO um and that happens all the time and everyone jokes like oh like why do they do this it's so obvious the reason they do it is because it works like people

fall for it and they do this all the time I I do know someone actually who um they got messaged by what they thought was their CEO um and was like I'm having a basically I'm having a really hard time or like it was some outrageous demand for like I need gift cards I need you to go and buy me gift cards because but but like but the whole thing was couched in like a a reasonable justification and they went with it because it was coming from a CEO yeah but it was like but it happens like yeah I could see myself falling for some weird you know thing too I guess maybe if it's the right way yeah and it was the delivery

was exactly how it like it was it was on the channel that they communicate on in a style that they communicate in and even though the ask was a bit weird like the everything around it made so much sense that they went with it and so there's like this happens all the time it happens all the time um and so that's where we're really interested in building out like um I guess ultimately it's underpinned by Telegram and Discord Bots um I think we'll probably focus on the telegram one first out of everything but underpinning that basically is the ability for like within Telegram to um basically like share credentials to other people without having to leave

Telegram and so what that means is like if like I would hope in the future if any of our admins or moderators are having to speak directly to someone else they can always prove who they work for and similarly like if you're a business development rep for someone else you can always prove who you work for yeah so that's a matter of community manager who has to deal with this on a daily basis um and and that like you're in the chat for those listening Easter in the chat and we're just putting he says hello he says 100 goodbye scammers hello creds yeah exactly and so this this happens all the time um so this would be let's say

um like Matt's a great example if like checked issues Matt credentials to prove that he works for checks what his role is like and he's still currently working like obviously like especially with ambassadors and moderators like there was turnover and then whenever he interacts with someone in DMs like he can prove to that person who he is without like that person needing to step out and we can also do that for like BD reps in terms of like when they're just messaging someone I don't know anyone watching is aware of this but like all the exchanges have like um like verify endpoints now and like Pages where you can enter telegram handles so you can check like they can

check who people are so like it's it's going down that yeah exactly so uh so Matt's just saying there like yeah apparently I asked him for uh three PMB last week and that happens so regularly and so basically all of that to say that um we're gonna be like rolling this thing out where projects organizations whatever can issue credentials and then you can share them inside telegram the really nice thing about telegram is because it has a web for you you could actually do the entire experience without having to leave um so you like I could share credentials directly to you you wouldn't even have to leave telegram to be able to check who I am um and it just adds like that layer to

start protecting people um as well as like doing things like potentially gating telegram um sorry telegram groups um and the final thing to say is like one of the reasons why that's so important is we were speaking to another um another layer one and they were just like they've had to turn off DMS in Discord because it was just it was the way that people were getting compromised left right and center and so you're like you basically have broke you've had to disable one of the functionalities of Discord to protect your community that like it so I think basically it's it's a mix of like one side's very much going to be put like learning in

gamification the other side is going to be like let's start protecting people and stopping the amount of scams happening because it's just it's rampant um a shame so so this Lee this all culminates on on your hot take which is the uh the AI uh the AI Revolution and um or the AI apocalypse sorry yeah yeah okay depending from which point of view you're looking at it might be the same thing but um yeah so how does check prevent us from heading into the uh apocalypse yeah um and I think I should be specific there so like obviously AI is great for so many things like

for creds we've been using mid-journey to generate images like it works perfectly um works really really well and so it's got some great uses but at the same time it is so good at generating just like either fraudulent data or helping people submit fraudible data or creating things that like don't make any sense or like that you can't attribute um so just a couple of examples of like some of the problems it's creating right now so um the lower level one is just like an inability to attribute stuff so um one of our team members was pulling together this like big commercial model and then like pulled some numbers out of chatgpt for population numbers and I was

like well are they right like where do these come from is that chat gbt I'm like well like do we know that that's accurate like how so I then had to go through and just double check them and it was fine but like it would be so much better if I knew where they came from in the first place and uh kind of a more problematic Center not Sinister but like problematic issue that's really close to this is um there was an article by the guardian recently where they were talking about they keep on obviously getting contacted for references and for articles um someone had got an article out of chat gbt that was supposedly written in the guardian by all of their uh authors or one of their writers and they needed basically the original article for

citation and it never existed and the article about apparently the guardian spent two weeks tried to find this thing and contacted the the writer and the author was like Hey can you remember writing this and they were like ah like but it it looks like something I'd write and it's on a topic that I'd write about but it just never existed and so the ability to like just generate data in volumes and like potentially have nothing standing behind it it's going to be so so dangerous so part of our like and this is something that we really didn't see coming um but makes so much sense now in hindsight it's like all the value that's historically just been given up like

everyone talks about like the data economy but I think that's now going to shift to what we're calling the trusted data economy we're like you need to know where that data comes from you need to know whether it's trustworthy and I think and also that the whole like not a bot like I'm not talking to someone who is pretending to be someone else or something that's entirely artificial and so that way that is where like I think checked and creds is going to really come into its own so like creds mostly for the not a bot scenario like prove that you are legitimate you've got a history like you can do that in any which way that you want and move that between communities and then the value flow will be unchecked which is like can I like take this data in whatever industry to

somewhere else so like let's say supply chain I can take like a manifest or actually even better your example with um corporate kyc like generative AI is going to be able to issue so many of those documents where I could like spin up a fake company and it doesn't exist on paper but I've got all the documents to prove it yeah and so Chris yeah exactly but then they'd be able to prove where that came from in the first place and prove it's trusted is going to become so valuable versus like the danger of what could go wrong so that's where like I think the actual like trust is going to be solved by um by credentials but the the kind of coralary or the the power of the thing

of that is all the value is going to shift from like just generic data to stuff that is trustworthy where you know where it comes from and you can check the provenance of that all the way through so it's it's um it's gonna be a fun time but I think the it's especially with like fraud and this kind of stuff it's always a game of cat and mouse and I think at the moment the mouse is probably a bit further ahead with all of like the AI tooling that's come out and I think we're looking to be the cat that's kind of catching up and going like we can protect ourselves against this and we can capture the value that's part of it so it's it's gonna be fun and games over the next couple of years I think yeah well this uh it's a perfect segue

to talk about uh creds which is this product that you guys are building it's currently in uh weightless so people can sign up um we'll put the link in the show notes but yeah I think a good way to think about this is is your first product being built on checked or does it is like a product being built on the check platform yeah well it's it's the well the first one that we've taken ownership of specifically so um as I mentioned there's like a bunch of Partners building stuff this is the one where we've been like it was weirdly it started off like just to demonstrate like credentials and decentralized ID in a way that's fun so

that that point earlier that we talked about like loads of um decentralized ID ssis or based around like pretty dry topics like kyc and national identity and stuff and instead we were like what if we just built something that's cool that the community and anyone can interact with that like it's just fun to use and it looks good um and where it kind of grew to was when we started fleshing out we're like oh well what type of credentials would we use like how would this all fit together now we started speaking to other people and other projects and like oh like I'd want to do this too like I'd I'd want to issue this credential and we've had everything from like I I can't give that example because it would be so obvious who it is um but we've had loads of people been

like oh I want to issue this type of credential I want to be able to issue credentials off like zeli layer 3 crew 3 like all this kind of stuff I want to be able to have like staking credentials I want to be able to prove that I'm like a moderator and Ambassador an nft Creator and be able to prove that like it is me doing this stuff inside this realm and so what started off as basically like a demo that we were building for our community is now just got like legs and we're going to be rolling out and the idea is that um it won't just be ourselves like it'll be pretty much anyone who wants to start issuing credentials to anyone else in a way that is just like super simple super easy to get on board with and has that the the two streams that I mentioned

earlier so one is like very much gamification engagement learning Journeys all that kind of good stuff and then the other one is like the stuff that's a bit more High trust like who do you work for can you prove that is that important to someone else um and just and use that to protect people both like I think we'll start on telegram that of course Discord a bunch of other stuff so um it's it's I think the other side is again so that bring it back like it started off as a demonstration on like just showing SSI in a way that was like engaging what we're finding now is because of that um people are coming to us being like Oh hey we want to like we want to get involved more in checked like than we

were before we want to do this stuff like we want to be part of this this journey and we're also finding that it's going to be the perfect vehicle to demonstrate payments because like we can just basically roll it out into something that is like everyone can see we can show that it works and it's kind of imminent um I'll be able to show it all hangs together so it's going to go from being like just uh what was just a demo platform to being like a supercharged demo platform that is then used usable at least across Cosmos and I think even further um because we're getting just randomly asked by other projects like even outside the cosmos of like could we use this in the future to go do this like X Y and Z and we're like yes absolutely we can't wait to do it um and

it's it's tangible I think um like a lot of the Czech stuff the cool stuff is that the is it the infrastructure layer but that means it's really hard to see um it's really hard for people to interact with unless they're working with one of our partners or like or they are a partner and creds is going to be the first thing that like everyone watching and on this call can see and they can interact with and they can use um both on the like collecting credentials but also like issuing them to other people so um yeah I having come from like corporate land at Accenture land and then focusing on infrastructure for like a year and a half it's really fun to be able to start

showing people like a slit ux and be like this is what it's going to look like and this is how it's going to interact um can I can I put this up on screen or is it uh is it too early uh which which ones you have I'm curious is it just the website I was I was in the uh I was added to the waitlist so I've got my I've got my credits profile up here oh what's up um I don't think quite yet I've been told okay to keep it under wrap so all right but I think we'll have to come back you'll have to come back and have to do a demo when when you guys are ready to show it because I think it's cool like I mean you know I'm looking at my creds profile here I just claim kind

of like my Discord uh credential and you you can claim that there's a bunch of like demos here but for example like I can create a um I could say I'm a content creator or I contribute it to the docs or I uh I attended an event and you know I'd like to we've talked about this is I'd like to see how we could leverage this for uh for nebular Summit and creating credentials for say people who have attended the conference or uh people who have participated in a workshop or this sort of thing and so you know if that's something we could do this year I'd love to love to yeah experiment with that otherwise maybe next year or for like a future event I think would be really cool no it's uh this year sounds good it's honestly like one of our biggest

Milestones is like get it to the point where like any anyone running workshops theoretically at nebula could issue credentials to whoever attends and then those people if they want to go off and like I don't know if it's the first time they've interacted with Cosmos and then they want to get in go and get like a junior Dev role with a project be able to show that they went to that workshop and they went through that Journey executed successfully and possibly even have like the workshop uh like leader attest to how well they went through um would be really really cool so I think like yeah it's it's something we're like really really targeting on our side so Ross are like had a product on this is not gonna like it

um but that's like a big kind of big milestone that we're focusing on cool yeah and I mean I think for the podcast too there could be some interesting things to do here I mean I I've been wanting to do like type things for a long time and this this is an idea that we've had at epicenter for years that we've never implemented because that episode we have this really kind of cool artwork that we we generate for every every uh every guest and it could be cool to have kind of a credential you know there there's kind of a a precedent to this and uh OG's will remember the let's talk Bitcoin uh uh you know shout out to Adam B Levine uh let's talk Bitcoin um uh token and they had this whole

thing where every podcast episode on the let's talk Bitcoin Network and we were part of that Network there was a you could you could create a magic word and so every every episode at some point in the in the middle of the episode would say like today's magic word is credentials and then as a listener you take that magic word you log into your account you'd enter it and that was proof that you listened to the episode and you get some tokens that are not worthless in exchange and I thought it was a really cool thing that got a lot of people involved and people would claim that thing and they would like actively do it and and then and you know they they ended up having worthless tokens but but it was still a cool use case yeah I totally agree like [Music] um

one of the things I'm mourning well two things is like when you travel now you don't get um in a lot of places like you don't get a stamp like you don't get something like in your password yeah like you don't get that anymore and also um if you're going to like gigs or concerts like all that kind of stuff like you don't get that anymore they use I used to love being able to go around like museums and find what they were putting on the tickets because like it was always cool it was always something unusual and different and the same with like um I've still got like Festival T-shirts from when I'm like I was 13 to 18 I did Leeds Festival five years in a row like I've still got those t-shirts

and I still got the tickets but like and that's the kind of thing that I'm missing collecting now you just can't get hold of them and be able to replicate that into something that's like still privacy preserving I just have them for myself I'd love um it would be so so cool to have that because it's it's gone missing this whole shift to digital that it's like great we're using less paper fine but like I want something that's equivalent I want to be able to take something like somewhere yeah we we like as humans we we love to collect things uh whether physical or digital uh and certainly um this is um this is one one solution I think yeah and there are many other uh platforms

that are when we talk about Co-op of course like they're they're taking a different approach but I think all this stuff um ends up quite being quite useful for tons of different use cases including the collectible use case yeah yeah I totally agree and I think just going back to what you said like a couple of seconds ago which was like the stuff that you were thinking about with like nebula or App Center I think it was like what you could issue that's been honestly the most fun with creds is like taking this out and be like look this is what it looks like this is what the interface like and everyone being like Oh what if I could do this like what if I could add this stuff in we're like awesome because we've never thought of that before um there was one like I'm not gonna say

who they are but they're like oh I want to use this to dox myself like I want to use this to like show who I am in real life in a way that is like available express it yeah and in a way that like I can also shut it down afterwards like if I don't like where it's going um and I can take that back and no one's actually got the data to use like on my behalf so it's a it's been such a journey of like seeing what people want to use this stuff for in a way that we just it's basically it's grown legs in a way that is fantastic but we just weren't like we were hopeful but weren't exactly expecting it great we're working people where do you want to send people to learn more about uh creds there should be you know are

you looking for people to build on the platform are you looking for partners to integrate creds here's your chance to share all the links yeah absolutely so the best one is really is creds.xyz uh so c r e d s dot XYZ like that's easily the the best ways to start um you'll find a wait list like get on that the amazing um and the the plan is that um over the next couple of months we'll be opening this up like it'll be available to like everyone to go in and collect um what we'll then do off the back of that is open up the issuance side so that won't just be people be able to go in and collect stuff it'll be projects being able to issue credentials out or

like left right and Center create new ones explore like merge them all together um and then on the checks I just had to like uh check to dot IO um and then navigate from there like that's that's probably the best place to start on those two um but I think if if you're kind of watching this and you're looking for like getting your Hands-On credentials credits.xyz is the best place to start um that's going to be the really big thing excellent Fraser thanks for coming on it's been a pleasure no likewise it's been awesome and uh looking forward to like opening this up and be able to show it off properly um it can't come soon enough yeah see it nebular absolutely absolutely

cheers