Portable, verifiable and, most importantly, reusable representations of personal data can enable high-touch, high-trust and low-cost engagement between customers and networks of complementary service providers. The EU is already adjusting to the opportunities of Self-Sovereign Identity, but the private sector needs to demonstrate more high-value use cases in order to force beneficiary regulations and an enabling environment for the technology. The tools and techniques of Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI), including the no-code capabilities provided by ProofSpace, can be used to create trust networks within an organization’s existing technical infrastructure in order, for example, to verify that a credential shared by a customer was issued by a trusted partner. A valuable use case for this is re-usable Know Your Customer verification. Other high-value use cases for SSI trust networks include: networks of affiliated hospitality services referring and on-boarding customers; networks of educational institutions verifying academic credentials; networks of employers verifying employment histories; and web 3.0 and DAO communities verifying member reputation and voting rights for management and governance purposes. A brilliant case study for this is ProofSpace’s work with the pro-democracy opposition of Belarus, where Self-Sovereign Identity enables a decentralized and secure “virtual country”, offering private and public services to unite, serve and empower the pro-democracy community.
