EIC Speaker Spotlight: Michele Nati

Absolutely. Yes, we are changing the way we generate identities. We manage identities and we verify identities and we access services. So the European commission already looking forward on how to change this. There are new regulation that are currently under discussion on how to reform the identity space, especially state identities, moving from centralized approach or toward the more decentralized approach where identities can be issued by government, but also be verified across different government without direct interaction of offices, adding bureaucracy, adding administration burden.

And on top of that collect credential collect attributes that allow people to show who actually they are in a trusted way, what attributes their identity brings forward to access service to be verified for age restriction whenever it's needed. So this can happen now in a much more decentralized way rather than centralized. So the European commission itself is looking now to expand and adapt the initial ADA network. That was a network between member states to create an issue state identity for digital services that was still relying on centralized concept.

Now is moving toward that the centralized view that they start to look into now to employ ledgers, how they call them, where we know there are dis little ledger blockchain technologies to be the underlying trust rather than the members that itself, that guarantee a person, his book claim to be when he travels, when he moves, when he try to access service along different states in Europe. And that's just the start.

So we, we see this way of people moving and be trusted across border as well across countries, across oceans, hopefully things like this are happening also in other countries in other continent.

And one of these reform of AI will also culminate with what is the introduction of actually digital wallets, digital wallet that people will carry with them will carry their mobile phone to carry not anymore currency, not anymore credit card, debit cards or token like somebody's doing for payments, but carrying their identities, their identity credential that they can present, that they can access services engineer, go to a doctor. And I want to show what I'm actually need assistance for in a foreign country.

There is no more need for the doctor to go and look for this in my origin countries, start to make phone calls or get this from my wallet as a credential that everybody can trust because it's been issued by central trust and authority in my country. It's a very good point.

It's also, actually one of the reason we still see bit of delay in the new concept of the centralized identities taking forward, because the idea before was one all or nothing. So one identity or the other, and that's not actually the way a city is going forward. The way it's a complementary, of course, there will be case and scenarios where identities like this concept of self-sovereign identities can be selfish with. So UN identities, the centralized now self-sovereign is basically unidentified.

That is immutable on a ledger and public key in terms of cryptography, a private key is always controlled by the subject created entities. So there is no more need for a government. Let's say to create that identifier is the number of my passport.

Let's say so anybody can create that and can start to collect credential, but there will be use case on which it will be enough to collect credential that states me it's me and have some features, attributes like a living, a country or another country that can come from, let's say other identities, spirit dentist that can other sum sum up and say, I can state that Kel lives in this country or the other country because of interaction with him.

But there will be also use cases where I need some other authority that have done proper KC of me that have verified all the aspect of my identities or legal or any other position like state identity that can say actually is, will claim to be credit Cardish David kishk. That is KC. So this will create not a different identity will create a credential that sits on top of this centralized system that add more value to my attributes because come from an established authority that they've done controlled than KC as a bit more value, a bigger value. So it's a different level of insurance.

When I interact with the third party. So long story short, there is no competition. In my opinion, there is complementary. There is integration of these two technology and what identity was in the past and new identity will be in the future with a central point, be the person controlling it, but there will be still a role for centralized identity provider to start to issue now credential and empower citizen and people to manage them and present them.

So, and they will be the need of course, to invent some of the business model that exists in the, in the domain. But of course, I see this as a complimentary landscape that will come together for a, for a greater good, Absolutely. We are working on this project called ensure sec, it's a European project funded under the horizon 2020 framework. It's an innovation action. So you actually try to establish new technology and test their viability in the market for creating innovation and creating also better process. And we are actually tackling the eCommerce.

Let's say infrastructure revenue in mind also to create a more seamless way for the digital single market at Europe is, is building up in a way that is trusted across country. And one way that we see one of the barrier is basically the difficulties for small and medium companies to basically be part of a marketplace of eCommerce marketplace, because they have either to rely on on third party and they have to build their customer base.

When this comes, they bring also a lot of data about their customer, especially if you think about small, mid enterprise selling age restricted items or items that are only be sold like drugs and medicine at this past two people that have the right requirements that all of these require this small company to either be with a bigger player, or be able to have a infrastructure that is secure to maintain all this personal data, all this sort of information that expose the risk of cybersecurity for them.

So with the centralized identity, we are exploring the opportunity for them to still have the same knowledge of other customers. Still able to verify age, still able to verify any other official before providing whatever the customers aiming to, to, to, to buy with the centralized identity and verifiable credential. So this knowledge is information is not anymore burden for them to create so they can speed up and lower the barrier, the friction to be part of a single marketplace.

So this one example, we are also testing the identity decent centralized identity, not only for person, but also for company itself. So if a company have to open up an e-commerce store again, they need to prove they have enough cover of any liability.

This information also require checks and what is best then a bank that also have knowledge of the, the, the book logging book, accounting book of, of an SME issue, a credential toward the marketplace operator for the company to operate in a way that's seamless and proof that a company can receive finance credit and trade, trade finance, and so on and so forth. So there are few ways we are exploring this.

So now to, to use yes, the centralized identity, creating a more, let's say dynamic, frictionless eCommerce infrastructure still maintain the security that eCommerce will provide because these days more than before with the COVID experience, lockdown rely on eCommerce much more than before and more and more will be in the future.