AMA Recap of Crypto Legacy x cheqd by Fraser and Alex Tweeddale.
No more data silos to be leaked or hacked. No more data sold without consent. No more relationships and transactions without trust.
Alfred, [27.09.21 10:00]
@dubious_pip are you there?
Fraser
hey hey, I am!
Alfred
We welcome everyone to join us at this prestigious AMA event with Cheqd
How are you?
Fraser
I’m good, although it’s Monday, so yaknow!
hahaha
Well, what do you think if we start with the AMA
Fraser
Sounds good to me!
Alfred
Introductory questions
Q1. Can you provide a brief introduction to the core team behind cheqd?
Fraser
Sure! Can you also add @tweeddalex as an admin to help me answer! He’s one of our key people!
Alfred
Yes
One minute
Fraser
We currently have 8 members in our core team and 7 developers — and we’re expanding fast. Here’s a little bit of info on some of us:
Fraser Edwards (CEO), Fraser was Delivery lead for Known Traveller Digital Identity (KTDI.org) a self sovereign identity project for international travel with the World Economic Forum, Dutch and Canadian governments. Fraser has patents in cross-ledger payments. Fraser is ex-Accenture blockchain. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwardsfraser/)
Ankur Banerjee (CTO), Ankur co-invented the hyperledger blockchain automation framework and spent time as disruptive tech lead for the Accenture Fintech accelerator, before joining IDWorks followed by R3 on shorter contracts. Ankur is ex-Accenture blockchain. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/banerjeeankur/)
Tobias Halloran (Head of Partnerships), , Tobias has had senior leadership positions in top start-ups from Oxford University’s Computer Science department and the wider Oxford ecosystem. He has also founded start-ups powered by Oxford University Innovation and the European Space Agency. He has seven years experience as a start-up operator in strategy, strategic partnerships and BD. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobiashalloran/)
Javed Khattak (CFO): Javed is an award-winning C-suite executive, a qualified actuary and a serial entrepreneur who has led multi-billion dollar funds/projects and successful ventures. He has advised governments, central banks and global brands like PwC, GSK, M&S, HSBC, and Thomson Reuters. Javed has the valuable experience of structuring and scaling blockchain products. He also brings passion for the transformational nature of blockchain technology as we build DeFi identity that underpins digital and real-world interactions. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/javedkhattak/)
Eduardo Hotta (Head of Marketing & Community): Eduardo is a branding and demand generation expert, and has led successful marketing teams in several industries, including data analytics, cyber security, and marketing automation. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/hotta/)
Ross Power (Operations Lead): Ross brings a unique blend of people, product and operations experience. He’s been a leading figure in delivering blockchain and distributed ledger products (DLT) from strategy & innovation to live production products. Ross has a keen interest in the employee experience and the Future of Work. He is eager to pioneer new and emerging ways of working that respect individual preferences, create a strong company culture, strengthen connections, and build, test and scale products as efficiently as possible. He is also passionate about financial inclusion and engaging with marginalised communities, which have been underserved with existing systems and technologies. Ross is excited to immerse himself in the world of self-sovereign identity fully. Ross is ex-Accenture. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosspower11/)
Elina Yumasheva (Communications lead): Elina Yumasheva is a purpose-driven marketing and communications professional who brings a unique blend of technology and sustainability knowledge. As a dynamic and performance-driven innovator, Elina strives to increase revenue and business growth. She has a track record in developing communication strategies, product positioning, analysing market trends, managing projects, and leading teams. With over ten years of experience in the corporate sustainability and technology sector, Elina has worked with the largest global brands, leading NGOs and governments. She is committed to making a positive impact on the world through her professional activities. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/elinayumasheva/)
Fraser
And I’ll let @tweeddalex introduce himself!
So for me, I was the delivery lead for KTDI (ktdi.org), building identity for multiple governments and the world economic forum and prior to that working with central banks on cross-blockchain payments
He’s the paper from that:
https://www.mas.gov.sg/-/media/Jasper-Ubin-Design-Paper.pdf?la=en&hash=EF5857437C4857373A9287CD86F56D0E7C46E7FF
And for anyone who wants a nap, here is the patent I got from it;
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20210133738A1/en?q=cryptologic&inventor=Fraser+Edwards&oq=Fraser+Edwards+cryptologic
Alex Tweeddale
¡Hello y hola! I’m alex, I have a background in law and digital technologies — specialising in privacy law and blockchain. I’ve worked across some of the major decentralised identity projects worldwide, such as with the US Department of Homeland security.
Alfred
Next question
Q2. What potential does your native token have and what are its different use cases?
Fraser
So, so many uses! We’ve split this out into different areas
This shows it from a roadmap perspective
We’ve also documented it in our tokenomics blog here:
https://blog.cheqd.io/cheqds-tokenomics-for-ssi-explained-f13f680cf00d
Alex Tweeddale
The potential is really huge. Here are possible use cases for SSI:
1. KYC (Know Your Customer): Most processes that touch finance usually require verifying your ID.
2. Travel: International and domestic travel, especially in the age of covid, require visas, passports, and other documents to be shared.
3. NFT: SSI can solve the provenance issue with NFTs regardless of the ledger.
4. Content: fully decentralised content consumption with payment and identity, i.e. consumption of media / content directly from the creator without a distribution channel. A possibility for creators to receive fair payments for their work and interact with audiences directly.
5. Identity tied to payments: There’s no way to verify the identity of the payment receivers in crypto/DeFi transfers beyond the wallet address. It’s a problem even for low-volume transfers, but increasingly more so on high value transfers. There is always a need for anonymous payments in crypto, but equally there are occasions when it’s useful to verify who is receiving funds.
6. Decentralised storage: SSI can be implemented to manage the data of participants and store distributed files with decentralised access control
Adding on from this too, decentralised identity and the technical standards involved (Verifiable Credentials and Decentralised Identifiers) can also be used for:
7. Corporate or organisational identity: Making it easier to trust companies you are interacting with, especially over the internet
8. Product or package identity: Enabling more efficient and effective track and trace for real world supply chains
So a very very wide range of potential future use!
Alfred
many use cases apparently
Fraser
Just a few!
Alfred
Q3. Can you talk a bit about your prospects and how they will benefit from your products and services?
Alex Tweeddale
Un momentito, this one is a bit long!
Alfred
No problem
Frase
So our prospects are pretty wide (like the opportunities) and mainly works around our panrterships strategies:
1. Self-Sovereign Identity vendors (who will also light up nodes on our network) — we’ve already onboarded onto testnet our GTM partner and market leading SSI vendor Evernym, and also key SSI vendor DIDx. We’re currently onboarding other influential SSI vendors: DIDx, DanubeTech, Tykn, Trinsic, Esatus, ContinuumLoop, Randa Solutions, Condatis, Dhiway, EarthID, Crucible Network, Convergence.
2. In the Crypto space — we have notable partnerships with Unizen, CeDefi Alliance around how cheqd can help CeFi and DeFi merge as the risky nature of CeDeFi transfers has been holding back many institutional users. Our crypto alliances pipeline is forming with Cosmos Cash for joint development and we’re in advanced discussions with Sonar, Curio, Blocto, Mintable, Source, and many more forming daily (we’re just getting started!) about how SSI can benefit the DeFi ecosystem.
4. Enterprise partnerships and Implementation partners: We’re also creating interesting partnership models all over the world to make sure our ecosystem grows rapidly!
Fraser
So, by working through those, we’re aiming to target as many ecosystems as possible through the vendors solving all those use cases we mentioned before
Alfred
Excellent
Q4. What is that milestone at cheqd that you are most proud to achieve?
i like this question
Fraser
So for me, this was our recent fundraising announcement. This is my first start-up, so raising 2.6m at 40m valuation was huge for me! It was something I was absolutely terrified about when we were starting
Alfred
Wow
2.6m
Fraser
I’m gonna put a second one: “building our team”. They’re incredible and I think really that’s my proudest moment. Fundraising was biggest relief, hiring our team was proudest. I just spend my time trying not to get in the way
Alex Tweeddale
For me, I have developed a governance framework which is the first of its kind for decentralised identity. This lays out the ways that participants on the cheqd Network are able to make proposals, vote and influence the direction of change on the network, in a democratic way. This is made possible as well since we are building on top of Cosmos, which has native on-ledger governance. I look forward to sharing more on the Governance framework in the next few weeks.
Alfred
Do you still have vacancies available?
Fraser
See, I do things like forget to say done, need Alex around!
Here you go:
https://careers.cheqd.io/jobs
We’re hiring for three devs across DevOps and a full-stack!
Alex Tweeddale
If you’re a dev, and you love what we’re doing, drop us a message!
Alfred
Last question
Q5. What plans does cheqd have for this 2021?
Fraser
Launching! That’s the big one!
On a serious note, it’s still launching! We’ve got our test network live, we’re onboarding partners at a rapid pace, so now it’s all about TGE, & live network!
Our aim is to be out and live in the next month or so! Watch this space!
Join us to watch out!
Telegram Group: https://t.me/cheqd
Twitter: https://twitter.com/cheqd_io
Alfred
Thanks for your answers , we just finished the segment of:
Introductory questions
We move on to the segment of:
Twitter questions
@LeyaNirmala
I understand that one of their characteristics is that they are a real data network, but how is this network different from other common ones that we see in our day to day? Does this network really keep data secure like no other?
Fraser
Great question! So the key differentiator against most is SSI vs just any old data.
So a lot of networks like IPFS and ocean protocol host data but they don’t care about the nature of the data itself, for example, they don’t care if it’s legit or not. We’re very much focusing on trusted data, like passports, driving licenses for things like KYC and such
So we’re a “trusted data” or “authentic data” network
The other key thing is none of the data goes onto the ledger, only company / public data goes on the ledger, personal information goes p2p so it’s entirely private! A lot of networks make this mistake. Anyone who writes information onto a ledger makes it traceable and somewhat breaks people’s privacy, we’re here to maintain that!
Alex Tweeddale
So just to build on from Fraser’s message — great question — we’re building using a new technology called Self-Sovereign identity, which enables data itself to be signed cryptographically. The technical standard for this is known as a Verifiable Credential, developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Our Network natively supports the technical primitives to support Self-Sovereign Identity, and to make it a commercial reality.
@16_albe
One of Cheqd’s solutions is the mobile device and backend software toolkit, which SSI providers can integrate into their own software. What are these devices on which SSI providers can install this solution they are building? What solutions do these tools provide?
Fraser
Nice architecture question there!
So those toolkits can be embedded into everything from phones to service-side software!
On the server-side, we’ve made this as easy as possible to integrate with other systems, for example, the IATA travelpass:
https://www.iata.org/en/programs/passenger/travel-pass/
This takes data from laboratories, governments and airlines and gives it to individual users on their mobiles. They can then decide to share that data to whoever they need to
Alex Tweeddale
In essence, the tools give companies the ability to send and receive verifiable credentials, alongside a native payment of CHEQ. They can incorporate this into their existing business models and enhance the relationships with their clients
Fraser
If anyone is interested in launching a node and beginning to integrate, head to our github:
https://github.com/cheqd
Alex Tweeddale
@MmgvsTodos
One of Cheqd’s main goals is to become the de facto payment mechanism for sharing verifiable credentials but could you explain to me what long term plans they have to reach that goal and get their network moving money without anyone worrying about the underlying cryptographic?
Alex Tweeddale
Having Fiat on and off ramps will enable companies to transact seamlessly and more efficiently — without even having to know they’re using crypto!
Fraser
So we’re going to work with custodians and exchanges to provide seamless crypto-fiat bridges so that end clients don’t need to worry about where it’s going froma crypto perspective, just that ti goes
We think that’s the key thing to getting global adoption
here’s that vision of crypto vs defi blended:
https://blog.cheqd.io/why-centralised-decentralised-finance-cedefi-and-self-sovereign-identity-ssi-work-together-7e49d0e0993a
@soyestefanya_
What are those business models that Cheqd has for verifiable credentials? What is innovative about your project to offer companies, organizations and people in general?
Fraser
What we want to create is customisable models and then let end clients customise these to however they need, we don’t want to be prescribing! Only supporting / facilitating
@Rarr0103
You claim on your website that you allow new business models for verifiable credentials, but can you tell me what these tradable models would be? How do you verify the credentials of companies or people? Is it a process similar to KYC?
Alex Tweeddale
So to answer this succinctly — there will be an initial KYC done by an ‘issuer’. That initial KYC check can then be issued as a Verifiable Credential and signed by the issuer.
That credential is held by a ‘holder’ in a digital wallet. This may be an individual but could also be a company.
When a holder presents the credential to a verifier, the verifier can cryptographically resolve the credential to prove it is authentic, and has not been tampered with.
So it’s not the same as KYC, but it’s reusing the value from KYC multiple times to enable better usar experience and efficiency
Fraser
Not really adding anything but imagine only doing KYC once and then being able to re-use that data for a long, long time, completely cross-use-case
A good sign we need to start explaining use-cases more!
Alex Tweeddale
Data is currently single-use, but we make it recyclable
Alfred
We just finished the segment of:
Twitter questions
Now we move on to the segment of:
Live questions
take the time you want to answer
@Carlos Zamora
Researching and reading their networks and documents I could not find a fixed roadmap, just some plans and ideas for the future… Does it mean that they do not have a roadmap for now? Can you tell me about your plans for this and next year? Where can I keep up to date with future updates and news?
Fraser
Very fair feedback! The long and the short of is we’re laser-focused on launching and everything beyond launching is in a future we’ve got a good idea and vision for but doesn’t make sense to spend huge amounts of time detailing out for a roadmap.
So our detailed roadmap runs till launch and then as soon as that looks locked in, we’ll be looking at the future. We’ve got plenty of plans like using stablecoins for settlement, BBS+ signature (something specific for SSI) but also so so many different payment models and use cases.
We will be publicising something in the coming weeks though as we know everyone wants to see more concrete plans.
What we would say is, we could put go-live in next year and then have a very easy, solid roadmap, but for us, we’d rather be quick and early, rather than detailed, late and dead!
@Wilmer
You seek to make it easier for people and organizations to trust each other, but how will people really trust organizations, when they have been harmed by using the data without their consent, so how will you manage to unite this relationship?
Alex Tweeddale
Self-sovereign identity reframes identity control around individuals. So you will hold a set of claims about yourself in a digital wallet.
These will be issued by an issuer (which will be a company, with a public identifier, known as a public DID)
You then have a choice about who you share your identity claims with, and how much you share. This means that companies will still request your data, but you can choose when to share it, and with the token you can even earn money yourself for sharing the data. So instead of companies monetising your data, the issuer will be remunerated, as well as potentially the data subject
@Juan Sandoval
In your Medium you assure that cheqd has managed to raise an investment of $ 2.6 million to support the launch of its product at the end of this year. So, can you explain to me what will be the product that you will launch this year? Does it require so many funds to launch this product?
Fraser
So that product will be the network and token launch, with enough functionality to support self-sovereign identity projects like this one from Evernym (they’re investors and partners):
https://www.iata.org/en/programs/passenger/travel-pass/
The reason we raised so much despite being so close to launch is we want to make sure we’re successful and can see out a bear market, the 3.3m we raised gives us a lot of firepower to execute whilst keeping us safe over the next few years in case the market goes south.
The Sovrin project hit a bear market, and the SEC and bad execution and had to go volunteer only. We’re not going to do that :D
@Suso
The cheqd proposal is new to me, it makes me think about saving time, money and an avant-garde company, but many companies have a backward culture not willing to change their structure, programming and conflict with the news. What strategies would you use in cases like these to achieve buy-in and see the effectiveness?
Alex Tweeddale
This is a really good point Suso, we don’t want to alienate existing, traditional companies by using SSI.
We need to work alongside them and offer them:
- Cheaper KYC, as KYC only needs to be done once and then can be reused;
2. New payment models — issuers of verified identities can generate a recurring, passive income flow using our network
@Bangladesh
NFT is really a hot topic in the cryptocurrency market now. So how is your project planning to develop NFT then how is your project planning to integrate it with DeFi?
Alex Tweeddale
Verifiable Credentials are actually quite similar conceptually to NFTs except they can be trusted without having to exist on a blockchain, because they are signed by an identifier on a blockchain. This means that personal data can be incorporated into a VC, which is trustworthy, but doesn’t present data protection issues for the holder. In this regard we can use VCs similarly to NFTs in terms of their utility — VCs can also be issued for art and objects like NFTs. But VCs are a bit more nuanced and do not exist directly on ledger
@Lucy
Hiii
I notice that Cheqd_io is building a private and secure SSI (Self-Sovereign identity) digital credentials network. Can you please explain What do you mean by “SSI” in your ecosystem? How does it work? What is the big impact that users will get through digital credential network?
Alex Tweeddale
Essentially the way that data works right now is that it’s held by companies, and you have to log into a company to have access to your data. There is limited data portability because it’s difficult to share identity data between third parties.
And companies monetise your data which is massively problematic — but we sacrifice a bit of privacy for a lot of convenience online.
SSI flips this on it’s head. It allows companies to issue ‘credentials’ for specific claims, a bank for example could issue a credential, after looking at your physical passport saying ‘Lucy is over 18’. Then you could reuse this credential again and again with multiple services efficiently, without ever having to show your physical passport again!
@Nico
The Cheqd project is built on the cosmos network so could you explain to me why you decided to use this network? Have you audited your smart contracts? What other security measures have you integrated to strengthen the security of the project?
Fraser
We’ve written why cosmos a few times, this is probably the most in detail:
https://blog.cheqd.io/why-cheqd-has-joined-the-cosmos-4db8845722c5?source=collection_archive---------5-----------------------
The main thing to say is we’re building on Cosmos so there’s no shady smart contracts to disappear everyone’s eth. We’ve also open sourced the code so everyone can take a look, the best antiseptic is sunlight after all!
In terms of other security measures, we’re leveraging everything cosmos offers and then adding our own security on top such as using secure key storage for any infrastructure we’re running, recommending the same to our other node operators and also segregating infrastructure where we need to.
One big item is for us is we’re starting to work with custodians (e.g. propine) so that we can leverage their custodial solutions and workflows to prevent issues there.
This is a good guide on securing cosmos networks as a base:
https://docs.tendermint.com/master/nodes/running-in-production.html
@ Hafsa
Is your project potential, give a reason why I should choose your project, not for a short time, but for a long time?
Alex Tweeddale
There is a massive push in the regulatory space to have identities linked to crypto payments to avoid criminality and fraud.
We build this functionality natively by bridging SSI and crypto. This positions us very well for the future of crypto which will become increasingly regulated
@Mmmm
What will be the community involvement on kucoin future plan for the coming years?
Fraser
KuCoin is one of the exchanges we’ve put applications into, amongst others, so hopefully a lot!
@Bad lakh
Where can I buy your tokens now,, what are your current contracts and how can I buy them and what are the benefits???
Alex Tweeddale
We haven’t launched yet, but join our telegram community to be the first people to hear when it goes live https://t.me/cheqd
@Cuenta eliminada
To attract an investor to a project, it is important for a project to have tokenomic, experienced team, clear road map etc. My question is do you have all these in your project? If so, where can an investor know the details?
Alex Tweeddale
Hey Sadin, we have all of these, please go and cheq our our blog to see our newly released tokenomics:
blog.cheqd.io
@Wilmer
You seek to make it easier for people and organizations to trust each other, but how will people really trust organizations, when they have been harmed by using the data without their consent, so how will you manage to unite this relationship?
Fraser
Great point. Interestingly, a lot of the companies we’re speaking to, don’t necessarily want to host people’s data, a lot of them just want to offer services and a decent number want to give people back control of their data
Right now, SSI provides the tech but not the commercial models to achieve that, we’re solving that with cheqd
So, we’re finding a lot of these companies are actively engaging saying: “we want to give people data back, we just need to have a revenue / commercial model for this”
@Mmmm
Do you have a Token Burning plan to increase Token value and attract Investors to invest?
Alex Tweeddale
Token burning is incorporated in our governance model, for failing to reach mindeposit, for failure to reach quorum and for a ‘vetoed’ vote.
There is also slashing for bad node operator behaviour
Fraser
Basically, money creates the incentives for companies to give that data and control back
Alex Tweeddale
There’s lots of questions asking where to find more info, here is all the good stuff for you guys! Disfruta!
Please make sure to:
Join our Telegram Group: https://t.me/cheqd
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/cheqd_io
Visit our website: https://www.cheqd.io
Read our blog: https://blog.cheqd.io
Watch our videos: http://cheqd.link/youtube
And, sign up for a cool surprise right after this AMA here: https://www.cheqd.io/l/get-ready
@Maria Fuentes
Have any SSI companies already implemented the use of the business models that Cheqd offers? If so, could you tell us what they would be? but really when will the launch of your products?
Fraser
We’re not live yet, but we’re expecting traffic from day 1. We have evernym as an investor and a partner who are building the iata travelpass with all the airlines below.
We’re also building relationships with Spherity, DanubeTech, Truu and others to take advantage of this
Alfred
Thank you very much for sharing your successful project with our community, we will be waiting for the news and milestones of your project!