Web Laptop Protocol (ICP), a decentralized blockchain community that extends the performance of Web3 by overcoming the constraints of conventional blockchains and sensible contracts, has launched Verified Credentials (VCs), a walletless resolution that allows environment friendly and reliable sharing of non-public information whereas sustaining privateness and management.
It was formally unveiled on the Digital Id unConference Europe (DICE) 2024 in Zurich, Switzerland. Verified Credentials additionally deliver with them the primary utility designed to stop the manipulation of public discourse on social media by eliminating the issue of bots and faux accounts, an important mission given that almost half the worldwide inhabitants is ready to vote in nationwide elections in 2024.
At this time, for many customers, their wallets equivalent to Metamask, work as their common Web3 id. With VCs, ICP presents a walletless infrastructure and tooling to challenge, share, and eat credentials in a privacy-preserving vogue.
VCs, described in ICP’s newest Roadmap as one of many key focus areas, are constructed on high of the Web Id (II), a decentralized id resolution operating end-to-end on the Web Laptop blockchain. Web Id gives a sturdy authentication resolution primarily based on passkeys slightly than passwords or seed phrases. Passkeys are constructed on a standardized know-how that gives safety in opposition to phishing assaults. This makes Web Id each extra handy and safe than conventional sign-in strategies.
Verifiable credentials are digital representations of knowledge ({qualifications}, achievements, or attributes) which can be cryptographically secured and transportable. A VC is a digital model of a bodily credential that the holder can shortly share on-line with service suppliers needing to confirm a declare, equivalent to age or humanity. The VC is tied to a consumer via a digital id supplier like Web Id.
Jan Camenisch, CTO of the DFINITY Basis commented “The new Verifiable Credentials feature of Internet Identity addresses long-standing problems for online privacy-preserving authentication: all a user needs is a computing device that has a passkey (all recent ones do) and a browser. Apart from dApps on the Internet Computer, traditional systems can also plug in with Internet Identity and allow users to authenticate with Verifiable Credentials, e.g., proving that they are a real person, that they did KYC, or that they are over 18.”
Till now, customers authenticating with Web Id to a dApp had been assigned a singular and pseudonymous identifier for every dApp with none extra attributes equivalent to title, age, or residency. The Verified Credentials framework permits customers to assign id attributes to their Web Id.
The consumer can simply handle and reuse the credential with out dApps having the ability to tie it again to them. VCs put customers in command of who they share their credentials with and the way a lot data they wish to expose. As an example, a consumer can confirm their age with out revealing their title or date of beginning, a function referred to as selective disclosure.
When end-users authenticate to an utility, Web Id creates their distinctive identifier for that service. This fashion, totally different purposes can’t observe customers as they discover the online.
Furthermore, the Verified Credentials framework solves the issue of dApp interoperability in a privacy-preserving vogue. Web Id (II) acts because the trusted middleman between a Relying Get together and an Issuer, utilizing an alias to share credentials as a substitute of the consumer’s actual principal.
Proof of Distinctive Humanity (PoUH)
One of many first purposes of Verified Credentials within the ICP ecosystem is the Proof of Distinctive Humanity (PoUH), carried out by the decentralized on-chain messaging app OpenChat and developed by Determine AI. The id issuer hyperlinks a credential to biometric information equivalent to facial, finger or palm print recognition, requiring customers to show that they’re human and possess just one account on a platform.
Customers anonymously utilizing a number of accounts and bots has lengthy been thought of a problem that not solely contributes to the quantity of illicit behaviour performed on-line but in addition underpins the extent of poisonous discourse prevalent on conventional social media platforms.
A report printed on the finish of 2023 by the Queensland College of Know-how confirmed that the unfold of disinformation by bots is getting worse. Researchers recognized a community of 1,200 automated X (previously Twitter) accounts selling the conspiracy principle that Trump beat present President Joe Biden within the 2020 election, which attracted over three million impressions. Additionally they found a separate community of 1,300 accounts damaged into clusters circulating pro-Trump messages, together with deceptive information gadgets.
Proof of Distinctive Humanity (PoUH) will assist fight the exercise of bots and foster extra virtuous discourse on social media. The issue with the present Proof of humanity is that it’s simple to govern. Customers or bots can resolve all kinds of proof of humanity checks and do it 100 occasions over to get 100 accounts.
Then again, Proof of Distinctive Humanity (PoUH) prevents individuals from piloting a number of on-line accounts by linking a credential to biometric information. It eliminates the danger of a consumer creating lots of of social media accounts, or benefiting from token farming or airdrops through the use of a couple of account.
Concerning the Web Laptop
The Web Laptop Protocol (ICP) is a decentralized cloud 3.0 protocol that permits builders to construct and run providers and enterprise programs immediately on a public blockchain community with unprecedented scalability. Companies operating on high of ICP are tamper-proof and might natively work together with the skin world in a trustless method, each with conventional Internet 2.0 providers and with different blockchains. The quick, low-cost, and energy-efficient protocol establishes a brand new paradigm for a way a decentralized community really operates in web3.
