Polygon ID: Private Identity Infrastructure for Web3 with Otto & Sebastian

Transcript

[Music] what is up coordination on the Pod today we've got Auto B who is the sales lead for the Americas for polygon ID and Sebastian who is product manager for polygon ID so polygon ID is a privacy preserving identity tool that polygon has been uh has been building and I think that what's really exciting about this is we can build more trust in web 3 users being humans unique compliant well reputed and trustworthy and that can achieve really green pilled ends things like digital democracy Cil proof uh protocols stabs reputation-based Defi and governance portable social

reputation private Access Control passwordless login seamless user onboarding so a lot of things that are regenerative pro-social pro- environmental and pro user can be built once you have identity layers because you've got positive some games that can be bootstrapped when we understand who our our counterparties are and so with those positive some games and repeated interactions you can build a more regenerative cryptoeconomic internet and I think that identity is one of those things where there's great opportunity but there's also great Peril because you don't want to dox your information into a decentralized permissionless immutable Network and so building a privacy preserving identity layer is something I think is really high upside for the

ecosystem and polygon idea is investing a lot of resources into making that happen so where we want to get to I think is a ecosystem in which more users are getting verifiable credentials and soulbound tokens and recentralized identifiers and then you got more D apps who are consuming that information and that creates a network effect where there's more credentials out there which is more useful for DS and you've got more D apps and people are generating more credentials and so that's what's called a network effect how can we build a network effect of more generative to economic Internet to the point where it's growing exponentially and it's Unstoppable and polygon ID is I think stimulating some of some of that so

that's why I was excited to have Otto and Sebastian on OD today to talk about polygon on and ID so I think that you're going to enjoy this one if you're into decentralized identity and positive some games enjoy Val is an open Global Collective working to finance and democratize the governance of synthetic biology Technologies to protect the future of our planet research and progress into synthetic bi ology is critically constrained by the world of nation state regulations and bureaucracy from middlemen but the potential that synthetic biology has for the world is massive it can produce a world in total harmony with nature we can grow stuff using cells like software it's awesome and the best part is we no longer have to pull carbon out of the ground to grow and maintain civilization don't you

think we should be funding this Valley da does and that's what they're here to do to try and make the solar Punk World of Tomorrow a reality today so join Valley Dow right now and Save the Planet at Valley dow. bio hey Sebastian hey Oto how you doing hi thank you great to be here yeah yeah excited to talk about polygon ID today so uh how does it work and maybe OT will go to you first yeah so polygon ID is a is a platform that is aiming to empower users to you know be self- Sovereign over their credentials and their data um and you know self Sovereign da is not something new verifiable credentials have been around for some time but what differentiates US versus other self- sofware identity

platforms out there that have been already attempting to do this in the market is that we allow privacy by default right that's kind of what we try to kind of encourage users to have so you have a set of credentials in your wallet they'll say you know attributes about your identity maybe they'll say this is your you know date of birth this is your country you're a citizen from this is your credit score uh other information those credentials are very much like cards that live in your wallet right so they're they're not like you know public on the blockchain but they do have a blockchain anchoring component they have a like say a hash or a connection to the blockchain in some sense um so that you're able to prove that they're valid essentially that's

what that's and then you'll um be interacting with the verifier um when you use those credentials right so the verifier will going to ask credentials about those uh uh questions about those credentials so they ask cred in the form of uh let's say demonstrate that you're older than 18 right or demonstrate to me that you are a citizen of this country or maybe that you're a member of this club or perhaps a more Nuance question demonstrate that your credit score is between you know 500 and 600 you know questions like that was be questions that asked and so what differentiates us is that we're able to you know you know derive Ser knowledge proofs from those

credentials to demonstrate the validity of the data without revealing the full credential data right because that's normally what happens in other you know SSI platforms is you'll have to directly reveal the full credential and in doing so you'll enable you know kind of correlation and tracking and other things that come along with that so we kind of encourage users to have you know this privacy by default by generating Ser knowledge proofs from the credentials that they have so these credentials will live in your wallet you generate Z knowledge proofs of them and then that will satisfy you know what the verifier wants to know and a verifier in this case could be a dow U you know that wants to check that you're in a given country or that you have a given

membership or other attribute or let's say a defi protocol that's trying to encourage only users within a certain credit score or from a certain country participate in their platform right that that's essentially what what st's doing right and then so the the credentials live in your wallet they have a blockchain encoring and you're generating these Ser knowledge proofs from there right so that's that's like the main the main thing that we have and then we have a marketplace where you can kind of get these credentials from a set of isers you know that will kind of be onboarding onto our Marketplace but we can get into that later that's that's that's it got it well the thing that most resonated with me about your answer is is enabling identity but doing it in a privacy first way is the most

important things so you're walking in a knife's edge between uh releasing information about a user but also not releasing too much so that it can be correlated and become personally identifiable and the example that resonates with me is that I walk into a gas station and I want to buy a pack of cigarettes or something and I have to verify that I'm 18 I want to prove that I'm 18 but without revealing my name and my address so that like the creepy clerk can't look me up on Facebook or something afterwards so um walking that knif edge between privacy and identity is something that polygon ID can do with zero knowledge proofs was was I the primary thing that I heard there yeah yeah yeah exactly that's what it is and and the other thing we want to try to

get away from is sort of this um overreliance on soulbound tokens for credentials which I think is something that's right very common right now but you know in doing so you're kind of doxing your blockchain addresses right you're kind of revealing to the world who what blockchain address you're using so we believe you know these credentials can live private in your wallet you can reveal them to who you like and you know reveal the attributes about that who you like and you know if you do so need to Mint an nft that you know gives you the ability to kind of you know showcase or back to the world that you have this given credential then you can do so but that should be more your option and not your default that you use a soulbound token and that's like your you know the way to you get access to other platforms

so we we think that should be more optional as opposed to by default yeah I know that when Glenn and ballic released that paper uh about decentralized system Society finding web 3 Soul there was a lot of really interesting ideas about how to use digital identity Technologies but because they really focused on soulbound tokens I think people lost the forest for the trees and we're just debating the merits of soulbound tokens and everything like that but there's a whole category of decentralized identifiers and verifiable credentials that don't aren't soulbound to an address and um you know I see a lot on polygon ID's website about verifiable credentials so um seems like you're investing heavily there yeah absolutely and yeah we believe that

you know there could be use cases for nfts where nfts are more tied to a given identity as opposed to soulbound and then just like set on a given blockchain address so you know we believe in this concept of you know perhaps you get a verifiable credential that says you're a solidity expert and you get you gain it through some you know online you know Academy website and then maybe you use that credential to me an nft that's bound to your identity that says you're a solidity expert and you can brag about it you know on the blockchain ETC but then what happens if you like let's say lose your blockchain address or you want to rotate to a different blockchain address so if through a Ser knowledge proof you can demonstrate that you're that person again you can transfer that

nft from you know the one original address to another address that you like so in that way you know kind of the nft follows you around with your identity and if you demonstrate that you're in control of a separate blockchain address and you're that same person again that'll be transferred over so you know we think that's you know there could be a kind of a medium between both both sides of verifiable credentials and the spbt where it's kind of you know identity bound is what we believe it identity bound uh it's a there's a meme opportunity in there somewhere I'm curious uh how the first experiments of things being built on top of the platform have been going what within the polygon identi ecosystem are you most excited about what does this enable for

your users I'd love to hear from both of you what what your favorite applications built on top of this are yeah absolutely so right now we're sort of in this process of building what we call a Marketplace of credentials and I'll let Sebastian expand on the concept in a little bit but we've sort of enabled U on boarded a a group of issuers that issue uh various types of credentials some of them are kyc type of credentials that say where your uh you know source of wealth is where your address is from or you know what country you're citizen off that kind of thing um others will like look at your onchain activity you know and then be able to issue your credentials from that so like wiw is one sample of a partner where they can look

at to say how many loans you've been paying on a and whether you've been paying in L time and they derive a credential from that or how many nfts you've had on polygon and they give you a credential from that so we've we've had a variety of issuers that we're working with that will kind of enable these base use cases that will then be consumed by the you know verifiers in this case it Dows or defi that will have a use for that uh and then on the other side of this we we call it a triangle it's called a triangle trust where there's you know the issuers of credentials the verifiers and then like at the top is the identity holder with their wallet right so on the wallet and on this on this side of the the triangle we have a set of wallet providers that

are integrating with us uh and then two of two of the ones that we're um you know working with already verita and Al me Europe are are quite exciting because they're sort of you know web three wallets that also have like identity capabilities so you have like NTS living side by side next to your verifiable credentials and you know there it's kind of an interesting interplay there where you know we have that uh option there so we have a polygon ID app and that's a reference app but as I'm saying you know we would rather have uh you know existing while it's kind of integrated into us um so yeah some exciting use cases already U we we announced set of Partners in Denver um including you know the sandbox and others that are

integrated with us um but I think in in the coming months there'll be more more uh of these partners and should be some exciting announcements I don't know if uh Sebastian wants to add any any context to that or the marketplace of grul well I I like to uh out the of the end gate sometimes it's true that we we not technology but uh I think we may uh in risk of of using the means by by the right um and very D all these things are just me for end and the end uh polyon ID is I think I be summarizing trusted identities working with trusted

application right it's all about trust uh from both sides I think this is the so poon is a company well know for add scalability scalability is probably thinking about Mass adoption or chain is the first thing you you you find right and probably that's that's why so the first prob that everybody has jumped uh to Sol and I'm probably G do as well but then the second thing that goes to mind we using about massive adoption there are people using blockchain for real application is a broad of trust right and we're seeing every day there the scams the r pools etc etc right so this not only from the

from the user it's not only that the user needs to be trusted right the applications need to be trusted business so that we have the problem of trust and the problem of trust had a very straightforward solution in in more uh we have organization delivery right certifying TR uh but uh there is a there's a centralization aspect to it there is a control aspect to it the it implies censorship and also uh uh we are giving away a lot of privacy because of that so the reason why we have started wordid focusing on privacy

is because web three is going to need St is going to go through some regulation right and um so part of that may not necessarily be but but thing it's just that we need to to to find a way to be compliant without giving way of privacy without without go security power right but there is no way that we're going to reach Mass adoption uh in the white West right that's not going to happen it didn't happen for work two it's not happen for three people require some security they they they trust uh uh the CES or the transactions or whatever is they there to be uh to a new technology so we are trying to find that perfect match between uh being able to transfer

a certain ified trust between BS without the concentration of power without losing the privacy in the process right that is the that is the end game it's about creating that Marketplace or that Hub or whatever you got it of trust where credentials can be issued and consume right with the maximum guarantees of the yeah this is part of the polygon ID website that I really love it says building trust in web 3 users being humans unique compliant well reputed and trustworthy and then there's a second section so we can achieve digital democracy civil proof protocols reputation-based defi portable social reputation private Access Control passwordless login and

seamless user onboarding so I love the sort of like this polygon ID being sort of a springboard to all of these things that are regenerative cryptoeconomics that are that are actually good for the end end end users and um yeah just just positioning it that way I think is the way it really resonates in in the green pill thesis for me right now if you are uh I following that that line of of thought right uh right now and and I think this is the reason why that we we are the first ones to tackle the identity problem right there is a lot of uh companies as Auto State prob have been out there for some time right uh and this is what the first time somebody

say s identity what um but the the the if we take that to the Practical level right if you are a the today and you are creating your first V getting funding Etc is you and three more guys all very technical skilled right but then your application has to check for age right so or you have to J for Country okay how easy is that how is is to find the proper isue how is this to s a contact with I how is this to pay for it how is this to integrate it into your application usually it's not it's not easy at all also uh from the user point of view the experience is is uh at one time right they they do it for your site

they will have to it for other site and then for other site and each time the process will look different right uh so everybody is using the bad you user experience as an excuse not to gra the bar on on the trust requirement right since it's difficult to implement it's difficult for the user it's not reusable it's not priv data is also a liability right I start keeping data uh that's liability for a small company right all both excuses right to give the the bar of the trust quite no and say you know what it's is the way everybody does it right so I think we having is skipping this uh this uh hygiene or this uh uh good practices

on on checking on our user or checking on application because it's just the easiest thing so our Miss as so to say is not only to cover the technical aspect of it so we are providing now tools for everyone every tools for for issuers for verifiers and we keep expanding of the tool inside but a very important aspect of our vision is also to be this system right where if you integrate one Library you get immediate access to 100 different issuers with a big repository of credentials that you guys just can connect to and use right we need to we our vision is to simplify the end process for a developer that wants to raise the bar on the on the

trash onip yeah thank you AO anything to add there I mean I I I like what Sebastian has I think that the vision is that you know getting a verifiable credential in the end should be as easy as going onto the iTunes Store to just download a song like it should it should be as easy as that like I mean I obviously I'm oversimplifying it but we want it to be like that you know right now when you want to do a kyc check you're going to through a set of contracts and you know have to pick a package of kyc credentials they're going to charge you at least you know you know five 5K or more for a set of credentials um and you know no developer wants to go through that right like they just want to be you know getting ready to go

getting their users onboarded like already developing a a a web3 platform is enough of a challenge so you know we want to make it really easy for users to just touch and go and be able to add identity to their platform and in a very uh you know developer friendly way you know I I'm wondering what a world looks like in which you all are maximally successful so project me out it's 20 it's May 2023 right now I think that this episode will probably air in June um you know take take me five or 10 years out and polygon ID is maximally successful how do that change web 3 and and and what does that world look like I think that identity is uh I like in identity like water right for by water

for fish right so fish you you don't realize that you are surrounded by it right so you only you only acknowledging you're out right so if we are massively successful uh we we like to s in this idea of liquidity of credential right and liquidity of credentials is for any app any the app in web threee right what are the chances that any user getting to the app for the first time will be able to interact with the app in a trusted way with zero friction because the user already has credentials that he obtained somewhere else right uh that can reuse that interoperate e across applications

and there are H certified cryptographically uh maintaining privacy right so when nobody cares about that is that is access par people don't even see don't even see the product and they are just focusing on uh having trusted interactions yeah and if I may add to that I think the other thing is you know back to your original question and U like what original is and as as Sebastian was mentioning is this future of digital democracy you know the inspiration for you know polygon ID is in fact wanting to do uh digital democracy you know it was founded by people from Catalonia from Spain that wanted to enable kind of this digital democracy you know

experiment idea that they had but back then they weren't even able to scale the blockchain and that's what they had to go and start Hermes and start ckvm and we know how that played out now right like they've had to do the ckvm project but so to this future of digital democracy I think you know that we get Beyond just being able to authenticate that users are humans and that they're from a given country in Dallas and that they're not gaming the the voting proposals in Dallas but they we're going even further and we're allowing for things such as delegative democracy right that we like to call Liquid democracy where you can delegate votes to other people and then there's this trust online um you know all these online cooperatives which I think are very you know kind of the future really of of organizations and nonprofits at

least in my mind these online cooperatives that are DS and that you can just easily you know either trust in somebody delegate your vote to someone or take control when you want to you know through this uh kind of self- soverign identity protocol that we're making it available yeah I'd love to pinch in zoom on the uh the Catalonia story there because I think that I may be familiar as somewhat of an OG in the space but I don't know that all the audience would be so if it's relevant maybe we could pinch and zoom on that for a few minutes soan I think you're you're the perfect person since you're you're in Barcelona so you should you should one on yeah yeah so well um there are some historical facts right that may support

uh a vision right of the independence of Catalonia from the uh uh rest of Spain right so Spain actually has been longer being a separate collection of states that being Wasing right so it's quite a young country as a as a single one uh some I think back in 200 11 or 12 I think uh they now uh there was a strong movement started in favor of that uh it was uh there were some uh conditions that acted as CICS by some very conservative government in the center and well I probably the effect as

well of Crisis a number of things just made it perfect for popular expression to be massive in favor of that right and people were against or in favor but I would say the big majority of aalon was if they were voting the the issue right so even even for people that was against uh the the separation uh almost everyone in Catal was in fav of asking uh in a referendum right but the the central government the referendum and they uh there was an attempt of referend it was called illegal by the government there was polic policy repression uh it was a a big mess right

the results were were not taken as conclusive because all the uh uh interference for the police uh but I think it exposed the fact that um uh how difficult right it was to to to ask people what they wanted and and many of the some of the founders of her where the the origal compan the initial company uh saw that and and wanted to to create a digital democracy right and they realize very soon that democracy is very linked to identity and privacy right and that's how the ID three protocol that other pin's PO ID was for

the that por ideas of product is quite new but ID three which is the protocol that has all the Primitives and the design of of everything it's been in the makeu for three years right and it was made for a government election I mean that's that's the level of privacy that it was uh included by Design right so it's a protocol that you you want to take it work on to uh car elections it has all the counter measures all the design principles to all for a level of privacy and security yeah thanks I I know it's a little bit of a diversion from talking about polygon ID but just tracing the roots of connecting what I mean what democracy is

to decentralize Identity and um everything in democracies what from voting to social benefits um um to interacting with many government services depends on ID and just tracing that rout to the cloud loading Freedom Fighter movement I think that's lore in this space to to many of us and um you know I don't want to take too much of a diversion in in into it but I do think that connecting some of the these dots for the listeners was valuable so thank you for uh for humoring me on that little diversion there um so what what haven't I asked about uh polygon ID that you want to tell us it feels like there's a there's a deep Vision here I just want to make sure that the audience can fully see it so um OT maybe I'll go to you next what what haven't I asked

that you want to tell us about polygon ID well I think one of the the things that would be worth clarifying is that yes polygon ID has the polygon name in it but it's actually fully evm compatible so you can Port this onto you know Avalanche optimism arbitrum you can take our stack and just deploy it you know in any AVM compatible chain it's fully open source the founders care very much about open source and public goods so it's something we value you know a lot and then we want to make available we want to PE want to see what people build on top of this protocol right it's it's you know you know out there for people to integrate you know do cool things you can hack it you can Fork it and you know you can make your own like

versions of this so we're kind of out there to build this ecosystem we want to see this benefit web 3 as a as a whole more so than just polygon like obviously if you Deploy on polygon you know we're going to be happy right but you know even beyond that you know we're we're happy to just bring web 3 um you know an identity Solution that's you know scalable and that could Inspire other people to start you know getting into this um moving away from the Primitive of just an ethereum address being equal to an identity to an identity controlling a set of keys like if we can get to that start getting into um you know that Vision I think we've already done a good job in kind of helping web three out there I don't know so yeah the evm compatibility I think

matters a lot uh because just the evm seems to be everywhere in blockchainbased networks so being able to deploy this in anywhere that's that's evm equivalent or evm compatible uh is is really interesting um how can builders get involved in building on top of polygon ID so we'll have a link to the Tool uh to polygon ID's website in the in the show notes but do you have any specific areas that you want people to focus or should they just come and check out the SD K and and build on top of it how can builders get involved with polygon ID yeah absolutely so we've we've we've deployed a set of tutorials that are available online so if you go to our website polygon.net polygon ID you'll be able to access the tutorials uh from the

tutorials page we have you know a set of videos that explain polygon idea in further detail and then uh there's also a link to something called polygon University in which you'll encounter this gentleman here Sebastian explaining the element ments of SSI and and just all of the you know base elements of how polygon ID works and I think that's also a great material for you to be able to just kind of get into the details of how this all operates how set KPS are done and you know what can you build using this so um yeah I think that's what we have out there we have a set of uh sdks depending on on you know what use case you have so if you're a wallet developer we have a flutter uh you know mobile app

in CK that you can used to integrate either for Android or iOS um we also have SD for JavaScript so if you have more of a browser based extension you can use or JavaScript SD and if you're an issuer of credentials we have the issuer node which allows you to issue credentials this is a server that you run in your infrastructure please kind of ignore the word node there it doesn't mean that you're running a blockchain node it's just a server that connects to a blockchain note and then if you're a verifier and you want to consume these credentials you can do so either use using our JavaScript or goang libraries or you can use our sample smart contracts that we have that allow you to kind of verify credentials on chain so you could develop even you know a DA or a defy that based on you know some proof

that you demonstrate that gets consumed on chain and then the smart contract takes some action to allow you to get an airdrop or get access to a particular protocol or another thing so yeah we have a you know kind of the tutorials out there and we're excited to see what people can build we have an ecosystem space in our web page where we are starting to populate all the issuers that are very credentials uh supporting PO ID uh so that that's a good way to start right if you see credentials there that you may use your shots then that is that is the immediate value that you get right so because you can be interested in the technology but in the end if you're looking for application uh the

ecosystem uh is is wor to start and this second is if you are uh looking for new use cases or things that you can now that right so uh ways to expand your your uh um application we allow for something quite cool which is the onchain verification that is uh private uh verification uh by your smart contract orile credentials are Store look right this is something that wasn't possible before one of the unique features of the product and always for new use cases right right uh the the most easiest one

and the most Co one is uh you could do a kyc air right people could just be presenting both of their uh credentials to the smart cult and give gr uh without any of the personal information right but with the full go that you doing hmer Bo so there's a number of things uh every time you introduce one this enable new things but you have new use cases and and you you you throw these to hackers and then find then the ways of of using it so I would say that these are to also nice way to yeah so um building on top of the sdks getting involved in the ecosystem

and also seeing what other ecosystem stuff has been built um are things that people should check out and check out the website link in the show notes and I'm really excited about the building of network effects here more people with verifiable credentials is going to mean more apps that want to consume those credentials is going to mean more people uh pulling those verifiable credentials I'm just excited about the network effects of web 3 identity assuming that it's done in a privacy preserving responsible way of course but um yeah I'm really excited about seeing this ecosystem spin up and more positive some games more regenerative uses of crypto being built on top of that so uh that's why I'm excited about this episode and and thank you so much for for joining

the green pill pot I hope to see polygon ID uh grow that ecosystem in the future thank you s coms yeah thanks for inviting us a big fan of what you all are doing for web 3 adoption and um yeah looking forward to building side by side with you in the next cycle all right peace and love [Music]