AMA Recap: Cheqd X MegaVentures
Host: I welcome our guest @AnkurBanergee
Ankur: Hey all! 👋 Ankur here, CTO and co-founder at cheqd
Host: Great to meet you
Let’s start AMA Session
First of all please introduce yourself, For how long you’ve been building & planning “Cheqd” project?
Ankur: I’m Ankur Banerjee, CTO and co-founder of cheqd. I’ve got a background in software engineering, product dev and innovation. Been working in the blockchain space for about 5 years now, on a range of enterprise and public use cases including in the exciting bits of self sovereign identity. For instance, I worked with the National Health Service in the UK to make it easier for doctors to use digital ID to move between different hospitals.
Host: Cool! Thanks for the background. Can you also share some information about your team and founders? How big is the team right now?
Ankur: You should come say hi to our team! https://www.cheqd.io/about
We’re about 8 people now, plus an external team of 7 devs.
We’re lucky that our team understands both the blockchain world as well the world of digital identity. We’ve got deep expertise working with governments, financial services, healthcare, blockchain and other sectors. Our team is also all united by our mission to make the world a better place and here we’re working hard on giving people their privacy back.
A bit more about me, I’ve also been heavily involved in SSI for the past few years. Some of my previous work is as the lead architect behind https://github.com/hyperledger-labs/blockchain-automation-framework with Hyperledger Foundation, one of the largest open source blockchain foundations.
And, my co-founder and CEO is Fraser Edwards, his most recent project before cheqd was building SSI for international travel with two governments and the World Economic Forum (ktdi.org) and before that was working with two central banks on cross-blockchain patents (with the governments of Canada and Singapore).
Our CFO Javed has experience building blockchain and fintech companies that are regulated and with assets under management upwards of $100mns. And the rest of our team with Eduardo, Alex, Elina, Ross, Toby are all highly experienced in startup world and passionate about blockchain and identity.
Host: Great! Are you currently expanding and adding more talents to your team?
Ankur: At the moment, we have a solid core team and focussed purely on going live. So while we aren’t recruiting at the moment, we look to hire developers and business folks in a couple of months
Host: Great! Excited to know more about Cheqd project
Ankur: We are focused on going live with our current team. Although, we’re always looking for passionate people about identity and crypto, it’s an upcoming niche where we expect to see more people getting into. If you’re interested in getting involved, join our communities.
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
Host: Can you please explain the main concept behind “Cheqd”?
Ankur: cheqd is a software company that is building a secure network to enable individuals and organisations to take full control of their personal data using blockchain technology.
Think about when you go to a bank to open a new account. You need to provide documents to prove who you are. Or there are other scenarios when you have to prove authentic data, such as when travelling.
We’re working on making this process digital and more secure, and in the control of the user. That’s why it’s called “Self Sovereign” (i.e., in your control) identity.
We’re creating a token, called CHEQ, so companies can monetise self-sovereign identity. It enables new business models, where verifiable credentials are exchanged in a trusted, reusable, safer, and cheaper way.
cheqd makes it easier to create authentic data ecosystems through customisable commercial models and governance structures, all built upon a public permissionless network with a dedicated token for payment. Oh, and authentic data is data, which source can be proved.
Think of your digital identity right now, with Facebook or Google…these are with one single company where they do whatever they want with your data. You have little control or portability behind it
What we’re aiming for is to give the control back from these 100s of accounts you have online to something private, secure, and incentivised with a token which puts you in control.
Host: That’s awesome. What are the key features that Cheqd will offer to its users?
Ankur: Our core functionality is the ability for individuals and companies to hold digital credentials, and the ability for payments to be made when digital credentials get exchanged. This term is often called “self sovereign identity” or “SSI” — it is identity that you control.
Easily accessible common and public infrastructure
1. Most SSI blockchain ID projects are private permissioned, and we want to change this to public permissionless
2. Our core hypothesis is that self-sovereign identity needs commercial models that accelerate its adoption. Having worked in SSI for 3–4 years, there aren’t really any viable projects that have made business models happen yet
3. We’re providing a common and public infrastructure easily accessible to anyone and any organisation with payment rails between issuers, holders, and receivers of trusted data.
Standards, compliance and interoperability focus
1. Unlike a lot of other projects, we have deep expertise in digital identity, and working with large trustworthy organisations and governments. For example, we have our CEO Fraser Edwards who worked on international travel with the World Economic Forum; Ankur has worked with the UK govt and banks on digital ID and I’ve worked with the US Department of Homeland Security on digital ID for tracking and tracing products.
2. A lot of other projects are not compatible with the technical and legal standards for how private data should be handled, and we’re working very closely with the community to make sure ours is compliant — and therefore has better adoption. We want to harmonise and unite the decentralised identity industry, rather than fragment it.
Ankur: You can read more here in a blog post we did earlier: https://blog.cheqd.io/the-business-models-of-identity-bb3336773727
Host: I would say great initiative for Privacy Data.
Let’s move to our last question from 1st segment
Can you now tell us what are the utilities of Cheqd?
Ankur: The main utility being to power identity verification transactions. We see it playing a major role in travel, eCommerce and finance (KYC).
And a little bonus, here are possible use cases for SSI.
KYC (Know Your Customer): Most processes that touch finance usually require verifying your ID.
Travel: International and domestic travel, especially in the age of covid, require visas, passports, and other documents to be shared.
NFT: SSI can solve the provenance issue with NFTs regardless of the ledger.
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.
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 im crypto, but equally there are occasions when it’s useful to verify who is receiving funds.
Decentralised storage: SSI can be implemented to manage the data of participants and store distributed files with decentralised access control.
Decentralized identity and the technical standards involved (Verifiable Credentials and Decentralized Identifiers) can also be used for:
Corporate or organizational identity
Making it easier to trust companies you are interacting with, especially over the internet
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!
Host: Lots of interesting and cool stuff in Cheqd project
