Why Decentralized Identity?

The Growing Problem of Trust in Digital Interactions

When you interact in the digital world—whether shopping online or sending messages (texts, emails, etc.) — you quickly run into a problem: it’s hard to know who you’re truly interacting with. We've long dealt with scammers impersonating trusted entities through phishing attacks that pose as legitimate financial services. However, these threats have become increasingly sophisticated. Advances in AI now allow fraudsters to imitate the voice of a colleague or relative, or even generate realistic-looking videos, leading to significant financial harm for individuals and organizations. In short, the problem of knowing who you’re interacting with is becoming harder to solve.

Current Fraud Prevention: Flawed and Ineffective

Organizations currently prevent fraud by requesting large amounts of information from individuals to prove their identity. However, this approach has two major flaws:

For organizations: This leads to onboarding friction, delays, and the burden of managing and securing sensitive data.
For individuals: This often results in data breaches and increased risk, as they repeatedly share personal information with multiple service providers. Moreover, individuals go through significant effort to prove who they are, but they still can't always be certain who they're interacting with.

In short, existing fraud mitigation techniques create problems for all parties and are ill-equipped to handle the increasing sophistication of modern threats.

The Solution: Decentralized Identity

Decentralized identity introduces a fundamental shift in identity management, addressing these challenges by empowering both organizations and individuals:

Trust at Every Interaction: Every party can be certain they are interacting with the intended counterparty, whether in business or personal transactions.
Data Control for Individuals: Individuals have full control over their data, deciding exactly what to share, and with whom, for each interaction.

Moreover, decentralized identity technology goes beyond current systems by addressing threats across multiple communication channels. Whether through phone calls, texts, or emails that direct individuals to an online transaction, decentralized identity can secure these interactions across channels, ensuring trust and security throughout the process. This cross-channel capability is a game-changer for securing all types of remote interactions.