Own Your Identity with Fractal ID

Introduction:

Identity is of great importance in the society, both online and offline. It is what makes us who we are.

As we gradually transition from web2.0 to web3.0, the web begins to take form with many web3 applications. Verifying an online identity is necessary to make the web safe for everyone with adequate utilization of available resources.

The internet has experienced remarkable growth in utility and adoption, becoming a pool of diverse individual identities, both verified and unverified. However, the question is, how is this data managed? Is it secured?

Identity verification is also important to businesses, companies, and corporations to help understand their customers or consumers and thus build and provide services they can relate to and interact with sufficiently.

Web3.0 has led to the rise of many novel decentralized applications across different sectors, from finance to health, agriculture, etc. However, the current web structure offers little privacy, and its anonymity puts the web structure in jeopardy.

What is needed?

Fractal Decentralized Identities (Fractal ID):

Fractal ID is a product of the Fractal Protocol based on a trust framework for identity management by allowing users to create and control their identities digitally (online).

Fractal ID executes verifications ranging from human uniqueness for Sybill-resistance to KYC/AML (Know Your Customer/Anti-Money Laundering) for regulatory compliance. Fractal ID also allows businesses to outsource part of their regulatory compliance needs without compromising transparency and integrity. All sensitive data is encrypted and subject to state-of-the-art security processes.’ (see Fractal ID — [Public] Fractal Gitbook)

Fractal ID consists of the following elements:

• Identity Owner: The person or entity who creates the identity.
• Identity Wallet: Fractal wallet enables the user to store and manage their decentralized identity.
• Issuer/Verifier: Fractal issues and verifies the identity information provided by the user.
• Service Providers: Applications that accept decentralized identities for authentication.
• Blockchain: Fractal utilizes the substrate framework on the Polkadot blockchain to provide the mechanism and features for Fractal ID.
• Identifier: The fractal ID contains details such as the public key, verification information, and service endpoints.

In simple terms, Fractal ID is an infrastructure that allows its technology to act as a base layer (or bridge) for access to decentralized services. by offering on-chain identity verification services (KYC) in such a way that only reveals a piece of user-specific information relative to the service requirements without revealing its underlying data.

Setting Up Fractal ID:

When setting up the ID, users upload their underlying personal information and credentials, e.g. name, age, address, jurisdiction, a valid ID, employment status, etc, which are collected once only when setting up the Fractal Wallet. The information is verified, encrypted and stored securely by Fractal.

How to setup your Fractal ID: Using your browser (Chrome, Opera-mini, Firefox etc.), start your Fractal ID setup by:

Goto: https://protocol.fractal.id/protocol and click on ‘Fractal ID & Wallet. (See Image below)

Next Step, click on the ‘Signup with Fractal’ call to action button. (See image below)

You can enter ‘your email or phone’ to signup and tick the box below agreeing to the cookie policy. (See image below)

Check your email and click on the link sent to complete your ID setup.

Why Fractal ID?

Simplicity: With DIDs, Web3 projects can easily interact with their users without accessing or managing personal data through ‘Credential Proof Verification’ or ‘DID Registry Lookup’ based on verified user uniqueness, reputation, and KYC/AML status. Thus enabling activities such as; democratic governance with the one-person-one-vote, distribution of airdrops in the right proportion and devoid of bot attacks, NFT authentication, unlocking undercollaterize loans etc. (see here )

Privacy: The current web2 infrastructure forces users ( consumers) to surrender their identity in full with little information on why some of the data is required and how the data is secured. Fractal ID puts consumers back in control of their personal information while helping businesses scale their consumer information needs with verified encrypted data. The concept of “selective disclosure”

ID Integrity: Data integrity is the maintenance of, and the assurance of, data accuracy and consistency over its entire life-cycle and is a critical aspect to the design, implementation, and usage of any system that stores, processes, or retrieves data (see here)

By leveraging the blockchain to provide a decentralized identity solution (DID), Fractal ID can fine-tune and structure data collection before storing it. Verify data quality and detect data issues quickly. In a practical sense, user information is verified off-chain, encrypted and stored on-chain, making the user information verified, secure, easy to update, and readily accessible.

ID Interoperability: Fractal is building on Polkadot’s substrate framework, thus leveraging the power of cross-chain technology to enable true interoperability. Polkadot enables cross-blockchain transfers of any form of data or asset and not just tokens, thereby giving Fractal ID the ability to interoperate with a wide variety of blockchains in the Polkadot network (see here)

The partnership with Aleph Network is an example of the interoperability of DIDs. Typically, whenever a user on any blockchain network needs to prove something about themselves, they can then share the credentials issued by Fractal.

Outsourcing: A detailed example of the importance of Fractal ID for data outsourcing is the partnership with Aleph Zero.

“Aleph Zero is a privacy-enhancing proof-of-stake public blockchain with instant finality. These allow independent developers and enterprises to build decentralized projects that benefit from the speed and security of a public Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) platform while still being able to preserve the privacy of their transactions”.

In a bid to launch its private and public contribution rounds, Aleph Zero needed to verify the uniqueness of participants and identify the risk factor to ensure a high conversion rate in the funding round by ensuring compliance with ID documents, Proof of Residency, Liveness, and Face Match, Anti-Money-Laundering, and Politically Exposed Persons.

With this established, Aleph Zero outsourced the KYC process to Fractal ID, which was in a better position with the experience, technology, and resources needed to execute the task effortlessly. Barely two weeks into the operation, Fractal received over 11,565 applications with 85% compliance. The round was able to raise about $10 million for Aleph Zero. (see here)

Conclusion:

From the article, it is safe to say that Fractal ID will transform how digital identity is managed and operated, making the process as easy and as decentralised as possible. It will also eliminate the data monopoly of big companies. More importantly, users of Fractal ID will be able to easily and securely verify themselves without having to share all sensitive personal information with third parties.

About the Fractal Protocol

Fractal Protocol is an open-source, zero-margin protocol Built on Polkadot. It defines a basic standard to exchange user information in a fair and open way, ensuring a high-quality version of the free internet. In its first version, it is designed to replace the ad cookie and give users back control over their data.

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Disclaimer:

This article is not a property of the Fractal Protocol but of the writer and subject to information intended for educational purposes. No part of this article is a piece of Financial advice.