Contrary to what you hear, ICOs are still popular and data hackers know this

Stephen Hyduchak
2 min readApr 25, 2018

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Our team has been working hard on the infrastructure supporting the Bridge identity management (bIMS) system to protect our communities. Our team is troubled to see ICOs like BeeToken and Sentinel Chain being compromised by bad actors. Users sensitive information from simply trying to participate in an ICO are on the streets now. This furthers the sentiment that we need a blockchain solution for blockchain crowdfunding.

The Bridge engineers have been focusing on building the identity standards through Hyperledger Indy and accessing the blockchain for information of a user through BigChainDB 2.0. These points can meet the standards that we need for identity protocols and also offer a function to store information and assign role based call functions between relationships.

Focus still remains on tailoring for most-needed markets and user experiences. The challenge for banks and other potential customers is that they have a strong requirement to verify the identities of people with whom they do business (in part because of “Know Your Customer” regulations, but also because of the immense amount of fraud that has arisen in the last few years). If the business takes too long to onboard, then they run the risk of a loss of interest. Studies have found that rates fall as high as 40% in new-user signups with long check periods.

Studying other competitors in the identity space, we also see an underlying sentiment of ease-of-use for end users. Feedback ranges from larger click buttons in apps, less written instructions throughout screens and focus on taking the user through a process that directs them into next prompt for information needed. Our process will build on a few measures we are testing for security, but emphasize ease of use. There is live facial tracking to verify identity documents validity for initial onboard, but has some weaknesses in algorithms for facial checkpoints. Integrating hardware devices like YubiKey will provide a unique 2-Factor authentication code each time it is pressed. This combined with a private key will make the systems nearly impenetrable and we can finally take back our identities from bad actors.

Our solution will reduce occurrences like Sentinel Chain from happening by distributing data and removing redundant checks to the user for each ICO they want to participate in. One KYC, One Whitelist.

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Stephen Hyduchak

Blockchain, Identity Verification and AI keep me up at night. CEO of Bridge Protocol and Aver.