PATHSPORT: A Self-owned and Personally Controlled Digital Sports Identity Application

The world’s leading authentic sports profile.

Vision

To build an authentic, safe, and empowered digital future for athletics.

Mission

We are dedicated to building a trusted and secure digital world for sports.

Where players can accurately represent themselves with confidence in the digital domain.

Where players can safely interact with agents and organizations.

Where users are confident interacting with others.

Where the athlete recruitment ecosystem is trusted and transparent.

Where recruitment is equally beneficial and accessible to all.

Where the digital and physical worlds co-exist.

Summary

The commercialization and globalization of sports have led to opportunities for young athletes to make a name for themselves on the global stage. Unfortunately, they’ve also provided opportunities for unscrupulous individuals to take advantage of these athletes, including the complicated environment to traffic them.

Decentralized technologies have the potential to completely transform the existing sports landscape, from players to key stakeholders. Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) are the missing components that provide each user with a 100% self-generated and self-controlled digital identity, disrupting the world of sports by transcending physical interactions in a new completely digital world. Unique verified identities allow genuine connections and real-world authenticity, thereby eliminating the threat of impersonation and false information — this, in turn, encourages community growth. However, there are fundamental obstacles to overcome before Web3 technology can be widely accepted and adopted in sports. In this paper, we’ll examine these hurdles and discuss why Elastos technology is best suited to support PATHSPORT, the world’s first globally adopted decentralized sports application.

1. AUTHENTICITY — The most compelling use case for PATHSPORT is that it requires real-time identity and credential verification via multiple KYC methods. Not every individual can easily access proper identification documentation, nor does each have access to 3rd-party verifiers to immediately determine authenticity.
2. HUMAN TRAFFICKING — It’s estimated that tens of thousands of children are trafficked in the name of sports — an estimated 15,000 children are trafficked from West Africa to Europe for football (soccer) alone. Unfortunately, this is not the only sport plagued by this practice.
3. SECURITY — If PATHSPORT is to facilitate the transfer of millions of credentials, it will be targeted by hackers, and will therefore need the strongest possible network security. In order to achieve this highly robust and secure network framework, the process starts with the consensus algorithm itself.

What is required to move the sports industry to the digital domain, where it can realize its full potential?

A platform that provides a combination of authentication, robust security, statistics tracking, genuine communication, and tools to enable athletic communities to flourish. Only then do we believe mainstream audiences will trust a platform enough to adopt it.

PATHSPORT

Introducing PATHSPORT — a platform that supports self-ownership and control in the fight against human trafficking through sports.

The problem

Every year, tens of thousands of hopeful young athletes are exploited and/or trafficked in the name of sports, with their only fault being that they believe they’re good enough to compete on the biggest stages, if given the opportunity.

Bogus agents make promises of trials or even contracts with famous clubs to children and their families, for a fee. Thousands of dollars are required to make this dream possible, and families often resort to selling off their property, including cattle, houses, and land, to pay for the fees — they may also borrow from neighbors under the premise that their child is a super talent and will be able to later pay back the debts. When arriving in new countries, these young athletes are sometimes put in cheap hotels and left alone to fend for themselves, in a place where they may not know anyone or speak the local language. A child with no identity and visibility is now open to many other dangerous situations they should never be in.

This poses a huge humanitarian problem that affects many lives and also reflects poorly on the credible actors in the world of sports. Whether it’s the responsibility of credible sports agents, sponsors, clubs, overarching sports federations, or any other stakeholder in the industry, the fact that child trafficking remains such a large unwanted phenomenon cannot be ignored. This eventually reflects back to the individual brands, which is a huge problem from a branding perspective, as no business would want to be indirectly related with child trafficking. Whether it’s federations like FIFA, or famous brands such as Nike and Adidas, this is a shared problem within the industry that requires immediate attention.

The solution

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child recognizes the right to have an identity. While many children in remote areas may not have a passport or birth certificate, many do have mobile phones (or at least access to one per family). The fact that a good amount of children have access to a mobile device gives us the ability to provide these child-athletes with digital identities and sports passports.

PATHSPORT will digitize their identities, not only providing millions of people a basic online profile but also giving them back a huge part of their own personal digital identity.

PATHSPORT will allow individuals to safely connect with each other in a trusted environment, while also fully respecting privacy. A specialized blockchain is used to store digital identities, manage data access, and control communication. Both agents and athletes will receive a profile in the form of a “sports passport” — in the future, clubs will also potentially be added, facilitating trust in an often-untrustworthy environment. By using digital identities that are verified and recorded on an immutable ledger, such as a DIF / W3C compliant blockchain, fraud is prevented and privacy is managed by the owner.

For example, an unverified agent won’t be able to communicate with an athlete and will be restricted from seeing that person’s profile, and vice-versa. In other words, fake agents cannot access the platform — only fully verified and approved agents can communicate with child-athletes.

The open-source digital identity system PATHSPORT will utilize Elastos Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) that allow users and stakeholders to trust code rather than third parties with reverse incentives. By issuing DIDs to users on Web3, a blockchain automates trust — in a blockchain-based system of exchange, interactions occur only between individuals, thereby removing the need for central authorities and intermediaries.

The Elastos open technology platform resolves the factors that constrain adoption of a global sports identity platform:

• AUTHENTICITY — In the player journey as it currently operates, “agents” utilize photoshopped pictures of themselves with famous players in order to trick the children into believing that they’re legitimate. They also show (often poorly written) fake documents to prove their legitimacy and offer “official” invitation letters from the club they claim to represent.

In the simplest case, a player may not have sufficient identity verification — even if the proper KYC has been completed and presented, it’s from an unknown source. An individual is forced to trust without verification or wait over a long and antiquated KYC process. Because athletes, agents, and other stakeholders do not currently interact in a decentralized way, such as that powered by Elastos Identity technology, they cannot seamlessly authenticate identity.

When a player applies the same concept using DID, the barrier that prevents verified communication is removed. Based on the present state of cryptography, individuals and organizations can safely confirm the validity of content if it’s signed with the proper private key. As long as the receiver (generally an application) is recognized, attaching a copy of the user’s public key with a transaction functions as a secure form of KYC because the public key can only be produced by way of the hash output of the user’s private key, which only that user may access. This relationship and identification mechanism effectively establishes an interoperable connection between players and agents or organizations, as it allows them to use a trusted KYC process. By using a single DID to sign transactions, PATHSPORT provides the greatest benefits of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI): seamless identity verification and transaction process efficiency.

• HUMAN TRAFFICKING — This project is about giving vulnerable individuals a better way to safely move towards a potentially successful career in sports. It is the first step in making the invisible visible. While Elastos DID technology does not fix all of the problems of the existing internet, it plays a vital role in empowering individuals to issue self-created, self-owned, universal identities and prevent impersonations that lead to child trafficking in sports. All users on the platform will have a verifiable identity, where without it, access will be denied. Through wide acceptance of the platform, athletes will learn to connect with and verify the work of real agents, ultimately discouraging the activities of the fake agents.

Because identity-related attributes can be stored within every DID, this information is always going to be on the blockchain and will neither disappear nor be controlled by anyone. Information is stored on a public chain, so anyone can access it by investigating the history of blocks; such is the power of having an open, transparent, and tamper-proof blockchain. DID owners (players, agents, and stakeholders) can write DID property into any content, provided the content is accompanied by their unique signatures — that is, their public keys. Once new content is written to a DID, it cannot be modified or deleted. This conditionally guarantees the authenticity of the signature and prevents a user from counterfeiting or forging content to a DID for which they don’t have the private key.

Anything can be written to DID properties, including nicknames, emails, and locations, to name a few. Much like for social media platforms, it’s unwise to store sensitive information on a DID because it will be visible to the public. However, for public information, a number of radical use cases exist for PATHSPORT where a third-party certificate acts as proof of evidence. For instance, leagues can apply for their own DIDs for signing documents, where they can then sign agent certificates with their DID. Players may write their own DID property into this signature. Later, third parties can verify the legitimacy of the players’ and leagues’ public keys by reading the signature content from the blockchain. From that point on, a system of proof is established on the basis of DIDs.

The agent’s sports passport includes their digital identity and outlines their track record (verified by EFAA, for example), licenses by FIFA, and other relevant information. These licenses can be updated to the blockchain in the instance of an agent losing an accreditation (i.e. failed to renew licenses), resulting in limitations to or cancellation of platform access.

For PATHSPORT, there are two different levels of trust.

• Fully licensed, all information up to date: This means that the latest licenses are obtained and no license is expired, giving the agent the freedom to connect with any verified (tier 1, 2, or 3) player they want.
• Partly licensed: This means that an agent was fully approved, however one or more licenses have been revoked or expired. In this case, the agent will only be able to view the platform but not utilize its functionalities.

• SECURITY — PATHSPORT will provide the highest degree of security for users. Elastos employs a hybrid consensus of Auxiliary Proof of Work + Delegated Proof of Stake (AuxPoW + DPoS). In this consensus, blocks are packaged by merged-miners and then validated and signed by DPoS Supernodes. For this reason, theoretically Elastos could amass as much hashrate (or more) as the Bitcoin network in securing its blockchain. This is an extremely effective method for securing the data and DIDs issued and stored by the Decentralized Identifier (DID) blockchain.

As previously stated, DIDs can be issued to all users, applications, and websites on the internet. The DID blockchain serves as the trustless zone for the most valuable data of the Internet, which is exactly why its consensus mechanism prioritizes security and robustness.

Where “agents” could get away with exploiting technology to support their activities, this technology will now be utilized to create a secure and safe environment for athletes.

The following components of our security ecosystem will be formed:

• Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) — PATHSPORT will use the Elastos DID blockchain to manage identities, and the verifiable credentials feature developed by Tuum Technologies will be used as a framework to verify these identities. This DID blockchain was chosen due to the fact that it conforms to the highest (W3C|DIF) standards. Moreover, it’s secured by the biggest blockchain network in the world, making it the safest option to use.
• Decentralized Storage — Via a service called Hive, we aim to allow every user to choose their own storage solution, including one where c content is streamed directly from one’s own device. Alternative (sponsored) solutions will also be offered, and Hive ensures that data can never be owned/managed by a third party, as full data privacy is at the core of the design.
• Carrier: Decentralized Communications — This technology is also part of the Elastos technology stack and is used to decentralize and encrypt communications themselves. This allows for maximum security and privacy by all actors in the network.

INTRODUCTION

PATHSPORT

Tuum Technologies teams up with Mission 89 to help fight sports-related child trafficking with Elastos’ decentralized identity solution.

Software house Tuum Technologies partnered with Mission 89, a renowned Geneva-based organization that aims to mitigate child trafficking in sports, in order to both protect victims via the use of decentralized identity technology and raise awareness for this facet of human trafficking.

By working together with Mission 89, Tuum Technologies seeks to promote decentralized IDs to approach and tackle this issue, enabling tamper-proof verification of the credentials presented by sports agents. The company’s vision is that players, agents, and stakeholders will receive self-sovereign digital identities on the Elastos blockchain. These identities and certifications will be verifiable by cryptographic means and made available through the PATHSPORT application developed by the Tuum Technologies engineering team.

Education is a fundamental aspect of the partnership and initiative that will truly bring the technology to life. Once the technical solution is live, users will gain both primary exposure and have the opportunity to learn how to use it. Further awareness will be instilled through campaigns with major sports organizations at national, regional, and local levels, while the usership will be spurred by gamification strategies implemented in the app.

The ultimate goal of the partnership is to onboard major sports organizations to grow awareness of the initiative, while providing the world’s first digitally authenticated athletic profile.

About Tuum Technologies

Tuum Technologies is a Web3 technology company that enables a global network of entrepreneurs, developers, academics, industry experts, and users to access the decentralized internet. As the software engineering leader of the Open Decentralized Internet space, Tuum Technologies provides a suite of Elastos powered products and services to help developers build decentralized applications and enable individuals to control data on an open web.

About Mission 89

Mission 89’s aim is to mitigate child trafficking in sports through research, education, and the implementation of mandatory regulations to keep sports training academies accountable for the safety and well-being of children in their care.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of children are smuggled across borders and sold as commodities, including promising young footballers who are trafficked by sham agents making false promises of fame, riches, and an escape route from a cycle of poverty.

Mission 89’s research into the issue will provide a detailed examination of the issue as it exists today, develop educational and vocational programs at a grassroots level to empower those most vulnerable to exploitation, and establish a licensing and accreditation system to recognize legitimate institutions from illegitimate organizations exploiting young athletes.

Intended Impact

By introducing a self-sovereign identity for footballers and agents in a digital form, the primary short-term impact envisaged is the creation of an avant-garde solution to player trafficking. PATHSPORT creates a safe and secure environment, which can effectively protect the physical, psychological, and mental well-being of footballers, particularly youth and child athletes in the 21st century. The PATHSPORT application creates a networking environment based on a robust verification system that allows only fully verified agents and footballers to interact and network with one another in a safe and secure space. With the sheer amount of of extensive networks that can be reached with participation from partner organizations, many believe that even at an early stage, PATHSPORT will be able to dramatically increase the visibility of footballers and agents from different parts of the world.

In the medium-term, Mission 89 aims to foster majority buy-in within the football community of PATHSPORT’s system of verification. Mission 89 seeks to include the voices of all stakeholders in football, including players, parents, agents, and sport organizations in an effort to continuously improve PATHSPORT, which in turn will create a product that represents and fulfills the needs and wants of this diverse range of actors. Moreover, Mission 89 hopes that some form of recognition from international sport governing bodies will go a long way to helping us achieve this goal. At this juncture, the impact Mission 89 strives for is an increase in confidence and trust amongst athletes, parents, and sport organizations towards agents and intermediaries, and in all issues related to the transfer of footballers — the safeguarding of minors. Equally as important is the increasing buy-in of agents for PATHSPORT, which Mission 89 is targeting as well.

Concerning long-term impact, Mission 89’s ambition is to extend the accessibility of the PATHSPORT platform in order to provide a safe and secure environment for all athletes and agents. Mission 89 will extend the offering of a digital self-sovereign identity to athletes from sports other than football (i.e. basketball, athletics, baseball) and establish an accessible platform that allows the verification and accreditation of athletes everywhere. Its end goal is to create a global safe space for athletes and agents to interact in a sustainable manner that continuously prioritizes the rights of young people seeking to make a career in the sports world.

PARTNERSHIP

The Roadmap to Scale

The following are phases by which we expect the application to grow from minimal viable product and architecture planning to pilot programs and global adoption. These phases will not be distinct but represent the anticipated broader evolution of the application.

• PHASE 1: Minimum viable product, architecture planning, open framework development, decentralized identity implementation, player profile creation, branding, onboarding UI/UX, introduction to key stakeholders.
• PHASE 2: Version 1 development, verifiable credentials integration, inaugural pilot programs, player onboarding, development of credential standards, agent and organization Decentralized Identifier (DID) implementation.
• PHASE 3: Version 2 development, expansion of verification capabilities, expanded pilot programs, team and league onboarding, accessibility and integration with DID compatible products, the addition of statistics APIs, agent and organization signing of credentials.
• PHASE 4: As users are distributed globally and competition is established due to the addition of statistics and recruitment, there will be an expanded market for adoption from key stakeholders in athletics.

In this way, all of the growth starts locally, and the initial verifications default to members of select regions, leagues, and sports. Over time, however, both the application participants and validators gain wider distribution until they’re distributed across millions of players, agents, and organizations.