How to Use Peer Mountain (includes use cases)

Your identity is personal, unique, and easily accessible. Whenever you present or share identifying information for verification, you’re most likely putting sensitive data at risk of being exposed or stolen.

Businesses and institutions use centralized data storage, processing, and transmission processes. Regardless of how secure their centralized systems are, organizations are at constant risk of being hacked. It just takes one entry point for identity thieves to gain access to your data. Over the past few years, we’ve seen a rise in major data breaches, and, looking at the year ahead of us, the situation is more likely to get worse before it gets better.

Peer Mountain will soon offer a means of transacting that will not only keep your data private, it will return ownership of your one-of-a-kind identity to you. More than a self-sovereign identity (SSID) platform, Peer Mountain is a decentralized marketplace of trust. In addition to putting you in control of your ID and protecting your personal information, the Peer Mountain ecosystem enables you to choose third parties to validate different facets of your identity, including:

• ID validation (e.g. passport, driver’s license)
• Personal attestations (e.g. diploma, diving certificate)
• Subjective attestations (e.g. employment reference, qualitative review)

Validators are individuals or organizations that validate identities in Peer Mountain. These entities earn Peer Mountain Tokens ( PMTN) every time one of their validations is used in a transaction. Anyone can play this role in the Peer Mountain trust marketplace, which means anyone can get paid for their trustworthiness.

You and all other Peer Mountain users will be able to benefit from the marketplace in a practically limitless number of ways. First, you’ll need to set up your Peer Mountain profile.

Let’s start with the Peer Mountain mobile app

The Peer Mountain mobile app will enable you to verify your identity, and validate other members’ identifying information, simply, swiftly, and privately. You’ll be able to download the app for free in app stores; organizations will be able to offer the app in a variety of ways, such as QR codes or URLs in various communication channels, such as magazine ads, email newsletters, or stickers on POS terminals.

Once you download the free mobile app and spend five minutes creating your profile, you’ll choose validators in the Peer Mountain marketplace to verify your identity documents and information — again free of charge. With your Peer Mountain profile and attestations, you’ll be able to transact with businesses, institutions, NGOs, and other organizations, as well as other individuals.

Purchasing and profiting in the Peer Mountain marketplace of trust

After you create your profile, you’ll be ready to interact with other entities in the Peer Mountain marketplace, both commercially and non-commercially. As you do so, you’ll share verified identity data required to complete transactions. Peer Mountain keeps this data private, providing ID validation without sharing or exposing specific personal details such as your social security number (SSN), passport number, and credit card numbers.

Entities pay a small fee in PMTN to validators for verified ID documents and data. For example, a business that requires your SSN in order to complete a transaction with you pays an amount of PMT to the validator that verified your SSN.

Peer Mountain use case 1: ID validation

Adding ID documents to your Peer Mountain profile will be free of charge and as simple as scanning them with your smartphone. Getting these documents validated will be just as simple; you will just need to decide which validator you want to use.

Let’s say you’ve added your passport to your Peer Mountain profile. To validate this identity document and transact with you, the entity receiving your information pays PMT to a validator. Perhaps the government that issued your passport is their only option; it is more likely that, they will also be able to choose from a number of private Know Your Customer (KYC) companies offering validation services in the Peer Mountain marketplace. For these validators, the level and quality of their trustworthiness will become an important competitive advantage — potentially more important than price.

While price is certainly important, trustworthiness is vital to the value of your attestation. For example, most hotels require you leave a copy of your passport with them when you check in. When arriving at a hotel that has a Peer Mountain instance, you will be able to use the Peer Mountain mobile app to scan a QR code at the reception desk. In doing so, you provide them with an encrypted, verified digital copy of your passport.

Here’s where trustworthiness has value. Some hotels may accept passport validation from specific private KYC providers that have a certain level of trustworthiness. This is similar to the way some businesses will only accept credit cards from certain providers.

So in the Peer Mountain marketplace, entities will need to determine which validators are most trustworthy. Because validators receive PMTN whenever their attestations are used, there will be opportunities to develop partnerships between the organizations that pay for identity verification and those who provide it.

Peer Mountain use case 2: Personal attestations

Your identity is more than a collection of numbers, dates, addresses, and contact information — your professional skills and personal interests are also vital components of who you are. Certificates and records such as scorecards and leaderboards tell the world what we excel at; permits allow us to take part in activities that require a certain level of knowledge and/or expertise.

For example, you decide to get a diving certificate in order to scuba dive. You take a course with your local Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) center and get certified. As a global authority, PADI’s certification now allows you to scuba dive throughout the world.

You scan and add your PADI certificate to your Peer Mountain profile. As it is practically impossible to steal or forge, this digital diving certificate is even more trustworthy than a printed paper certificate, provided that the PADI center that validated the certificate is a trusted Peer Mountain member. Now, whenever you go to a diving center that has a Peer Mountain instance, you can simply use the Peer Mountain mobile app to scan a QR code that confirms your PADI certification, allowing you to use the diving center’s services.

This use case applies to all activities that require certification, registration, or permits from a trustworthy authority, as well as scorecards for various associations, including:

• Diplomas and degrees
• Vehicle registration and inspections
• Golf scorecards and handicaps
• Gun licences
• Fishing licences

Peer Mountain use case 3: Subjective attestations

The Peer Mountain marketplace will go beyond official and professional attestations. You will also be able to provide, and receive, subjective validation of your skills, experience, and knowledge. Any opinion or fact that a third party can validate can be part of your Peer Mountain identity.

For instance, you may be interested in attending a yoga seminar that will only accept advanced yoga students. To verify the level of applicants, the seminar has a Peer Mountain node that is part of a national Peer Mountain instance run by your country’s national yoga association. A select group of yoga teachers have the trustworthiness required to be validators in the yoga association’s instance. Your local yoga teacher is a member of this group, and he provides an attestation that you are indeed an advanced yoga student. Your local yoga teacher receives PMTN for his attestation, and you can attend the seminar.

In Peer Mountain, the collective of people and organizations that validate their trust in you represent your identity in far more personal way than your official ID documents can. This enables you to participate in, and benefit from, more personal economies of trust for activities that don’t require attestations from authorities, such as:

• Employment references and testimonials
• Membership in special interest groups
• Skill level in recreational activities
• Qualitative reviews (e.g. “He’s a great cook”, “She’s an honest salesperson”)

Conclusion: Trust pays

Peer Mountain makes verification processes simple, and profitable. Anyone can join, and the mobile app is free to use. Service providers and institutions that require identity verification pay a small fee in PMTN for each verification they receive. At the same time, they can earn PMT by providing identity verification themselves in Peer Mountain’s circular economy of trust.

Anybody, including you, can be a validator. The more trustworthy you are, and the more value you create for one or more communities, the more PMTN you stand to earn.

Whether you’re providing or buying attestations, Peer Mountain ensures that all data remains private. The potential for this to grow into a massive, secure international marketplace of trust is huge — learn more about Peer Mountain today.