2023: The Year of the Self-Sovereign System

XYO is a self-sovereign system, a type of decentralized system in which individuals have full control and ownership over their own data and digital identities. Built on blockchain technology, you decide what data to share, how often, and for what compensation you are willing to share it.

Why is this important? The simple fact of the matter is that there is no such thing as true privacy in the digital age. The New York Times’ Privacy Project shed light on a simple, brutal truth of using a mobile device: you are constantly sharing data, without your explicit consent, all the time:

Everywhere on the planet, dozens of companies — largely unregulated, little scrutinized — are logging the movements of tens of millions of people with mobile phones and storing the information in gigantic data files… if you could see the full trove you might never use your phone the same way again.

We hope you don’t. XYO provides a way to take back control of the data digital users have been providing (unwittingly and for free) to these largely invisible surveillants for years.

Self-sovereign systems not only reclaim data ownership and privacy, but offer several additional benefits over more common shared ledgers, which have proliferated over the past decade:

Privacy: Individuals control who has access to their data; shared ledgers often involve sharing data among a network of users.

Security: Advanced encryption techniques ensure the security of personal data, protection shared ledgers may lack.

Interoperability: Seamless integration with other systems, allowing for ease of data sharing. Shared ledgers can have difficulty integrating with other systems.

Decentralization: No overarching authority controls a self-sovereign system, while shared ledgers are subject to centralized governance.

Flexibility: Ease of customization to meet the specific needs of an individual or organization. Distributed ledgers are often limited in their ability to similarly adapt.

Overall, self-sovereign systems offer a more efficient, secure, and cost-effective way to manage personal data compared to traditional distributed ledgers. And the connected world is starting to better recognize self-sovereign systems for what they are — empowerment tools for individuals to take back something personal and of value that has been tacitly stolen from them for years.

Widespread recognition of these invasive tactics has been building slowly for decades, but as with so many things that take many years to reach a critical-mass-driven inflection point, it will seem to happen all at once.

We believe 2023 will be the year of the self-sovereign system. XYO spells the end of for-profit entities unknowingly, silently capitalizing on your literal every move, very much at your expense.

Written by Alexander Trigaux, guest writer for XYO.