11 posts tagged with "Decentralized Web Nodes"

Have you ever watched a creator’s video and thought, "Where did she get that top?" or "I need that protein powder"? You scroll through the comments, only to see the infamous "link in my bio" comment. You rush to click the link, and you're hit with-page not found 😒. I remember once being so desperate that I took a screenshot of the item and reverse-searched it on Google Images. I found something similar but not what I wanted. SO frustrating. Eventually, I gave up and kept on scrolling.

At the recent California DMV Hackathon, the Block team, represented by members from Square and TBD, won the Best Privacy & Security Design award for building a prototype of an instant age verification system. This solution utilizes mobile drivers’ licenses (mDLs) to provide secure, privacy-centric transactions for age-restricted purchases with Square’s Point of Sale (POS) system.

In this post, we’ll explore the core technical components behind our solution, which centered on using TruAge technology to enable seamless, secure age verification.

tbDEX is an open messaging protocol that enables liquidity seekers to connect with liquidity providers. This means that as a liquidity provider, your business can be the backend supplier in several payment applications.

Performing KYC on repeat customers every time they attempt to transact with you from a different payment app would be a pain. To avoid this, you will use the Web5 SDK to issue a Known Customer Credential (KCC) to a customer, Alice, who you have already completed KYC on. You will store the JWT representing the KCC in Alice’s Decentralized Web Node so that she can present it to your business from any payment app.

At TBD, we are committed to building a decentralized future where users have greater control over their data and organizations can interact in a more open, trustworthy, and secure way. Open standards are the foundation of this vision, enabling the seamless collaboration and interoperability across systems.

Everything we do at TBD is enabled and strengthened by open standards. Our most notable projects, Web5 and tbDEX, are deeply rooted in these open standards. The frameworks for decentralized identifiers (DIDs), verifiable credentials (VCs), and the protocols that facilitate their sharing form the backbone of our work.

When blockchain technology was first introduced a decade and a half ago, it made the possibility of a decentralized web seem viable to a mass audience. Since then, blockchains have proven themselves to be a poor solution to the majority of data storage problems outside of bearer assets - i.e. Bitcoin - because blockchains grow continuously without any ability to delete data, which just doesn’t make sense for things like personal data. But ‘blockchain’ isn’t synonymous with decentralization, and just because a blockchain isn’t the best solution for personal data storage doesn’t mean your app can’t be decentralized.

The Future of Personal AI​

For many years, artificial intelligence primarily piqued the interest of academic researchers and enthusiasts within niche technological sectors such as robotics. Although respected, AI presented little practical application for the average person. That changed in June 2020 with the debut of a Large Language Model (LLM) called GPT-3. GPT-3 inspired organizations and individuals to use AI to accelerate their workflows, from coding and blogging to planning itineraries. Today, the potential of AI is so immense that Simon Westh Henriksen, the CTO of Kin, believes personal AI will be one of the most valuable digital assets we own in the future.

"Our current credit system says, 'Saddle yourself, so we can give you more to saddle.'" Eric Lapin, President of FormFree, stated during a recent TBD live stream. His comment sheds light on a fundamental paradox of the U.S. credit system: it often requires you to accumulate debt as a prerequisite for obtaining loans, leading to more debt. This systemic issue is underscored by recent data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which reveals that 1 in 5 applicants for mortgages, car loans, or other types of loans were rejected — the highest rate in five years. This trend disproportionately impacts Black and Latino applicants. Guided by their slogan, 'Democratizing lending for all people without bias,' FormFree developed a platform built with Web5 and AI to address these issues.

DIF 🤝 Web5 Hackathon​

The results are in! Out of 418 participants we have our top 3 projects! We were honored to sponsor a Web5 challenge with DIF Foundation. DIF (Decentralized Identity Foundation) is an engineering-driven organization focused on developing the foundational elements necessary to establish an open and interoperable ecosystem for decentralized identity. The challenge given was to build a decentralized web app utilizing Web5.js and Decentralized Web Nodes.

"What can you actually build with Web5?" This is one of the most common questions I've heard as I enter my two-month mark at TBD. It's one thing to discuss the theoretical aspects of Web5, with its focus on decentralization and user empowerment, but it's another to see tangible, innovative applications come to life. This is why builders, visionaries, and project maintainers at TBD are excited to showcase Netonomy, a Web5 project built by Anthony DeMattos.

I wanted to learn more about how Web5 (and SSI in general) works and the benefits it could offer. To do this I created a simple project to create and store DIDs, and use them to read and write to a DWN using a protocol.