19 posts tagged with "Web5"

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.

The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) has introduced a new rule banning fake online reviews. This rule, which penalizes businesses and individuals involved in the sale or purchase of fake reviews, represents a much needed step in promoting trust online. But while enforcement is crucial, there's still a challenge of identifying which reviews are legitimate. This is where Verifiable Credentials (VCs) can provide a solution.

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.

"Verifiable Credentials seems niche. Only a small group of technologists would be interested in this," a conference attendee declared after I enthusiastically described my company's work in the Global Payments and Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) ecosystem.

This comment gave me pause. Less than a year ago, I first encountered Verifiable Credentials (VCs) - a W3C standard for digital credentials that state specific facts about individuals, organizations, or entities. My initial reaction was similar to the conference attendee’s response. However, after interviewing SSI builders on a weekly livestream, my perspective changed dramatically.

While VCs are relatively new and primarily explored by SSI enthusiasts, their benefits extend far beyond this group. Many of the services and products you use today already rely on them – even if you don't realize it.

From healthcare to content creation, finance to travel, VCs are changing how we share and verify information. Here's a look at seven real-world applications of VCs that may surprise you:

Remember your first username? If you were anything like me in the early 2000s—too young to surf the web but excited about the possibilities of connecting with the rest of the world—your username probably makes you cringe today.

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.

As we wrap up our very first self-hosted hackathon, we're thrilled to announce that out of 1,681 participants we have our top 8. These three hackathons have been a great learning experience, and an amazing opportunity to see what unique projects developers can build with Web5. In hopes of keeping the Hackathon open we came up with 6 categories, FinTech, Health, Music and Arts, Personal Data,and Empowerment & Enablement applications. Join us in celebrating our top 3 and best application per category.👏

DevCareer 🤝 Web5 Hackathon​

It's winner announcement time! We're thrilled to have been a part of DevCareer's first-ever hackathon. DevCareer's mission is to cultivate new talent and make a difference in Africa through tech, and having that talent play around with our Web5.js SDK was an invaluable experience. The level of creativity resulted in us having not 3 but 5 winning projects! 🚀