Why is the idOS needed?

A compliant, privacy-preserving and decentralized identity layer is possible. It's never been more needed than it is today. Since its inception, the web3 industry has advocated for a user-centric internet, but we failed to adopt user-centric identity management to this day.

Bot traffic is rampant. Bots farming incentives meant for regular users make building healthy communities and governance systems hard. An open-source financial system that is on the verge of breaking out of the crypto niche into the mass market has attracted more scrutiny from the regulators and requires native identity rails. On the internet at large, it is becoming increasingly hard to tell who is a human being and who is an AI. This is on top of a problematic business model of platforms (ab)using user data to keep competitors out and user data locked up.

Today, most ecosystems either build their own local version of an identity system that they need to maintain, rely on centralized solutions, or worse, don't offer any solution and transfer the issue to their dApp builders.

Switching from fragmented, centralized solutions to a web3-wide identity layer like the idOS is a statement and commitment to change. There are more very practical reasons for ecosystems and dApps to make the switch – as well as for users to demand it:

• Better UX. The ability to re-use identity data across web3 makes the user experience great. dApps face huge drop-off rates when asking users to fill KYC forms, and users hate having to upload their passports and waiting for approval over and over

• Higher security. No centralized databases means reduced risk of hacks and data leaks. If each user has the keys to their own data, there are no data honeypots

• Prevention of data loss and vendor platform risk, as the infrastructure is run by a network of node operators that continue to run even if one node gets disconnected

• No user censorship and data manipulation

• Enhanced growth potential. Thanks to the open-source, composable and chain-agnostic nature of the idOS. Developers can build dApps and services for the entire idOS ecosystem making it available throughout multiple chains across web3

The idOS is built for user adoption

The idOS is open-source, composable and chain-agnostic. It has been built to leverage existing standards, invites other projects to join in, and works everywhere across web3. It supports the W3C Verifiable credential standard and is able to issue credentials following, for instance, the Polygon ID credential schema. It can be used to create all types of different attestations from soul-bound tokens (SBTs) to ecosystem-specific artefacts. As a fact, any type of data can be written on it. The idOS can be managed with any type of private-public key pair cryptography to enable users to reach the idOS on any blockchain ecosystem through their regular wallets.

The idOS' main superpower is connecting existing identity solutions. We believe that today there are many providers developing great infrastructure and services for KYC, AI biometrics, or privacy-preserving data sharing. However, these providers are not orchestrated, interoperable and oftentimes take data ownership away from the users. The idOS enables any identity provider to write Verifiable Credentials through any node operator since day one, and in its final state, will become a fully permissionless web3 protocol. The idOS can leverage existing privacy solutions to process user data as a module. Making data available and issuing all types of credentials within any ecosystem, across any ecosystems. Giving users the choice to manage their data using an identity wallet, or their regular crypto wallet, with the idOS serving as a backend.

We need a web3 identity layer accessible to everyone, everywhere.