[00:00:00] Katherine Druckman: Hey everyone. Welcome back to reality. 2.0, I'm Katherine Druckman. Doc Searls, and I are talking to Gordon Jones and Erica Barnett today, they are co-founders of Thrivacy, which is a new platform for verifiable credentials. And we are gonna get more into that and they can tell us all about what they're they're working on and, and why this is a cool project you should check out.

But in the meantime, I wanted to remind everyone to check out our website at reality, to cast.com. That is the number two in the URL, and we will have links to privacy and other supplementary information that you might find helpful. You can also sign up for our newsletter there. So with that, thank you guys for joining us today.

Um, we're pretty excited. We love to talk about identity solutions here. Doc has a much to say about that, I think, and really good questions, but, um, yeah. Thank you so much. 

[00:00:54] Gordon Jones: Thank you for having us.

[00:00:55] Katherine Druckman: So doc, why don't we get here? 

[00:00:58] Doc Searls: Lets talk about how we got here. Um, yeah. I, as you know, many people know, but not enough, probably still we, um, Joyce and I are, are both involved with, the internet identity workshop. And I think SSI for self sovereign identity is the first thing after 35 or at, toward the end of 35 of these things to sort of come at us, this like really hot topic.

And you seem to be in one of the hotter corners of that topic. So wonder you gimme, I mean, I've been talking about it for years, but gimme your angle on it on, on where it works for you, where and how, where you're trying to push to the front of this 

[00:01:36] Gordon Jones: thing. Sure. Um, so first of all, I, uh, teach blockchain and data privacy and I sneak SSI in there at the university of South Carolina mm-hmm , um, which is actually where Erica and I met.

Because I'm also the entrepreneur and residence for the college of information and communications there. So in all of my courses, I also teach entrepreneurship. Uh, so one of the first things I do is I have the students come up with a problem that they have. And then throughout the course, as they learn about the technology and, and whatever, the subject of the course, then they apply that to their problem and then decide either they can use it to solve their problem or not use it to solve their problem.

And, and Erica, you want to talk to them a little bit about what your problem was that kind of led to all this. 

[00:02:30] Erica Barnette: Absolutely. Um, so when I was learning about blockchain, my first thought was around student identity and really protecting students in a different way. Um, that would be more encrypted and more secure for them.

So they're not, you know, having to deal with problems later down the road. This also has to do with older students going out and enjoying their social life. And the problem around the, uh, presenting your driver's license as to validate your age, cuz obviously you're giving away way too much information when you give somebody your ID, especially with incredible platforms like social media nowadays.

So, I really wanted to help create a solution that would help stop that because at the end of the day, all they need to know is that you're above 21. So that was really important to me. 

[00:03:21] Gordon Jones: So as she was doing her research, I actually had a problem that was mustering in the back of my mind because I hadn't gone through a background check for employment since 1997.

Uh, because I worked for myself , but to become an adjunct, uh, at the university of South Carolina, they had to take me through that rigamarole. And just because of my diverse background, it took a little bit longer than normal, according to them. To do my work history, my criminal background and all that, all, all my academic credentials and I've got four degrees and all this crazy stuff.

So, so it took them a lot longer than we all expected. As a matter of fact, they didn't even let me into my own class until a week after it started. . Yeah. So I was like back here saying, well, why are we doing this third party background check business? That's a hundred years old already. Um, and what we ended up doing was as, as Erica was researching, I, you know, the identity space and I wasn't really deep into it at myself at that time.

Of course I knew about authentication and KYC and, and, um, and any money laundering and all that. Stuff, because I've been in blockchain and crypto for so long. Uh, but I didn't really think about the identity portion of all this. And, uh, we ended up meshing the two ideas together to come up with the idea for privacy.

So basically it is a digital wallet for identity, uh, and incorporated in that we want a person to be able to hold not, it's not just for payment and identity. It's primarily to hold verifiable credentials, um, and, and primarily around career. So work history, education, um, um, you know, anything that has anything to do with quote unquote, a career employment.

Um, so that's kind of why I, that was our initial idea. And really over the past, over the 2021, we really were just doing a lot of research. To figure out exactly what we wanted to do. And of course we, we found out about, uh, decentralized identity and, and, uh, self sovereign identity. And we really grabbed onto that.

And so that's, that's why we're here. yeah. As a matter of fact, we've got the shirt now says, oh, very nice privacy self. So self sovereign, your identity 

[00:05:58] Doc Searls: oh, that's really good. So, so, um, an angle on the attraction for me of, of SSI is that you don't carry around. You know, I have my wallet around here somewhere, but you know, people think of their ID as a thing that's issued by that has a lot of credentials on it.

Like my driver's license says I'm licensed to drive in the state of California. It says I old am. It gives my hair color. Um, uh, it gives, uh, uh, my eye color. Uh, both of which have changed over, over the years. Nevermind that. But, um, but generally what, what the other party, what the relying party, um, needs to know is, do you have tickets to the game?

Did you go to this school? Did you know it's generally you want, what you wanna be able to have is MI what Kim Cameron of Microsoft called minimum disclosure for constrained use to justifiable parties, rather than exposing a lot more about yourself. And it's a completely different way to do, to do identity in the sense that the other party only gets you.

You only gets to learn what they need in order to provide whatever service they're providing. And. It's not much of a service, it's just like, do you need to get in the door? Are you over 18? Where did you have your shots? Um, are you, you know, there there's, you know, did you go to this school? And it's a very different way of thinking about identity, cuz it doesn't start with, with, uh, a relatively small number of very important information providers, but a very large number of, of important at the moment, facts about yourself, but not everything which would expose you a lot more.

Mm-hmm that's probably a terrible way of putting it, but there, there you 

[00:07:45] Gordon Jones: go. Yeah. And, and actually that was one of our original use cases was. So Erica can go down to the, we call it the entertainment district around the university and be able to get into the restaurant or bar and be able to order a drink without them even knowing her actual birthday.

Right. They don't need to know her name. They don't need to know her home address. All they need to know is this is her phone, which we do visually. And then that she's over 21 and that's it. Yeah. Or she's under 21. If she's under 21, then an server, if she's over 21, then they serve her. Right. Um, and, and that's really what, what her whole project was for that semester.

Yes. Um, so yeah. Is very interesting. Uh, we, we, we, when we talk about it, of course we say zero knowledge proof. So mm-hmm, bartender has no reason to know anything else, except that she's actually over 21 and 

[00:08:42] Katherine Druckman: that's it. Very much need to know. I'm curious, how, how does, what's the adoption like, like how does that work?

How do you ensure that the business you're going to will accept, um, your, your 

[00:08:54] Gordon Jones: verification? Well, so that's been, and I've been down this road before, so I, I created a, um, live streaming app called guardian watch for 9 1, 1 incidents back in 2011. And the problem we had then was, okay, well, you have to be in order to live stream from a 9 1, 1 incident, you're an observer.

You just happen to see this 9 1 1 incident and it's streamed to a first responder. Who's on the way there. We have to do what we call, create density in a local market. Mm-hmm . And so Eric and I came up with the idea, what we call our marketing model is local to grow global. So what we'll do is we focus on communities and educating them vertically instead of.

Picking a horizontal industry to focus on mm-hmm . And, and so in Columbia, South Carolina, you know, we were meeting with the mayor, the police chief, the sheriff, the officers on the ground, uh, the restaurants, and then the university. As a matter of fact, we just completed two pilots with the university to, so that they can actually share the college degrees from the college that we work in, that I work in with the graduates.

So we did it in, uh, December, and we just did it in may. And then from there, they can use that credential in their privacy wallet to also go down and use it at the restaurants. Mm-hmm so, so from a marketing standpoint, yes, we need to fo hyperfocus on a local community and, and, and build what I call density in there, where people, even if we haven't directly marketed to them, They start knowing what privacy is.

Um, we've also created incentive model, uh, where 1% of all of our revenue goes back to the person who introduced privacy to whoever the next customer is, whether it's a person or a business. And so, as long as they're a member of thrive, the privacy community, they'll actually earn incentives back based on the revenues generated from those entities, whether they're a person or a business, uh, through the, uh, ecosystem.

Um, so that's another way we, we help get the word out, theres, incentivizing our community to referral. If you want to call that or social. Social network or whatever you wanna call that. . 

[00:11:28] Doc Searls: Yeah. It's interesting. Joyce and I are, uh, we're in Bloomington, Indiana, you know, and for similar reason, we've got a similar project that we're working on here.

It's not a commercial project, but, um, uh, but it does have markets in it and you ha and I think that. I, there are so many ideas and SSI is certainly one of them, um, where the, what one tends to think is it can only work at worldwide scale. In other words, that, you know, yeah. You have to get everybody to use it before anybody uses it.

And, um, obviously there's lots of things to succeeded that way. Um, but it always starts locally somehow. I mean the worldwide web started with a bunch of high energy physicists in one place in Switzerland, you know, that's right. That's right. Um, And I don't think they even thought that that was gonna be a worldwide thing when they, even though he called it the worldwide web.

Right, right. it wasn't, it was, it was more like the, not even campuswide something, you know? So, 

[00:12:27] Gordon Jones: um, yeah. And Tim and Tim did and, and the re and because Tim didn't, Tim burner's league did it that way. He also didn't make a boatload of money off of it either. Did you? 

[00:12:37] Doc Searls: No. And, and he, you know, he , he didn't have any of that in mind.

I mean, yeah. Right. Right. So often it's just kind of scratching your own itch. Right. So, so what, tell us about the business and how okay. You're, you're trying it locally there. Um, on the one hand, people do wanna know, Hey, you've got a business there. It makes money somehow. That's good. We don't want you in the community doing that.

On the other hand, there's a, Hey, you're trying to start something new here. Why you're making money with it. There there's those two tensions, as it were 

[00:13:08] Gordon Jones: wondering. Well, and we're, we're going to be venture backed. Um, mm-hmm so, so we have to be able to show that we can generate significant revenue and value, so the investors will get their money back.

Um, so we definitely have to do that and we have a plan for that. Um, um, but, uh, you know, and for the sophisticated and I, and I, I don't mean, I don't mean people who are academic or anything. I just mean people who kind of understand what's happening in this world of what is now called web three or Medi Versey or whatever, whatever.

Um, I do talk about how once we get this into the market and it starts being adopted for initially in the employment space or some other use cases it's gonna be adopted for other use cases, because at the end of the day, Credentials process for issuing holding and verifying is exactly the same. It doesn't really matter what the credential is, right?

So ultimately, uh, if we, if we structure the wallet part of this correctly, we should be able to hold other digital assets. And that's the long term vision of what we're doing that would be able to scale significantly. And we call that the inverse. So you got the metaverse, which means a bunch of different things.

You have the inverse, which is an individual's universe to where I'm holding all my digital stuff. In one place. 

[00:14:48] Doc Searls: I, I, I like that. Is it? I do you, do you see it as in N D I verse or I N D Y verse 

[00:14:53] Gordon Jones: I, I, uh, I N D I verse and, uh, yeah. Um, because also because the U URLs were able to get . 

[00:15:00] Doc Searls: Yeah, yeah, of course.

Right. That's great. 

[00:15:03] Gordon Jones: Um, but yeah, and we don't, we don't tell a whole bunch of people about that because, um, because if they're, if they're looking at it for education and career, they don't understand this thing over here, they'll get scared off. So , but, um, but when I do start talking about that, I talk about your idea of the in intention economy.

So I, I do talk, especially my data privacy, right? So in my data privacy class, where the big tech guys are, are taking our data, our, our personal identity information. As a mathematic meta, which is Facebook is getting sued for scraping personal health information off of hospital websites. That, that was just pushed out this week.

It's 

[00:15:46] Doc Searls: amazing how they can do that. 

[00:15:47] Gordon Jones: Yeah. I mean, I mean, and it's just a little thing in the web browser. That's scraping the data while you're going into your medical 

[00:15:53] Doc Searls: records and, and all these great hospitals that, uh, uh, Johns Hopkins, many others, you know, they just signed off, they signed off on something, they just look like a third party service.

Right. Well, it's harmless. It just gets, you know, yeah. It'll help. It'll help socially instead of realizing that that 

[00:16:10] Gordon Jones: well. So, so what I tell people is, um, so the attention economy is today and it's, it's grabbing your data to figure out how to market and manipulate you. Right? And to your point in your book about the intention economy is I'm not telling people who I am, but I'm displaying.

The credentials that you need to make an offer or answer a proposal to me on what I need. Right. Right. So if it's like a mortgage, then what I'm gonna do is through SSI. I can present the credentials, my financial credentials, the price of the house, you know, the general information around the value of the house and all that.

And then a mortgage provider can make an offer to me for a mortgage. And then if 20 of them do it and I choose one, then that one might get some data to go into their database. But the other 19, no longer have my information. Um, and, and so I, I layer into what we are doing into your idea, the intention economy, to where we're building a framework to enable people to actually do, um, do that.

Uh, in the future. So, 

[00:17:29] Doc Searls: yeah, and, and the, an interesting thing is, uh, and an unfortunate thing is that I, I wanna make clear to people, we were talking about the distance difference between a tension with an a and intention with an I, because they sounds, there's such, hominems in a way, and it's disturbing, but anyway, but I think what's cool about what you're trying to do is it starts with the intention of the individual, right?

Yes. With their own inverse. I like that, you know, that I, I have a, I have a personal universe of data about myself over which I have complete control, and I will selectively disclose on an as needed basis to others, according to my intentions, not according to theirs, you know, which may be may far exceed mine and what they're actually looking for.

[00:18:14] Erica Barnette: Right. Absolutely. You have the right to take it back. Yeah. I 

[00:18:19] Gordon Jones: like that. Right. And then you've revoke it and, and you could expirations on there on all that. Great. Go ahead. 

[00:18:27] Erica Barnette: Uh, 

[00:18:27] Katherine Druckman: Katherine. Yeah. Yeah. I have a question about, about your end users. Um, I wonder if you have a sense of who is attracted to your wallet for ease of use reasons, you know, carrying around these various credentials versus, um, you know, what's the Vinn diagram where people are more concerned about data privacy and does that, does it change depending on different demographic groups?

Like for example, we're, we're a pretty, uh, we, we represent a lot of different age groups here on this call. I think mm-hmm yeah. And two of us are women and, and, you know, I, I, I see arise that a lot of that women should maybe take a little more care with data privacy for a lot of reasons. Absolutely. Which we could get into.

But I just wonder if you get a sense of, of who, who your users are and, and what their various, um, attractions are to, to your, your wallet app. And we, why, why are they coming to you? 

[00:19:26] Gordon Jones: So, well, we're still early sure. So we're 

[00:19:30] Katherine Druckman: attracting that who's, who's, who's more excited. That's probably a better, a better way who gets more excited when you 

[00:19:36] Gordon Jones: pitch them.

Um, um, so one of the groups that is interested in leveraging what we're doing and, and we're working on this, um, is, uh, the South Carolina soccer league. So the South Carolina youth soccer holds a lot of P uh, personal information on youth, right? Mm-hmm and their parents control the giving of that data to the soccer Federation, um, through their coaches.

So in other words, there are birth certificates in various forms, either sitting on a coach's desk or scanned into a computer and a PDF that is unsecure. Uh, and if you know, the statistics today, hackers are going after youth identity because they can use it longer. Yeah. Before somebody finds out because a youth doesn't really ping their, um, ping their, uh, credit bureau until they're going for, you know, an 18 year old and they're going for a credit card.

So one of the ideas is to enable the parent to use the thy wallet, to create verifiable credentials based on the, their child's birth certificate that's needed by the coaches to register them for the soccer league. And, and, and so that particular use case then enables a parent to become a privacy customer.

And then we tell them other ways that they can ultimately use privacy in their life. Because at the end of the day, like, like doc was saying, um, I have my wallet. I know what to do with my wallet. So once we explain to people what to do with their, what a digital wallet is and what they can do with it, then they'll come up with ways to better use it.

Um, and then on top of that, we give them incentives for figuring out new ways of using it. That's. Yeah. So from a demographic standpoint, though, um, you know, you're right, there's a lot of people that have been using all these free services G you know, Gmail and everything, and, and not caring about their data.

Uh, but I think it's becoming more and more prevalent. As a matter of fact, I'm being asked to speak on Fox nation during the freedom Fest in Las Vegas next week, freedom Fest is a libertarian, um, conference. So they're all about. They're they love the terminology self-sovereign identity. , that's interesting.

That's 

[00:22:23] Doc Searls: great. And it, and it freaks out others because there are some really fringe groups that, that have sort of taken over, not taken over, but they've used the term. And there are a lot of people in the SSI world who actually, we are in a, uh, interviewed recently where, um, we were told to not use the word sovereign right.

Because it, yeah, 

[00:22:50] Gordon Jones: that's interesting. As a, and, and as a matter of fact, um, uh, one of the provinces in Canada was trying to figure out how they were going to frame, uh, the terminology in order to adopt decentralized identity. And they, they used the word dominion instead of sovereign individual dominion over your identity.

[00:23:11] Doc Searls: Well, that's interesting. 

[00:23:14] Katherine Druckman: What's interesting to me is I think, you know, data, privacy issues, data privacy issues are, seem to be one of the few issues that are, uh, that appeal. It's one of the few issues that appeals to people across the political spectrum. We've talked to people and many, many, you know, uh, Evan Greer comes to mind who works with fight, works for fight for the future, and I remember in that episode talking about, you know, just a bipartisan support and, and the ability to work across the aisle very much on a lot of these issues, because it is actually one of the things it seems to be important to really 

[00:23:48] Gordon Jones: everyone well, well, and that goes all all the way back.

So when I teach my course about data privacy, one of the things I talk about is HIPAA. And, uh, so my, uh, one of my relatives was Nancy casaba. So she's a Senator from Kansas, a Republican, right? And she partnered with Ted Kennedy. Who's the quintessential Democrat. Um, and they came up with the Kennedy Casa bomb act of 1996, which turned into HIPAA.

Yeah. And it was all about health, data, privacy for health information. Right. And, uh, so yeah, I mean, this, this thing definitely goes across all boundaries. Most of the legislation that's presented, um, for consumer protection is the way they usually frame it. Um, it, you know, is usually from, uh, you know, the Democrats or their more liberal side of, of things.

Um, but I mean, it's an absolute need. 

[00:24:47] Doc Searls: I, I think it's one of the areas that, that really completely T or transcends, uh, um, you know, political. Boundaries. I mean, it's it, it's one of the topics over which the two sides don't have to hate each other. right. I think absolutely. You know, I mean, it's just like, I we're, we're trying to do a right thing here and I think pretty much everybody sees what, you know, what, what the problem is.

Um, you know, I think we, where we, we get into trouble and I was on another cast this morning that kind of went into, this is where, where the right and the left decide that they both want to kill big tech you know, so, and then, and, and privacy, and along with it, you know, like we want all the ISPs to censor everything that social media is doing.

Um, but we're right, right. We're kinda, they can't have it both ways. No, no, you can't. So, so what I'm wondering is how I've thought of it is that the wallet is the. It's a great metaphor for what you're doing, but you don't use it the same way. And everybody today, Chris, nobody can see this, cuz we're not an invisible podcast.

We don't do video here. We right. We can see each other, but I'm holding up my phone. Right. And these are like an extension of ourselves. Now is, is privacy going to be, um, a front page app on your phone? Or is it gonna be something your phone does without having an app that, that is visible? For example, I just go, all I have to do is wave this thing.

I've got nearfield or I've got Bluetooth or some other thing that, uh, or just a QR code, you know, that's kind of the hot thing with the, I've done a lot of flying lately and they all wanna look at your QR code. Um, 

[00:26:32] Gordon Jones: so, so now you're talking about operating systems. Yeah. And in 2011 I was working very hard.

As a matter of fact, I partnered with in Trudo, which. For that that's that 9 1, 1 app I built. So we partnered within Intrada that switches all 85% of all nine one, one phone calls in the country and Canada, they go through Intrada. So I had partnered with them. So they're deep, deep, deep into next gen 9 1 1.

And we couldn't even get a conversation with apple or, or Android to talk about how to embed this in the operating system, cuz that's what you're talking about. Um, but so we'll be an app and uh, but if you, and you know, you understand this, so you know this, all this talk about a super wallet. I mean, ultimately there's gonna be apple pay or apple wallet or whatever that's gonna be as a super wallet.

Google's gonna have a super wallet. So all the big tech guys gonna have a super wallet, but then we are gonna have a super wallet that's decentralized. Um, and gives you total control over your information as opposed to them tracking everything that you're doing with your wallet. Uh, so that's that's uh, so I do see it being an, an app or whatever evolution of, of things on phones, uh, from a utility standpoint, I don't, I mean, if apple adopts SSI, which they haven't, they're an ISO shop now in, in their adoption of, um, uh, digital identity through this, their, their current version that they're partnering with, what 13 states now on, as a matter of fact, they don't, they require all the transactions to go back to the DMVs to for instant Verifi.

And, uh, so they wouldn't, they, you know, they wouldn't, they're not gonna adopt a decentralized identity platform to go inside their operating system. I don't see it. Um, as a matter of fact, I presented to the South Carolina DMV in December and to educate them on this because they didn't know anything about decentralized identity or self sovereign identity.

I went in there with decentralized identity. I didn't go in there with self sovereign identity. um, 

[00:28:54] Doc Searls: yeah, I know you kinda have to pick your words. 

[00:28:56] Gordon Jones: Yeah. Yeah. But they, they were, they, I mean, we spent, how long did we spend with America? Um, hour and a half. Something like that. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And, um, and the other part of it, that from the standpoint of which self sovereign identity is also, Hey, if an officer comes up to your car window and needs your driver's license, your proof of insurance and your registration, guess what these can be.

Verifiable credential form, where they just scan a QR code through the window. So you don't even have to roll down your window. And because of the role that the officer plays, they can get this package of driver's license and insurance and registration. That's 

[00:29:42] Doc Searls: interesting. In one sort of non invasive, you could actually put your QR code right next to your VIN number on your dashboard.

Yeah. 

[00:29:48] Gordon Jones: Or that too. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Um, but the, the main reason why I was making that a huge point is you're not handing your phone to the officer and the officer now does not have access to all the other information on your phone. Yeah. Which is that's the search and seizure part of the constitution that we wanna make sure that, okay, we're going down this path of digital wallets on phones.

And if we have to hand the phone to an officer that kind of gives them permission to do whatever they want to with that phone now, Um, so that was the main point that we were making in our presentation to the South Carolina. DMV is, Hey, if they're gonna use an apple wallet and they're using these ISO standards.

Yeah. It's secure from a hacker, but it's not necessarily protective from a policy standpoint. Um, so that's a big component of everything that a state needs to consider when they're adopting these digital IDs. 

[00:30:49] Katherine Druckman: Um, I have a question for Erica specifically, actually. Sure. I wonder if you've done any outreach or marketing or focus groups or anything specifically with groups of women?

[00:31:01] Erica Barnette: No, I have not had the opportunity quite yet. Um, not, um, especially focused on women. Exactly. Um, we've had women in our, you know, pilots before, but it hasn't truly been focused to women. Um, I'm not the only woman on the team. We, um, right. There's another one of us. Excellent. Um, 

[00:31:24] Katherine Druckman: so, but, you know, I, I'm curious just because I, I would be curious to, to, to know what kind of reception you would get from, for the reason I ask, I actually, I gave her presentation, um, in, in may to a, a women in technology conference about data privacy and the reception I got was fantastic.

And, you know, I just, I wondered if you had had any similar experiences I suspect you might. I, I suspect it might be a, um, yeah, this is a, yeah. This is 

[00:31:55] Erica Barnette: an avenue I need to check, check out. Yes. Thank you for that. 

[00:31:58] Katherine Druckman: I, so I will, I'll be curious to know what happens. 

[00:32:02] Gordon Jones: I will say that, um, um, the youth sports channel.

Is primarily 

[00:32:10] Katherine Druckman: mothers, moms are very 

[00:32:12] Gordon Jones: concerned about these things. Yeah, absolutely. And, and so whenever we've spoken to that group that wants to take that to market, um, it, it's always a mother that they're talking

[00:32:27] Katherine Druckman: about. , they're protective over their kids' information more than yeah. More than they're 

[00:32:28] Gordon Jones: and they're the ones who register them and do all that stuff. You know, the dads are pretty lame about that stuff. So 

[00:32:34] Erica Barnette: well, 

[00:32:37] Gordon Jones: in some, in, in most cases 

[00:32:39] Katherine Druckman: yeah, I do. I I'm, I'm noticing women in particular. Um, absolutely. And actually becoming more and more aware.

[00:32:46] Erica Barnette: Absolutely. Funny enough. Um, for the university pilot, we worked with all women there too, to help get that accomplished and pushed 

[00:32:53] Katherine Druckman: out. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I was just curious to accidentally, I would curious to know more.

Oh, doc has any further thoughts 

[00:33:03] Doc Searls: on that, but no, no, I, I, actually, one of the things I was thinking is that it's, it's not just a coincidence to me that, um, as a tech topic, identity is unusually strong with women. Um, an awful lot of women are involved in, in the development side of it. Not just, not just the let's talk about its side or the corporate side or the, you know, the policy side or all kinds of sides to it.

But it, it, it, it, uh, it is a, it's not one of those tech topics where it's a bunch of bros, you know, seems to be a pretty, even split an interesting thing to me about identity as well is, and this is, this has been the case from the start. An unusual number of Canadians are involved as well. Yeah. It's really real strong.

Yeah. 

[00:33:52] Gordon Jones: Well, almost all the pro almost all the provinces have adopted it already into their government. Right. Yeah. And, and now that the w three C is approved, the, uh, did come, you know, now it's right. Is probably gonna explode even further. Yeah. 

[00:34:09] Doc Searls: Do you wanna see a bit more about what did come is? We've talked about it.

I've I I'm on so many podcasts, the things that, that talk about this, but I wanna tell us a little bit about DIDs and did comment what those are. 

[00:34:20] Gordon Jones: Uh, well, and I'm not a, uh, I'm not the ultimate expert on that either. You probably have a little bit better insight, but, um, but I think it goes further than it goes fur it's identifier.

So it goes further than just the individual, right? It's identifiers framed in this environment of decentralized identity, but it, it goes to businesses. It goes to the internet of things, to where anything and everything that's touching an ecosystem can have an identifier. And that identifiers decentral.

um, um, and it was interesting that it took what, how many months it was like 18 months to really kind of get it pushed through. I, I, I can't remember how many months exact, um, but it was kind of the big tech guys that were trying to keep it from passing. Um, cuz they see the writing on the wall for that.

[00:35:19] Katherine Druckman: Yeah. I've been a link here. This is actually, um, a previous guest we've had, did we have her here or the other one? Uh, identity woman Kaliya. I think we 

[00:35:27] Doc Searls: had her here, young identity woman. She's all over it. She definitely 

[00:35:31] Gordon Jones: knows more than I do about all that. 

[00:35:32] Doc Searls: And she's Canadian, which is part of the pack. the pack.

[00:35:36] Gordon Jones: I'll try, I'm see her and, and uh, Heather Vincent tomorrow on their podcast talking about, uh, professional, professional, uh, professionals in identity. So they're gonna be talking about the industry of identity management and how. Uh, how professionals can, um, be, uh, qualified to operate in that sphere should be interesting.

[00:36:04] Doc Searls: Yeah. Yeah. Um, I should point out again for pronunciation sake when we was talking about DS they're DDS, as in the past par simple of the verb to do it's like I did, uh, oh, that's true. The ID, it's a, it's a, it's a w three C uh, standard. Um, and it's, you know, and it is basically, it's a way to identify things.

So, but it, but that, now that it's a standard, I I'm wondering if you have any thoughts about where and how this goes. I, it seems to be like in. SSI decentralized identity in general is out of control in a good way in the sense that, okay, fires are spreading. Now we're not gonna, nobody's gonna put these out.

Okay. We're this is it's happening. It's kinda like blockchain happened. Yeah. You know, there, it's not, there's, there's a little V with some of this cuz there is blockchain behind some of the approaches. Um, but, but it, it seems to me there's too much happening in too many places, but it also seems to me that there's the successes that it will have are going to start locally in, in constrained places where you can actually get the proof of proof of concept out there and get actual adoption where people are using it in their lives and taking it for granted.

So one, 

[00:37:28] Gordon Jones: one of the problems that we had when all these blockchain platforms were coming into play was interoperability. So one of the good things I see about identity is that we're at least attempting to make it as interoperable as possible. And that's one of the focuses for privacy. And, and because this inverse thing, when we develop that is gotta be agnostic, we gotta be able to hold a digital.

We gotta be able to enable you to hold your digital asset inside the wallet. And if an employer wants to receive a credential and there on I Microsoft's ion decentralized identity network, that's built on Bitcoin technology, but it, but it currently sits in a Hyperledger indie format. How does it convert so that the employer can receive it?

And, and the same thing we're working with the velocity network foundation, and they've built theirs and be. So, how do we take a credential that's built in Bezu and convert it into Indy or one of these other things? So, so our focus for our company is ultimately, um, to be agnostic to the networks so that you can hold any kind of digital asset that you want to in your wallet.

So it's all in one place. Cause right now, when I hold my crypto, I've got like five different wallets. I've gotta hold my cryptocurrency in. Right. Mm-hmm and, and that's insane. Um, when you're trying to manage all those things, so it'll be this, it's gonna be the same thing with your credential. You're gonna wanna hold all your digital assets in one place.

Um, and that's really what our big vision is. Um, we gotta generate some revenue and, and, and then get towards that, cuz that'll be down the road. 

[00:39:27] Doc Searls: That's an interesting thought about digital assets, cuz I think people don't tend to think of them that way, but when, once you have kind of a critical mass of verifiable credentials that you're going to use, some of them are, are permanent in the sense that, uh, you're always gonna have them, your, your passport number, your, you know, driver's license, but a lot of them, your, your ticket to the show, um, you know, your, um, or to the game or, you know, other stuff like that.

I think they're, once people see that they have this sort of collection of, of personal data that they can use in their way, rather than inside some big system. You know, recognizing you, which is more like the system we have now, uh, you carry a cookie. You don't even know where it is and it right.

Identifies you. It's sort of like, I, what I'm sort of imagining right now is this is the complete substitute for the cookie system. Cuz the cookie system is the way is the system by which servers recognize you, right? This is going to be the system by which you recognize servers for a moment that you need them.

And then, and then that need goes away cuz you, now it's now satisfied. It kind of, it kind of turns the whole thing around and what's decentralized about it is people, people are decentralized, right? We're not we're we're independent. 

[00:40:55] Gordon Jones: Well, and, and I think so if you think about it, if I bought that ticket through a Google browser, Google knows that I bought it.

Right. Mm-hmm if it's in a verifiable credential and I want to ultimately monetize my data. In the future, then I wanna hold onto the fact that I bought that concert ticket. Right? So it's, it could always be in my wallet available for me to package it up and to lease my data to somebody who's willing to pay me for it.

Cuz today we don't make money off of our data. We just get free crap. And, and so I think, um, one, one of the biggest things that we're really looking at, as a matter of fact, I'm an advisor for a project called DataBank me, uh, they're hyper focused on Nigeria right now, but what they are doing is, is enabling you to capture your health data.

And then they have pharmaceutical and healthcare companies that do research, who are paying you for being able to see your health data. Um, And so they're they're, they are creating a platform they're not decentralized yet, but they are leveraging blockchain tech in CRI in, uh, crypto tokens, not currency, but, um, um, but that, and that actually ultimately then leads to the intention, intention economy that we were talking about earlier.

And that now I have a platform that enables me to intently monetize my data. And that's definitely the future. 

[00:42:34] Doc Searls: Did, did we visit how, how you do make money? Um, I, I dunno if we, you mention yeah, so we're 

[00:42:39] Gordon Jones: so we're, um, so primarily we're our primary customer is the individual mm-hmm and we have two models, an ad hoc model where we can go out and, and verify a credential that you want and turn it into a verifiable credential and put it in your wallet.

And that's an ad hoc fee for that. Mm-hmm um, but we prefer a me. Model. So, uh, right now we've got a membership model that's $5 a month or $60 a year. Um, but we could also have models that are B2B to C where the, if your employer. So if the employer adopts this, uh, and we're already talking to a couple of employers where we're pilot B piloting internal employee training programs, mm-hmm and turning those training programs into verifiable credentials.

So the employee can hold it. So first of all, they get the kudos for getting this training. And then now they have a digital asset they can hold onto and take it to another employer saying, Hey, I got this training over here and here you can verify that I did. And so that all would, we would see following underneath our membership model.

Uh, but we also do have revenue, transactional revenues for verifiers and issuers and mm-hmm and all that 

[00:44:00] Doc Searls: as promising. 

[00:44:01] Gordon Jones: Um, yeah. Yeah, we, we, uh, we did, we did a friends and family round last year that has gotten us to this point. Um, we're looking, uh, for another round of funding to really get to production.

Um, um, so we're, we're, we're doing all those pitch competitions and all that kind stuff and talking to primarily angel groups. We're not talking any yeah. Any VCs cuz we're pre-revenue still so so that's great. Yeah. It's fun. We're having a good time. Aren't we Erica? Oh, absolutely. It would be nice to be making some money so we can put it in our bank accounts, but , I've got a really good wife who's tolerant of, of my escapades.

[00:44:43] Doc Searls: that's great journey is me too. And uh, fun part then telling deal. Now you knew knew her better than me actually. Cuz she's been, uh, she's been all over this topic for a long time. 

[00:44:56] Gordon Jones: Oh yeah. Yeah. Definitely been on a few calls to Joyce . 

[00:45:00] Katherine Druckman: Oh, that's interesting. You know, I'm glad somebody's working on it. There is a problem and you're making an effort to address it.

And I think that's, you know, somebody benefits. I hope, I hope it's you oh, well, mate. Well, yeah, I hope you benefit. I hope somebody does, you know. Hey, it's great. Um, yeah, 

[00:45:17] Gordon Jones: well, we appreciate, y'all helping to share the story, so that's great. Well, tell 

[00:45:22] Katherine Druckman: us, I'm interested that people are working on it, frankly.

So , as long as somebody's working on these problems makes me happy. So, 

[00:45:28] Doc Searls: so tell us again where people should go to, to, to look for more 

[00:45:32] Gordon Jones: about this. So, uh, you know, Erica is our marketing VP, so she's got all the social channels. She's got Instagram. She hasn't been doing any talks yet, but she's been doing all the other stuff.

[00:45:44] Erica Barnette: absolutely. And you can check us out at, uh, my privacy for those social channels, 

[00:45:51] Doc Searls: Uhhuh and, and it's privacy with the th just so people do. Yeah. It's just like 

[00:45:54] Gordon Jones: the word privacy, but with. And then also privacy.io is our main website. That's great. Um, and I'm mostly active on LinkedIn, so you can definitely find me in privacy on LinkedIn.

[00:46:08] Doc Searls: Excellent. 

[00:46:10] Katherine Druckman: Excellent. Thanks for sharing your, uh, your approach here. We'll see, we'll see. We'll see if it ends up being the one, but uh, Hey, well 

[00:46:19] Gordon Jones: there's only gotta start. There's only almost 8 billion people on earth that, and there's a lot of people who don't even have identities much less a digital identity.

Right. So, right. Yeah. We got a lot. We got a lot of work ahead of, we're not worried about 

[00:46:32] Katherine Druckman: running out people and running outta identities. 

[00:46:37] Gordon Jones: uh, but yeah. Cool, cool, 

[00:46:40] Katherine Druckman: doc, is there anything we didn't cover that you wanted, you wanted to get out there? Like, 

[00:46:46] Gordon Jones: no, that was all good. I mean, I'll be at the velocity network foundations first face to face.

Uh, inaugural conference in New York city at Roosevelt island next, the beginning of next week, uh, where we'll be speaking, I'll be speaking on wallets, um, the conferences around the career, uh, the internet of careers and, and that, and they've, and they're basically building the career model on top of all of this from an SSI standpoint.

And then, uh, on third, on, uh, Friday and Saturday, I'll be in Las Vegas at the freedom Fest conference, talking about SSI and super wallets and all that kind of stuff, um, uh, on, uh, vaccination, no less. So, so hopefully that'll, that'll, uh, enlighten some people. 

[00:47:41] Katherine Druckman: Well, excellent. I, I, I would love to see a world where, you know, women don't have to flash their home address just to get a beer.

So I know, 

[00:47:48] Erica Barnette: right. that's the 

[00:47:50] Gordon Jones: goal. That's right. So that's, 

[00:47:54] Doc Searls: that's, that's a big motivator 

[00:47:55] Gordon Jones: right there. Mm-hmm oh, well, I was gonna say about the women thing just real quick, before we sign off everything I tell every time I tell a dad about what we're doing, that has a daughter in college, they're like, mm-hmm I never even thought about that.

Yeah, man. Yeah. 

[00:48:11] Doc Searls: Yeah. The 

[00:48:12] Gordon Jones: world 

[00:48:12] Katherine Druckman: is a yeah. Well, yeah. don't so your home address, that's right. Okay. Um, cool. Well, uh, yeah, with that, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for everybody. Who's listen. To all of this. Um, yes. Thank 

[00:48:26] Erica Barnette: you so much for having us and 

[00:48:28] Doc Searls: we'll have to have you back on for a progress report.

[00:48:30] Katherine Druckman: Yes. Yeah. We hear progress. Absolutely. We would 

[00:48:32] Gordon Jones: love to give, give us some time for the progress

[00:48:38] Doc Searls: all you need, but 

[00:48:40] Gordon Jones: yeah, that great. Thank you very much. Yes. Thank 

[00:48:43] Erica Barnette: you.