London, England, July 24th, 2023, Chainwire
cheqd, a start-up creating the trusted data economy, where users and organizations have full control and portability of their data, is launching Creds – a platform for issuing, holding, and sharing digital credentials to build a portable reputation.
Announced at the Nebular Summit today in Paris, Creds is a platform to issue digital credentials, or "creds," a portable, reusable, privacy-preserving, and secure way to prove identity, build a decentralized reputation, and establish trust.
Creds addresses several Web3 challenges, particularly community security, engagement, trust, the wave of distrust created by generative AI, and privacy concerns.
Community security, portable trust, and decentralized reputation
One of the biggest challenges in Web3 is security. One report shows that crypto scams wiped out nearly $150M in a single week and mass-scale distrust in communities. With Creds, projects can confirm personhood and ownership of handles, wallets, and reputation, proving admin and moderator role/status across platforms, including Discord and Telegram, and preventing impersonation, Sybil attacks, and scams. Fake content, news, and even people are being supercharged with the advent of generative AI, compounding the issues.
The way to combat this issue is through trust and reputation. Individuals should be able to build their verifiable reputation and port it across different communities and platforms. Creds allows exactly that with the added feature of privacy, whereas individuals can share one or a collection of credentials for others to verify as real.
Community engagement and gamification
Gamification enhances user engagement and drives customer acquisition and retention. Companies that use gamification are more profitable than those that don't. Creds adds a reputation layer to community strategy, enabling projects and individuals to explore gamification mechanics, such as incentivized quests and learn-to-earn, create unique reputation and trust systems, and increase real engagement.
"More and more organizations are looking to become community-focused to take advantage of the rising community economy. As an example, it's preferable to have a smaller number of real active community members, or superfans, than to have a group with thousands of bots.", expands Eduardo Hotta, Head of Marketing & Community at cheqd.
Privacy-preserving
Trust and reputation systems have been tried with the use of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and SoulBound Tokens (SBTs) with varying levels of success. Creds differ from NFTs and SBTs, as they are private, revocable, and can be taken to different platforms and ecosystems since all personal data is off-ledger, which remains private and secure. Data is cryptographically signed and verified by decentralized identifiers (DIDs) on-chain, making it trusted data.
Fraser Edwards, CEO and Co-founder of cheqd explains: "Creds offers a privacy-preserving alternative to the surveillance enabling tech of SBTs and NFTs where you have little control over your privacy, as activities and other information are written on the ledger making it public and immutable. Creds are collectable, portable, secure and verifiable; it has all the best things that the NFT and SBT have with the addition of everything else they are missing."
Launch
cheqd kicked off the launch of Creds and its verifiable credentials by issuing creds to attendees at the Nebular Summit. Attendees, with their creds, have a verifiable way to prove they were at the event without giving up any personally identifiable information about themselves. And, just like an NFT, their creds are collectible and can be kept as a memoir of the event they attended.
Sebastien Couture, Founder of Nebular Summit and Interop Ventures says: “Our goal for Nebular Summit is to showcase the innovative technology emerging from the interchain ecosystem, and offering credentials to all attendees is a really unique and personalized experience to showcase these innovations. We're excited to build from this first edition and use them to offer future benefits, like early registration to our events throughout the year."
For further questions or interview requests, please contact Avishay Litani at avishay@marketacross.com.
About cheqd
cheqd (cheqd.io) is a privacy-preserving payment and credential network that allows users and organizations to gain control and portability of their data. cheqd builds upon Decentralised Identity, Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI), and Digital or Verifiable Credentials (VCs) with payment infrastructure to create Trusted Data markets as an entirely new industry category. Put simply, you can now issue credentials and get paid.
With its technology, cheqd is creating a new paradigm around Trusted Data economies such as lending markets in Web3, preference data markets, and others where the user is at the center. It gives consumers and businesses full ownership, portability, and control over their data and identities. In addition, this data can be transacted within a cutting-edge payment network that prioritizes individual privacy and market-first principles. The distribution scale is unmatched as cheqd engages with organizations across Lending, Supply Chain, eCommerce, Education, Manufacturing, Gaming, and other sectors.
cheqd also features a decentralized reputation platform (creds.xyz) to incentivize and engage Web3 communities through learning credentials and protect users from fraud and scams across Discord, Telegram, and beyond.
Press Contact
Avishay Litani
MarketAcrossavishay@marketacross.com
