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Research Summit 2022 • Videos

Lightning talks: The identity revolution: Centering trust on people

Today, our online identities are composed of disjointed and siloed relationships with various governments and commercial and social providers. The internet is missing a suitable layer to represent and manage the complexities of real-life identity in our online lives. An interoperable, user-centric identity system has long been a dream and promises to unlock scenarios in both the physical world and on the internet. New modalities, such as the metaverse and Web3, impose new requirements, while societal and regulatory shifts towards increased privacy raise the pressure to innovate.

In this research talk, we discuss hard problems in digital identity and potential solutions. We highlight some of the building blocks being developed in research—auditable data structures, zero-knowledge proofs, and minimal disclosure technologies—to realize the vision of an equitable, decentralized, secure, and privacy-preserving identity layer to the internet.

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