Key Concepts

Digital Identity

Digital identity is our representation in the digital world. Along with the evolution of the internet, the conception of identity has also evolved through time. Nowadays, presenting our identity while exploring web services usually requires more than a username-password pair, such as additional personal data or the association with a social media accounts. That's where the problem emerges, because, for average users, much of their information is floating everywhere, publicly displayed on social media and search engines, or exposed to hackers through unsecured databases.

Self-Sovereign Identity

Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) is the next step in the evolution of identity models to bring the full authority of digital identity back into users' hands. That means users can control their personal data, and only they can possess the right to prove who they are.

User data is securely stored on their personal devices or client encryption storage, together with their digital signature, ensuring no one can impersonate them to access permissioned services. With this approach, users are at the center of the identity solutions and can present and verify themselves easily and safely. With no more managing multiple passwords or depending on the data silos of big tech companies, the user experience can be seamless without trade-offs in privacy and security.

Another important feature in SSI models is the common usage of blockchain ledgers as the data layer. In this way, peer-to-peer interactions are enabled to enhance users’ privacy and independence from any centralized organization. With the rising of decentralized applications and platforms, bringing SSI into the field is expected to be a key factor for them to become mainstream and achieve mass adoption.

Zero-knowledge Proof

Zero-knowledge proof (ZK or ZKP) is an innovative cryptography technique of proving some given statements are true without disclosing any data that needs to keep private. In every zero-knowledge proof system, one party - the prover - can convince another party - the verifier - that a given statement is true without conveying any sensitive information, for example, the possessing of some secret parameters. The technology has already been adopted as the answer to privacy problems in various digital systems.

In our SSI model, privacy is designed as a built-in feature because users’ privacy is our top priority and is always protected by default. With ZKP technology, we allow anyone to prove who they are without the need to disclose their sensitive information or to selectively share a part of their personal information. This approach will tremendously reduce the risks of identity fraud and identity theft.

Web2 and Web3

“Web2” is the term used to describe the current iteration of the internet, an internet dominated by big corporations that exchange your personal information for services. On the other hand, the term "Web3" refers to decentralized programs that operate on blockchain networks, or decentralized applications. The ideas behind SSI and Web3 share the vision of a decentralized ecosystem in the digital space, their approaches embrace decentralization in identifying entities and put power in the hands of individuals rather than corporations.

On the other hand, interoperability between systems and standards is at the heart of applying an identity model in solving real-life problems. Keeping that in mind, Ziden provides solutions working seamlessly across Web2 and Web3 systems by supporting integration with multiple blockchain networks.

This helps us bring abstraction and transparency into every workflow and keep the user experience consistent while businesses can flexibly deploy and serve their services on different platforms with ease.