Civic CEO: identity should be a 'universal lego' across chains

Ashton Addison: How did you get into blockchain and Civic?▶ 00:23

Chris Hart: My background started in tech. I used to build data centers for high-frequency options trading firms, back in the early 2000s day-trader days. Later I went into finance, became a controller and ended up as a CFO for a couple of Silicon Valley companies. But something was always in the back of my mind saying there had to be a better way to handle data transfer, and particularly money transfers around the globe. I was introduced to Vinny, and for me 2017 was the moment I decided this technology has legs. It will revolutionize how money is handled, and even more importantly how data is handled, through distributed ledger technology. I joined Civic in 2017 and have been focused on distributed identity ever since.

Ashton: What are the main solutions Civic is focused on right now?▶ 02:42

Chris: We've been working on identity since our inception, and those use cases have played out in different ways. One is access management. We work with Johnson Controls, which uses the Civic identity to get people into office buildings. Instead of lining up at a desk to show an ID document, you bring your portable identity with you, tied to a mobile app, identity documents and face mapping, with the checks already done. Another is traditional KYC and login, where we want identity to be easy to use, reusable and portable between applications. The third is zero-knowledge proof of a fact about your identity. With Blackfire Innovation outside Las Vegas, in partnership with UNLV and Caesars Entertainment, we're demoing a vending machine where you prove you're of age to get a beer without sharing the underlying data.

Ashton: Why would a business prefer not to hold its customers' data?▶ 06:17

Chris: A lot of companies don't want that data. Ingesting it creates security risk, storage risk and PII exposure, and with regimes like GDPR and CCPA in California it's really important to store data securely. If your use case doesn't absolutely call for you to store personal information of your customers, you should not do that. A lot of companies tell us they'd rather just get a thumbs-up and move forward with the transaction.

Ashton: Is identity necessary in DeFi, and what role does Civic play?▶ 07:24

Chris: I think this mirrors innovation curves you see on a 50- or 100-year cycle. A hundred years ago stock exchanges were the Wild West. That changed for good reasons, because there were bad actors. But centralizing and controlling can stifle innovation, so the balance is delicate. DeFi has created access to financial products for people who never had it. We hold to the ideals of self-sovereign identity, where your identity belongs to you. But to prove ownership of something like an NFT or the title to a house, you need some authoritative, government-issued documentation. It's like the form at a doctor's office. They probably don't need 75 percent of what they ask, but there is a core they do need, such as your medications. DeFi has to ride that line. Lending pools, AMMs and DEXes are transformative, and we need to protect privacy and not stifle that.

Ashton: Will DeFi move to more granular identity requirements rather than blanket KYC?▶ 11:46

Chris: I think that's right, and there's value in different approaches. Some companies look from the outside in, keeping lists of known bad wallet addresses and monitoring velocity and strange transactions. We take the inverse approach and work from the inside. People share elements of identity and tie them to something meaningful like a wallet, a deed to a house or an NFT, so ownership is verifiable, on-chain and distributed. The user decides to share only the bare minimum of data required. There's validity in both, and I think both are needed.

Ashton: Where is the Civic wallet now, and where are you heading by the end of the year?▶ 13:37

Chris: The wallet is now out and publicly available, with over 120,000 downloads. People use it for login, vending machines, access and a range of KYC use cases. We see a real need in DeFi, and Civic's technology is well suited to it. The team is distributed around the world and focused on polishing identity, adopting DID standards and making identity available cross-chain. That matters because of the proliferation of L2 chains and the fast-growing Solana ecosystem. Identity is kind of like a universal lego that you should be able to take from chain to chain. It should tie you to your wallet, your identity and your passport or driver's license, and just follow you wherever you go.

Ashton: Which chains are projects gravitating toward?▶ 16:02

Chris: It varies by use case. For really high-volume, high-frequency transactions we're seeing movement mostly to Solana, but also Algorand, Polkadot and others. On Ethereum there's a ton of volume, and the NFT marketplace is going nuts, so there's a real need to tie identity to it. Identity should be a utility. When you're building a project, being able to grab an identity piece and layer it in without thinking twice makes life much easier. We think that will accelerate innovation and interoperability.