Development of the VIDT Dynamic Digital Identities

The need to combine the physical and digital has always been there, but there has always been a missing link. That missing link is the trust and proof that the digital actually is the representation of the physical. Making a unique NFT of a painting does not prove that this NFT is of that actual painting for example.

VIDT DAO has been used to build this bridge for paintings, watches and even a McLaren supercar. The core of what VIDT DAO has done in the past revolved around the proving the following:

1. proof of existence - the verifiable proof that something has existed at a certain point in time
2. proof of authenticity - the verifiable proof that what you see before you is the authentic one
3. proof of ownership - the verifiable proof that what you see before you is owned by someone
4. proof of provenance - the verifiable proof of who has owned, and where the item has been

These processes have been very time consuming to develop. It took multiple organizations quite a lot of time to develop the Rembrandt on Chain use-case. And scaling this would prove difficult as every painting is different, just like its history and provenance.

A dynamic identity

This issue of scaling can be solved though. A dynamic identity that can be used to store the 4 proofs mentioned above. Creating a unique entity on the blockchain is not new; NFTs do exactly this. But making sure the NFT contains the proofs and is actually verifiable is where the big challenge lies.

This is where VIDT DAO technology comes in. We envision a digital entity that is unique and can be used to create a digital identity of anything; both digital and physical. This identity is therefore dynamic and can be adjusted to any use-case in which it would be needed.

The McLaren, Rolex and Rembrandt use-cases were great ways to explore how each proof worked and could be implemented.

Now it is time to develop a platform that enables anybody to create a digital identity using VIDT DAO timestamp technology, which covers every potential use-case.

Digital Twin

Digital identities are used everywhere already, usually named Digital Twins. A digital twin is essentially exactly what the name implies; it is a digital replica of a physical object/item. For example, a building can be managed using a digital twin to record all the changes, maintenance operations, rentees, etc.

The benefit of a digital twin is that it makes it very easy to manage the physical object due to all the functionality you can build around that digital twin. The need to create a verifiable unique twin is bigger than ever, and is the challenge to do properly. This is exactly where VIDT DAO timestamping technology shines.

The proposal

The digital identity should be unique, easy to create and implementable for any system so that it can be used to add functionality to existing applications. This is quite a big development operation and will take a lot of R&D to get done properly. Especially because all the proofs should be in there.

We are asking for a grant of 3,5 million VIDT DAO tokens. We will be using the funds granted to us from this proposal for the following:

• Technical design Designing the right API and dataset to form the Digital Identity. It is important to keep characteristics like how easy it is to implement in mind. The design is therefore very important, especially with blockchain development as updates are difficult to do with an immutable technology.

• Proof of concept When the design has been completed, a proof of concept will be developed. This proof of concept is used to prove and test the viability of a use-case like this. We will be looking for several types of identities to test the proof of concept with. For example: a physical document, a painting, a watch, etc. If you have a good suggestion for this, let us know.

• Scale up document After the proof of concept was a success, we should start planning the next features and development phases. The scale up document is used for this and will be the basis of the future.