Koii DIDs: Full User Autonomy in an Open Web3

Introducing Koii’s Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) for Web3

We’re thrilled to announce the upcoming rollout of Koii’s DID framework, enabled by Koii and Arweave!

Koii’s DID framework enables an unprecedented level of autonomy for Koii users and is central to our creation of an operating system for the decentralized internet.

TL;DR — What’s Happening with the DIDs

• Koii is releasing an Arweave-based DID, which will allow people to create identities (profiles) that can be used across multiple chains.
• When viewed online, Koii’s DIDs accrue rewards for the DID owners in $KOII tokens.
• DIDs will be available for a limited early-adopter group on November 19, 2021. To pre-register and receive your DID, fill out this information.

Overview of the Koii DID

These DIDs are Koii’s answer to the longstanding problem (and opportunity) of decentralized, secure, self-sovereign identity management. As Web3 evolves into an interoperable, multi-chain reality, the ability to retain one’s identity and everything that comes with it (reputation, on-chain history, governance track, etc.) becomes paramount. Built on Arweave, Koii is uniquely positioned to provide two core benefits for DIDs: permanence and economic incentives.

Permanence: Koii’s DIDs allow people to originate their Web3 identities on Arweave, which uses a blockweave architecture and Succinct Proof of Random Access (SPoRA) consensus mechanism. Together, blockweave and SPoRA ensure that Arweave’s validator nodes not only store information, but continue to store it in perpetuity regardless of how “popular” the information is or how often users request it. This means that Koii’s DIDs persist forever, providing decentralized and permanent identities.

Incentives: Built off Koii, the DIDs also benefit from the network’s slow consensus, which batches on-chain transactions every 24 hours. This enables the cheap collection and analysis of online attention, and distributes $KOII daily to addresses on the Koii network that own assets that have received online attention. This means the owners of the DIDs will receive KOII whenever their online profiles are viewed by others.

Sign up for the Koii newsletter and stay tuned for more information about Koii’s DID framework, and how to get started.

DIDs, Explained

Since the earliest days of blockchain, decentralized identity has loomed as a sort of “holy grail” for Web3.

In the earliest days of the Internet, the technology served to connect devices together and share basic information across multiple networks. However, the Internet’s IP protocol is only capable of determining the addresses of the devices users are connecting to, meaning they are not able to verify the identity of the users controlling these devices. This means that when you switch from device to device, your identity isn’t necessarily carried with you. Hence, the rise of third party “identifiers” — your email address, your Facebook profile, your bank accounts. Because each of those companies profit off your data, however, they don’t “speak” to each other, meaning your identity is scattered around the Internet, on multiple devices and multiple platforms. And none of them are under your control.

This is where DIDs come in. Unlike IP addresses, DIDs provide an autonomous and definitive method of proving who we are and who exactly we are interacting with. In other words, a DID is decentralized proof of who you are. More specifically, a DID is a cryptographically secure and machine-verifiable string of values that can identify an individual or entity without relying on a centralized authority. DIDs use public and private key pairs to secure information and handle permissions, and are designed to work across different blockchains, software libraries, and protocols.

In a single-chain ecosystem, DIDs aren’t that complex to imagine. A MetaMask wallet, for example, can serve as something similar to a true DID if the entire world operated off Ethereum. As the blockchain community collectively marches towards an interoperable ecosystem of many chains, however, the need for DIDs to be portable across chains becomes critical. Multi-chain DIDs today pose one of the greatest challenges and opportunities to the Web3 ecosystem.

DIDs were the first new online identification standard to be approved by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) since the creation of the URL, and their importance within Web3 cannot be overstated. And while few existing DIDs have managed to capture widespread usage, Koii’s framework is here to change that. In order to truly free ourselves from centralized gatekeepers and media platforms, it’s essential to develop and adopt a decentralized, interoperable system of online identity management. In other words, DIDs are a codified representation of full user autonomy on the internet of the future, and Koii’s framework is the first DID of its kind.

How to Get Your Koii DID

The Koii team is currently developing a process for users to create their own DID using the Finnie Wallet. This feature will be rolled out within a few weeks, so now is the time to download the Finnie Wallet – your gateway to Koii’s decentralized attention economy.

In the meantime, you can sign up for early access to Koii’s DID, although spots are limited and filling up fast!

Sign up for early access to GUPII

Down the line, Koii’s DIDs will enable users to interact with any on-chain environment using a single cryptographic key. In addition to streamlining Koii’s end user experience, the DIDs will also let dApp developers take advantage of whichever blockchain they need for the task they’re trying to accomplish. In other words, you will be able to build a cross-chain dApp that lets users interact across multiple blockchain networks simultaneously.

As new features are rolled out, the DIDs will provide a one-stop meta-solution bridging all existing DIDs, and will eventually underpin Koii’s entire on-chain reputation system. Additionally, the DIDs will also serve as a spam-prevention mechanism to separate real traffic from bots and scammers, thereby ensuring that Koii’s attention rewards go to the content creators who are generating real-world excitement. By making it easier than ever for users to prove who they are and who they are interacting with online in a seamless and secure way, Koii’s DIDs will usher in a new era of creative expression and on-chain collaboration.

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