1. What is the mission and vision of Peer Social?
Peer Social is a team of dedicated decentralists who are researching and developing new architectures and technologies to solve some of the most pressing problems of our time—starting with social media. We are committed to eliminating the dynamic of user exploitation, which has become commonplace on the social internet.
Social networks and centralized Cloud service providers require users to agree to terms which include giving up control of their personal data in return for using their network or service. They use this agreement as a blanket authorization to host, track and store, their users’ online activities and behaviours. The Surveillance Capitalism business model represents the worst excesses of the social Internet—we are here to change it.
Over the past 2 years we have assembled a super-talented team of security architects, designers, developers, and some of the world’s best academic researchers to build a secure, distributed, mobile networking app, which allows users to create their own private network (using a secure blockchain)—it’s called Manyone. Manyone is a safe, digital environment where users control their personal information, connections, and unique personas.
We want to fix content moderation, content hosting, and the ownership problems of today’s social Internet by giving users decentralized ownership and control of their data. We want everyone to have a self-sovereign, self-hosted, digital identity.
2. How will digital identity transform the Canadian and global economy?
Users having a real, verifiable, trusted, digital identity solution is the ambition of every person, country and every business. Enabling one true digital identity for every human would improve access to services like healthcare, government, and banking by uncoupling this access from traditional identity issuers—this would give the under-privileged and under-banked the ability to establish their own unique digital identity.
Economies around the world, including Canada, are going to need to rebuild quickly. Imagine a world where all people had their own self-sovereign digital identity. By establishing immutable links to every citizen at the individual level—we would remove the friction (measured in both time and money) associated with accessing online services/support. Digital access that is efficient, secure, and convenient for everyone is key in helping rebuild and transform economies.
3. How does your organization address the needs of this transformation?
Peer Social focuses on an increasingly important component to any digital identity architecture by enabling true, verifiable, self-sovereign digital identity.
Any individual user, business or government wanting to create a self-sovereign digital identity can do so by recording it on a personal blockchain and securely sharing it with other people and institutions over a private distributed network.
We aim to deliver the simplest, yet most powerful, self-sovereign, verified, decentralized digital identity platform we can for our users.
4. What role does Canada have as a leader in this space?
Canada is in a unique position to take a leadership role in the global digital identity market by already possessing a foundation of ‘trust’—essential for any successful solution. Brand Canada has a lot of admirers around the world and it is easy to imagine a robust and cutting edge, Canadian-built digital identity solution gaining wide acceptance at a global level.
In today’s world, Canadians are more likely to trust a self-sovereign, digital identity solution that is architected and built in Canada. In fact, a digital identity solution produced in Canada is more likely to be accepted as a global standard due to Canada’s reputation as a fair and open society.
5. Why did your Peer Social join the DIACC and what else should we know about your organization?
Peer Social joined DIACC to become more engaged (at the policy level) in the Canadian digital identity conversation. We live in interesting times, where a lot of attention is being paid to digital identity and how to produce the best solution to meet the needs of traditional identity issuers like banks and governments—while still respecting individual users’ civil liberties. Joining DIACC is a great way to connect and listen to what others have to say—as well as add our voice to the discussion.
Keep an eye on Peer Social. We are launching our first generation, decentralized, self-sovereign, digital identity mobile App, Manyone, very soon— allowing each of us to take our first steps towards a self-sovereign, digital future.