Blockchain technology is allowing us to build a new internet on distributed systems, commonly referred to as Web 3.0. Web 3.0 represents a new way of organising internet data. On blockchain networks like Ethereum, user data is owned by users and permissioned to platforms who hope to provide value. We call this idea of enabling data ownership and protection: self-sovereign identity.
Whereas Web 2.0 is privatised and monopolised, Web 3.0, enabled by blockchain, will be pro-privacy and anti-monopoly—it’s about multiple profit centers sharing value across an open network.
Self-sovereign identity is still in its early days, but it is more than just an idea. Working solutions already exist, such as the city of Zug in Switzerland to offer Ethereum-based digital identities as an option to residents, or the Swiss Federal Railway, which recently piloted the use of self-sovereign identity in tracking the credentials of its contractors and employees.