Hi everyone. So I'm Misha. I'm one of the co-founders of Vidos by Mail Chain and vidos. Our mission is really about supporting the global adoption of decentralized identities and verifiable credentials. But today I'm not gonna be sort of speaking about the different DID methods or credential standards. I think those topics are covered by some fantastic experts who are here at the conference. So kind of instead I wanted to look a little bit more about, sorry, am I meant to be able to put the notes on the screen? I'll take care of it. Sorry. Thank you.
But yeah, so instead what I'm really looking at today is actually how we, how we design and implement the systems and the networks that actually incorporate these technologies.
And I think both drawing from my own experiences within Web3 as well as kind of over the last couple of months I've been doing some interviews with kind of key identity figures within the space. And so I know that it can sometimes feel a bit in ous to sort of compare Web3 with the likes of regulatory approaches like EIS two.
But certainly from kind of my own experiences I've been able to see some of the intersections because my journey into verifiable digital identity really started in 2020 when we first built out mail chain. And mail chain is really sort of email for Web3. But to do so we had to build from scratch the interoperability between blockchain addresses using the different standards and methods and be able to support things like group communication between decentralized identifiers and as well as sort of supporting tens of thousands of different decentralized identities within our registry.
And so as the regulations evolved and standards kind of became more standardized and we had more kind of requests coming in around supporting the standards based DIDs and VCs, that was when we started to move more towards being able to provide verifiable services that could scale globally and support these identities.
But the more we, the more we moved into this space, the more we went into the regulations and joined working groups and were speaking to relying parties and to kind of other identity service providers, the more that we actually saw that there are a lot of the challenges we are facing, whether it's in EIS two implementations or others, were actually challenges that we've been seeing quite a lot already within Web3.
And I think sort of the, one of the most interesting things about Web3 is actually the fact that the builders have been able to test and iterate and experiment with these network designs and how to bootstrap new networks at the most ridiculously unprecedented sort of rate of experimentation in part 'cause it's unregulated. And so there are things that I do believe we can draw from the way that they've tested these different technologies and there are insights that we can draw from these.
I'm not however, going to just completely ignore the fact that there is obviously this sort of wild west to put it lightly side of Web3. And I think that the headlines are certainly evidence of that. But I would say sometimes it's worth us looking kind of beyond the noise that sort of forms our perception of what Web3 is.
Because actually at the core of it, Web3 really is about designing new networks for the way that identities interact, digital identities interact, and the way that assets and information are exchanged on the internet to be able to distribute ownership differently to how our networks do today, which tend to sort of well centralize and sometimes buke abuse power over data and data ownership.
And I think if we look to the verifiable identity shifts that we see, whether it's EIS 2D I-A-T-F-P-C-T-F, other tfs, it's, they are really also fundamentally about building new global networks for how personal data is exchanged, verified and owned.
And we had some fantastic sort of explanations of this in the the previous talk.
And so I think what's important here is actually seeing that a lot of the challenges are similar in the way that effectively they're having to build kind of this network of networks that can handle different digital identity architectures around the world and scale globally.
And so kind of from both my experiences and the signals from the successes and failures within Web3 that I've seen and then kind of cross-referencing this with some of the interviews that I've been doing and personal experiences within the more regulated exploits, I started to see these parallels in the challenges and particularly those that centered around adoption because I think one thing with Web3 has certainly been how it's shown that the value of the network is only really truly realized once you reach this sort of post-adoption phase.
And so kind of starting with incentive mechanisms, I mean Web3 is a treasure trove of different types of tests for incentive mechanisms to try and bootstrap, bootstrap new networks where you can see anything from airdrop tokens to vampire attacks to sort of on chain and off chain like ways to build reputation over time.
And I think what's interesting here is when you look at sort of the problem, which is that Web3 incentives so tend to be intrinsically tied with financial value and whenever you have incentives that promise this sort of financial return, you are always gonna get people trying to gamify the systems. I think sometimes that's just easier to expose in Web3.
And so yes, there are a lot of exp sort of examples that I could tell you about how sort of networks have built short term incentives with tokens where they have failed predominantly because they aren't tying the network utility to the financial short term incentive.
Whereas if you look at the likes of something like say Awe, where, which is a decentralized storage network, the actual tokens which did help to bootstrap the network were still tied to the actual long-term value and utility that the users themselves were getting out of the network.
And so the adoption was genuine adoption for this network and for the value that it would return. And so I think that's one of the things, especially one of the lessons is certainly when looking at incentive mechanisms for how we encourage adoption of decentralized identities, verifiable credentials, it's being conscious and challenging short-term incentives that sort of instigate short-term metrics like just general user numbers and instead looking at like how we tie that to the network value.
The second one is around transparency in terms of where Web3 is just the a completely trustless ecosystem. The builders in Web3 have had to rely on transparent technology based on kind of chains of trust so that they can ensure to the users that the systems will act in the way that they expect them to.
So things like charity donations using technologies like smart contracts which allow the users to know that the funds won't be misused.
I think they managed to raise it, it was something like a million dollars in 30 seconds for Ukraine because the users could trust that they knew exactly where those funds were going. And I think that's part of the point is it's not just saying I won't do something, it's, it's actually showing I can't act badly in this situation because as networks evolve and especially when there is the potential to extract kind of life changing financial value, human motivations can change.
And so we even saw it in the kind of keynote yesterday, it's about not building in the capabilities for credentials to phone home or the back channel incentives behind credentials. It's building back trust with users through this transparency that those technologies won't act in that way.
I think we've all seen the sentiment around EIS two when it comes to like the fears of surveillance, but it's being transparent with users and not infantalizing them either, but actually explaining why and how this technology protects them.
And that kind of brings me to the third point around user experience, which is really, again, drawing on the transparency but also looking at kind of removing uncertainty when bringing in new technologies.
And I think there are again examples in Web3 where actually this has been done quite well where you have the likes of base, which is one of which is a blockchain protocol created by one of the largest crypto exchanges, Coinbase, which has done well with both customers and businesses because it removes some of the uncertainty and some of the startup risk that is associated with other blockchain protocols. And so just being conscious to that and being conscious of removing uncertainty I think is critical.
And that can come through education and it can come through not using exclusionary language. And so the one, the final one on here, which I think we've heard a lot at this conference, but I do think is one of the most critical points here and it's also critical to the user experience and increasing accessibility because we need to create multiple paths. And I think that is where Web3 doesn't always do well is creating this multiple paths to solve the same problem.
Because in Web3 essentially the networks have built been built in silos and created these sort of tribal cultures where PE sort of certain networks believe that they are the best network and eventually everyone will see the light and come to their network and it'll all be great. But unfortunately that has actually ended up damaging the value of the whole. And I think without that interoperability, that is where we will prevent adoption.
And so I think there's many transferable lessons from Web3 and I think there are also a lot of technologies that are worth looking at from what has already been developed and what has been tested, but particularly looking at like the why behind things have been successful and why things may not have been so successful.
But overall, I think as I was doing this research, as I was kind of looking at the real intersections between Web3 and what we're seeing in the regulatory approaches, actually the most important lesson of all I found stemmed from the fact that both Web3 and the verifiable identity shift, I would say actually stem from the same root cause they stem from the fact that there is this eroding digital trust which is just simply getting worse over time. And that's in part because our existing networks, the way that they've been designed means that they have created these damaging feedback loops.
We only have to look at sort of like the the, the sort of data race to see that as more data is generated, there is more incentive for companies to monetize that data. And then as there's more incentives to monetize the data, it means that more companies are trying to over extract user data and the cycle just persists. And it's not as if they started with bad intentions. These companies didn't aim to do that at the very beginning when they were first building out these networks.
But unfortunately due to the way that the network is designed, it creates these runaway loops that just exponentially accelerate harmful incentives.
And so when it comes to both Web3 and EIS two and some of the other regulatory approaches, I think what's important to remember is that they both stemmed from the same problem. They both stem from the need to solve the issues we have around digital trust. But what is important, and I think what the critical actual lesson here is, is that the approach to the network design really determines the outcomes.
And I think that's where the major difference in divergence in Web3 and the regulatory approaches kind of came from was that Web3 took this don't trust one approach and meant employed sort of trustless technologies that meant you don't have to rely like interactions and transactions don't have to rely on human intermediaries. They basically turned around and said, trust the technology alone, don't trust any humans. And I think that is kind of where we've ended up with this sort of slight culture of paranoia in Web3.
I mean, I don't know about you, but a lot of people when they call customer support, they actually are looking to speak to a human rather than a machine because we inherently believe that the human is gonna try and do what's best for us, whereas we don't believe that machines have that same incentive. And so rather than sort of rebuilding trust that, and depending on the technology alone, it's in some parts had the opposite effect. And so I think what's important here is actually that we can't just rely on the technology alone.
It is actually how we implement the technology and the decisions we make around how we design the systems and networks that will actually help us to rebuild trust over time.
And so that's why this talk is really about building resilience because resilience is not just technical failover, it is also the system's ability to preserve the societal and moral values over time. Resilience is always about restoration, preservation, maintenance, and it is building in the set of feedback loops that over time will preserve and maintain digital trust in our systems and in our networks.
And I think that's why when we look at how we're designing and implementing these, these technologies, we base and anchor our decisions in that idea of digital trust. How can we build the digital trust and how can we try and protect digital trust in our, in our systems and in our networks so that the feedback loops preserve that over time.
And I think this kind of draws to the close this, this idea that when we design, when we design our networks, we are really designing the outcomes and we need to think further than just the technology itself and think about the implementations because it's not because the human at the end of the system is just as important as the line of code that might have failed.
And so the questions that kind of I've been able to formulate from looking into where these intersections lie when it comes to sort of the incentive mechanisms and using this lens of digital trust, it's looking at what are the shared incentives for all of the actors in the system that will actually encourage them to adopt the network long term.
How will these incentives actually evolve over time and how do we avoid short term incentives that may create and generate maladaptive behaviors that actually draw utility from the network with transparency, how can we build transparency and verifiability into the system to actually increase digital trust between all of the actors? And then with user experience, how and have we considered multiple journeys to increase accessibility? Can we reduce uncertainty and enhance trust between individuals across the whole network?
And then interoperability, how can we promote interoperability and embrace the diversity of standards to increase the network's value and utility for all participants?
There are always limits to resilience, but I do believe that if we collectively try to anchor the decisions we make when building and implementing these systems in digital trust, then we can create these sort of pockets of possibility, this local positive change that should eventually allow digital identity to become a cornerstone of trust in our digital worlds.
Because I do believe that digital trust matters to everyone and when we build for identity, we are building for everyone. So thank you very much.
Thank you very much. And those were really thoughtful questions that you left us with. So.
