April 30, 2024 • 42 mins
Unlock the full potential of your digital identity with guidance from Jeffrey Schwartz, founder and CEO of Dentity. Together, we unravel Web3's promise of consumer empowerment and ownership over one's digital presence. Gone are the days of big tech monopolizing your online identity—learn how the decentralized nature of Web3 can hand back control, allowing you to express yourself more authentically and secure your personal data from the fragmented dangers of the internet's original design flaws.
Dive into the brave new world of digital identity verification where your privacy is paramount, and you're at the helm. Jeffrey uncovers the power of secure, cloud-based wallets and sophisticated verification processes that mark a seismic shift away from big tech's grasp. With the imminent obsolescence of cookies and increased app tracking transparency, we explore the changing face of digital marketing and how it impacts your online footprint. This episode is a beacon for all seeking to navigate the evolving digital landscape with confidence, ensuring their private information remains just that—private.
Finally, we address the pressing need for verified digital identities and their role in fostering a safer internet ecosystem. Through the lens of AARP's investment in Dentity and the scourge of online scams, we stress the importance of collective responsibility in establishing trust online. Join us as we paint a vision of a future where verified identities are the norm, empowering consumers and protecting against the maladies of the digital age. This isn't just a conversation—it's a movement towards a more secure, trustworthy, and empowered digital society.
About Jeffrey Schwartz
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffrey-alan-schwartz/
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https://www.dentity.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
no-transcript.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Welcome to Tech Travels hosted by the seasoned
tech enthusiast and industryexpert, steve Woodard.
With over 25 years ofexperience and a track record of
collaborating with thebrightest minds in technology,
steve is your seasoned guidethrough the ever-evolving world
of innovation.
Join us as we embark on aninsightful journey, exploring
(00:56):
the past, present and future oftech under Steve's expert
guidance.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Welcome back, fellow travelers.
On today's episode we're goingto dive into the topic of
identity and Web3 and its impactto customers and why they
really need to understand whatdigital identity is and also
help us understand really kindof what it's all about.
Today we're thrilled to haveJeffrey Schwartz.
Jeffrey is the founder of CEand the CEO of Density, a
(01:24):
company dedicated to helpingcustomers build trust online
through streamlined and reusableidentity verification solutions
.
Jeff has a rich history ofworking with multiple public
companies and has extensiveexperience in launching startups
and brings a wealth ofknowledge to our discussion
today.
He's also served on variouspublic and charitable boards and
(01:45):
has been an Aspen InstituteFellow for over two decades.
Jeffrey also holds a doctoratefrom the University of Southern
California, which is based inLos Angeles.
Jeffrey, it's great to have youon the show today, Welcome.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Thank you, Steve.
After that introduction, I canonly disappoint you.
That was very interesting.
I thank you for being so kindto me.
Usually people aren't so kindto me.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
I really wanted to take our audience on this topic
around identity, and who betterthan somebody who is a CEO of a
company who specifically worksin this space so to really kind
of help our listeners, just kindof give us a real kind of
foundational understanding ofreally what.
In simple terms, what is Web3identity and how does it really
typically differ from just thetraditional type of identities
(02:34):
that are managed by the big techcompanies?
Speaker 1 (02:39):
So there's a couple of questions there.
The first question is what isidentity?
And I think the second questionis what is Web3?
So let's take the firstquestion.
So the first question what isidentity?
The one point I want to make toyour listeners is that identity
is a more encompassing term andit doesn't mean you're
identifiers.
(03:00):
So most people think ofidentity and they say, well,
it's my name, rank and serialnumber, it's my digits on my
license card, I bank here, Igive to all these different
(03:28):
charitable organizations andthey have credentials that say
that I'm a donor.
And so I think of identity as amore expressive term.
Right, I mean, certainly we doID verification, which is about
your identifiers who are you andare you a real person, are you
human and what's your driver'slicense number or your passport
(03:50):
number?
In fact we do.
I think we do over 16000documents now in 200 countries.
So we do that, we doidentifiers.
But we also work with a numberof companies that that issue
credentials for membership, likethe National Notary Association
, for example.
So I just want to level set theterm identity versus
(04:15):
identifiers, and when I sayidentity, I mean a kind of a
more expressive identity, a moreencompassing term.
So that's question one.
Question two is what is Web3?
And I'm also out there talkingabout Web5, right, which is even
more confusing.
So what I'll do is give ageneral comment about Web3 and
(04:37):
talk to you about why am Iinterested in this subject and
all the new technology.
So Web3 is this idea that youcan own things that previously
were owned by the companies thatyou registered for.
So you can own the money, youcan own the identity.
You have a decentralizedinterest in things that
(05:01):
previously were stuck in what wecall a Web 2 database, right?
So if Web 1 was about readingthings on the Internet and Web 2
was about writing things on theInternet, like social media
comments and whatnot, web 3 isabout owning things.
It's fundamentally about owningthings, and the reason why it's
so interesting when it relatesto identity is that we don't own
(05:27):
our identity.
Let's face it right.
Facebook, google, you knowYahoo or you know Apple all
these companies own youridentity.
So when you go to log in, steve, you know you typically will
log in.
You know we call it federatedlogin.
So you're logging in withFacebook or you're logging in
with Google, right?
So you don't.
They aren't referencing.
You know we call it federatedlogin.
So you're logging in withFacebook or you're logging in
(05:48):
with Google, right?
So you don't they aren'treferencing you know anything
that you own Right To to to pulldown the identity.
They're going, you know, googleowns that identity, it's
Google's identity.
Now, your name is there, butGoogle owns it, right, and so
it's very, it's very troubling,and it really has been.
You know, I'm going to, I'mgoing to back up, I'm going to
back up all the way to thebeginning of the Internet, right
, and this is how I like to tellthe story.
(06:09):
When the Internet was created,steve, it was created.
I call it the original sin,right?
There's two, actually twooriginal sins.
The first original sin is thatit was there was no identity
created.
The second original sin is thatthere was no money created,
right?
So let's deal with identity.
So the internet was created toconnect a bunch of anonymous
computers to each other, andthat's what it does, right?
(06:32):
You know TCP, ip protocol.
So it basically has been builtaround connecting anonymous
machines into a network.
Okay, so the reason you have 350passwords, right, or more
probably have 500.
But the typical person has 350.
(06:55):
The reason you have 350passwords is that every place
you log in.
Every website, every service,has had to create its own
identity layer, right?
And so you have.
You know your name and yourdigits, right, and your email
address, and so you have.
You know your name and yourdigits, right, your email
address and, in some cases, alot of personal information in
350 databases, right, the attacksurface is so incredibly large
and that's why we have, you know, 3 billion identities for sale
(07:18):
on the dark web.
That's that has fueled theproblem of identity theft, right
, it's.
You know, your identity iseverywhere.
It's everywhere, right, so whatwe're trying to do, right, is
give rightful ownership of thatidentity back to the consumer,
and there's been all these newstandards, all these new
protocols I'm not going to gointo detail, but there's all
(07:40):
these new things that havehappened that allow you, today,
to own your identity and youridentifiers in a wallet that is
secure, right, you know, usingcryptography, they can be
verified anywhere, anytime,anyplace, and so this is an
incredible renaissance forconsumers, right, it's an
incredibly exciting time, andthe thing that follows this,
(08:04):
steve, is that your personalinformation has value, all that
information that you give to allthese different companies,
right, they make billions ofdollars on your information
right.
So this trend of you know Web3,owning your information, and
then you know it's all stored ina wallet I'm not going to
(08:26):
confuse people with a wallet butyou own it and then at some
point you're the rightful ownerof that data and you should be
able to make money on it, right,and you shouldn't.
You know Google and Apple andall these other companies.
They shouldn't make money onyour data, you shouldn't.
So that's where this is headed.
That was a long answer, I'msorry, steve.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
No, it was really great because it really kind of
expands the fact that there'sdefinitely a differentiation
when it comes to talking aboutidentity and then talking about
identity within Web 3.
And then even I think you hadmentioned kind of Web 5, which I
think kind of blows my mind,because here I am stuck on Web 3
.
I had no idea there's a Web 5.
So let me just make I'm stuckon Web3.
I had no idea there was a.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Web5.
So let me just make can I justmake one comment about Web3,
web5?
So Web3 really has been overrunwith crypto and coins and NFT,
right.
So when people think of Web3,they think of all that
financialization, right.
So we've come up a whole bunchof people have come up with this
term Web5, web2 plus Web3, web2plus Web3 equals Web5.
(09:40):
And Web5 is only dedicated to.
What is that?
And that's the opportunity youhave to say it's about consumer
control, consumer-owned personaldata, and it's not about coins
or crypto or NFTs.
It's about you and your data,your relationship to that data.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Do you think that the concept of Web3 has kind of
become almost overused, in thesense that we tend to almost
kind of almost now, almostsynonymously, just kind of just
blank out when we hear Web3.
Is it just that there's justtoo much frenzy going on with
things like cryptos and tokensand things like that and not
enough focus on identity?
You're saying it tends to bemore of crypto and NFTs and
(10:20):
gamification than identity.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Yeah, I think that's right.
You know.
The one thing that I'll tellyou is that I use the Web3 often
, but you also know that I useWeb5 because you're in my Web5
LinkedIn group.
So the thing you have to dowhen you say Web to explain, you
have to hack your way throughcrypto coins, nfts, and then you
(10:47):
get to this promised land whereyou can talk about a consumer's
relationship with theirpersonal information ownership
and relationship with it.
The beauty of Web5 is nobodyknows what the hell Web5 is, so
you get to start from zero,steve, and you get to say okay,
this is a cool opportunity.
Web5 is only about the consumer.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
It's incredible.
I mean, it really kind of doesbring in the whole idea around,
kind of the holistic, you know,the idea of self-sovereign the
data and permissions are fullycontrolled by the individual
identity and I guess the ideawould be is that users really
control it.
And I think, if I kind ofencapsulate the philosophy, is
that, you know, the users canreally kind of port their data
(11:30):
across different segments ofapplications and then things can
selectively kind of discloseinformation about themselves to
whoever they want to at,whenever they want to, right.
So it is full data sovereignty,yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Yeah, I mean, you know, as I said, I know some of
your audience isn't overlytechnical, so I'm not going to
talk about zero knowledge,proofs and credentials and all
this verifiable presentationsand whatnot.
But the beauty of the newtechnology is that it allows you
to prove things about yourselfwithout disclosing a bunch of
information.
So like, for example, let'stalk about the physical identity
(12:08):
system.
Okay, let's just start there,because the physical identity
system, this identity systemthat we all live in, the
physical world, so the DMVissues you, they're the issuer
of the driver's license, okay,you're the holder of the
driver's license.
And then when you go to buy abeer or a pack of cigarettes,
you present your driver'slicense to the verifier, right?
(12:30):
So holder, issuer, verifier, soit's a triangle, right, and the
verifier looks at the licenseand says, oh, this is issued by
the California Department ofMotor Vehicles.
I trust it, right.
Now the reality is is that youknow, with all this new tech and
AI, you don't know that you cantrust it right, because who
knows right?
So that physical identity system, that triangle, basically, is
(12:54):
the system that we use in thisnew data model, this new
consumer data model.
There are issuers ofcredentials, there are holders
of credentials and there areverifiers, relying parties,
verifiers of credentials systemis that a verifiable credential
(13:15):
is not verifiable in the sensethat I could issue you a
verifiable credential, steve,that says you're six foot five,
right, but you're not six footfive.
I mean, maybe you are becauseyou're sitting down, but you're
not six foot five.
So I haven't verified thatyou're six foot five.
I've just put it into acredential which can be
cryptographically verified usingblockchain and other technology
.
So the beauty of this newsystem is that the data should
(13:40):
be irrelevant.
I could give all my data toeverybody on the internet, but
what's relevant is theverification of the data.
So that's where we're hopefullygoing to get to to is a world
where the data is sort ofmeaningless.
It's the verification of thedata that becomes important.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Now walk me through a little bit of understanding.
How do we actually verify theentity?
Are we leveraging somethinglike a smart contract or
leveraging things such asblockchain?
I mean, when you say kind of of, how does that actually kind of
work?
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Right, okay, so let's start at the very beginning.
Okay, so we do a lot ofidentity verification.
Okay, we can verify 16,000different documents in almost
every country, okay, anddifferent documents in almost
every country.
So we have a very smart systemthat looks at the physical
document, does all this analysison the physical document.
(14:40):
You put some information inyour date of birth, we do some
analysis.
Then what we do is we have avery sophisticated system that
proves that you're human andalive a video system and that it
also proves that you're humanand alive a video system and
that it also proves that you arethe person represented on the
government-issued ID.
And if that checks out, thatprocess typically takes about a
(15:03):
minute and a half, and consumersare familiar with it.
They've gone through it amillion times now.
So the beauty of it is thattypically, steve, the consumer's
relationship with that data isthey have no more relationship
with that data.
That data then goes and sits ina database, right, which gives
you zero value.
You can never, ever use thatdata again, and so what you have
(15:26):
to then do, right, is you haveto keep verifying and verifying
your information everywhere yougo.
Right?
Uber just launched a riderverification, you know Airbnb,
you know Meta, you know it'sgoing to be insanity because
there's going to be a hundreddifferent verification, every
platform, right.
So that makes no sense becauseall we're doing is we're just
(15:46):
recreating the system that we'retrying to, the problem we're
trying to solve, which isthere's too much information out
there.
So the system that we have,right, basically creates what's
called a verifiable credential.
It sits in the consumer'swallet and the consumer doesn't
even necessarily know that theyhave this wallet, but it's this
really cool Web3 wallet that'sup in the cloud and they have a
(16:08):
key pair and then they have tounlock the other key pair up on
the cloud.
But don't get hung up on that,because the consumer doesn't
even really interact with theirwallet that much.
So that credential, thatidentity credential, now can be
reused anywhere, anywhere.
(16:28):
So, because it uses openidentity standards, anybody that
wants to integrate maybe threeto five lines of code onto a
webpage can verify thatcredential and the act of
verification.
Basically, there's a few partshere.
So the very first thing we do,steve, is we make sure that you,
we authenticate you and makesure that you have a wallet, and
(16:51):
we do that through a phonenumber and what's called the OTP
one-time password.
So we authenticate you as therightful owner of a wallet.
And then what we do is we say,ah, we want to look for the
identity credential, we want tolook for the identity credential
(17:11):
.
So then the identity credentialis presented, right, and let's
say that there's 10 attributesof data on that credential.
Right, you know your height,all this other kind of stuff.
Well, you, the user, now havecontrol.
Right To say you know what?
I don't want this website tohave all this information.
So you now can go through andcontrol what information you're
(17:34):
giving to that website.
So it's very different.
In that example I gave you,steve, all you have to do is
prove you're 21.
They don't need to know yourbirthday, they don't need to
know where you live, they don'tneed to know the color of your
eyes or how tall you are or howmuch you weigh.
So we're massively oversharinginformation.
So this new system of digitalidentity basically allows you to
(17:57):
prove things about yourselfwithout spraying your data
across the internet.
Right, and that's why it'sprivacy protective, it's secure
and that's why the system is,you know, has been adopted by,
you know, all the big companies.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Yeah, and yeah, I mean, yeah, it does.
I mean really, I mean, when youkind of use the analogy like
you did, I mean you know talkingabout, you know driver's
license, I think that they mostpeople can really understand
that concept.
And one thing that I really Ireally trying to understand is
really kind of around the roleof centralization and
decentralization.
I think the shift into kind ofmore of the Web3, identity-based
(18:35):
, where the individual user hassovereignty over the data and
the information they choose toshare, can be very selective.
When you kind of look at someof the business models around
some of the big tech companies,it seems like they would
probably almost kind of findeither what are you seeing in
terms of kind of either they'reeither adapting to this new
change and fundamentalphilosophical shift into
(18:56):
identity, Because it seems likethey kind of own all the data,
they own all the ability to kindof share that data.
It seems like they would almostbe a power struggle over
retaining that at some point.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Right, yeah, no, there is right, there is and
consumers know that app trackingright, you have the ability to
not have the apps track you,right.
So that's been a big hit to bigtech companies.
And the other big hit ishappening right now and the
cookie.
You know the cookie.
That is, that you know cookies,you, and follows you around and
(19:28):
you know, says, you know, hey,you know like you were looking
at these sunglasses everywhereyou go.
Now you have to look at thosesunglasses.
It's annoying and that's notwhat happens in the physical
world.
Imagine going into a store andthen you look at a shirt and
then you go to the next door andthen the sales guy comes with
that shirt next door and he'sbanging on the window saying,
how about this shirt?
(19:48):
It makes no sense.
So that whole system,ultimately, is going away.
So Google is deprecating thecookie, right?
So the cookie will go away andweb marketers are going to
basically have to rely on theinformation it's called zero
party data and first party data,the information that you give
them with permission to use,right?
(20:10):
So this is fundamentally a sea.
You know, a sea change, rightin a sea change.
So the big tech companies bythe way, don't worry about the
big tech companies.
They'll be fine, I'm notworried about them.
They'll get access to yourinformation.
Um, just, you know they'll askyou for it, right?
Basically, what they'll do isthey'll say hey, in order to use
facebook, which is a freeservice, you have to give us all
(20:32):
this information, right, right,and you know so.
The next big wave here is lotsof companies asking you for your
data that previously were justtaking your data, right?
So this is going to be the newtrend.
They're going to be asking youfor your data, and you can
choose to give it to them or notgive it to them, but the thing
(20:53):
I'll tell you is that they maychoose to not allow you to use
some of their services if youdon't give them your data.
So this will be the next bigfight as it relates to
centralization versusdecentralization.
All this data for 20 years, 30years, it's just been sitting up
in their databases.
And what happens?
(21:13):
Steve, you're a DevOps guy.
You know this better thananybody.
What happens to that data?
What always happens to thatdata?
No, no, no, it gets hacked.
Right, it gets hacked.
Of course, there's billions ofrecords for sale, right?
It's because those data recordsare not secure?
(21:35):
They're not secure, I don'tcare what you know, you could
put them in Fort Knox, there'salways going to be somebody that
can figure out a way to getthat data.
Now, the beauty of the newdecentralized method of data
storage right versus thecentralized method of data
storage is that in order for thebad guys to get you know the,
the, the personal information ofa million users, they have to
(21:58):
crack a million differentwallets, right, and you know, we
use what's called AES 256encryption, right, which is the
same encryption standard thatthe department of defense uses
for top secret information.
You know, according toMicrosoft and the department of
Defense, it would take you 100years to crack that code.
Okay, so you're gonna, you'regonna crack.
You know you're gonna.
(22:19):
It's gonna take you 100 yearsto crack the code of a million
wallets.
Have fun, right, go at it,right.
So my point is is that the, themethod of storage in the new,
in the new, in the new ecosystem, this decentralized ecosystem,
is far more protective thancentralized data storage, right,
and so that's the benefit tothe consumer they're going to
(22:43):
have more security over theirinformation.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
It definitely does present some real key features
when it comes to things likeprivacy, security and
enhancement of protecting thatidentity.
Where I might see a little bitof a struggle is the average,
normal, everyday consumerunderstanding how they can then
kind of go about obtaining awallet.
It seems like it really tendsto be.
It favors more of the peoplewho tend to be tech savvy.
(23:11):
How do we start to see thelandscape shifting in terms of
wider adoption, with moreawareness, understanding of how
the wallet works, with easierinteroperability?
Speaker 1 (23:20):
So this is what we're focused on and this is the
genius of identity.
So the consumer doesn't wantanother wallet.
I mean, they don't want anotherwallet.
They've got their Apple wallet,google wallet.
So what you have to do isabstract all this technology a
Web3 wallet, asymmetriccryptography, the blockchain.
You know, people don't wake upin the morning and say I want to
(23:42):
be decentralized.
Today, steve, they say I wantto sell something on Facebook,
or I want to buy something onCraigslist, or I have somebody
coming over to walk my dog andI'm concerned that.
You know, I want to know whothey are.
Those are the things, those arethe everyday problems that
people want to solve.
Right, and Web3 tech isbrilliant at solving them.
Right Now, the problem is, isthat you know and this is no
(24:05):
offense to you because you're atechnologist is that
technologists think it's atechnology problem?
It's not a technology problem,it's a user adoption problem,
right, and so what?
We're focused on identity.
I mean we have brilliant techand many, many patents.
Brilliant tech.
You know a dozen engineersworking on open identity
standards for three years.
Right, it's a very simple userinterface and workflow to the
(24:28):
consumer, and the reality is 90%of the consumers don't even
know they have a wallet, becausewe don't call it a wallet.
It's just this place where youhave access to your credentials,
you can reference them andunlock them by using your phone
(24:52):
number and consumer may nevereven go to their identity wallet
.
In fact, we don't even call ita wallet anymore.
And you know what?
We don't even call all theselittle things credentials
anymore.
We call them passes, becausepeople are used to passes, right
, they have passes in theirApple wallet, right?
So part of it is that we, astechnology people, right, we're
(25:15):
so obsessed with the technology.
We basically, you know we smokewhat we roll, right?
So you know, we have to get offthat.
And, by the way, you know, ittook us a long.
You know, we've been around forthree years, right, this is our
third version.
We just launched a big, youknow user interface update and
we were hammering the wallet forthree years.
We thought the wallet was themost important thing.
(25:37):
It was featured in all the appsand everything.
We don't even.
It's gone.
Now the wallet is gone, right,like you know, do away with the
wallet.
Consumers don't want anotherwallet, in my view, right, and
they tell us this like theydon't want another wallet.
You know, what do they needanother wallet for they don't
have any use for the wallet.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
So it seems like you guys are kind of abstracting you
know, kind of extracting youknow kind of more of the
technical hurdles that mostpeople would tend to go to to
get kind of a Web3 identity andmaking it more as an easy to
kind of you know, identity as aservice where users or consumers
can simply say, look, I want acentralized place that has all
(26:17):
of the bells and whistles thatbe able to kind of gives me all
the technical features but Idon't understand, and really
just kind of presents it to mein an easy to use interface,
right Cause you know it's youknow having to learn these
things.
Yeah, it's very difficult.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
No, that's exactly, you got it exactly right.
And what I will tell you aboutDENITY is we have 85 year old,
you know, grandmothers that getthrough this process every
single day, like it's an.
It's incredible to me, right?
It's incredible to me thatpeople you know that aren't
digital natives, right Are aregetting through the most
complicated technology ever.
Like.
Our technology is likeworld-class, world-class ID tech
(26:51):
, world-class right, and85-year-old, you know
grandmothers can get through oursystem no problem, in two
minutes, by the way it takes.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Yeah, I was going to say the baby boomers that are
basically kind of nearretirement right is like you
know.
They're now kind of beingwashed in this new technical
world right of identity and Web3.
And you know even some thingsyou know that might be kind of a
limitation to them in terms ofthe understanding is just as
frightening, I think, in someaspects.
So it's great that you've beenable to do that and it's amazing
(27:24):
that you said you mentioned the85 year old is able to kind of
do this and do this with ease.
I'd love to see this on a massadoption level kind of increase.
Where do you start to kind ofwhere do you see the next five
years happening?
I don't want to say five to 10,but where do you kind of see
consumers kind of meeting andwhere do you see this consumer
push in the next five years?
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Where do you see this consumer push in the next five
years?
Right?
So my focus is on adoption andmy focus is solving real-world
problems, not very niche Web3problems.
So let me give you an example.
A big investor in our companyis AARP.
They have 38 million members.
Steve.
Aarp has more members thancrypto holders in the US.
This is massive, right.
(28:11):
So they invested in Dentitybecause they're concerned and
focused on elder financial crimeand abuse, romance scams,
things like this, and theyunderstand that identity is the
through line.
If you can't figure out a way toget identity in the hands of
consumers and for them to beable to exchange it and make it
social and make it social right,then it's useless.
Right?
Because, look, you're nevergoing to get a billion people
verified right by relying onFacebook and Google and all the
(28:33):
big tech.
You just won't.
And there's a couple of reasonswhy.
First, it's not in theirinterests, right?
You know they have businessmodels.
You know they don't want toverify every single person that
onboards into their system.
They just don't.
That's not their business model.
I mean, you may have heard thesame stat, but I always hear the
stat that 80% of the ads onTikTok are consumed by bots, by
(28:57):
technology.
So, 80% of every ad that youserve on TikTok, if you're an
advertiser publisher, it's beingseen by a bot, right?
So that just tells you the sizeand scale of the problem, right
?
And AI presents all theseincredible challenges about
identity, right?
You know deep fakes and allthis other stuff, right?
(29:20):
So the thing that we have tofocus on is finding use cases.
We call them use cases.
We're finding problems that arereal problems that vex
consumers, and then using ourtech to solve them.
I'll give you an example wehave an exclusive relationship
with the largest Facebookmarketplace sellers group.
There's 20,000 sellers in thisgroup 20,000.
(29:43):
And we are working every day,right, to work with the sellers
to get them to understand howyou you know, how you verify
people, how you buildcounterparty trust, and this is
like you know, I always say thatit's.
You know, if you want to createa network, it's better to
easier to create a network in aclassroom than it is in a
football field, right?
And have you know?
(30:05):
We have, um, we have.
You know hundreds uh, I meanbecause we just started this
relationship but hundreds ofpeople in that, in that group,
that are verifying each other,verifying buyers right, and
it'll it'll disperse out thatway.
So the way this the way thisrolls out, steve is, you know is
for us to solve real worldproblems that consumers actually
(30:25):
care about.
Do it without putting thetechnology front and center and
not making it Web3 or sayingit's blockchain or a credential,
and just giving consumersaccess to all this technology
and then, over time, it spreads.
So the one thing that I wouldalso tell you is that you know
(30:47):
to my previous point, you know,consumers they have the lowest
trust ever in all these big techand social media.
80% of consumers today don'ttrust social media with their
data.
They just don't right.
So they're not going to givemore of their personal data to
the social media giants and bigtech.
They just won't right, theyjust won't.
So the best way to do this is tomake it decentralized, to make
(31:09):
every consumer basically verifya relying party and do it to
each other, because then youhave millions and millions and
millions of people, billions ofpeople verifying each other.
Then it just spreads, right?
We don't have to sit in lineand queue up to get our identity
verified by Meta or Facebook.
You know, and, by the way, youknow, if you do that you have.
(31:30):
It's of zero value to you.
You know it's sitting up intheir database, Like what good
is that?
You know you can't use it.
You can't use it and you'regoing to pay $15 a month to have
a little blue check mark thatyou.
You know that.
That that and then, by the way,you have to then go to every,
every single platform you go to.
You have to do it again.
It's useless.
So reusable reusable digitalidentity owned by the consumer,
(31:52):
controlled by the consumer moreprivacy, protect, protective.
They decide what informationthey give to to whom, and it's
safer.
It's safer than putting it in acentralized database.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
Yeah, and and and and that's.
I think it's incrediblypowerful.
Is that?
You know, is that the idea ofyou know, having everything
decentralized?
You know the reducing thesurface attack of reducing it
now to basically now millions ofidentities.
You now have to attack amillion different type of
individuals versus just oneindividual type of place.
It's incredible.
I think it's very, veryempowering for users and I
(32:24):
highly advocate for ourlisteners to go out there check
out what Jeff's working with atDensity.
Jeff, how can our listenersunderstand more around what
Density is doing and how we canprotect them?
Give us a little bit of idea of, kind of like, some of the
things that Density can reallyhelp them with.
How can they get involved?
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Well, first of all, identity is free to the consumer
.
So go to a identity D, e, n, t,I, t Ycom, just like identity
without the I identitycom andsign up.
It'll take you two minutes andyou know your information will
be safe and secure.
Then then go into the app.
It's a web app, which meansthat you're not going to find it
in the app star, it's on theinternet.
Then go into your identityaccount and start verifying
(33:07):
people, right, like you know, wehave a point system and all
this other fun kind ofgamification and all this other
fun stuff.
But go in and start verifying.
You know people Get comfortable, get comfortable sending
verification requests.
You know it's super easy to doby email or SMS.
Then what I would say is youknow it's super easy to do by
email or SMS.
Then what I would say is youknow I have service providers
coming to my home all the time.
(33:27):
You know people workingdomestically in the house and
you know, in the yard I don'tlet a single person on my
property without verifying theiridentity.
Period hands down.
You know there's a lot of badpeople out there, steve, a lot
of bad people.
You know we see them every day,bad people trying to do bad
things to good people, and theywill, and they want to do it.
You know, getting a fakeidentity, right, um so, um, so,
(33:52):
you know, uh, uh, what I wouldsay is like, anytime, you know,
anytime you're trying to createtrust with somebody remotely or
online, send them a verificationrequest.
Right, and you know, in myexperience of doing this for a
few years, if they don't do that, if they don't accept it, you
(34:12):
know, beware, beware.
Just have your eyes wide open,because a lot of times, the bad
people you know and you see,have you ever posted something
lately on Craigslist or Facebookmarketplace?
It's you.
Get over, it's insane, steve.
Do it, just so you understandthe magnitude of the problem.
(34:32):
Right, do it.
I ask you to do it.
It is.
You will get overrun instantlywith 25 requests for your Zelle
account, your phone number, yourPayPal account and there's all
these scams out there, right,there's bad people and, by the
way, it's not domestic anymore,it's completely
internationalizedized and theproblem is that you have all
these federal agents.
These people are doing itbasically in plain daylight out
in Southeast Asia and NorthernAfrica and all these other
(34:54):
places.
They can't stop them andthey're coming after you.
They're coming after your momand they're coming after your
grandfather and they're comingafter you.
They're trying to steal yourinformation and they're going to
scam the shit out of you.
They're going to take yourmoney and they're going to steal
your identity, and it's bad.
So just be aware there's badpeople out there, and I'm not
(35:16):
even talking about all the badstuff that happens to women and
children and minorities.
And do you know that there was21 million reported cases to the
National Center for Missing andAbused Children, and a lot of
those cases now are onlinegrooming, like huge more than
half of them it's online.
It's bad people trying to groom, you know, young kids online.
(35:37):
It's disgusting.
And so we all this is my pitchhere now, Steve, we all have a
role here.
We all have to, steve, we allhave a role here.
We all have to stand up.
We all have to stand up foridentity, verified identity,
together.
Right, it's free, it takes twominutes.
Right, we all have to stand upfor it.
Otherwise, you know,particularly with AI otherwise
(35:58):
it's just going to continue toget worse, you know, and all the
trust that we're trying tobuild online and all this
digital commerce stuff that wedo, it's all going to go to shit
, because trust is the essenceof commerce.
Without trust, there is nocommerce.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
Yeah, I 100% agree with that.
I think the key takeaway thereis that consumers have to get
involved.
They've got to get engaged withbasically getting an identity
that they can then verifythrough something like Dentity
and then start basicallyreaching out to people to join
their network and get verified.
That way, I think, kind of aspeople start to get on board
with that, you start to see thatadoption curve go up.
(36:31):
I think that's a win-win forconsumers and for entities as
well too.
Wow, that's incredible stuff,jeff.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
I can't yeah like if you I mean it's powerful, right,
Steve?
Like, if you want to bitchabout, you know hate speech and
all, and you want to bitch aboutidentity theft and you want to
bitch about a lack of civility,you know, on social media, if
you want to bitch about allthese things, and you know
online consumer scams and youknow financial, if you want to
(37:01):
bitch about it, you have aresponsibility to stand up and
do something.
And you know we've been doingthis three years now and you
know we'll have millions ofpeople on the app.
You know, using the system andthis, by the way, we haven't
made a single pity.
We don't charge consumers,right, and we charge businesses,
right.
You know we have hundreds ofbusinesses that use it.
We charge them.
But my point is is that this isa mission-driven company, right?
(37:23):
And consumers if they want tocomplain about all the
malignancies and bad shit thathappens on the internet, then
they have a responsibility to dosomething right.
And finally, now you can dosomething Create virality around
verified identity, right, ifeverybody's verified, steve,
people say bad things with theirusername.
They don't say it with theirname, they just don identity
(37:43):
right, like, if everybody'sverified, steve, you know people
say bad things with theirusername.
They don't say it with theirname, they just don't right.
So all these bad people doingbad stuff on the internet,
ultimately this stuff will goaway because they're you know,
they hide, they're cowards,right, they're cowards.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
It's taken away the anonymity of it, right, they're
no longer hiding behind just aghost username.
It's now it's kind of like youknow your identity can be
verified.
So you need to really be youknow, really need to kind of
hone in on just the identitiesthat are verified.
So it seems like that's kind ofthe powerful takeaway is moving
into kind of an environment orkind of an ecosystem where
(38:18):
everyone's identified,everyone's verified and everyone
then can.
You can't hide anymore.
Very, very powerful stuff.
It's amazing, jeff.
What are some of?
Speaker 1 (38:30):
the projects you're working on.
Where can we follow you?
Yeah, well, I'm not a bigsocial media guy I think you
probably know that but I am veryactive on LinkedIn, so follow
me on LinkedIn.
I'm always publishing and Steveis always jumping in and
jumping in on my posts, which isgreat.
I love that.
So follow me on LinkedIn.
But, you know, I'll give youjust a bunch of examples of this
(38:51):
kind of stuff we're doing.
So if you're a notary, right,we work with the National Notary
Association.
There's about 120,000 notariesin the US that do 100% of
mortgages in America.
Those notaries, every year theyhave to have their notary
commission verified, they haveto have their background checked
and they have to have theiridentity verified, right, so
(39:11):
we're out there trying toprevent notary fraud.
You know, a lot of people seethis legal advertising on TV,
right, there's $2.5 billionspent on legal advertising,
right, all those calls go intothese digital intake centers
around the country and we do,you know.
And then, by the way, they'regoing to release your medical
records, right, because you knowyou sign the contract and then
they release your med records.
So we do all that compliance tomake sure that you know people
(39:37):
aren't basically saying they'reyou and then having your medical
records, you know, releasedright, so that's a good use case
.
And then having your medicalrecords, you know, released
right, so that's a good use case.
We do you know, if you're buyingvape or tobacco or something
like that, online, you have tobe 21.
There's age-gated products.
We do that.
We're very active in the musicfestivals around the country,
proving that you're 21.
We do a lot of stuff, like youknow, trying to make sure that
(40:13):
kids aren't you know kids aren'tsmoking and buying age-gated
products.
You know we do fun stuff, likeyou know.
A lot of the venues, you know,don't issue tickets.
Now they issue thesecredentials, right, you know, we
do.
You know it's a fun businessbecause the technology is so
incredibly diverse.
And the technology, steve, as Isaid in the beginning, is not
just about your identifiers,it's about community, right?
So we have companies andorganizations that are big
organizations building communityin this sort of Web3 space
(40:35):
using these credentials and Iwish I had one around here.
But this plastic membershipcard, this thing is useless.
It's useless.
So all these plastic cards thatyou walk around with in your
leather wallet, all that's goingaway.
It's all going to sit up insome Web3 wallet and allow you
to prove information aboutyourself in a privacy-respecting
(40:59):
way.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
That's going to be really cool, because I know that
it will definitely probablytake about four pounds off of
the weight that I carry in mywallet with just cards, cards
and identification andeverything like that.
It's really cool to be able tokind of have everything verified
through either an app orsomething, some sort of digital
identity, on your phone.
Jeff, I can't thank you again.
This has been an amazingconversation.
I know our listeners havedefinitely been enlightened by
(41:21):
this topic.
Would love to have you on again.
Can't thank you enough to helpshed light on this conversation.
A big shout out for you,antinity.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
Can't thank you enough for this Cool Steve.
Well, I appreciate it.
I appreciate the very good workthat you do on LinkedIn,
enlightening the users, and Iappreciate this podcast, which I
like this podcast, steve,because it's not so technical
where there's so many hardcoretechnical podcasts everywhere.
This gives us an opportunity totalk about this stuff to a
(41:52):
consumer audience.
You know a real world, explainit in real, simple, easy terms.
So I appreciate you and I thankyou for having me on today.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
Absolutely Look forward to it and happy travels
everyone.
Thanks for listening, jeff,we'll chat soon.
Cheers everyone.
no-transcript.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Welcome to Tech Travels hosted by the seasoned
tech enthusiast and industryexpert, steve Woodard.
With over 25 years ofexperience and a track record of
collaborating with thebrightest minds in technology,
steve is your seasoned guidethrough the ever-evolving world
of innovation.
Join us as we embark on aninsightful journey, exploring
(00:56):
the past, present and future oftech under Steve's expert
guidance.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Welcome back, fellow travelers.
On today's episode we're goingto dive into the topic of
identity and Web3 and its impactto customers and why they
really need to understand whatdigital identity is and also
help us understand really kindof what it's all about.
Today we're thrilled to haveJeffrey Schwartz.
Jeffrey is the founder of CEand the CEO of Density, a
(01:24):
company dedicated to helpingcustomers build trust online
through streamlined and reusableidentity verification solutions
.
Jeff has a rich history ofworking with multiple public
companies and has extensiveexperience in launching startups
and brings a wealth ofknowledge to our discussion
today.
He's also served on variouspublic and charitable boards and
(01:45):
has been an Aspen InstituteFellow for over two decades.
Jeffrey also holds a doctoratefrom the University of Southern
California, which is based inLos Angeles.
Jeffrey, it's great to have youon the show today, Welcome.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Thank you, Steve.
After that introduction, I canonly disappoint you.
That was very interesting.
I thank you for being so kindto me.
Usually people aren't so kindto me.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
I really wanted to take our audience on this topic
around identity, and who betterthan somebody who is a CEO of a
company who specifically worksin this space so to really kind
of help our listeners, just kindof give us a real kind of
foundational understanding ofreally what.
In simple terms, what is Web3identity and how does it really
typically differ from just thetraditional type of identities
(02:34):
that are managed by the big techcompanies?
Speaker 1 (02:39):
So there's a couple of questions there.
The first question is what isidentity?
And I think the second questionis what is Web3?
So let's take the firstquestion.
So the first question what isidentity?
The one point I want to make toyour listeners is that identity
is a more encompassing term andit doesn't mean you're
identifiers.
(03:00):
So most people think ofidentity and they say, well,
it's my name, rank and serialnumber, it's my digits on my
license card, I bank here, Igive to all these different
(03:28):
charitable organizations andthey have credentials that say
that I'm a donor.
And so I think of identity as amore expressive term.
Right, I mean, certainly we doID verification, which is about
your identifiers who are you andare you a real person, are you
human and what's your driver'slicense number or your passport
(03:50):
number?
In fact we do.
I think we do over 16000documents now in 200 countries.
So we do that, we doidentifiers.
But we also work with a numberof companies that that issue
credentials for membership, likethe National Notary Association
, for example.
So I just want to level set theterm identity versus
(04:15):
identifiers, and when I sayidentity, I mean a kind of a
more expressive identity, a moreencompassing term.
So that's question one.
Question two is what is Web3?
And I'm also out there talkingabout Web5, right, which is even
more confusing.
So what I'll do is give ageneral comment about Web3 and
(04:37):
talk to you about why am Iinterested in this subject and
all the new technology.
So Web3 is this idea that youcan own things that previously
were owned by the companies thatyou registered for.
So you can own the money, youcan own the identity.
You have a decentralizedinterest in things that
(05:01):
previously were stuck in what wecall a Web 2 database, right?
So if Web 1 was about readingthings on the Internet and Web 2
was about writing things on theInternet, like social media
comments and whatnot, web 3 isabout owning things.
It's fundamentally about owningthings, and the reason why it's
so interesting when it relatesto identity is that we don't own
(05:27):
our identity.
Let's face it right.
Facebook, google, you knowYahoo or you know Apple all
these companies own youridentity.
So when you go to log in, steve, you know you typically will
log in.
You know we call it federatedlogin.
So you're logging in withFacebook or you're logging in
with Google, right?
So you don't.
They aren't referencing.
You know we call it federatedlogin.
So you're logging in withFacebook or you're logging in
(05:48):
with Google, right?
So you don't they aren'treferencing you know anything
that you own Right To to to pulldown the identity.
They're going, you know, googleowns that identity, it's
Google's identity.
Now, your name is there, butGoogle owns it, right, and so
it's very, it's very troubling,and it really has been.
You know, I'm going to, I'mgoing to back up, I'm going to
back up all the way to thebeginning of the Internet, right
, and this is how I like to tellthe story.
(06:09):
When the Internet was created,steve, it was created.
I call it the original sin,right?
There's two, actually twooriginal sins.
The first original sin is thatit was there was no identity
created.
The second original sin is thatthere was no money created,
right?
So let's deal with identity.
So the internet was created toconnect a bunch of anonymous
computers to each other, andthat's what it does, right?
(06:32):
You know TCP, ip protocol.
So it basically has been builtaround connecting anonymous
machines into a network.
Okay, so the reason you have 350passwords, right, or more
probably have 500.
But the typical person has 350.
(06:55):
The reason you have 350passwords is that every place
you log in.
Every website, every service,has had to create its own
identity layer, right?
And so you have.
You know your name and yourdigits, right, and your email
address, and so you have.
You know your name and yourdigits, right, your email
address and, in some cases, alot of personal information in
350 databases, right, the attacksurface is so incredibly large
and that's why we have, you know, 3 billion identities for sale
(07:18):
on the dark web.
That's that has fueled theproblem of identity theft, right
, it's.
You know, your identity iseverywhere.
It's everywhere, right, so whatwe're trying to do, right, is
give rightful ownership of thatidentity back to the consumer,
and there's been all these newstandards, all these new
protocols I'm not going to gointo detail, but there's all
(07:40):
these new things that havehappened that allow you, today,
to own your identity and youridentifiers in a wallet that is
secure, right, you know, usingcryptography, they can be
verified anywhere, anytime,anyplace, and so this is an
incredible renaissance forconsumers, right, it's an
incredibly exciting time, andthe thing that follows this,
(08:04):
steve, is that your personalinformation has value, all that
information that you give to allthese different companies,
right, they make billions ofdollars on your information
right.
So this trend of you know Web3,owning your information, and
then you know it's all stored ina wallet I'm not going to
(08:26):
confuse people with a wallet butyou own it and then at some
point you're the rightful ownerof that data and you should be
able to make money on it, right,and you shouldn't.
You know Google and Apple andall these other companies.
They shouldn't make money onyour data, you shouldn't.
So that's where this is headed.
That was a long answer, I'msorry, steve.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
No, it was really great because it really kind of
expands the fact that there'sdefinitely a differentiation
when it comes to talking aboutidentity and then talking about
identity within Web 3.
And then even I think you hadmentioned kind of Web 5, which I
think kind of blows my mind,because here I am stuck on Web 3
.
I had no idea there's a Web 5.
So let me just make I'm stuckon Web3.
I had no idea there was a.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Web5.
So let me just make can I justmake one comment about Web3,
web5?
So Web3 really has been overrunwith crypto and coins and NFT,
right.
So when people think of Web3,they think of all that
financialization, right.
So we've come up a whole bunchof people have come up with this
term Web5, web2 plus Web3, web2plus Web3 equals Web5.
(09:40):
And Web5 is only dedicated to.
What is that?
And that's the opportunity youhave to say it's about consumer
control, consumer-owned personaldata, and it's not about coins
or crypto or NFTs.
It's about you and your data,your relationship to that data.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Do you think that the concept of Web3 has kind of
become almost overused, in thesense that we tend to almost
kind of almost now, almostsynonymously, just kind of just
blank out when we hear Web3.
Is it just that there's justtoo much frenzy going on with
things like cryptos and tokensand things like that and not
enough focus on identity?
You're saying it tends to bemore of crypto and NFTs and
(10:20):
gamification than identity.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Yeah, I think that's right.
You know.
The one thing that I'll tellyou is that I use the Web3 often
, but you also know that I useWeb5 because you're in my Web5
LinkedIn group.
So the thing you have to dowhen you say Web to explain, you
have to hack your way throughcrypto coins, nfts, and then you
(10:47):
get to this promised land whereyou can talk about a consumer's
relationship with theirpersonal information ownership
and relationship with it.
The beauty of Web5 is nobodyknows what the hell Web5 is, so
you get to start from zero,steve, and you get to say okay,
this is a cool opportunity.
Web5 is only about the consumer.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
It's incredible.
I mean, it really kind of doesbring in the whole idea around,
kind of the holistic, you know,the idea of self-sovereign the
data and permissions are fullycontrolled by the individual
identity and I guess the ideawould be is that users really
control it.
And I think, if I kind ofencapsulate the philosophy, is
that, you know, the users canreally kind of port their data
(11:30):
across different segments ofapplications and then things can
selectively kind of discloseinformation about themselves to
whoever they want to at,whenever they want to, right.
So it is full data sovereignty,yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Yeah, I mean, you know, as I said, I know some of
your audience isn't overlytechnical, so I'm not going to
talk about zero knowledge,proofs and credentials and all
this verifiable presentationsand whatnot.
But the beauty of the newtechnology is that it allows you
to prove things about yourselfwithout disclosing a bunch of
information.
So like, for example, let'stalk about the physical identity
(12:08):
system.
Okay, let's just start there,because the physical identity
system, this identity systemthat we all live in, the
physical world, so the DMVissues you, they're the issuer
of the driver's license, okay,you're the holder of the
driver's license.
And then when you go to buy abeer or a pack of cigarettes,
you present your driver'slicense to the verifier, right?
(12:30):
So holder, issuer, verifier, soit's a triangle, right, and the
verifier looks at the licenseand says, oh, this is issued by
the California Department ofMotor Vehicles.
I trust it, right.
Now the reality is is that youknow, with all this new tech and
AI, you don't know that you cantrust it right, because who
knows right?
So that physical identity system, that triangle, basically, is
(12:54):
the system that we use in thisnew data model, this new
consumer data model.
There are issuers ofcredentials, there are holders
of credentials and there areverifiers, relying parties,
verifiers of credentials systemis that a verifiable credential
(13:15):
is not verifiable in the sensethat I could issue you a
verifiable credential, steve,that says you're six foot five,
right, but you're not six footfive.
I mean, maybe you are becauseyou're sitting down, but you're
not six foot five.
So I haven't verified thatyou're six foot five.
I've just put it into acredential which can be
cryptographically verified usingblockchain and other technology
.
So the beauty of this newsystem is that the data should
(13:40):
be irrelevant.
I could give all my data toeverybody on the internet, but
what's relevant is theverification of the data.
So that's where we're hopefullygoing to get to to is a world
where the data is sort ofmeaningless.
It's the verification of thedata that becomes important.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Now walk me through a little bit of understanding.
How do we actually verify theentity?
Are we leveraging somethinglike a smart contract or
leveraging things such asblockchain?
I mean, when you say kind of of, how does that actually kind of
work?
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Right, okay, so let's start at the very beginning.
Okay, so we do a lot ofidentity verification.
Okay, we can verify 16,000different documents in almost
every country, okay, anddifferent documents in almost
every country.
So we have a very smart systemthat looks at the physical
document, does all this analysison the physical document.
(14:40):
You put some information inyour date of birth, we do some
analysis.
Then what we do is we have avery sophisticated system that
proves that you're human andalive a video system and that it
also proves that you're humanand alive a video system and
that it also proves that you arethe person represented on the
government-issued ID.
And if that checks out, thatprocess typically takes about a
(15:03):
minute and a half, and consumersare familiar with it.
They've gone through it amillion times now.
So the beauty of it is thattypically, steve, the consumer's
relationship with that data isthey have no more relationship
with that data.
That data then goes and sits ina database, right, which gives
you zero value.
You can never, ever use thatdata again, and so what you have
(15:26):
to then do, right, is you haveto keep verifying and verifying
your information everywhere yougo.
Right?
Uber just launched a riderverification, you know Airbnb,
you know Meta, you know it'sgoing to be insanity because
there's going to be a hundreddifferent verification, every
platform, right.
So that makes no sense becauseall we're doing is we're just
(15:46):
recreating the system that we'retrying to, the problem we're
trying to solve, which isthere's too much information out
there.
So the system that we have,right, basically creates what's
called a verifiable credential.
It sits in the consumer'swallet and the consumer doesn't
even necessarily know that theyhave this wallet, but it's this
really cool Web3 wallet that'sup in the cloud and they have a
(16:08):
key pair and then they have tounlock the other key pair up on
the cloud.
But don't get hung up on that,because the consumer doesn't
even really interact with theirwallet that much.
So that credential, thatidentity credential, now can be
reused anywhere, anywhere.
(16:28):
So, because it uses openidentity standards, anybody that
wants to integrate maybe threeto five lines of code onto a
webpage can verify thatcredential and the act of
verification.
Basically, there's a few partshere.
So the very first thing we do,steve, is we make sure that you,
we authenticate you and makesure that you have a wallet, and
(16:51):
we do that through a phonenumber and what's called the OTP
one-time password.
So we authenticate you as therightful owner of a wallet.
And then what we do is we say,ah, we want to look for the
identity credential, we want tolook for the identity credential
(17:11):
.
So then the identity credentialis presented, right, and let's
say that there's 10 attributesof data on that credential.
Right, you know your height,all this other kind of stuff.
Well, you, the user, now havecontrol.
Right To say you know what?
I don't want this website tohave all this information.
So you now can go through andcontrol what information you're
(17:34):
giving to that website.
So it's very different.
In that example I gave you,steve, all you have to do is
prove you're 21.
They don't need to know yourbirthday, they don't need to
know where you live, they don'tneed to know the color of your
eyes or how tall you are or howmuch you weigh.
So we're massively oversharinginformation.
So this new system of digitalidentity basically allows you to
(17:57):
prove things about yourselfwithout spraying your data
across the internet.
Right, and that's why it'sprivacy protective, it's secure
and that's why the system is,you know, has been adopted by,
you know, all the big companies.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Yeah, and yeah, I mean, yeah, it does.
I mean really, I mean, when youkind of use the analogy like
you did, I mean you know talkingabout, you know driver's
license, I think that they mostpeople can really understand
that concept.
And one thing that I really Ireally trying to understand is
really kind of around the roleof centralization and
decentralization.
I think the shift into kind ofmore of the Web3, identity-based
(18:35):
, where the individual user hassovereignty over the data and
the information they choose toshare, can be very selective.
When you kind of look at someof the business models around
some of the big tech companies,it seems like they would
probably almost kind of findeither what are you seeing in
terms of kind of either they'reeither adapting to this new
change and fundamentalphilosophical shift into
(18:56):
identity, Because it seems likethey kind of own all the data,
they own all the ability to kindof share that data.
It seems like they would almostbe a power struggle over
retaining that at some point.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Right, yeah, no, there is right, there is and
consumers know that app trackingright, you have the ability to
not have the apps track you,right.
So that's been a big hit to bigtech companies.
And the other big hit ishappening right now and the
cookie.
You know the cookie.
That is, that you know cookies,you, and follows you around and
(19:28):
you know, says, you know, hey,you know like you were looking
at these sunglasses everywhereyou go.
Now you have to look at thosesunglasses.
It's annoying and that's notwhat happens in the physical
world.
Imagine going into a store andthen you look at a shirt and
then you go to the next door andthen the sales guy comes with
that shirt next door and he'sbanging on the window saying,
how about this shirt?
(19:48):
It makes no sense.
So that whole system,ultimately, is going away.
So Google is deprecating thecookie, right?
So the cookie will go away andweb marketers are going to
basically have to rely on theinformation it's called zero
party data and first party data,the information that you give
them with permission to use,right?
(20:10):
So this is fundamentally a sea.
You know, a sea change, rightin a sea change.
So the big tech companies bythe way, don't worry about the
big tech companies.
They'll be fine, I'm notworried about them.
They'll get access to yourinformation.
Um, just, you know they'll askyou for it, right?
Basically, what they'll do isthey'll say hey, in order to use
facebook, which is a freeservice, you have to give us all
(20:32):
this information, right, right,and you know so.
The next big wave here is lotsof companies asking you for your
data that previously were justtaking your data, right?
So this is going to be the newtrend.
They're going to be asking youfor your data, and you can
choose to give it to them or notgive it to them, but the thing
(20:53):
I'll tell you is that they maychoose to not allow you to use
some of their services if youdon't give them your data.
So this will be the next bigfight as it relates to
centralization versusdecentralization.
All this data for 20 years, 30years, it's just been sitting up
in their databases.
And what happens?
(21:13):
Steve, you're a DevOps guy.
You know this better thananybody.
What happens to that data?
What always happens to thatdata?
No, no, no, it gets hacked.
Right, it gets hacked.
Of course, there's billions ofrecords for sale, right?
It's because those data recordsare not secure?
(21:35):
They're not secure, I don'tcare what you know, you could
put them in Fort Knox, there'salways going to be somebody that
can figure out a way to getthat data.
Now, the beauty of the newdecentralized method of data
storage right versus thecentralized method of data
storage is that in order for thebad guys to get you know the,
the, the personal information ofa million users, they have to
(21:58):
crack a million differentwallets, right, and you know, we
use what's called AES 256encryption, right, which is the
same encryption standard thatthe department of defense uses
for top secret information.
You know, according toMicrosoft and the department of
Defense, it would take you 100years to crack that code.
Okay, so you're gonna, you'regonna crack.
You know you're gonna.
(22:19):
It's gonna take you 100 yearsto crack the code of a million
wallets.
Have fun, right, go at it,right.
So my point is is that the, themethod of storage in the new,
in the new, in the new ecosystem, this decentralized ecosystem,
is far more protective thancentralized data storage, right,
and so that's the benefit tothe consumer they're going to
(22:43):
have more security over theirinformation.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
It definitely does present some real key features
when it comes to things likeprivacy, security and
enhancement of protecting thatidentity.
Where I might see a little bitof a struggle is the average,
normal, everyday consumerunderstanding how they can then
kind of go about obtaining awallet.
It seems like it really tendsto be.
It favors more of the peoplewho tend to be tech savvy.
(23:11):
How do we start to see thelandscape shifting in terms of
wider adoption, with moreawareness, understanding of how
the wallet works, with easierinteroperability?
Speaker 1 (23:20):
So this is what we're focused on and this is the
genius of identity.
So the consumer doesn't wantanother wallet.
I mean, they don't want anotherwallet.
They've got their Apple wallet,google wallet.
So what you have to do isabstract all this technology a
Web3 wallet, asymmetriccryptography, the blockchain.
You know, people don't wake upin the morning and say I want to
(23:42):
be decentralized.
Today, steve, they say I wantto sell something on Facebook,
or I want to buy something onCraigslist, or I have somebody
coming over to walk my dog andI'm concerned that.
You know, I want to know whothey are.
Those are the things, those arethe everyday problems that
people want to solve.
Right, and Web3 tech isbrilliant at solving them.
Right Now, the problem is, isthat you know and this is no
(24:05):
offense to you because you're atechnologist is that
technologists think it's atechnology problem?
It's not a technology problem,it's a user adoption problem,
right, and so what?
We're focused on identity.
I mean we have brilliant techand many, many patents.
Brilliant tech.
You know a dozen engineersworking on open identity
standards for three years.
Right, it's a very simple userinterface and workflow to the
(24:28):
consumer, and the reality is 90%of the consumers don't even
know they have a wallet, becausewe don't call it a wallet.
It's just this place where youhave access to your credentials,
you can reference them andunlock them by using your phone
(24:52):
number and consumer may nevereven go to their identity wallet
.
In fact, we don't even call ita wallet anymore.
And you know what?
We don't even call all theselittle things credentials
anymore.
We call them passes, becausepeople are used to passes, right
, they have passes in theirApple wallet, right?
So part of it is that we, astechnology people, right, we're
(25:15):
so obsessed with the technology.
We basically, you know we smokewhat we roll, right?
So you know, we have to get offthat.
And, by the way, you know, ittook us a long.
You know, we've been around forthree years, right, this is our
third version.
We just launched a big, youknow user interface update and
we were hammering the wallet forthree years.
We thought the wallet was themost important thing.
(25:37):
It was featured in all the appsand everything.
We don't even.
It's gone.
Now the wallet is gone, right,like you know, do away with the
wallet.
Consumers don't want anotherwallet, in my view, right, and
they tell us this like theydon't want another wallet.
You know, what do they needanother wallet for they don't
have any use for the wallet.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
So it seems like you guys are kind of abstracting you
know, kind of extracting youknow kind of more of the
technical hurdles that mostpeople would tend to go to to
get kind of a Web3 identity andmaking it more as an easy to
kind of you know, identity as aservice where users or consumers
can simply say, look, I want acentralized place that has all
(26:17):
of the bells and whistles thatbe able to kind of gives me all
the technical features but Idon't understand, and really
just kind of presents it to mein an easy to use interface,
right Cause you know it's youknow having to learn these
things.
Yeah, it's very difficult.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
No, that's exactly, you got it exactly right.
And what I will tell you aboutDENITY is we have 85 year old,
you know, grandmothers that getthrough this process every
single day, like it's an.
It's incredible to me, right?
It's incredible to me thatpeople you know that aren't
digital natives, right Are aregetting through the most
complicated technology ever.
Like.
Our technology is likeworld-class, world-class ID tech
(26:51):
, world-class right, and85-year-old, you know
grandmothers can get through oursystem no problem, in two
minutes, by the way it takes.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Yeah, I was going to say the baby boomers that are
basically kind of nearretirement right is like you
know.
They're now kind of beingwashed in this new technical
world right of identity and Web3.
And you know even some thingsyou know that might be kind of a
limitation to them in terms ofthe understanding is just as
frightening, I think, in someaspects.
So it's great that you've beenable to do that and it's amazing
(27:24):
that you said you mentioned the85 year old is able to kind of
do this and do this with ease.
I'd love to see this on a massadoption level kind of increase.
Where do you start to kind ofwhere do you see the next five
years happening?
I don't want to say five to 10,but where do you kind of see
consumers kind of meeting andwhere do you see this consumer
push in the next five years?
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Where do you see this consumer push in the next five
years?
Right?
So my focus is on adoption andmy focus is solving real-world
problems, not very niche Web3problems.
So let me give you an example.
A big investor in our companyis AARP.
They have 38 million members.
Steve.
Aarp has more members thancrypto holders in the US.
This is massive, right.
(28:11):
So they invested in Dentitybecause they're concerned and
focused on elder financial crimeand abuse, romance scams,
things like this, and theyunderstand that identity is the
through line.
If you can't figure out a way toget identity in the hands of
consumers and for them to beable to exchange it and make it
social and make it social right,then it's useless.
Right?
Because, look, you're nevergoing to get a billion people
verified right by relying onFacebook and Google and all the
(28:33):
big tech.
You just won't.
And there's a couple of reasonswhy.
First, it's not in theirinterests, right?
You know they have businessmodels.
You know they don't want toverify every single person that
onboards into their system.
They just don't.
That's not their business model.
I mean, you may have heard thesame stat, but I always hear the
stat that 80% of the ads onTikTok are consumed by bots, by
(28:57):
technology.
So, 80% of every ad that youserve on TikTok, if you're an
advertiser publisher, it's beingseen by a bot, right?
So that just tells you the sizeand scale of the problem, right
?
And AI presents all theseincredible challenges about
identity, right?
You know deep fakes and allthis other stuff, right?
(29:20):
So the thing that we have tofocus on is finding use cases.
We call them use cases.
We're finding problems that arereal problems that vex
consumers, and then using ourtech to solve them.
I'll give you an example wehave an exclusive relationship
with the largest Facebookmarketplace sellers group.
There's 20,000 sellers in thisgroup 20,000.
(29:43):
And we are working every day,right, to work with the sellers
to get them to understand howyou you know, how you verify
people, how you buildcounterparty trust, and this is
like you know, I always say thatit's.
You know, if you want to createa network, it's better to
easier to create a network in aclassroom than it is in a
football field, right?
And have you know?
(30:05):
We have, um, we have.
You know hundreds uh, I meanbecause we just started this
relationship but hundreds ofpeople in that, in that group,
that are verifying each other,verifying buyers right, and
it'll it'll disperse out thatway.
So the way this the way thisrolls out, steve is, you know is
for us to solve real worldproblems that consumers actually
(30:25):
care about.
Do it without putting thetechnology front and center and
not making it Web3 or sayingit's blockchain or a credential,
and just giving consumersaccess to all this technology
and then, over time, it spreads.
So the one thing that I wouldalso tell you is that you know
(30:47):
to my previous point, you know,consumers they have the lowest
trust ever in all these big techand social media.
80% of consumers today don'ttrust social media with their
data.
They just don't right.
So they're not going to givemore of their personal data to
the social media giants and bigtech.
They just won't right, theyjust won't.
So the best way to do this is tomake it decentralized, to make
(31:09):
every consumer basically verifya relying party and do it to
each other, because then youhave millions and millions and
millions of people, billions ofpeople verifying each other.
Then it just spreads, right?
We don't have to sit in lineand queue up to get our identity
verified by Meta or Facebook.
You know, and, by the way, youknow, if you do that you have.
(31:30):
It's of zero value to you.
You know it's sitting up intheir database, Like what good
is that?
You know you can't use it.
You can't use it and you'regoing to pay $15 a month to have
a little blue check mark thatyou.
You know that.
That that and then, by the way,you have to then go to every,
every single platform you go to.
You have to do it again.
It's useless.
So reusable reusable digitalidentity owned by the consumer,
(31:52):
controlled by the consumer moreprivacy, protect, protective.
They decide what informationthey give to to whom, and it's
safer.
It's safer than putting it in acentralized database.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
Yeah, and and and and that's.
I think it's incrediblypowerful.
Is that?
You know, is that the idea ofyou know, having everything
decentralized?
You know the reducing thesurface attack of reducing it
now to basically now millions ofidentities.
You now have to attack amillion different type of
individuals versus just oneindividual type of place.
It's incredible.
I think it's very, veryempowering for users and I
(32:24):
highly advocate for ourlisteners to go out there check
out what Jeff's working with atDensity.
Jeff, how can our listenersunderstand more around what
Density is doing and how we canprotect them?
Give us a little bit of idea of, kind of like, some of the
things that Density can reallyhelp them with.
How can they get involved?
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Well, first of all, identity is free to the consumer
.
So go to a identity D, e, n, t,I, t Ycom, just like identity
without the I identitycom andsign up.
It'll take you two minutes andyou know your information will
be safe and secure.
Then then go into the app.
It's a web app, which meansthat you're not going to find it
in the app star, it's on theinternet.
Then go into your identityaccount and start verifying
(33:07):
people, right, like you know, wehave a point system and all
this other fun kind ofgamification and all this other
fun stuff.
But go in and start verifying.
You know people Get comfortable, get comfortable sending
verification requests.
You know it's super easy to doby email or SMS.
Then what I would say is youknow it's super easy to do by
email or SMS.
Then what I would say is youknow I have service providers
coming to my home all the time.
(33:27):
You know people workingdomestically in the house and
you know, in the yard I don'tlet a single person on my
property without verifying theiridentity.
Period hands down.
You know there's a lot of badpeople out there, steve, a lot
of bad people.
You know we see them every day,bad people trying to do bad
things to good people, and theywill, and they want to do it.
You know, getting a fakeidentity, right, um so, um, so,
(33:52):
you know, uh, uh, what I wouldsay is like, anytime, you know,
anytime you're trying to createtrust with somebody remotely or
online, send them a verificationrequest.
Right, and you know, in myexperience of doing this for a
few years, if they don't do that, if they don't accept it, you
(34:12):
know, beware, beware.
Just have your eyes wide open,because a lot of times, the bad
people you know and you see,have you ever posted something
lately on Craigslist or Facebookmarketplace?
It's you.
Get over, it's insane, steve.
Do it, just so you understandthe magnitude of the problem.
(34:32):
Right, do it.
I ask you to do it.
It is.
You will get overrun instantlywith 25 requests for your Zelle
account, your phone number, yourPayPal account and there's all
these scams out there, right,there's bad people and, by the
way, it's not domestic anymore,it's completely
internationalizedized and theproblem is that you have all
these federal agents.
These people are doing itbasically in plain daylight out
in Southeast Asia and NorthernAfrica and all these other
(34:54):
places.
They can't stop them andthey're coming after you.
They're coming after your momand they're coming after your
grandfather and they're comingafter you.
They're trying to steal yourinformation and they're going to
scam the shit out of you.
They're going to take yourmoney and they're going to steal
your identity, and it's bad.
So just be aware there's badpeople out there, and I'm not
(35:16):
even talking about all the badstuff that happens to women and
children and minorities.
And do you know that there was21 million reported cases to the
National Center for Missing andAbused Children, and a lot of
those cases now are onlinegrooming, like huge more than
half of them it's online.
It's bad people trying to groom, you know, young kids online.
(35:37):
It's disgusting.
And so we all this is my pitchhere now, Steve, we all have a
role here.
We all have to, steve, we allhave a role here.
We all have to stand up.
We all have to stand up foridentity, verified identity,
together.
Right, it's free, it takes twominutes.
Right, we all have to stand upfor it.
Otherwise, you know,particularly with AI otherwise
(35:58):
it's just going to continue toget worse, you know, and all the
trust that we're trying tobuild online and all this
digital commerce stuff that wedo, it's all going to go to shit
, because trust is the essenceof commerce.
Without trust, there is nocommerce.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
Yeah, I 100% agree with that.
I think the key takeaway thereis that consumers have to get
involved.
They've got to get engaged withbasically getting an identity
that they can then verifythrough something like Dentity
and then start basicallyreaching out to people to join
their network and get verified.
That way, I think, kind of aspeople start to get on board
with that, you start to see thatadoption curve go up.
(36:31):
I think that's a win-win forconsumers and for entities as
well too.
Wow, that's incredible stuff,jeff.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
I can't yeah like if you I mean it's powerful, right,
Steve?
Like, if you want to bitchabout, you know hate speech and
all, and you want to bitch aboutidentity theft and you want to
bitch about a lack of civility,you know, on social media, if
you want to bitch about allthese things, and you know
online consumer scams and youknow financial, if you want to
(37:01):
bitch about it, you have aresponsibility to stand up and
do something.
And you know we've been doingthis three years now and you
know we'll have millions ofpeople on the app.
You know, using the system andthis, by the way, we haven't
made a single pity.
We don't charge consumers,right, and we charge businesses,
right.
You know we have hundreds ofbusinesses that use it.
We charge them.
But my point is is that this isa mission-driven company, right?
(37:23):
And consumers if they want tocomplain about all the
malignancies and bad shit thathappens on the internet, then
they have a responsibility to dosomething right.
And finally, now you can dosomething Create virality around
verified identity, right, ifeverybody's verified, steve,
people say bad things with theirusername.
They don't say it with theirname, they just don identity
(37:43):
right, like, if everybody'sverified, steve, you know people
say bad things with theirusername.
They don't say it with theirname, they just don't right.
So all these bad people doingbad stuff on the internet,
ultimately this stuff will goaway because they're you know,
they hide, they're cowards,right, they're cowards.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
It's taken away the anonymity of it, right, they're
no longer hiding behind just aghost username.
It's now it's kind of like youknow your identity can be
verified.
So you need to really be youknow, really need to kind of
hone in on just the identitiesthat are verified.
So it seems like that's kind ofthe powerful takeaway is moving
into kind of an environment orkind of an ecosystem where
(38:18):
everyone's identified,everyone's verified and everyone
then can.
You can't hide anymore.
Very, very powerful stuff.
It's amazing, jeff.
What are some of?
Speaker 1 (38:30):
the projects you're working on.
Where can we follow you?
Yeah, well, I'm not a bigsocial media guy I think you
probably know that but I am veryactive on LinkedIn, so follow
me on LinkedIn.
I'm always publishing and Steveis always jumping in and
jumping in on my posts, which isgreat.
I love that.
So follow me on LinkedIn.
But, you know, I'll give youjust a bunch of examples of this
(38:51):
kind of stuff we're doing.
So if you're a notary, right,we work with the National Notary
Association.
There's about 120,000 notariesin the US that do 100% of
mortgages in America.
Those notaries, every year theyhave to have their notary
commission verified, they haveto have their background checked
and they have to have theiridentity verified, right, so
(39:11):
we're out there trying toprevent notary fraud.
You know, a lot of people seethis legal advertising on TV,
right, there's $2.5 billionspent on legal advertising,
right, all those calls go intothese digital intake centers
around the country and we do,you know.
And then, by the way, they'regoing to release your medical
records, right, because you knowyou sign the contract and then
they release your med records.
So we do all that compliance tomake sure that you know people
(39:37):
aren't basically saying they'reyou and then having your medical
records, you know, releasedright, so that's a good use case
.
And then having your medicalrecords, you know, released
right, so that's a good use case.
We do you know, if you're buyingvape or tobacco or something
like that, online, you have tobe 21.
There's age-gated products.
We do that.
We're very active in the musicfestivals around the country,
proving that you're 21.
We do a lot of stuff, like youknow, trying to make sure that
(40:13):
kids aren't you know kids aren'tsmoking and buying age-gated
products.
You know we do fun stuff, likeyou know.
A lot of the venues, you know,don't issue tickets.
Now they issue thesecredentials, right, you know, we
do.
You know it's a fun businessbecause the technology is so
incredibly diverse.
And the technology, steve, as Isaid in the beginning, is not
just about your identifiers,it's about community, right?
So we have companies andorganizations that are big
organizations building communityin this sort of Web3 space
(40:35):
using these credentials and Iwish I had one around here.
But this plastic membershipcard, this thing is useless.
It's useless.
So all these plastic cards thatyou walk around with in your
leather wallet, all that's goingaway.
It's all going to sit up insome Web3 wallet and allow you
to prove information aboutyourself in a privacy-respecting
(40:59):
way.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
That's going to be really cool, because I know that
it will definitely probablytake about four pounds off of
the weight that I carry in mywallet with just cards, cards
and identification andeverything like that.
It's really cool to be able tokind of have everything verified
through either an app orsomething, some sort of digital
identity, on your phone.
Jeff, I can't thank you again.
This has been an amazingconversation.
I know our listeners havedefinitely been enlightened by
(41:21):
this topic.
Would love to have you on again.
Can't thank you enough to helpshed light on this conversation.
A big shout out for you,antinity.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
Can't thank you enough for this Cool Steve.
Well, I appreciate it.
I appreciate the very good workthat you do on LinkedIn,
enlightening the users, and Iappreciate this podcast, which I
like this podcast, steve,because it's not so technical
where there's so many hardcoretechnical podcasts everywhere.
This gives us an opportunity totalk about this stuff to a
(41:52):
consumer audience.
You know a real world, explainit in real, simple, easy terms.
So I appreciate you and I thankyou for having me on today.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
Absolutely Look forward to it and happy travels
everyone.
Thanks for listening, jeff,we'll chat soon.
Cheers everyone.
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