Credentials for Web 3.0
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TICKER: KILT
FOUNDED: January 2018, Berlin, Germany
BOTLabs is the legal entity behind the KILT project. BOTLabs is also a member of the Digital Identity Foundation.
WEB PAGE: kilt.io
WHITEPAPER: HERE
Very thorough whitepaper on 109 pages.
FIELD OF INTEREST: BLOCKCHAIN CREDENTIALS PROTOCOL
CATEGORY: Open-source blockchain protocol for issuing self-sovereign verifiable, revocable, anonymous credentials.
CHAIN/TOKEN TYPE: Parity/Substrate/ Polkadot
CONSENSUS MECHANISM: NPoS
LIVE MAINNET: testnet
KILT Protocol has deployed one of the first parachains on Rococo V1 as part of the Polkadot ecosystem. KILT’s parachain will use XCMP to enable smart contracts from other chains to verify attestations on the KILT chain.
DEV ACTIVITY: GITHUB
Very busy active and constant development with recent updates. Three contributors mentioned in the Github.
PRODUCTS:
Kilt is currently running a testnet (Mash Net) for the presentation of the KILT Protocol. You can get 500 Mash-Coins for trying out the testnet.
There is a Demo Client available for trying out the testnet. One can also use the KILT SDK to build JavaScript- or TypeScript-based applications for credentials. Demo mobile wallet for customising the claim/credential type, branding and colours can be tried out here. You can check out the activity on their blockchain explorer.
Testnet is active and the demo features of Kilt are available to build on and check out. Mainnet is due for q2/q3 2021.
EXISTING CUSTOMERS AND USERS: Currently still under development
COMPETITORS: Sovrin, Metadium, Ontology OScore, Shyft Network, Dock.io
Ingo Ruebe about the competition and ID on blockchain: “The Concept of Identity on the blockchain is not unique to KILT. In fact, there are quite a few projects dealing with that. Most of us gathered in the decentralised identity foundation, in order to define common standards and to be compatible with each other.
Why do we team up with competitors? a) if everyone defines his own standard, we will never find adoption and in the end, Facebook wins
b) the cake is so huge, that there is enough room for everyone
c) as usual in the blockchain: not the biggest team or the most money wins, but the one who cooperates best.
But how does KILT differentiate from the others?
a) KILT is (as far as we know) the only project in ID and Credentials which solved the price/truth Paradoxon. That means, we can produce affordable credentials and still deliver the security of a permissionless blockchain. We do that by being a Parachain to Polkadot. This feature is key to industrial adoption, especially in IoT.
b) we Support complex trust structures through delegation trees, which model the real world much better than the pure standard.
c) we invented CTYPEs, which allow the standardisation of Claims and Credentials.
d) KILT is the only project, which supports anonymous credentials (also received a W3F grant for this) which is particularly needed in the FinTech and DeFi world
e) we deliver an easy to use JavaScript SDK, which makes adoption for industry much easier. “
TEAM: You can find all about the Kilt team here.
Ingo Ruebe, Project Lead. Ingo is the founder and CEO of BOTLabs, the company that develops KILT Protocol. The Computer Scientist founded his first IT Startup in 1995. As CTO of Hubert Burda Media, he initiated the open-source CMS Thunder. Ingo is a founding member of the International Association for Trusted Blockchain Applications (INATBA) and the creative driving force and Project Lead of KILT Protocol.
Christine Mohan, Vice President of Business Development. Christine Mohan has 25 years of experience in software and digital media, working for startups and corporates including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Previously she was CMO of Web3 Foundation / Polkadot and co-founder of Civil Media, a blockchain syndication platform.
Matthias Moeller, Operations Director. Matthias has twenty years of professional and leadership experience in developing and shipping digital services for the internet and media industry. Since the early days of the internet, he has been managing the development of front end and back end internet services for high traffic and scalable products.
Marton Csernai, Product Owner and Research Lead. Márton is a research scientist with experience in telecommunications, network science and neuroscience. He holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering and a PhD in computer science from Budapest University of Technology and Economics.
PARTNERS:
*Glacier. KILT Protocol (Germany) and Glacier Blockchain (China) announced the founding of a joint research lab, The Web3 Identity Lab which will focus on applied science and cultural acceptance within the Web3. The joint research will try to present solutions based on Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs), Verifiable Credentials (VCs) and Blockchain Technology in general.
*Dena. KILT Protocol is a partner in an innovative Blockchain-based project, initiated by the German Energy Agency (Dena) and sponsored by the German Government, called “Blockchain Machine Identity Ledger”. This technology is intended to ensure sufficient identification and solve interoperability issues for the rapidly increasing number of interfaces in the Energy Market. Interestingly, the Ledger will also provide system-oriented applications like the Smart Meter.
*Starks Network. Partner with Kilt to enhance data privacy protection for your verifiable credentials.
*Fractal & Polkadex — for infrastructure to manage KYC
*Currently Certified KILT Integrators: galani projects, SPRYLAB, unitb, iXMAP.
INVESTORS: TBA
TOKEN USE CASE:
*Paying angel’s share (gas) when writing an attestation on the KILT Blockchain
*Paying an Attestation fee
*Register a new CTYPE on the blockchain
*Creating a Hierarchy of Trust (including the Private Curated Registry) and managing the delegations in the structure
*Creating and setting up a Token Curated Attester (TCA)
*Expert applying to a TCA
*Paying for an Attestation issued by a TCA
*Direct transactions in KILT tokens between users of the network
*Distributing the block reward to Validators
*Contributing to network security (staking/nominating Validators in the proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism)
TOKEN METRICS:
TOTAL TOKEN SUPPLY: 1 billion KILT
40% percent of the token supply would be pre-mined and distributed before the launch of the network. The remaining 60% of the available token supply would be minted over time and would be rewarded to agents that conduct valuable work for the network. The tokens for the block reward would be minted as needed. The block distribution is currently designed in a way that after 50 years, all one billion KILT tokens would be released and there would be no more block reward after that.
Token metric details are yet to be publically announced.
FUNDS RAISING INFO: TBA
ROADMAP: TBA
SOCIAL MEDIA:
Telegram 2065 members
Twitter - Joined Twitter in September 2018 and have 4800 followers
Medium 147 followers with first publishing in September 2019
LinkedIn
NOTES
KILT is a blockchain protocol for issuing self-sovereign verifiable, revocable, anonymous credentials and enabling trust market business models in Web 3.0.
Kilt is building amazing protocols for digital credentials and are also members of the DIF — Digital Identity Foundation. They are part of Substrate’s Builder’s Program and got 2 grants from the Web3 Foundation. First one was for Substrate Anonymous Credentials and the other one for Kilt’s upcoming project called Polimec. Polimec is a Fundraising Mechanism for Projects within the Polkadot Ecosystem.
Kilt partnered with Chinese company Glacier to found a WEB3 Identity Lab to research and produce DIDa and Verifiable Credential solutions. Very active development that can be seen in Github.
Until now writing apps for blockchain was reserved for blockchain developers. In order to foster cooperation and mass integration of KILT Protocol, they have provided an efficient and easy-to-use JavaScript SDK.
Among some already mentioned startups, Kilt can be compared to Sovrin for the tech and cause. Sovrin is connected to all the essential alliances and organisations that matter in the blockchain. There is so much potential with certification and ISS in the near future as there will be the demand for an SSI, privacy regulations and trust. Self-sovereign identity is something IBM is also working on. It is the core element to control and manage data. An individual would receive a web ID without revealing himself — anonymous digital ID verification.
Ingo Ruebe about anonymous credentials: “With anonymous credentials, the only thing a verifier learns from a claimer, are the presented attributes. Therefore the verifier can’t link multiple sessions to a single user, except the user has identifying attributes.
DID is still in standardisation. But there are many implementations of it. The idea is not to have one of the implementations to rule the world, but to give users a choice on which system they want to anchor their data. If your DID driver complies with the current joint understanding, you can check it into the universal resolver (uniresolver.io). Ethereum, Sovrin and KILT all checked in and got approved as far as I know. The universal resolver serves as a compatibility layer.”
Kilt might become an important part of the Polkadot ecosystem in the field of SSI and DIDs and outside the ecosystem ofc. Gavin Wood mentioned Kilt on several occasions.
In this article, Gavin Wood summarises the accomplishments of Polkadot and their contributors for the year 2019. He also gives an outlook for 2020 and highlights KILT as a part of the thriving ecosystem.
Gavin Wood: “We are seeing some really interesting tech coming from teams both insides and outside of the Web3 Grant programme, indeed one impressive thing about the Polkadot (and Kusama) community is the energy and productivity shown by its volunteer contributors. Though there are far too many projects in the space these days to be able to give a shout to all of them (I’m talking about you, Centrifuge, Laminar, Acala, KILT, Nodle, MXC, Celer, OAX, Katal, imToken!).”
Self-sovereign identity (SSI) blends the principles of identity data ownership and management with technologies that implement those principles. Due to the increasingly widespread adoption of blockchain, users are now able to store, share and authenticate identity data and third-party credentials on a secure, private platform. This eliminates the need for federated, third-party identifiers and with it the resulting fragmentation of an individual’s online identity.
TECH Layout
The KILT ecosystem will be composed of different interacting parts. KILT will be basically composed of client applications (e.g. Credential Wallet App), centralised as well as decentralised services (e.g. CTYPE registry), and the KILT Blockchain.
The KILT Protocol describes three main layers:
*The data formats and how to handle different types of data, such as Identities, CTYPEs, Claims, Attestations and Verifications, is the core of the KILT Protocol.
*Rules, guidelines and workflows, as well as a messaging protocol supporting these processes and exchange data formats.
*The KILT Blockchain nodes use Parity Substrate as the underlying blockchain technology stack (see details later in KILT Blockchain section). To support KILT, the nodes need to implement different modules in their runtime.
More about the underlying tech can be read in the very well written whitepaper.
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