IOTA Foundation participated in the COVID-19 Hackathon of Financial Times and launched a blockchain-based digital passport named Selv. The project is a result of a partnership with Dentons and shows the importance and power of digital identity control.
“It was a privilege to work with @Dentons in the FT COVID-19 Hackathon on our #Selv demo. The demo shows how #IOTA Identity can give individuals control over their health data, with authenticity guaranteed by IOTA,” tweeted IOTA.
Combining Blockchain Technologies With Legal Use Cases
Dentons is the largest law firm in the world. Their partnership with IOTA included validating the architectural design of the IOTA Identity platform. This means IOTA can claim legal and lawful underlying protocol for digital identity use cases in its platform.
The Global Legal Hackathon was the place that IOTA and Dentons partnered to make Selv. FT held this hackathon from April 27th to May 22nd to “innovate solutions to the most pressing legal, regulatory, and civil society challenges posed by the COVID-19 crisis”.
IOTA and Dentons showed a demo from the mobile application and website of Selv. They also clarified the platform’s legal guidelines and frameworks and their plan to grow and scale it. IOTA Identity is the underlying technology for Selv that “empowers individuals with control over their data, including health credentials, such as COVID-19 test results and vaccinations. The solution is GDPR-compliant, as reviewed by the Data Privacy lawyers of Dentons, allowing governments to deploy a privacy-first health passport.”
The control over digital identity is the primary purpose and use-case in Selv. Users can store, manage, and share verifiable personal information using the mobile app or website. The fundamental aspects of Selv that were showed at the recent hackathon proved its usability in the health care industry. IOTA now believes that Selv can act as a health passport, too.
Selv’s application is free and will be open-source on the final release. GDPR-compliance is the other benefit if this solution. IOTA claims the other benefits as follows:
- Private & Secure: All personal data is encrypted and stored on the user’s device. The solution will be fully audited by external security consultants.
- Scalable & Interoperable: Selv follows the W3C specifications on identity.
