Overview
What does the company/project do?
Sovrin wants to build a digital identity service on the blockchain. Sovrin enables users to create and control a portable, digital and verifiable identity. This identity can be used to access services of third parties without registration with a username and password.
The Sovrin blockchain is designed exclusively for the specific use case of identity management. It is an independent blockchain and not build on top of an existing blockchain platform such as Ethereum.
How advanced is the project?
The Sovrin Foundation was first announced in September 2016. The network was launched in July 2017 with the first genesis transaction. A detailed timeline with milestones is not available.
What are the tokens used for and how can the token value appreciate?
Sovrin tokens are used for the exchange of data on the Sovrin network. A user, who has an identity with Sovrin, may share personal data with a credit institution. In exchange the user will get paid with Sovrin tokens. The amount of Sovrin tokens to be paid depends on the value of the data. The more data is requested and the more valuable the data requested is, the higher will be the price. Just as the Ethereum token, the Sovrin token derives its value from the network. The market capitalization of the Sovrin network will rise together with the usage of the network itself.
Team & Advisors
Heather Dahl is the Chief Executive Officer of Sovrin and serves in this position since May 2018. She has previous experience in entrepreneurship and blockchain technology projects.
Roy Avondet is the Chief Financial Officer of Sovrin. He is also CFO at Global Upside Corporation since 2011, Partner at NextStep Partners LLC, a mentoring and consulting business, and manager at Lami LLC, a finance and accounting consultancy.
Nathan George is the Chief Technology Officer of Sovrin. He previously worked as software engineer and architect for various companies.
Besides the executive team the Sovrin team counts with an extensive Board of Trustees and a Technical Governance Board, which is partially identical to the Board of Trustees. The Board of Trustees includes people with business, entrepreneurial, blockchain, IT and research backgrounds.
Product
Sovrin essentially is an identity management solutions that enables digital identity verification for consumer and enterprise use cases via cryptographic authentication.
The Sovrin blockchain comes with validator nodes where write transactions are possible and with a majority of observer nodes that have read only copies of the blockchain.
The Sovrin platform is designed to protect privacy. Privacy is an essential condition for a digital identity in order to be compliant with the legislation in certain jurisdictions. To achieve this goal private data is never stored on the blockchain. The exchange of private data happens outside the Sovrin ledger.
Sovrin enables selective disclosure. This is similar to the permission management on the Facebook Graph API, where app developers may only request the data from Facebook, that they need for their app. The user can decide which personal information to share with a third party.
Strength and Opportunities
Blockchain technology is very well suited for this use case, because it helps to avoid data breaches. Sensitive data is no longer stored in a centralized database at the supplier of a service or at a large software company such as Facebook and Google. People and economies can be better protected from the effects of cybercrime.
Sovrin wants to provide a digital identity for those who do not yet have any type of identity. Sovrin’s mission is to provide a cheap and accessible identity for everyone. This enables Sovrin to deliver a solution targeted especially for people in developing countries.
Weaknesses and Threats
Building blockchain based digital identities is one of the trending topics in cryptocurrency. Hence there is a lot of competition in the field. uPort and Endpass are solutions build for Ethereum. TheKey is an identity verification solution for the Neo platform. On top there are other independent platforms such as selfkey.org. The examples mentioned are just a few and not a complete list. There is a lot of competition in this space. Obviously there is a need for an identity management solution on the blockchain, but it will be difficult to dominate this market.
A part of the executive team seems to be either very recent in this position or has substantial other responsibilities. This may negatively impact the execution of the project.
Verdict
Sovrin is already at an advanced staged compared to most other projects at the ICO stage. It is clearly visible that there is a necessity for the service that Sovrin is providing. However, investors in the Sovrin ICO need to consider the strong competition in the field. In 2018 it is not yet possible to foresee which blockchain based identity management solution will be the dominant one in the future.
(5 votes, average: 3.60 out of 5)
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