Speaker: Stephen Wilson, Founder, Lockstep Consulting
Date: Thursday, June 23, 2022
Location: Denver, CO

Description: The Internet, e-commerce and digital discourse are dominated by Identity. Until now, Identity was all we had when trying to trust anyone or anything online. We developed a terrible habit of over-identifying: Relying Parties collect circumstantial evidence (like CVVs and SSNs) instead of properly verifying what really matters; people divulge excessive personal data, often unwittingly, which leaks and gets abused by criminals. Thus, too much identity is sloshing around.

Is there a paradigm shift coming? The most important developments in our industry — Self Sovereign Identity, the FIDO Alliance, cryptographically Verifiable Credentials — are not about Identity, but authorship, provenance, integrity and control. The parallel universe of Distributed Ledger Technology is delivering CDBCs and NFTs. The common breakthrough is digital originality, something we never thought possible. Originality is key in the fight for digital truth and accuracy.

In this session, we will move the conversation beyond Identity and imagine a world where cryptographic infostructure is as universal as electricity or clean water, and all the data we need is hall-marked, traceable and trustworthy thanks to authentication technologies. What would a future in which digital and analog merge look like, in which real life and the virtual are no longer divided, and information becomes a tangible asset?