Everest Platform – Privacy By Design

EverID by Everest delivers privacy by design – biometrically-secured personal data, stewarded by a non-profit, recorded with a distributed ledger. 

Without verifiable identity and value storage economic exchange is difficult. Lack of verifiable identity is an obstacle to emerging market growth as it prevents access to formal economic services, such as banking, insurance, and lending – limiting who can access the economy, stalling economic development at the institutional level.

Worldwide over 1.1 billion ^1 people still lack any form of legal identity, 1.5 billion ^2 cannot prove their identity, close to 1.7 billion ^3 are without a bank account, and 5 billion do not have a smartphone or access to digital wallets.

As the mainstream economy continues to digitize, it will not just be the ‘unbanked’ and ‘unverified’ that struggle to join economic systems. A device-free, universally accessible, digital identity and integrated digital wallet provide the opportunity for the entire world to join the global economy.

Everest decentralized platform is three components: EverID, a digital biometric identity system to store and confirm user identity data; EverWallet, a multi-currency digital wallet with built-in, document storage, and EverChain, a blockchain-based transaction system. The platform is available to all human beings from birth until death. It does not require a mobile device to join, is encrypted to protect users’ privacy, and is interoperable with other systems.

Institutions, corporations, and government organizations can effectively, cheaply and quickly validate user identity, at scale. Value can then be transferred securely to the correct recipient with reduced transaction costs, lower losses from leakage, and innovations in service and value transfer.

The Everest platform auto-funds through a smart-contract the Identity Network Foundation (INF), a separate, non-profit organization by charging a few USD pennies per verification; a comparable fee to the one charged by Aadhaar.

The foundation of the system, EverChain, can handle a volume of billions of transactions per month with scaling plans to the trillions of transactions. EverID combined with EverWallet allow users and organizations in an economy to verify unique identity and exchange value, delivering digital identity with an economic model that is both private and profitable. The decentralized architecture of the platform also provides complete personal data ownership and higher levels of security compared with current centralized or public distributed databases.

Adhering to the Principles of Identification for Sustainable Development the user is the one and only party who controls their identity information, who it is available to, and for how long. This is privacy by design engineered into an identity platform, preventing the misuse of personal data, indelibly recording each transaction on a private, permissioned instance of the Ethereum distributed ledger. EverID also provides oversight and control of personal data sharing through the use of a sharing smart contract that provides an auditable record of everyone and every organization that has had access to what information for how long.

Everest's goal is to deliver an identity utility for humanity with EverID.

Footnotes

^1 - 2/2018 https://blogs.worldbank.org/vo...

^2 - 4/2016 http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/e...

^3 - 12/2017 https://globalfindex.worldbank...

Financial inclusion at scale:

Biometric identification - a unique identifier which cannot be “taken away” from a person

User-centric - user controls access to data and derives value from its use 

Deviceless - does not require user to own a device

Governance – decentralized, encrypted data stored so no organization, including Everest, can see it, turn it off, or taken over.  

Management console - allows organizations to manage their communities

Decentralized architecture - more secure and available than centralized architectures

eWallet or virtual account - identity data, vouchers, digital and fiat currencies

Cost savings - KYC/AML for capturing next billion banking relationships

Proactive not reactive, preventative not remedial – Everest has focused on anticipating and preventing privacy issues before they happen, and minimizing the impact of any compromise.

Privacy is default setting – The individual’s data is recorded in a manner that allows the individual (not a government, organization, or company) granular control of how it is shared, with whom, and for how long.

Privacy embedded into design – Designed to adhere to the Principles of Identification for Sustainable Development with the express purpose of giving the user control over their identity information.

Full functionality positive sum, not zero sum – Everest believes that privacy, security, and accessibility are all achievable on the same platform.

End-to-end security - full lifecycle protection – The user’s data is theirs, and through smart contracts they control who has access to that information, for how long, and in what form.

Visibility and transparency - keep it open – The Everest platform’s decentralized architecture and operational model is able to be independently verified.

Respect for user privacy - keep it user centric and self sovereign – Strong privacy measures are the default, access requests are opt-in, notifications are easy to understand, use is device independent, and help and coaching are readily available.

To include EverID into other platforms has been a central focus of the project - an “Intel Inside” approach to powering other solutions.

Through the Everest API and SDK, the Everest system can integrate with other applications and devices not directly addressed by Everest’s product offering. Hosted in the Everest Supernode is a server instance hosting a RESTful API to the Everest distributed computer.

The Everest Client API is a RESTful interface for building client applications. The capabilities of the API include the following:

• Search for EverID

• Validate, and retrieve EverID

• Create, retrieve, update, and close transactions in EverWallet

Through the API, users are able to interact with their EverID and EverWallet on devices that they don’t own, like, fingerprint-sensor enabled ATMs, or facial-recognition enabled medical tablets. They are also able to use their EverID or EverWallet in apps not provided by Everest for services like biometric unlocking, simple user onboarding (automated KYC/ AML checks), and medical form auto-fill. The data can be exported to standards-compliant portable formats, which allows the user to take their identity data with them if they choose to leave the platform.

EverID is intended on providing a digital identification system, as well as being a component of other systems that require digital identification. The effort to include EverID as a component of another system is similar to including authentication through a Single Sign On (SSO) provider like Google or Microsoft into a system through the Everest API.

The SDK will include sample code and a  test harness to validate correct implementations of the API

EverID is interoperable with other services through the http-available API on highly available infrastructure dispersed throughout the network. Users can export their data to standards-compliant portable formats, which allows the user to take their identity data with them if they choose to leave the platform.

Individuals who do not own their own technology, can become enrolled into Everest by an agent who has a device running the Everest Agent DApp. The user inputs all of the same information as if they were self-enrolling on the Everest DApp, however, they have the assistance of the agent to help them with scanning and data entry, thus solving technological familiarity and illiteracy challenges. The agent will also teach how to use their EverID and EverWallet. Everest or its partner organization agents are compensated per-transaction for both validated new enrollments, and the ongoing validations against those individuals enrolled.

We will deliver community management and value transfer solutions to organizations. We intend to focus initially on offering a suite of financial services to multiple institutions (MFI's, governments, NGO's, banks, etc.) Through "layering" or the offering multiple services to a large community of users, the platform produces an affordable, efficient and transparent path towards financial inclusion into the 21st century digital economy for the next billion users.

ID2020, Government of Indonesia = deploying cash transfer pilot solution with them now.

https://www.marketwatch.com/pr...

ADB

We are entrepreneurs, international development and technology professionals with security, distributed systems, and biometry startups who have worked within subsistence market environments and are dedicated to building this solution to bring the next billion users online efficiently, transparently and sustainably.

Identity verifications and transactional fees driven by partner implementations.

We believe that this will introduce our challenge to a new set of potential partners and help give identities to those in need.

Fear and misunderstandings over decentralized technologies.