We get a lot of question in regard to what we are doing and what our solution is all about. We think now is a good time to do our first round of FAQ. This post is intended to be a living document. We will update it frequently to keep it current and relevant. So in case you have questions that are not covered here or on our webpage, feel free to drop it as a comment directly under this post or contact us via twitter.
Questions covered are:
- What Problem does Jolocom solve?
- Who is the target group?
- What is the SmartWallet?
- What are claims and verified claims? Where is the difference and why should I care?
- How does Jolocom treat my data and what is the personal store?
- If developers are interested, what can they use?
- What are the advantages for services/apps/dapps?
- What do you store on the Blockchain?
- How can I verify my information?
- Can I also verify my own claims or from others?…coming soon
- Can I find the app on appstore?
- What is your Roadmap? …coming soon
- How can I contribute? …coming soon
Let’s get started! 🚀
What problem does Jolocom solve?
It’s 2017. When we look around us we see a world which is dominated by data slavery. In this world a few big companies own a big share of your data. Although you are the one generating this data, you don’t control it nor own it, and you are definetly not the one monetizing it. You pay with your privacy and navigate the chaotic digital lanscape with numerous usernames and passwords suppling the data silos of big corporations with a never ending stream of your personal data. At Jolocom we want to change this. We think that we need to move away from data slavery to a world of data sovereignty where you are in control of your data. Taking control of your data starts with your personal information — with your identity. We are developing a solution to realise this vision.
Who is the target group?
Jolocom’s user facing app is the SmartWallet. This app is geared towards data conscious people who want to take back control of their data footprint and effortless navigate the digital world.
What is the SmartWallet?
The SmartWallet is our app facing the user. Think of the SmartWallet like your normal physical wallet where you carry your IDs and money, but with smart functionalities on top. The SmartWallet is an app that lets you manage your identity related data like email address, phone number, or ID card. Get an overview over your personal details and verified information easily with our app.
Like with the physical wallet in the real world, you can use the SmartWallet in the digital world to identify yourself or pay for things (currently only ether are supported). So next time when you would like to register with a car sharing company, you can use the SmartWallet app and log in with one click instead of creating usernames and passwords.
Privacy lies at our heart, so we make sure that your data stays private and you are always aware and in control which data you share with whom. So in the case of the car sharing company, you would be prompted with a screen which shows exactly the information requested by the company, leaving you the choice to accept or decline their request.
All your data is stored and managed in your ‘personal store’ which you control. Jolocom has no access to this store, nor does anybody else without your permission. In case you grant access to another party to information in your store, like your drivers’ license in our car sharing company example, you can always revoke it. Moreover, you can always quickly and easily check which service has access to which data. This provides you with an instant overview over your connections.
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As our app supports ether, the SmartWallet enables you to plug into the Ethereum infrastructure seamlessly. So when other applications provide smart contracts functionality to support their service offering, you can access them conveniently with our app.
What are claims and verified claims? Where is the difference and why should I care?
A claim is a piece of information that you or others say about you, like your email address for example. Now when you communicate your email address to your friend, she will likely assume that this claim is true because you know her since many years and your relationship is based on mutual trust. However, when you deal with parties where no previous relationship and no trust is in place, providing a claim is likely not enough. You would want to trust the information without necessarily trusting the party involved. This is where verification comes in handy.
A verified claim is a piece of information about you which was checked and cryptographically signed by another party. It is always transparent who the other party is — and when you accept or provide the verified claim, you can choose to trust this information without knowing the owner of the claim itself. So when you present your verified claim of let’s say your drivers’ licence, which was signed by an official authority, during the registration to a car sharing service, they will likely accept it.
Because you communicate these verified claims digitally, it makes your life easier. Now you can freely move between different applications and on-board on new ones with just a couple of clicks.
How do you treat my data and what is the personal store?
Your data is stored in your personal store. As we have decentralized the whole logic to manage your identity details, permissions etc., we don’t execute any processes for you. You can navigate the digital world independently. For this, you need to enable your personal store. This is done during our onboarding phase. The personal store can run anywhere you feel comfortable with, but it has to be availbale ideally 24/7.
A common solution to this can be a hosting provider (which is e.g. located in Iceland), a freedom box, or if you already have an own web server, set up your personal store there. Don’t worry, we tried to make this process as easy as possible and pre-selected some suggestions for you.
We think a personal store is very important. Especially if we think ahead to a world where Dapps just rent your data with your permission instead of owning it.
If developers are interested, what can they use?
Developers can implement the functionality of Single-Sign-On (Jolocom SmartLogin) on their web application so that users with a SmartWallet can easly onboard and login. The advantage is that with this implementation neither you nor your customers/users need to take care of usernames and passwords anymore but can use verified information from the user.
Moreover, developers can use the Jolocom SDK to ‘connect’ the functionality of their smart contracts to the SmartWallet. This has the big advantage that users with a SmartWallet can use these smart contracts easily. It also removes the need for the app/dapp developer to implement ether transactions functionality or educating/onboarding new users. This also allows the developer to display method descriptions of used smart contracts to the SmartWallet user in a very user-friendly way which brings transparency to the whole process, also for non-technical people.
What are the advantages for services/apps/dapps?
The advatages for a service or dapp is that you can control which minimum information you require from users of your application and if this information has to be verified. This removes a lot of headaches, like checking if you are e.g. a human and not a bot, implementing an own verification department to check drivers’ licences, or storing sesitive data of the user. Note that this functionality is made available to you through our SmartLogin solution.
Moreover, using our ethereum integration (Jolocom SDK) you can implement smart contract logic and make it available for your users though our SmartWallet. It builds a bridge to the blockchain world for your users.
What do you store on the Blockchain?
We don’t store anything on the blockchain per default. However, we have Ethereum integrated in our solution which gives you the opportunity to create an identity contract with the SmartWallet app. When you do this, the only information that we would store is your identifier and your public key. No personal information like your name or email address will ever be stored on the blockchain.
How can I verify my information?
When you sign up, you can get your phone number and email address instantly verified with Jolocom. For verification like e.g of your ID card or drivers licence you would need to go to a partner which carries out the verification process and signs your claim (like e.g. a bank for ID card verification).
We are currently working on establishing a network of these partners so that you can find one conveniently in your city. Remember that you would ideally just do the verification process once and be able to reuse the signed claim on every following interaction that requires the verified information in question.
Can I also verify my own claims or claims from other people?
Coming soon.
Can I find the app in the app store?
Currently only the web application is available in an alpha release. The app for iOS and Android will be published soon.
What is your Roadmap?
Coming soon.
How can I contribute?
Coming soon.
