Usechain - An Identity Centric Blockchain
In this digital era, when data is increasingly becoming the oil that drives major processes, the concept of Self Sovereign Identity assumes great relevance. Self Sovereign Identity is the expression used to denote a scenario in which individuals are in control of their identity, what or how much they reveal about themselves to businesses and organizations, thus upholding their sovereign right to privacy.
Why is Self Sovereign Identity relevant? Think of the Equifax data breach in 2017 that exposed the sensitive personal information of close to 143 million people. Think of the Facebook/Cambridge Analytics fiasco that potentially affected 87 million people. There is clearly a problem when large, corporate organizations become the "custodians" of personal information and the world is waking up to this threat.
The very idea of Self Sovereign identity is contradictory to the idea of centralization. An Identity that is sovereign, works best in a decentralized environment. In a true peer to peer system, a self-sovereign identity brings about trust and reputation. Luckily, blockchains allow you to create true decentralized/p2p systems with features such as audibility, immutability etc. Usechain is combining all these principles and is set to become world's first true self-sovereign Identity Blockchain. Usechain will use privacy-preserving cryptographic principles, Zero-Knowledge Proofs and a novel consensus algorithm known as Randomised Proof of Work to create a "Mirror Identity Technology" enabled public blockchain that is secure, scalable and fast-paced blockchain.
Our Mirror Identity Technology solves the problem of privacy and technical performance.- Henry CAO, Usechain CEO
Putting simply, Usechain is a public chain that is based on user identities that allows multi-level authentication while incorporating privacy preserving concepts. To preserve privacy Usechain will make use of Zero Knowledge Proofs so that basic information (not all) is only needed for authentication.
Central to the working of the Usechain system is an Identity Virtual Machine (IVM), that will facilitate the development of highly efficient smart contracts. The IVM will act as the link between the blockchain layer and external APIs or oracles. An interesting thing to note here is that the IVM will incorporate a "smart contract vulnerability detection algorithm" that will enable developers to spot bugs during compilation.
Usechain's consensus algorithm is called Randomised Proof of Work (RPOW) and it overcomes some of the pitfalls of the original Proof of Work used by Bitcoin, In RPOW, the introduction of a random factor will reduce the mining hash computation difficulty, thereby making the network more efficient. The RPOW consensus algorithm also provides the network with a high level of security. The low resource and energy consumption during computing means that mining is possible through mobile devices hence ensuring wider public participation.The Usechain network will have different network participants such as Users, Application Participants, and Technology participants.
The transactions on the network will be powered by a native token known as UST. The UST will initially be available as a ERC20 standard token on the Ethereum network but can be swapped later, once the Usechain main net goes live. The total supply of these tokens is 20,000,000,000. A portion of these UST's will be available for sale through a public sale which is set to take place this month.
The typical use cases of the chain will include Identity Verification systems/Know your Customer, Cryptocurrency Payment Solutions, Secure IoT Applications, Decentralised financial services and Credit tracking, Investment and Equity Management, Decentralized Insurance, Digital Content Production etc . Further, Usechain will pave the way for the creation of decentralized exchanges, dapps, and games. To drive adoption by developers in this regards, a portion of the native UST tokens are assigned towards the "Technical Community Reward" program.
The Usechain Foundation, a non-profit organization based in Singapore is responsible for nurturing the Usechain ecosystem and is star-packed with individuals with expertise across multiple domains. The team is led by CEO Henry CAO who is a distinguished professor at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business. He also holds other positions. Baohong SUN is the CSO while Shengli ZHANG is the chief scientist. Usechain has received strategic funding from notable investors such as Grand Shores Capital and JRR Crypto. Notable media outlets such as Yahoo Finance, Markets Insider and MarketWatch have covered Usechain. To learn more about Usechain, the Team and ICO details visit the Website