Salt Lake City, Feb. 25, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Sovrin Foundation, an international nonprofit dedicated to enabling self-sovereign digital identity for all, is pleased to approve three new organizations as Stewards of the Sovrin Network. MakoLab, The Kuwa Foundation, and Validated ID are each committed to transforming digital identity through the global expansion of the Sovrin Network.

The Sovrin Network is a global public utility for self-sovereign identity that allows enterprises and developers to deliver privacy, security, and ownership solutions to people, organizations, and things. To date, the Sovrin Network is operated by more than 60 Stewards around the world.

MakoLab, a digital solutions agency, provides comprehensive business consulting and digital technology development services for businesses. The organization owns LEI.INFO, a SAAS solution that provides digital identification for legal entities. MakoLab plans to use the Sovrin Network to enhance the authentication mechanism within LEI.INFO.  

“By working with Sovrin, we can finally close the gap between identification of companies and their authentication in digital communication,” said Dr. Mirek Sopek, CTO of MakoLab and President of LEI.INFO. “The LEI system is perhaps the best system ever created for identification of legal entities (companies, trusts, partnerships and many other kinds of organizations) across the globe. Adding mechanisms for digital authentication to LEI will help combat business impersonation and frauds and will help build trusted KYC and AML solutions. As we have been working with Hyperledger Indy on our GraphChain system for LEI for some time – we are ready to go with Sovrin!”

The Kuwa Foundation created an open, decentralized, and self-sovereign identification platform for applications such as micro-finance and basic income distribution. The Kuwa decentralized system has the ability to identify individuals without the need to rely on government and third party-issued IDs. Such services hold the potential to improve the lives of millions of people, particularly the most economically stressed and underserved populations. The nonprofit plans to implement pilots that will use the Sovrin platform.

"If people do not have sovereignty over their digital identities, then privacy will be impossible,” said Jim Flynn, Co-founder and President of The Kuwa Foundation, Inc. “Without privacy the powerful will not only know everything we do, but will also be able to influence, punish, and reward our behavior. In such a world, free and open societies will not survive. We became a Sovrin Steward because the Sovrin Foundation has done the best work so far in making open and decentralized self-sovereign identities possible, and we want to contribute to that effort."

Validated ID is a fast-growing digital signature service in Europe that is deeply committed to developing self-sovereign identity verification-as-a-service services. Deeply invested in the development of digital identity solutions, Validated ID hopes to contribute to the resiliency of the Sovrin Network.

“We hope to support this fantastic foundation and push forward the process for trustworthy, easy-to-use digital identification,” said Iván Basart, CTO of Validated ID. “The inclusion of Validated ID in this international network implies we have taken one step further in the commitment to finally bring the user real power over his digital identity. Blockchain technology applied to self-sovereign identity will enable a trustworthy model upon which people and business will be able to use and share private and personal information in a fully secure way.”

MakoLab, The Kuwa Foundation, Validated ID, and all other Stewards have agreed to abide by the principles and requirements established in the Sovrin Governance Framework, the legal foundation of the Sovrin Network.

“These new Stewards show how organizations around the world are taking a stand against the current, broken framework for digital identity and verification,” said Heather Dahl, Executive Director & CEO of the Sovrin Foundation. “The Sovrin Foundation welcomes support from every organization who believes in the principles of self-sovereign identity and the opportunities  that a decentralized identity network can support. Becoming a Steward is one of the many ways to do so at the Foundation.”

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ABOUT THE SOVRIN FOUNDATION
The Sovrin Foundation is a nonprofit organization established to administer the Governance Framework governing the Sovrin Network, a decentralized global public network enabling self-sovereign identity on the internet. The Sovrin Network is an open source project operated by independent Stewards and uses the power of a distributed ledger to give every person, organization, and thing the ability to own and control their own permanent digital identity.

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