Switchchord: Amplifying Rights Management with Trusted Data

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Lance Byrd

[GENERAL] Are you delivering this project as an individual or as an entity (whether formally incorporated or not)

Entity (Incorporated)

[GENERAL] Co-proposers and additional applicants

Switchchord

Switchchord is a legal technology and digital identity company creating trusted data in the music industry. With verified decentralized identities and secure legal workflows, Switchchord connects creators, rightsholders (primarily record companies and music publishers), and downstream supply chain participants for seamless transfers of data. Through automated delivery of ownership information, metadata, and audio files into existing catalog management software, rightsholders using Switchchord can reduce the time and cost of ingesting new music across their enterprise by up to 80% while also automating registrations with licensing agencies.

Switchchord Team

Core Team 

Cole Davis - Founder/CEO

Previously a corporate and entertainment lawyer, commercial banker, and professional musician, Cole is now a technologist with a unique skillset that blends finance, accounting, copyright law, decentralized identity, blockchain, and machine learning. He obtained a J.D., summa cum laude, from SMU Dedman School of Law and a B.B.A. in finance, magna cum laude, from Texas Christian University, where he also obtained minors in psychology and accounting and played the upright and electric bass in the TCU Jazz Band. LinkedIn

Peter Black - Co-Founder/Head of Product

Peter has over a decade of experience in software design, front-end and back-end engineering, and product management. A published songwriter and full-time musician in his earlier years, he now blends his creative background with his technical expertise to build innovative solutions for the music industry. His diverse background in both music and technology enables him to craft cutting-edge tools for songwriters and creators. LinkedIn

Hieu Tran - Co-Founder/Software Engineer

Hieu graduated summa cum laude with a 4.0 GPA, earning a bachelor's degree in both Computer Science and Mathematics. With expertise in back-end engineering, database management, and machine learning algorithms, he brings a technical foundation that is uniquely suited to leveraging data and AI to transform the music industry. LinkedIn

Advisors

David Hughes - Former CTO, RIAA. Led Sony Music’s digital transformation. Oversaw the RIAA’s technology and policy efforts during the shift to streaming. 

Tracy Maddux - Former EVP and CCO, Downtown Music Holdings / CEO, CD Baby. Led CD Baby through its acquisition by Downtown then served as head of M&A and corporate strategy at Downtown. 

Scott Perry - Founder, Digital Governance Institute. Leading expert on ecosystem governance for digital identity and decentralized systems. Built governance frameworks for GLEIF and Trust Over IP Foundation.  

Jonathan Rayback - Founder, Future Forge. Former Head of Engineering, Evernym. SSI architect fluent in KERI/ACDC and W3C DID and VC frameworks. 

Bill Rosenblatt - Founder, GiantSteps Media Technology Strategies. Recognized expert at the intersection of technology, copyright, and music. Founder of the Copyright+Technology conference and board member of the Copyright Society. 

Mark Katz - Former CIO, ASCAP. Technologist and professional musician. Previously CIO of several leading Wall Street financial institutions. 

Prof. Xuan-Thao Nguyen - Pendleton Miller Chair in Law, University of Washington School of Law. Globally recognized leader at the intersection of intellectual property, technology, and corporate transactions. 

Paul Steele - EVP, Triple 8 Management. Founder/CEO of Good Time Inc. before its acquisition by Triple 8, one of the largest artist management firms in the U.S.

[GENERAL] Please specify how many months you expect your project to last (from 2-12 months)

4

[GENERAL] Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated into English from another language

No

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem (200-character limit including spaces)

Switchchord uses did:webS identifiers and will bridge to the Cardano/KERI identity ecosystem to model legal relationships as credentials and enable access across the music industry flows/databases.

[GENERAL] Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?

Yes

[GENERAL] If YES, please describe what the dependency is and why you believe it is essential for your project’s delivery. If NO, please write “No dependencies.”

The Switchord platform will incorporate integrations from:

• The RootsID/DoulaID app Cardano/KERI features used in F12 on the DoulaID concept proposal
• The Cardano Foundation open source identity wallet to manage identities on Cardano using the KERI standards for identifiers and digital credentials.
• The platform will also leverage the RootsID Cardano Super-Watcher funded in Catalyst F11.

[GENERAL] Will your project’s output/s be fully open source?

No

[GENERAL] Please provide here more information on the open source status of your project outputs

The Switchchord platform will be leveraging and contributing to many open source projects including:

• Trust over IP and Hyperledger labs did:webs spec/impl
• The Cardano Foundation identity wallet
• The RootsID Super Watcher on Cardano
• The WebOfTrust suite of KERI related repos
• And several others!

[METADATA] Horizons

Music

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution

In the music industry, it’s almost impossible for people and organizations to prove (1) they are who they say they are, and (2) they can do what they say they can do. This is because the music industry lacks a functioning identity system, and proof of licensing authority is held hostage in paper-based legal contracts. The end result is slow, manual data workflows and a significant increase in fraud now that the industry is fully digital. 

Our current system uses did:web DIDs for creators (songwriters and recording artists) and rightsholders (music publishers and record companies) plus W3C verifiable credentials to model legal relationships between (1) multiple songwriters on a single song, (2) songwriters and music publishers, and (3) publishers and administrators. This allows us to send data about new compositions from “out in the field” into existing rights management systems instantly. Currently, it takes on average at least 10 minutes per composition to do this, and can sometimes take days or weeks. 

Switchchord needs a more robust organizational identity solution and we have been close with GLEIF for years. We are now ready to implement vLEIs for music publishers and record companies and enable them to issue creator credentials using either ACDCs or W3C VCs. By upgrading from did:web to did:webS, we have the flexibility to offer either approach, depending on the enterprise security requirements of our customers. 

We are also in discussions with the Mechanical Licensing Collective (“MLC”) to bring identity verification and songwriter credentials to their platform. The MLC was created by Congress to administer a single license for streaming companies to stream compositions owned by music publishers. The MLC’s public works database is lacking identity verification or verified legal relationships between songwriters and music publishers. Congress has asked the MLC to explore possible solutions, and the MLC CEO and Cole (our CEO) have been discussing an implementation for several months. Note that there are over 5 million songwriters and hundreds of thousands of music publishers registered in the MLC database. 

Using did:webS for identities relating to the MLC database would allow DID Documents to be hosted on TheMLC.com domain until “taken over” by music publishers who want to maintain their own keypairs (mostly larger, enterprise music publishers). KERI AIDs enable this portability.

We will expand the current Switchchord platform, including our Hybrid Legal Contracts which use did:web and did:webS (note the 's' is for 'secure') identities. We will use our did:webS integration to bridge our customer identities to the KERI ecosystem:

• GLEIF vLEI for secure organizational identities
• Trust over IP and Hyperledger did:webs spec/impl
• The WebOfTrust suite of KERI related repos like the Signify Browser Extension and the KERIA cloud agent

and then use the Cardano/KERI identity ecosystem of tools, including:

• The RootsID Super Watcher on Cardano
• The Cardano Foundation identity wallet

[IMPACT] Please define the positive impact your project will have on the wider Cardano community

Switchchord will need a wallet that can handle KERI and W3C cryptographic operations for our identity framework, but the same wallet can handle cryptographic operations for Cardano transactions. In order to build a new “decentralized” music industry, existing legal, financial, and accounting workflows need to be automated. Switchchord is targeting the legal and accounting aspects, taking a Switzerland-based approach to whatever payment rails our users want. Integrating ADA and Cardano functionality into the Switchchord ecosystem can unlock new business models based on a secure legal infrastructure, on top of which developers can build new music applications. 

We built our framework to be industry-agnostic, so our legal tech and digital identity tools can be used in many different workflows outside of music. This is one major reason we are prototyping a GLEIF-based framework for our music company customers. We are aiming to bring the vLEI into wider usage through the legal industry, instead of focusing solely on financial services.

The positive impact to the wider Cardano Community is an expansion of the Cardano/KERI identity ecosystem into a pre-existing music industry platform. The Cardano/KERI ecosystem enables the Switchchord digital identities to secure and legally signed even the most complicated organizational contracts, and transact with the music industry global supply-chains. Cardano benefits from the further development and use of this tech to even support it's own use-cases that need to bridge to legacy real-world-legal contracts, regulated industries like finance, and also to support it's own internal efforts such as Cardano related elections, governance, the Catalyst process, and more.

For instance the GLEIF LEI ecosystem supports most major banks and 2.5M+ registered companies. GLEIF has implemented the vLEI to cryptographically bind the organizations to their identifier.

The Cardano/KERI ecosystem is expanding to support the GLEIF vLEI and needs strong industry use-cases like Switchchord, that integrate the features provided by the Cardano Foundation mobile identity app, RootsID KERI Super-Watcher, Cardano KERI Backer, etc.

Note that we are partnering with RootsID who will also be enhancing the KERI secure browser extension enabling webapp builders/users to leverage Cardano/KERI dapps like Cardano Foundation identity wallet, KERI Super-Watcher, Cardano KERI Backer. This bridges those services with features needed in KERI/Cardano and GLEIF vLEI secure organizational identity ecosystem.

[CAPABILITY & FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability? How do you intend to validate if your approach is feasible?

Switchchord has a pre-existing music platform. We initially implemented the identity portion with did:web and are currently integrating did:webS in preparation for bridging to Cardano/KERI ecosystem.

With our partnership with RootsID, we will support our did:webS customer identities with the advantages provided by the Cardano/KERI ecosystem.

RootsID is supremely confident in our ability to implement this solution. And the KERI/Cardano ecosystem is by far the most advanced KERI and vLEI blockchain implementation:

• RootsID is the primary implementor for the KERI secure browser extension. They know it inside and out.
• RootsID is also the original implementor for the KERI Super-Watcher and Cardano KERI Backer which were funded by Catalyst. They know them inside and out.
• RootsID is integrating with the Cardano Foundation mobile identity app in their F12 Catalyst proposal DoulaID and are in regular contact with their development team. They are highly confident in our ability to integrate with their excellent identity wallet.
• RootsID has helped the GLEIF vLEI ecosoystem on several projects including a Pilot with a European Regulator, which implements a webapp using the KERI secure browser extension.
• RootsID has already put into place a test harness for vLEI webapp solutions. It is ready to be extended for the Cardano/KERI identity test cases.

Switchchord as the platform developer and RootsID as the Cardano/KERI identity experts are by far the most capable partnership to implement this solution and with this support from Catalyst we are ready to implement these features immediately.

All progress will be reflectd in Switchchord demonstrations of the integration, as well as tasks related to the open source repos being leveraged. The open source development will be reflected in the discussions, issues, and pull-requests in the open source repos making the progress there completely transparent.

Cardano users will be able to use the KERI secure browser extension and their Cardano Foundation mobile identity app.

[PROJECT MILESTONES] What are the key milestones you need to achieve in order to complete your project successfully?

Planning, architecture and design documents for the new features and integrations.

Milestone Outputs:

In this first milestone we will produce and deliver the following:

1. The architecture design of the secure extension integration with Switchchord.
2. UI: we will provide a technical design of the UI components as it should be developed. It will include a list of features and functionalities that the UI will provide.
3. Flow of operation: we will provide a document and diagram on how users interact with the Cardano enabled KERI secure browser extension.
4. Project planning and task allocation: based on items 1 and 2, we will define and plan each individual development and operational task using an Agile methodology and will be published in the GitHub repository issue tracker and project management tool.

Acceptance criteria:

The milestone should be accepted when all deliverables defined above are completed. The goal is to have clearly defined:

• what is going to be developed. That is the architecture design of the system
• how users will interact with Switchchord using the KERI secure browser extension. That is the flow of operation
• how we are going to implement in terms of developer resources allocation. That is the project planning per se

Item 1 and 2 will be more technical, however an overall review should be enough to understand the architecture at a high level. Item 3 is just the detailed planning of task for the next milestones.

Evidence of milestone completion:

• For the first output, a document of the project describing the design of the Switchchord integration with the KERI secure browser extension functionalities.
• For the second one, a document of the project with a flow diagram that explains how interactions with other systems will be handled.
• For the last output, the creation of individual GitHub issues defining each development activity created in the repository and organized in milestones that can be easily tracked.

All the evidence will be provided to the above documents will be provided to the reviewers.

Development of the Initial Switchcord UI integration with the KERI secure browser extension.

Milestone Outputs:

In this milestones we will be developing changes to the Switchchord webapp to integrate with the KERI secure browser extension based on the design produced in the first milestone. The prototype should allow the user to interact with the KERI secure browser extension features based in the operational flows defined. As a first prototype, the added features shouldn't be considered an MVP.

Acceptance criteria:

The prototype delivered in this milestone should be able to demo at least 70% of the UI features defined in milestone 1. As a first prototype, it's not expected to be production ready and running and demoing may require manual procedures. The goal is to validate the initial design and a final product can be delivered a later milestone.

The prototype delivered should be considered as the first iteration of a product, that will be improved towards an MVP in the next milestone.

Evidence of milestone completion:

The full evidence for completeness is the demo of the Switchchord integration of the KERI secure browser extension with corresponding archive. Since this task may require expertise and knowledge of this technology, the evidence will also consist of a video showing and explaining how the prototypes deliver its functionalities.

Development of ALL prototype UI features needed to connect to the KERI secure browser extension ecosystem.

Milestone Outputs:

In this milestones we will be developing the first working prototype of all of the KERI secure browser extension UI features based on the design produced in the first milestone. The prototype should allow the user to interact with the KERI secure browser extension features based in the operational flows defined. As a prototype, some of the added features will be MVP; more will be added in milestone 4.

Acceptance criteria:

The prototype delivered in this milestone should be able to demo 100% of the UI features defined in milestone 1. As a first prototype, it's not expected to be production ready and running and demoing may require manual procedures. The goal is to validate the initial design and a final product can be delivered a later milestone.

The prototype delivered should be considered as the first iteration of a product, that will be improved towards an MVP in the next milestone.

Evidence of milestone completion:

The full evidence for completeness is the demo of the KERI secure browser extension with corresponding archive. Since this task may require expertise and knowledge of this technology, the evidence will also consist of a video showing and explaining how the prototypes deliver its functionalities.

Development of authentication and authorization prototype integrations between the UI components in the KERI secure browser extension and the did:webs Switchord identities:

Milestone Outputs:

The goal of this milestones is to deliver a prototype integration of authentication and authorization of the user based on the design of milestone 1 and the prototype delivered in milestone 2 & 3. This step is an iteration process of improvement of the prototype, where the rest the features defined in milestone 1 should be integrated to identify any issues detected so that integration testing can be mostly stable.

Acceptance criteria:

The prototype delivered in this milestone should be able to demo 100% of the UI integrations related to authentication and authorization of a user as defined in milestone 1. As a first prototype, it's not expected to be production ready and running and demoing may require manual procedures. The goal is to validate the initial design and a finalized prototype can be delivered in a later milestone.

The prototype delivered should be considered as the first iteration of a product, that will be improved towards our final concept in the next milestone.

Evidence of milestone completion:

Since this task may require expertise and knowledge of this technology, the evidence will consist of a demo video showing and explaining how the authentication and authorization deliver its functionalities.

Development of prototype integrations between the Switchchord KERI identities and the RootsID Cardano Super-Watcher funded in Catalyst F11.:

Milestone Outputs:

The goal of this milestones is to deliver a prototype integration that bridges to the Cardano/KERI ecosystem. Based on the design of milestone 1 and the features delivered in milestone 2, 3, and 4. This step is an iteration process of improvement of the other prototype developments and integrations, where the rest the features defined in milestone 1 should be integrated to identify any issues detected so that integration testing can be demonstrated.

Acceptance criteria:

The prototype delivered in this milestone should be able to demo the use of the RootsID Cardano Super-Watcher funded in Catalyst F11 in the Switchchord identifiers. As a first prototype, it's not expected to be production ready and running and demoing may require manual procedures. The goal is to validate the initial design and a finalized prototype can be delivered in a later proposal.

The prototype delivered should be considered as the first iteration of a product, that will be improved towards our final concept in the next milestone.

Evidence of milestone completion:

Since this task may require expertise and knowledge of this technology, the evidence will consist of a video showing and explaining how the feature works with the Cardano/KERI ecosystem.

Final goals:

Final development deployment of Switchchord prototype features completed.

Presentations of the prototype features to the community and stakeholders

Final Milestone outputs:

A recording of the app being demonstrated to the Cardano, KERI, and vLEI communities.

Final milestone acceptance criteria:

• The Switchchord prototype features platform has been opened to the public
• The community has been briefed on this impressive innovation

Final milestone evidence of milestone completion:

• The URL for the prototype features is available
• A final report including the community meeting recording is provided.

[RESOURCES] Who is in the project team and what are their roles?

Switchchord Team

Core Team 

Cole Davis - Founder/CEO

Previously a corporate and entertainment lawyer, commercial banker, and professional musician, Cole is now a technologist with a unique skillset that blends finance, accounting, copyright law, decentralized identity, blockchain, and machine learning. He obtained a J.D., summa cum laude, from SMU Dedman School of Law and a B.B.A. in finance, magna cum laude, from Texas Christian University, where he also obtained minors in psychology and accounting and played the upright and electric bass in the TCU Jazz Band. LinkedIn

Peter Black - Co-Founder/Head of Product

Peter has over a decade of experience in software design, front-end and back-end engineering, and product management. A published songwriter and full-time musician in his earlier years, he now blends his creative background with his technical expertise to build innovative solutions for the music industry. His diverse background in both music and technology enables him to craft cutting-edge tools for songwriters and creators. LinkedIn

Hieu Tran - Co-Founder/Software Engineer

Hieu graduated summa cum laude with a 4.0 GPA, earning a bachelor's degree in both Computer Science and Mathematics. With expertise in back-end engineering, database management, and machine learning algorithms, he brings a technical foundation that is uniquely suited to leveraging data and AI to transform the music industry. LinkedIn

Advisors

David Hughes - Former CTO, RIAA. Led Sony Music’s digital transformation. Oversaw the RIAA’s technology and policy efforts during the shift to streaming. 

Tracy Maddux - Former EVP and CCO, Downtown Music Holdings / CEO, CD Baby. Led CD Baby through its acquisition by Downtown then served as head of M&A and corporate strategy at Downtown. 

Scott Perry - Founder, Digital Governance Institute. Leading expert on ecosystem governance for digital identity and decentralized systems. Built governance frameworks for GLEIF and Trust Over IP Foundation.  

Jonathan Rayback - Founder, Future Forge. Former Head of Engineering, Evernym. SSI architect fluent in KERI/ACDC and W3C DID and VC frameworks. 

Bill Rosenblatt - Founder, GiantSteps Media Technology Strategies. Recognized expert at the intersection of technology, copyright, and music. Founder of the Copyright+Technology conference and board member of the Copyright Society. 

Mark Katz - Former CIO, ASCAP. Technologist and professional musician. Previously CIO of several leading Wall Street financial institutions. 

Prof. Xuan-Thao Nguyen - Pendleton Miller Chair in Law, University of Washington School of Law. Globally recognized leader at the intersection of intellectual property, technology, and corporate transactions. 

Paul Steele - EVP, Triple 8 Management. Founder/CEO of Good Time Inc. before its acquisition by Triple 8, one of the largest artist management firms in the U.S.

RootsID

Rodolfo Miranda is a co-founder of RootsID and contributor on several of our projects, including RootsWallet. 

His background includes a MS EE degree at Stanford University and more than 25 years of successful work experience in both large multinational companies and owned startup projects. His main activities involve architecting, developing, and implementing large scale software solutions for the Telecommunication Industry. Lately, he was engaged in blockchain technologies and became an enthusiast of Self Sovereign Identity. He’s an active contributor in the Aries, DIDComm, KERI and Anoncreds Working Groups.

He’s also involved in the Cardano Community, participating as a veteran Proposal Advisor, member of the LATAM Cardano Community, and the Cardano Community SSI Alliance.

LinkedIn

Lance Byrd is a co-founder of RootsID, a group of decentralized identity specialists building open source software for digital identity. Several of their projects have been funded by Catalyst. He is primarly focused on RootsWallet, the end-user identity wallet.

His background includes a BS in Computer Science (UMBC) and MS in Information Assurance (Capitol College) and more than 22 years of software development as a consultant. He has developed massive scale data analytics and visualizations, machine learning analysis pipelines, and worked with University researchers to bring their work to market. He has also built and taught technical certification courses for several different topics in data analysis, big data, and compliance.

He completed the first cohort of the Atala Prism Pioneer program and is now part of the Atala Prism Astros program.

Linkedin

Hunain Bin Sajid is the lead-UI developer for the KERI secure browser extension and related webapps.

LinkedIn

Lance Byrd will be leading the Cardano/KERI tool integration with Rodolfo and RootsID staff providing supporting development, testing, and deployment of our Cardano and KERI technologies.

Since we are participating in multiple proposals we have carefully planned our time allocation for each of us. We defined our individual commitment per week as if all of the proposals are funded including extra activities. Based on that, we defined the allocation per proposal for each of us needed to deliver the proposal in time.

[BUDGET & COSTS] Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources

Our budget is mostly composed of development hours at a ratio of ₳200/hr, plus the hosting costs. There are also costs for interacting with the governance and community team and marketing/promotion. Based on the activities defined above the requested breakdown budget is:

DoulaID pilot Medicaid Guide App

• Design: 30hr = ₳6.000
• Project Plan: 30hr = ₳6.000
• Development: 500hr = ₳100.000
• DevOps tasks: 100hs= ₳20.000
• Test and improvement iterations: 50hr = ₳10.000
• Yearly AWS instance: ₳2.000
• Domain name + SSL: ₳1.000
• User meetings, review, feedback, and changes costs
• Community meetings with feedback: 20hr = ₳5.000

TOTAL BUDGET: ₳150.000

[VALUE FOR MONEY] How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

Switchchord and RootsID are able to provide this low-cost high-value software by leveraging millions of US dollars of open source software, some of which was funded by Catalyst and integrating that software with a growing Cardano/KERI ecosystem, including open source software written and maintained by Cardano Foundation, etc.

RootsID has been funded for over 15 Catalyst proposals and several grants and are highly confident that our plan, budget, and team are an excellent combination for success for us and for the Cardano community.

Our costs are based on all of our work at Switchchord, DoulaID, and RootsID over the last 2.5 years. We have optimized those costs to provide the maximum value while giving us a strong chance for success. We have not raised our costs over the last 15 funded Catalyst proposals. Those previous proposals can be leveraged to reduce costs for our future Catalyst work.

We are charging the lowest rates to the Catalyst community than any other customer. Catalyst was our first customer and benefits from having funded us over 15 proposals.

The Cardano ecosystem is still looking for its first significant identity app success. And at the same time the Cardano community want to show the power of Cardano applied to real human challenges. This proposal represents an excellent opportunity to satisfy both, and can establish Cardano as a governed blockchain ecosystem with the maturity and funding to support production identity solutions.