KYC Credentials PoC

[IMPACT]

The Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations require that professionals make an effort to verify the identity, suitability, and risks involved with maintaining a business relationship.

Initially, the objective of KYC guidelines was to prevent businesses from being used by criminal elements for money laundering. However it was extended to enable businesses to better understand their customers and their financial dealings.

This project is to provide an Issuer in the Decentralized Identity ecosystem that delivers a Verified Credential as the result of a KYC onboarding process. The result of the KYC process will be delivered by a trusted service provider. In brief, this project involve two main activities, business and technical:

1. Business: Research, negotiate and close a deal with a trusted company to provide the KYC onboarding resources (API)
2. Technical: Implement an AGENT that act as an ISSUER that can provide a Verified Credential certifying the result of the KYC onboarding process

Note that this project will deliver a Proof Of Concept (PoC) capable of issuing KYC verified credentials to users who pass the validation process of the provider. However, this initial phase will not deliver a use case for the issued KYC credential nor a business model to cope with KYC verifying costs. So, it should be seen as an essential building block for creating Self-Sovereign Identity projects that require KYC verification from a trusted source.

The KYC PoC will set the bases to integrate KYC services into Self-Sovereign Identity systems. Why is that important? Due to compliance or regulatory pressure, ID verification is being required more often, making users to pass a KYC verification for each service since current KYC methods are “single-use”. A SSI platform can significantly reduce that friction by making the KYC process “recyclable”, so a user that holds a KYC credential can show them to many businesses that require it.

This team has been working in the project and made the following progress:

On the business side:

• research and contacted several KYC service provider
• get average pricing for different levels of service (range from $0.5 to $5 per transaction depending on service, country and volume). 
• ID verification from multiple countries
• 2nd ID verification (i.e. passport, driver license, etc)
• proof of life
• advanced security (sanctions, PEP, watchlists, adverse media sources)
• start negotiations with one known provider (provider name will be disclosed if a final agreement is reached. It’s name and business records are an important proof of trust of the system)

On the technical side:

• generate the architecture of the components of the system
• backend consuming KYC API
• issuing agent 
• frontend
• credential wallet supporting KYC onboarding
• define SDKs and components

We are delivering a component to the SSI ecosystem that helps users to preserve their identity as much as possible while complying with regulations. Users will go through the KYC verification process and receive a credential that can be shown to other parties as a proof of having passed the KYC process. This scenario is a real use case of a Decentralized Identity creating value in privacy, regulation, usability, and adoption.

The team is aware of the risk involved when dealing with contractual terms with financial related institutions. Base on the experience, we will implement a strategy to look for companies with diverse approach to the service (i.e. more financial vs more technical) and with a variety of position in the market (i.e well established with traditional models vs new and innovative flexible companies)

[FEASIBILITY]

The project is divided into two main tasks, the first one is related to business matters and the second related to the technological implementation.

BUSINESS TASK: Deal with a KYC service provider. Relevant activities in this task are:

• Research potential service provider candidates
• Negotiate a service agreement and close deal
• Sign contract
• Bring marketing and technical information

ESTIMATED DURATION: 4 weeks

TECHNICAL TASK: Implement KYC Issuer Agent. Relevant activities in this task are:

• Develop the Agent capable of receiving requests and submitting Credentials
• Develop the connector to the service provider KYC API
• Integrate the KYC onboarding into RootsWallet
• Deploy the system on cloud
• Provide demo and documentation

ESTIMATED DURATION: 10 weeks

TOTAL DURATION: 14 weeks

The budget is composed as follows:

• 60 hours of business work at rate $100/hr: USD 6.000
• 200 development hours at rate $80/hr: USD 16.000
• Purchase of initial licenses for trials and demos: $2.500 (estimated minimum commitment)
• Cloud infrastructure (1 year): USD 1.800

TOTAL BUDGET: $26.300

The team working on this project is composed by Deryck Lance and Patrick Rivenbank working on the business side of the project and Rodolfo Miranda on the technical side.

Deryck Lance: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deryck-lance-9405898/

Patrick Rivenbank: https://www.linkedin.com/in/privenbark/

Rodolfo Miranda: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rodolfomiranda/

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 joined Cardano community where he:

• Submitted and received funding for the following proposals:
• F6: Interoprability as Growth Driver
• F7: Odoo Plugin
• F7: Interoperability Within Atala Prism
• F7: Hyperledger-Prism Interoperability
• F7: Open Source Credential Wallet
• Participate as Community Advisor (from F6) and vCA (from F7), and is involved in many improvement working groups and discussions
• Is part of the Challenge Team for Fund 7 challenge "Grow Latinamerica, Grow Cardano"
• Is part of the Challenge Team for Fun 8 challenge “Self-Sovereign Identity”
• Was part of the first cohort of the Atala Prism Pioneer Program
• Is part of the team that created the LATAM Cardano Community and host a weekly LATAM TownHall

[AUDITABILITY]

This project will deliver a working Proof of Concept system that will allow us to showcase demos and trials. This system will be work as proofs of completion.

Additionally, this team adopts Agile methodology based on the tools provided by github. Besides progress reports, the advancement will be tracked by github issues, project views (like Kanban board) and commits. Intermediate progress will be reported as Sprint Burndown, a KPI metric that shows the progress as percentage of each development sprint.

The success of the project is the release of the Proof of Concept system that will allow us to showcase demos and trials of KYC verification with Credential issuance.

This proposal is not a continuation of a previously funded project, however is our effort to contribute with tools and systems to the Cardano SSI ecosystem.