Digital Bazaar favors government-friendly cryptocurrency over ICO

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In response to what has been viewed as an exaggerated form of raising money, despite its incredible popularity, initial coin offerings (ICOs) has begun to fall out of grace with some of the brightest minds in the cryptocurrency industry. One in particular, Manu Sporny, recently spent a great deal of time reflecting on the benefits and pitfalls of the system, and decided it was time for a change. He, along with his team at Digital Bazaar, is launching the company’s Veres One identity blockchain without first initiating an ICO.

In an interview with CoinDesk, Sporny said the goal is not to seek attention, “it’s trying to build the most cost-effective infrastructure for this thing.”

To that end, Digital Bazaar determined that it didn’t need either the ICO or even a cryptocurrency token; rather, it just wants to offer the best product possible. Sporny feels that the digital identity infrastructure is completely discombobulated due to a limited number of people having access to a large amount of personal data. This data, as has been seen numerous times, sits on larger storage devices that are susceptible to breaches (think Yahoo or Equifax).

Enter Veres One, an identity blockchain that serves as a global public utility. It would be available to everyone from every corner of the world. However, as Sporny pointed out, if the company were to be forced to deal with the ups and downs and constant speculation of yet another ICO on the market, the developers wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the goals. Additionally, the fees for implementation and integration could possibly fluctuate like what is seen in today’s markets, leading to an unpredictable network.

Veres One is billed as a secure and cost-effective method to control and manage one’s identity on the web. It is a “fit-for-purpose” blockchain that is designed exclusively for web identity security. It offers the ability for individuals to take control over by aggregating digital credentials from different parts of the digital realm and decide how to share those details without losing their online identity. The project has yet to be released to the general public, although it’s already sent out as a beta version for tweaking and testing.

The team at Digital Bazaar designed Veres One to be a public distributed ledger through which three groups of shareholders work in tandem to keep the system running optimally. These groups focus specifically on one of three areas—software development, software implementation on the nodes or the company’s group of directors that create network operational rules. The group of directors, or governors, is a diverse set of individuals that includes members of both sexes, as well as a range of ethnic, cultural and geographic backgrounds.

Since the company is beginning debt-free, it isn’t stressed to raise a tremendous amount of outside capital. There will be fees associated with use of the system, but these will remain in the vicinity of only $1, and aren’t expected to change in the future.

“A project that does do a token sale versus one that doesn’t do a token sale, all things being equal … the one that doesn’t do a token sale will fundamentally be a more cost-effective solution since it doesn’t have investors to pay back. So, the cost of the network can be much lower,” Sporny told the news outlet.