Dusk Network invests $50,000 in Outdid to spur self-sovereign identification

AMSTERDAM/LONDON, 25 MAY 2023 - The Amsterdam-based FinTech Dusk Network invested in Outdid. The London-based startup is using NFC and zero-knowledge proof technology to verify passport identities, without revealing any personal information. This helps in reducing identity fraud, as often this information is not securely stored or easily obtained via data hacks. This is Dusk Network’s largest investment ticket to date, helping Outdid accelerate the development of the technology. 

The Outdid technology allows companies to verify the government-issued IDs of their users, without asking the users to send any of their personal data to anyone, not even the company itself. This is in contrast to the conventional approach of doing identity verification, which requires the user to send their ID data to a third party for verification.  The interest of Dusk Network in the identity solution is a very strategic move. The company recently announced Citadel, their own private Know Your Customer (KYC) solution, and would benefit from integrating Outdid’s technology in their own tech stack. 

By using zero-knowledge technology and decentralized data storage, the largest use case would be reducing identity theft and fraud, as most of this data is obtained illegally via data leaks. Using Outdid would give the passport owner full control of the data they share and with whom. 

The investment was announced during an exclusive Dusk networking dinner, with over 50 game-changers from traditional financial institutions, the banking industry, media, and influencers. The event marks a new era for the company, which will hit the five year milestone in September 2023. Disclosing the investment will be the first strategic announcement, followed by upcoming pilots and collaborations in the near future. 

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About Dusk Network

Dusk Network is the global financial network for institutions and individuals that combines the privacy of FinTech, the instant clearance and settlement of DLTs, and the composability of DeFi. Dusk unlocks economic opportunities for all by making institutional-level financial assets directly available to users and investors.

Dusk Network is currently in test net mode, onboarding node runners to trial and error the Dusk blockchain. The incentivized testnet is one of the most decentralized ones in the industry, with over 650 node runners participating in the first phase of the incentivized test network. Dusk Network was founded in 2018 and is headquartered in Amsterdam.

About Citadel

Citadel is a self-sovereign identity (SSI) protocol that runs integrated into Dusk Network. It can be seen as a framework for SSI solutions, as anyone can use it for their own use case. We call SSI to those systems allowing users to manage their identities, their personal information, in a fully transparent manner: knowing at each time which information about them they are sharing, being able to consent or deny each request for personal information.

About Outdid 

Outdid.io is an end-to-end private identity verification system. It addresses the problem of doing privacy-invasive identity & KYC checks, where not all information is really required by the business verifying its users. This reduces cost & data liabilities on the business side, and shields the user from the risk of identity fraud or overidentification. More technologically, they are using Zero-Knowledge Proofs, extracting attestations (e.g. that the user is over 18) directly from government IDs using NFC, without the involvement of a third party. The process is both instant in enrollment and trustless in nature. Outdid was started by former 2 students, Zvezdin Besarabov and Ana-Maria Pricop, who dropped out to pursue their vision of a more private, decentralised world.