In the interest of improving community understanding of their project, Iris the PR manager of THEKEY agreed to meet with me in their office in Beijing. I spent several hours talking with Iris, Catherine and Lena (their new intern) about communication, business, software development, and about the practical significance of their partnerships. I was greatly satisfied by the meeting and would like to share what I learned. I feel that sharing my experience will help to clear up some of the misunderstandings that are often expressed online.
First, a quick refresher as to what the project is. In a nutshell, their identity verification (IDV) technology uses verified identity information provided by the government and service providers (this will be the company requesting the IDV) as well as biometric data (facial recognition, fingerprints, etc.), location data and IDV history to prove identity in the online world. The concept is to create undeniable proof that you are who you say you are when making a service request. It’s the equivalent to adding anti-counterfeiting technology to a passport, but for online identity. Blockchain is used to record previous IDV’s as well as connect identity to the different databases which are referenced as required. The token is used to incentivize verifiers, users and service providers as well as prevent network attacks.
Here is some of the more interesting, specific knowledge which I gleaned from the meeting;
THEKEY testnet is well on track to being launched as planned. The testnet will be implemented in one test city and TKY tokens will be used there, as described above and in the whitepaper. Ebaonet (www.ebaonet.cn), through whom THEKEY provide blockchain based IDV, is currently providing IDV for social insurance to prevent fraud. This is the use case to which the test net will be applied. When the mainnet is launched, the technology will be implemented in the other cities where Ebaonet is doing IDV. These are the 66 cities and hundreds of millions of people referred to in the whitepaper.
The data mining partnership with China Re is a precursor to China Re becoming a service provider (a part of the TKY ecosystem) in the future. THEKEY will first organize the information at China Re to make it accessible from their blockchain. Later they will use this information as part of their IDV process. This means that China Re will be able to transition from traditional IDV systems to a blockchain based one. This allows them to provide services online that were not previously possible, as they required “heavy IDV”, the technology for which does not yet exist online.
The partnership between China Unicom and TKY is a test case for commercial applications of the technology, meaning China Unicom use of THEKEY for IDV of their customers. The partnership is on a research level, and is intended to establish how THEKEY can implement their solution on demand, for commercial clients.
Many people in the community were wondering why they cannot find information about THEKEY in Chinese, or can’t research the background of the company. The PR team at TKY know that most of the investors are not Chinese speakers and so they post in English only. They told me that they will start posting in Chinese if the community needs to see that.
In China, TKY will be deployed in products provided by Ebaonet. When they move to other countries, they will be working through native service providers abroad. Steps have already been taken to establish THEKEY abroad. The goal of the first project will be to enable Chinese citizens to use TKY for IDV when buying health insurance abroad. This is a hot topic right now in China, with many buying health insurance from Hong Kong or Singapore since the coverage is more comprehensive and competitively priced than it is in China.
On a more personal note, Iris and Catherine were very nice to meet. Iris was quite amiable and chatty, Catherine is very direct, a clear thinker and communicator, and a strong presence. Both intelligent, professional and very focused on doing things the way they should be done. Another person that the community does not know much about, and whom we had the pleasure of meeting, was Dr. King. A very friendly older gentleman, I believe the founder of the company Ebaonet, he was dressed very casual for being in the office. He stayed a few minutes and was cracking jokes with us in English and Chinese.
Overall the visit greatly improved my opinion of TKY, and I am convinced that they will deliver on their product. Their network launch will very soon make them one of the few cryptocurrencies such as Steem, which are actually being used in the real world. All buzzwords aside, their application and use case really is an important innovation. Here in China, our lives are technology dependent. Simple, tech based, solutions such as this can save millions for the companies which deploy them, as well as give consumers access to a larger array of online services with far greater convenience. I would love to see similar technologies developed for use in other countries, so that we too can begin to inevitable migration of identity, and later assets, onto the blockchain.