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Algorand x World Chess: Universal Chess Passport
Recorded: May 6, 2025 Duration: 1:13:06Space Recording
Short Summary
The Universal Chess Passport initiative, a collaboration between the Algorand Foundation and World Chess, aims to revolutionize player identity verification in the chess ecosystem. By leveraging blockchain technology and decentralized identifiers, this project addresses the complexities of fragmented chess organizations, enhancing trust and participation across platforms.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Gracias. Thank you. so Okay, so let's get started i'm excited to be hosting this um xspace with a number of great
partners from from world chess and and others and so let's kick this off my name is Mark Vandlerberg. I am the CMO of Algorand Foundation and I'm joined by a great panel and let's go one by one. Bruno, are you there?
Yeah, I'm here. So hi everybody. So I'm Bruno. I'm the principal architect in the Algorand Foundation.
Great. And then from World Chess we have Matve here.
Great. And then from World Chess, we have Matve here.
Yes. Hi everyone. And thank you, Mark.
So as an introduction, I'm the Chief Operational Officer of World Chess. Pleasure to join.
Wonderful. And then we have Evgeny here as well.
Yep. 1212. Can you hear me guys yes we can all good yeah so that's that's my
that'd be my first spaces that i'm actually speaking so that's that's a bit new yeah um i'm
a chess grandmaster a little bit of a say crypto person okay not much but i know a thing or two
and yeah really excited about all of a sudden like two
passions kind of blending together excellent excellent and then and then we have kim here
from the decentralized identity foundation kim is
uh i think she's still joining she's still joining okay well we'll give her we'll give
her a few minutes to um uh to join and uh but let's kick it off let's kick it off so
the topic for today is the universal chess passport it's basically a white paper that
the algrant foundation put together together with World
Chess and and that's what we're going to talk about and but maybe just to kick it off Bruno
can you briefly explain what the Universal Chess Passport is yeah absolutely so this is a proposal and an idea based on some known concepts and standards being developed by bigger standardization bodies,
which touches around how we define and use our digital anchors online
and the need that sometimes we need to prove certain things about who we are online,
prove to others, let's call them verifiers.
And with this, there's a requirement that we need to port these claims across organizations
and the rest of the digital world.
When we, just to focus on chess this but this can be applied to any context
for any chess platform or website or application every time we register each organization each
platform each application creates a digital record for us and we have separate digital identities across all these platforms and each platform as
we gather as they gather data you you you play and certain things are then made made aware about
you and you show behavior none of those things are portable and when when I mean chess, then you can extrapolate into other contexts.
So our university credentials, how do we put these online? How do we port them into
other organizations? So it is a known problem. And I feel chess historically has been a good test bed to test new technology is a crowd that is not
averse to test new things and innovate and for me it's the best place to take something that
is being conceptualized in the broader spectrum of technology and web 3 and try to apply it to chess.
And there is, and none of these,
the way to achieve this,
none of these was
invented by
any of us. We're more in the game
of adopting the
right paths and standards
so that we are interoperable
with each other.
And in the broader Web3,
which Web3, just to define it properly,
is not just blockchains.
It's how we manage identity and payments and storage
and, yes, distributed ledgers.
But in the context of the broader technology sector,
we also want to be interoperable
so that we can move through the gates
and talk with each other
instead of create technological bubbles.
So in this case, it's a chess passport
that is portable across organizations
that everybody can see
what each organization made claims
about the particular player.
The player can present those claims to others
and that can be
verified. And the goal is that this is interoperable, and we are not asking people to adopt
our way of doing things. We're going and adopting the right, we can talk about,
far down the line about what we're actually doing to achieve interoperability, but we're building something that starts with chess but doesn't end with chess.
Wonderful. Thanks, Bruno.
So maybe I'll ask the question to Madve from World Chess.
It's like, why does the industry, why does chess need a passport?
What's your perspective on this from an industry perspective?
Yes, thank you mark uh and just to give
everyone context so uh chess ecosystem is a huge ecosystem right uh it is estimated that there are
more than one billion players i mean people who play at least one game a year and know the rules
and so on and so on and there are thousands and thousands of organizations and being such a
gigantic ecosystem it has spread across different various different environments
different languages different approaches to organization of clubs and tournament
different compliance systems and it poses a significant challenge to those organizations who operate internationally or deal with international aspects of chess. For example, if there is a tournament, there are people coming from
Asia, from Europe, from Africa, everybody has different documents, everybody has
different bank system and so on and so on. It is hard to process, it's a big effort, right?
It is hard to process. It's a big effort, right?
And this is what can be really facilitated through the use of a universal standard, such as chess passport.
And given all the possible verification procedures that can be implemented using it.
We can also try and fight with fair play violations,
not just fraud in chess, but monitoring and so on and so on related Chess somehow, false identities and stuff like this.
I think we'll cover this a bit more on this talk a bit later, but yeah, there are a lot of
applications for this passport and I think Chess can serve as a perfect example for other industries uh to um yeah as it has this level
of complexity which did you say did you say there are a billion chess players yeah it is estimated
that uh it is uh slightly more than one billion right now yeah wow that's amazing so and and how
many of those are like doing online chess
is online chess um like a big deal like how many how many games are being played every day online
do we have any idea uh right so um my personal estimations are based on them
let's say on top level websites is uh around 10 to 12 billion games um maybe even 20
so uh uh i'm saying 20 billion a year uh so um so if we divide this by number of days sorry um
you know so quick with math right and so you're basically saying there's that this the way
like these organized this it's that you're talking about a very fragmented industry right with a lot
of different kind of international and then national chess organizations like how many like
how many different rating systems uh do these kind of organizations have right now?
Right. So in the world, there are about 200 chess federations on the national level.
There are also chess federations on the level of the cities, sometimes even on the level of municipalities, then there are clubs and so on and so on.
Some of them use their own systems that can be somehow converted into the universal FIDE system,
but basically these things can depend on the local ministry of sport and something like this.
So it's a complicated system and it's not just about the universal rating, which can
somehow be compared with the universal standards, right?
With the federating. It's also about the bureaucracy.
It's also about the way these records are being kept,
the way it can be accessed, the way the players can...
the ease with which the players can prove their level and so on.
So I think this is where yeah that's great so that
does lead me to my next question maybe for evgenie as a grandmaster yourself like and as a
player so what do you see are like the big friction points from a player perspective uh right i'm a
i'm a retired player currently but um yeah, that's something that Matve touched upon.
Well, there is really a lot of different rating systems, but not only that.
You go play online and you have a handful of platforms that are relevant.
You have a multitude, but some of them are quite niche
a handful let's call it like are very relevant and you do have different ratings on on these
platforms and then you want to start upon a new platform okay let's say let's imagine new platform
emerges and you are whatever title player and so on so and in order to say get don't know golden membership
whatever like some benefits and perks you will have to send all the documents and really you
know sometimes go through face recognition pardon me so so like you will have to do again and again
this kyc which we all love right right? Instead, you could have had something
that is described in a white paper, the universal passport
that you just say, OK, this is me.
And technically, you can stay anonymous while proving
that you are an established chess player, blah, blah, blah.
And then something that when Matve mentioned the bureaucracy and stuff,
that something clicked and that's a, that's, well,
from personal practice some years ago, the rating, the feeder rating,
so-called official rating, which is, well,
perhaps the most important of them all is calculated in a very, again,
that's something crypto people will like in a very centralized manner.
It is calculated by pretty much one person, one entity who clicks the button.
And sometimes they would, I don't know, not probably of an evil will,
but just forget to click the button.
So I had this back in the day
where something was not calculated like and feed the 50 elo points which back then mattered to me
a lot right play for three months let's say so back then reading was calculated after each three months and you know like you lose your achievements and you have to literally write and
prove the cues you you play this tournament you have to disturb organizers and so on and so on
so that's one thing then you're dependent on your local federation which sometimes will forget to
send the document and that happened back back then with the Ukrainian Federation.
There was a little bit of a conflict between Ukrainian Federation and FIDA.
Ukrainian Federation didn't pay for, there is a fee for, let's say, the rating calculation.
Ukrainian Federation didn't pay.
And we, all of a sudden, new rating list comes out.
We all unrate.
Like Ukrainian chess players up to grandmasters we are unrated
okay I understand it's a you know it's their own business but let's imagine that time I want to
play some private tournament and then again in order to prove that and let's say the organizers
of a private tournament they wouldn't care if I have the official rating they just want good
players right so in order to confirm once again like like in my case, maybe you could say,
okay, you go to databases, you go check and so on.
But like, well, it's clearly there is a need for, there is a need for like very fast,
very transparent and okay, this word is abused, but pardon me, decentralized
proof of one's achievements. And once again, when we say chess, that's obvious it can be transitory to other different,
like the science comes to mind, of course, right? Like, I mean, any, any academical studies.
Yeah.
Great.
Thanks.
And so let's move to, let's go and dive a little bit deeper
into the tech itself.
I'm not sure if Kim in the meantime is able to join.
I don't really see her on the X-Space yet.
She's here as listener. Oh, she's there as a listener okay um okay so maybe bruno you can
um you can answer that question so i was gonna ask her um to give us a little bit of a primer
on on dates and verifiable credentials because those are the things that basically underpin
this whole system so what is it did and what is a verifiable credential so maybe bruno you can give us a
a primer on that yes so this this is part of what the diff uh does a lot of work on is to promote
this uh standard standard technical standards for people to for projects to agree on certain things in number one
is identity so today in most blockchain systems we a lot of times we anchor our so-called digital
identity and our addresses or specific keys and that's all fine but these are context-bound
and that's all fine but these are context-bound systems which gates us a lot of times keeps us
a little bit of a technological bubble that you have to onboard people into your own way of doing
things of recognizing people in a digital space a decentralized identifier makes it that you have this identifier that spans across ecosystems and you still own the
keys and this is keeps it honest to the whole web3 self-souvernment premise which is you control your
own keys and your own data and so when i connect if i if I have a DID, let's say we have wallets that support
DIDs, we still don't have them in Algorand, we will soon, I connect to a platform, and this could
be in this case a chess platform, and I tell the platform what is my ID, that I control the key,
that I control the key and I have some metadata about it,
that they can find more information
about my digital identity.
It's not a real, it doesn't have personal information
or there's no personal information that identifier,
but it has enough information to avoid organizations
to create their own local records for everybody.
So with this system, platforms and organizations
do not have to create separate records for their users.
You can see how this can be incredibly valuable
in things like healthcare, where I go to a hospital
and there isn't N records of the same person.
And each hospital has different records for the treatments and for them to talk to each other will be a nightmare.
That doesn't happen in this case.
I bring my own identity.
I participate in your platform.
Things happen and you don't need, and I can port this to other platforms and systems.
Now, digital identity is one thing.
The other thing is who I am for real.
And in certain cases, especially regulated environments, you might need to attach a real identity to your digital anchor.
to your digital anchor.
And with that comes,
somebody needs to make a claim about,
I know that this identifier belongs to Mark.
And somebody needs to attest for that.
This is where verifiable credentials
is not just for KYC purposes.
It can be your university degrees, achievements,
like you played on this tournament, like Ujek mentioned, or something happened in the digital space or in person, and somebody makes a claim about that identifier that you control.
Then you keep that data for yourself, and then you choose who you want to present that claim to.
This is the concept of verifiable credentials.
It can get a little bit more technical with that
because it involves privacy, how to keep things private,
how to disclose only the things that you want to disclose.
But both the IDs, verifiable credentials,
are works that the DIF is heavily involved,
so is the Open Wallet Foundation.
We are proud sponsors of these two foundations
because I think the work is very important for interoperability.
And we want to be in that space.
We don't want to be an ecosystem that creates gates
where people have to adopt, that we reinvent standards
and people have to jump through hoops to adopt
our own way of doing things. If there is a good standard out there that it is interoperable with
what we do, we want to adopt instead of create. Wonderful. And talking about the diff, Kim just
joined the call. I think, Kim, are you there? Yes. Can you hear me now? Yes, perfectly. Thank you. And
sorry for all my technical difficulties. Thank you, Bruno, for giving a great answer. And the
thing I'll add that Bruno mentioned was the idea that these verifiable credentials,
it adapts to different trust models. So you can use verifiable credentials to represent
claims, like for example, a driver's license or government issued documents or official,
you know, like world chess issuing a claim. But then also it works for informal or peer claims saying, I played a game with Matt V and lost badly.
You know, anything, any sort of thing you can express.
And so it works for recognizing claims by authoritative issuers, governmental world chess, or working with reputationbased web of trust models. And the key thing is the part
about decentralized identifiers and verifiable credentials combined. These identity claims are
controlled by you. You get to choose who you share them with and it avoids reliance on centralized
databases. Yeah. Yeah. Kim, thanks so much for that.
And so can you maybe talk a little bit about the state of adoption of like this and VCs,
very powerful adventures in the industry?
Is this widespread already or are we the beginning of a revolution or like what's the state of adoption?
Yes, it's starting to take off broadly, growing quickly, but I would say it's still early. And we, I especially am encouraged to see adoption in some more, how do you say, use cases other than government, official, foundational digital identity, because I think one of the biggest powers for decentralized identity
in BCs is the ability for people to use these standards, these credentials in broader areas
of their lives to give them access to new opportunities. So we'll get more into that
later. I would say in terms of the challenges for adoption, the biggest hurdle usually is
establishing trust across ecosystems. So, you know, we as consumers and our service providers
are quite accustomed to our data being locked into silos. So what does it mean for a service
provider or an organization to accept claims from another. So in some cases, there's,
you know, some more liability concerns to straighten out. But a lot of times, it's really
interesting to start based on existing trust ecosystems. I think CHESS is establishing a really good opportunity for that. So I think in terms of the opportunities for service providers, organizations you interact with online, it's an opportunity to establish stronger trust relationships through direct sharing of data based on consent in a trusted context.
So without needing to rely on low quality data that they're
purchasing from data brokers that may not even be correct. So we're starting to see a lot of
adoption in the hospitality and travel space, where a traveler holds a wide range of credentials,
ranging from their seating preferences to reward programs to identity
documents for a border crossing. Also in IoT and agentic AI use cases. So these same standards work
for non-person entities. And so that's sort of a case where existing digital identity solutions just will not scale and provide trust in the same way.
So we are seeing strong adoption, but I'm very encouraged as well by this example.
And yeah, so in terms of the role that blockchain plays, so we haven't really talked about that role in the decentralized
identity standards, but a common way that blockchain is used is to provide trust anchors
that are tamper evident, transparent log of history, but also provides the security and
availability. And blockchain was heavily featured in many of the
earliest implementations of decentralized identity. And that was used to anchor decentralized
identifiers and credential metadata to allow verification without needing to contact the
issuer. So in a lot of the use cases I was focused on early on was in educational credentials where to verify a digital credential like course completion or something, the verifier needed to contact the issuer.
But if the issuer's site is having problems, they move something around, you know, innocently, then you basically don't have a credential because it can't
be verified. So that was one of the benefits of blockchain. Now, as we'll get into later with
GDPR and the right to be forgotten, I would say there's been a bit of an unfortunate overcorrection
away from use of blockchain, and we'll get more into that later.
But I think that there is still a valuable role for blockchain in terms of being able to serve as a trust anchor.
And then certainly with progress and ZKPs,
there's even more opportunity.
Yeah, wonderful.
Thanks, Kim.
So Bruno, back to you, like these standards,
how are these standards being implemented
specifically in the context of this kind of universal chess passport?
Yeah, so there is a lot to unwrap here.
So as I said, so we try to, as much as possible,
to adopt standards instead of create them when these are possible.
So I think for Algorand in particular and this chess platform, DID is number one, and
we do have a spec.
We do have a DID where your digital identity is anchored in Algorand, and this was merged
some months ago.
It is available for people to check out.
There's a spec.
They can use it.
Now, we do lack a wallet to bring this into life
and this is where, at least for us,
is a good opportunity to also have us compete in this space
and have an offering
because I'm sure Kim can explain better than me, but different
DIDs might have different data, might be stored in different places.
It doesn't require a blockchain.
I do think it adds important properties to trusted systems.
And in Algorand in particular, we actually take advantage of boxes to store this metadata.
It's not real information. It needs to be publicly available so that people can find it.
So we implement DID in which we actually also take advantage of the economics of boxes to make this attractive.
Can you explain what the box is? Yes. So the IDs need to be stored somewhere
and they need to be discoverable
by this thing called the resolver.
And the way we do it in Algorand
is that you obviously own the keys,
you own the application
that your metadata is at
and they can be publicly discovered.
And the way we use it is that
most storage systems you have to pay for these.
So either you trust somebody to hold that data for you, or you pay some storage mechanism
to do that.
In Algorand, the economics can become attractive in certain situations where you actually lock
away algos for that storage.
If you ever want to delete your own identity, you fully control,
you can do that if you want, you get
all those costs back, minus fees, of course,
but you get almost 100% of your costs
back. So there is
some, we have some
competitiveness in terms
of economics there, and it's just
smart for us to play in this space
and adopt good standards
instead of reinventing the wheel.
So that's one. The other one is obviously credentials. We do need to do some work there.
But again, we want to leverage existing open source solutions. We don't want to implement
this from scratch. And these are meant to be interoperable. So we plan to take an advantage of that. In Algorand specifically,
there is not real new standards
need to be developed,
but new patterns in how we develop
applications and wallets.
Web3 as a whole has been very bad
and maturing in a way we build products.
And a lot of times,
the blockchain is the product.
I do think that is a bit of
a mistake uh i think it should be part of the technological stack of a product and in this sense
some of the specs that i'm trying to to put out soon for this chess platform is that the user is
the focus where we want to give a chess part app to chess players and for world chess.
We don't want to educate the user as soon as they install what the blockchain is.
We want to say it's in Algram, but we don't want to go through all the technical specifics.
You lose the user.
These are chess players.
They want to play chess.
They want to get rewards.
They want to port their achievements and prove things in other platforms.
They don't want to have a course in what the blockchain is.
And with that, for Algorand, we have some advantages here where we can delegate fees.
So the user, one of the principles that I'm trying to put forth is that the focus is the user, is the product, it's the business that covers the costs.
And with that, we can take advantage of delegating those costs to the wallet provider or the domain the user is connected to, to cover for those fees.
And it's up to the platform or the business to upsell the user in some way, give some value to the user to cover those costs.
Otherwise, we'll always be fighting on ramping.
And this is one of the scenarios that I think Web3 needs to mature.
The other way, the other important standard is,
or pattern, is communication.
So some of the W3C and some of the standards are a bit agnostic
to this but in again in the blockchain space we've been pretty immature which we rely on middleman to
control the flow of information uh namely about wallet connect so in the development of this chest passport that
will be pretty hard principle to avoid for me which is to do things in a
interoperable manner in a peer-to-peer manner and this is where we develop
this piece of technology called liquid off that soon should be available to use
it but also should be agnostic to use other protocols to communicate with issuers and verifiers,
namely .com
or even OpenID for VC.
I think that sounds great. There's a lot
into this. I'll speak for hours about
this, but I think that covers it.
The bottom line is,
Bruno, if I summarize this, that
we really want to develop an app that can be
used by the billion chess players out there
without them having to know anything about the blockchain.
Yes, and this is a bit of a challenge and a proposal
to people who develop applications, people in Algorand,
people in broader Web3,
is that we want to give World Chess and Chess an app for chess players,
not an app that we need people to know the technicals and the specifics.
It's a bit of a challenge.
There is ways to go about it.
But yes, it is to focus on the player.
They want to play chess.
They want to get rewards they want
to control their id id they want to go to tournaments and prove who they are in an easy
quick manner and and that should be the focus it will be open source likely i will i think fork from
I think a fork from wallets that already handle identity and credentials is at play here.
I think that will be the smartening and adding the Algorand engine behind the scenes so that WorldChess can have an app that works as a passport for its users and players.
But that's ultimately how it should work
right ultimately i mean in the crypto industry we talk a lot about uh onboarding the next you know
uh 100 million or a billion users but you're right to say that if you're onboarding them onto the
existing wallets it is really not going to happen i think i think the right way to do this is is to really abstract
away all of the technicalities of a blockchain and focus on specific use cases that are adding
value to users and make it completely seamless and transparent for a user to basically get the app
and and do whatever they want to do yeah that is i think that has to be the goal i mean otherwise selling between quotes blockchains
is already hard now if you if you try to convince everybody to say uh here my my my tech is better
than yours please come here uh that might work for some of the decision makers but on the broader sense chess players
want to play chess and people who enroll universities want to get their degrees
if you want a debit card issue you just want to go through kyc
at some point it needs to add value to the end user and are you saying are you saying Bruno that chess players don't want to
trade meme coins I'm just kidding some of them might okay so okay so we did a deep dive on the
tech so let's switch let's switch topics to to a tricky one governance and privacy because this always comes up when you talk about
decentralized identities um is how how does how does the governance of this whole system work
and how about privacy and all the privacy regulations that are out there so so maybe
we'll start with you um again it's like when you talk about these credentials, like who can issue these credentials and how does that work?
Does it require, does somebody have to approve it?
Is this like open?
Can anybody join?
Like talk to us a little bit about how that works.
There can be context-bound systems where, let's say in the case of CHESS, somebody established a group.
There could be trust registries in some domains where issuers and verifiers need to be part of this trust registry for things to happen. But on a technical sense, anybody, as long as you comply with these standards, could
issue credentials and WALTS could hold credentials and present them, whoever wants to accept
them and verify them.
they're more likely there will be in some cases trust registries for example recently there was
They're more likely there will be, in some cases, trust registries.
some of the the swiss federal agencies have this open source identity wallet as well and it makes
sense for them to have trust registries where only the wallets that they say is okay can participate
or only these can be issuers or only these people can be verifiers. I mean, it's really domain context bound.
So in the case of chess, we will start with world chess.
I think there's value here.
And I don't see the need for a gated trust registry in this context,
but there might be some domains that might have them.
But I personally, anybody that wants to adopt these could participate.
I'm sure Kim has more thoughts about this.
I'm not sure if I'm butchering or not.
So, Kim, any further thoughts?
Kim is on mute.
Okay, let's move on to the next question.
We'll come back to Kim in a second.
So we talked about World Chess and, of course, the credential system.
So if you take the example of World Chess, we have, of course, the online arena that is that is issuing official kind of online ratings so one of the question that comes to mind is like if if there's
if there's other platforms that are issuing credentials like how do these systems coexist
if you have feed the issuing online rating you have other credentials done by other organizations
how do these things kind of coexist matve, maybe it's a question for you to answer.
Right, so it is an important question and I think it brings us back to
the issue that Kim raised and basically the question is the trust between the organizations right so if uh we are allowing anyone to enter enter the system
so to say and uh issue the same ratings as we do uh issue the same identities and so on and so on or
if we uh accept uh identities and information from uh, let's say, online platforms, then there are some
things that we need to be sure about. So, for example, if they act as a verifier, we need to
understand how their procedures work. Are they sufficient, for example, for the KYC?
How do they check the games? So is the anti cheating system
certified by FIDA or some other organization? FIDA stands for the International Chess Federation is if the game is flagged as a as one where a potential fair play violation uh uh from one side uh this is uh a challenge from the other one it is uh um a nice challenge
to have because it brings uh standard practices it uh sort of elevates the professional level of
all of the platforms that want to become let let's say, a part of the profession, like a system, right?
Yeah, and as for the ratings, I wouldn't worry about this too much.
If there is trust, there is a way to convert ratings. educational system for example we for example we know that a in US school
system is roughly one in German school system is roughly five in post-Soviet
countries right and so the main issue is building the interconnectivity, building the trust between the organization.
And basically, the main challenge is to bring this fragmented ecosystem together, which would likely benefit all of the actors.
So you mentioned something interesting.
You mentioned something interesting.
You mentioned talking about anti-cheating.
and this is a system that would allow cheating detection
and basically locking out players that have cheated.
Now, that, of course, raises the question about privacy, right?
Like, you know, if like one platform, you know,
discovers a person that is cheating and bans the person then automatically
that person i would imagine would then be banned by pretty much every single chess organization
that's linked to it and that raises important questions about privacy right like how like where
do we how do we think how do we have to think about this maybe bruno or kim this question for you how do how do we think about this in in a privacy context
i can maybe comment on this uh a bit further uh because um uh it's still uh a little bit rests on
this issue of trust right and um um bringing back what uh if genie said at the beginning that it would nice to have this uh
i just id pub i just id passport uh because um it will allow a chess player to uh without
disclosing his name uh to still log into platform and be recognized as a chess
player of certain level and a certain chess history. And so
and still, even if the player is anonymous, he can be banned,
right. And he will lose the account at least even he's
anonymous, right. So this actually helps a lot yeah but sorry we should probably go back to
the privacy yeah yeah Kim maybe you have thoughts on this you mentioned GDPR earlier on right I mean
on the GDPR there's a right to be forgotten but then if know, blockchain is immutable. And so, like, how do these things, like, what are your thoughts on that?
Right.
So, yeah, one of the big benefits of this is the ability to interact pseudonymously.
You know, what we want to do is build ecosystems where people aren't expected to, say, log in to a platform with your mobile driver's license or your government digital
identity document. For many use cases, you should be able to interact, build up a reputation,
not share all your personal data. And as we were just saying, the idea that, yeah, at least that account can be banned if it's misbehaving.
But yeah, at the core, that's what these technical standards allow.
But the main thing there is that GDPR defines the right to be forgotten, which includes not just the idea that your name is printed in the clear on the blockchain.
It also includes correlatable information. So you could think of it, even a hash of information or even an identifier that can be linked to you could be a risk in complying with GDPR. Now, there are a lot of,
you know, I think that this needs to be approached in two ways. Some of it depends a lot on the use
case, you know, in some cases where there's the idea of public claims versus private, but then
the idea that, you know, with advances in zero knowledge proofs, that allows more opportunities
that weren't available when a lot of the discussions were being had. So I think that that's really the
big change that's happened, the progress in zero knowledge proofs that makes use of blockchain
more consistent with these data protection regulations.
So I think Bruno was going to say a few comments on this, though, too.
Bruno, go ahead.
Yeah, I was going to touch on similar points.
But GDPR for me is also a good forces as an exercise to also think a little bit more carefully
how we design products and systems around distributed
systems a lot of times people like to put everything on chain is just a good
check on this because most of the things we think should go on chain a lot of times doesn't need to go on chain uh there in terms of credentials uh you actually
don't need to put them on chain if we don't if you don't want them and actually might not want
them for privacy reasons now i do think in the case for example in credentials if you don't put
any compromising data on chain with as Kim mentioned, with zero knowledge proofs that now in Algorand,
we actually have Algoplock, which we could leverage
some of these things where a hash by itself
is not a link, a sufficient link to a specific ID.
So I think, as Kim said, it opens quite a few doors
because I think in the context for example of
chess if i get issued a credential for good behavior or i've been a good player in world
chess or i'm known for something and then i cheat that thing can be revoked from me and everybody
can see that that credential was revoked for me and if i try to present
it again that for verification will fail and the first check you can go back to the issue but the
first check can be the chain which makes it sometimes a very quick efficient verification
method instead of sometimes you have to talk direct with the issue and sometimes that's not possible so i think there is
so the doors are open here for property enhancing capabilities from a blockchain particularly in case of algorand which has a few other things that adds to this particular system for example
adds to this particular system.
For example, in the case of digital wallets or passport,
you want to collect your digital assets,
let's say if chess platforms start issuing rewards for you
to play on their platform, and they add something of value
for you to redeem them, joining tournaments or merch
or whatever they want, special tournaments.
Gold sometimes can be taken away from you if you misbehave.
And you need the ledger that allows you to do that.
In Algorand, in certain asset configurations, that can be put in place where even your rewards can be taken away or your credential might be revoked.
So it's not that we can detect cheating, but we can offer solutions that are interoperable,
that organizations can sort of broadcast to all participants in a neutral manner, misbehaving players.
Great.
Thanks, Bruno. Maybe one last question
to conclude the governance
section here.
Kim, obviously you've seen a lot of
implementations across different
industries. As we embark
on implementing this for chess,
what are some of the governance
lessons that you've seen in other
industries that we should not repeat?
One thing that's fantastic about this is it's getting off to such a solid start
with the idea of the use of interoperable standards, considerations about privacy from
the start. So use of interoperable standards to avoid vendor lock-in and ensure that there's an open ecosystem.
So I think one of the biggest things that stands out is the idea, and this maybe touches on the
trust registry or registry side, the idea of who can issue, who can revoke, what does it mean for
a credential to be issued or revoked. So the main thing is just transparency in those processes.
It's inevitable that there are some entities who will make claims that carry more weight than other authorities.
A good way of reconciling this is just making sure that there's transparency in this, including
the notion of if a credential needs to be revoked, processes and mechanisms around dispute
resolution.
So the idea that privacy or pseudonymous interaction by default is allowed.
So the ability to interact in the ecosystem without over-identification.
So what you're building is something that doesn't say, show up with your government ID to get in
and start interacting. So that makes sure it's open to a broader set of people, reducing
surveillance. And in general, transparency is key to help maintain the necessary balance for building a truly open ecosystem so that the trusted authorities can have control over the lifecycle of the credentials they issue.
And that helps preserve their reputation, but that anyone can participate and contribute and offer new services and benefits based on this open ecosystem and open standards.
Yeah, great.
So let's switch to the last segment and talk a little bit more about the actual player experience.
From the perspective of a player, what does this system look like?
And maybe this is a question for you, Evgeny.
If you look forward in the future, we have this kind of universal chess passport.
What does it do? What does it unlock for a player?
Well, I guess the easiest would be just online participation,
because with all the subjects on disclosing versus not disclosing identity that you've touched upon,
touched upon, I'm thinking it will take ages for, let's say, to form some feeder implemented,
say, like official governing body of chess, you know, championship cycle and so on to implement
all that. That'd be a lot of friction. But for your online platforms, that's an amazingly good
thing. So like me, apart from being a chess player I'm dealing with the
cheaters that something that's not very touched upon I'm uh uh anti-cheating officer they call
me at world chess right so and it's very often the case that somebody is uh okay there are
algorithms to catch these guys won't touch on that but very often it's a you know borderline case
we suspect the person and we have to take a human-based decision so the algorithm
shows something but it's not clear and then what i do what my my guys do we go search for the same person on other platforms very often manually to check like what
his results here could he or who couldn't he play on certain level and so on and so on this you're
very fine now with one click right so that that's makes it very easy to travel from platform A to platform B to confirm your results. But at the same time,
for unpaid cheating, I don't know if you know it, but it's a big problem in chess and specifically
online chess, right? So with what we call over the board tournaments, there is like,
well, high profile over the board tournaments look like airports can
which you don't want to take part in it like you're getting scanned and so on right for online
you can't do much right so it's trust but as you guys say trust but verify right don't trust verify
rather yeah so here once again i was thinking when you guys were talking about how do we what we
disclose what we don't disclose so in a way could it be done in like truly
sort of cypherpunk you know idea that we start we start from the basis like nobody discloses anything these are our credentials somebody knows who we are
and then we build trust through our actions right so and it's not like i've decided to cheat you
ban me on this platform i create a new account on another platform and continue to cheat so as long
as my account doesn't have enough sort of proof of account, my identity, so to speak, doesn't
have enough good deeds to back me up.
I'm not as much trusted as somebody else.
So you kind of build trust.
I don't know, you receive starts like an Uber driver, so to speak.
So that would really, it will take some time for chess community as a whole to adjust, to implement it.
But it can solve such issues as trust, which we are lacking nowadays as long as like, I mean, we don't trust people who disclose their identity.
We still suspect them, but it's a blow of paranoia.
Like whenever somebody has a good tournament, was he cheating?
And now imagine we are talking to autonomous players of course like there's a lot of mistrust and it actually prevents players
from competing for like bigger or rather organ prevents organizers from organizing tournaments
for any serious with any serious money prices because like how do you how do you stop people
from cheating and how do you stop people from cheating and how do you stop people
from accusing each other of cheating so so that that'd be that'd be my take so if you so if you're
talking to another um chess player another grandmaster for instance and you're talking
about this kind of passport and the grandmaster says like why should I care like what would you say in like 20 seconds or less why
a chess player should care about this universal chess passport well 20 seconds unless is not
necessarily my genre but but yeah but like dude it's the future buy this thank me later right
no uh seriously I think we are going towards this no matter what like if we want it or
not and then again like for some I imagine like especially all the generation could be scared
because this is like we've heard blockchain we've heard crypto we've we've heard scam right but
that's once again like maybe it has to be emphasized that this is maybe a blockchain, but this is not a crypto, right?
You know, it's a blockchain project.
And it is like, actually, you don't lose anything pretty much, right? is implemented you you benefit enormously by let's say having your your token your whatever your did
that is intropable and you can yeah it makes you free strangely enough right not not to send your
passports gone all the time and yeah depending on how much information you want to store, how much information you want to disclose.
Yeah, that's handy.
I mean, among other things, it's just very convenient.
Right.
So, maybe let me ask a similar question to Medve about this.
Like if you're a chess club or like an organizing body, why do you care?
Why do you care about this universal chess passport?
Why would you want to be on board? Look, most of the chess organizations who operate offline
and maybe only offline or offline and online,
but if you operate offline, sometimes you deal with such things as tournaments, right?
In chess it's quite popular. sometimes you should deal with such things as tournaments, right?
In chess, it's quite popular.
And basically, unless it's just a tournament for club members,
it can become really complicated.
So even if we forget about the privacy,
even if we forget about the interoperability and so on and so on, what this proposal, if implemented, brings is the such level of usability and effectiveness which makes the organization of the tournaments very very easy and efficient so for example you
come to the tournament you present a qr code yeah it's scanned and um and boom you are in the
tournament now you need to present your passport you need to present your um either chess profile
on feeder or some other document proving your level and so on and so on Sometimes you need to apply in advance and so on. So it's quite complicated. For example
we often organize tournaments
at the amateur level and it takes
for a tournament with let's say 40 people It takes around an hour to get everyone registered and so on.
So it's quite a complicated thing, which can be really facilitated, right?
This is one point.
Another one.
So I personally had deep experience.
We had a top-level tournament.
It was one of the Grand Prix's of the World Chess Championship.
And once it was over, we received an email from the player saying that
thanks for organizing the tournament.
Everything was perfect. Please send my prize money to this bank account and
luckily our accountants knew the emails of the players and had this process
where they contacted them separately on this but the amount of money that could have gone to the fraudsters or send this email
was quite high i think it was around 20 or 30k euros and
this is a top level tournament where everybody knows everyone where the same players participate
top level tournament where everybody knows everyone where the same players participate
from year to year and and there are not so many participants so it's quite easy to keep track of
such things but imagine you're organizing some international open tournament where there are
um let's say a thousand participants all of them have uh general email addresses from gmail and so on and so on and
so on and basically you get into a situation where you need to communicate you don't have
safe enough way to do this right and there is a need to verify a large amount of information and this poses a
significant challenge I mean just from the bureaucracy standpoint you need to
have like one or two separate people who who deal just with this task right and
during the tournament.
So... Yeah, thanks, Matve.
So we're running out of time.
So let's do like a very quick kind of lightning round.
And like I'll ask one question
and give me a one-sentence answer
and then we'll conclude.
So I'll start with you, Bruno.
Let's assume the Universal Chess Passport is live.
How hard would it be for a platform like Light Chess
to plug into the system tomorrow?
They have to comply with,
they have to adopt a few technical standards.
The good thing is that we're not asking them
to adopt our own way of doing things,
and they will have to adopt 200 different standards to be interoperable.
Likely pass keys, be able to verify credentials is sort of the hoops they have to go through.
But once they do that once, because these were well-defined and designed, they will only have they do that once because these were well defined and designed they will
only have to do that once so I would say there is some medium effort but it pays off because
you it works with one wallet with one system it would work with the with the others as well
okay wonderful so Matt a question for you Let's see if we can get some
alpha out of you. So,
I know that World Chess has
been working on some sort of an interim
version of this that is
based on custodial wallets, and
that will introduce loyalty points,
blockchain-based loyalty
points to World Chess players.
When do you expect this new system to
go live? Right right so we are quite
advanced on this so i think the um initial uh initial functionality will be available in a
couple of months bruno what do you think should be yeah i think it's doing well i think that's
that's reasonable okay okay wonderful uh again a question for you if you
had one ask for the engineers that are building this system what would it be
uh well one ask so to make it um how to say like multi-level disclosure so that at platform a i can only disclose my whatever universal rating is such
if i needed that platform b to disclose i am that is that born this way blood type this i can do
that and it's taught with within within my non-custodial solution. I'm deciding who and whom to and how much I want to
disclose. Great. And then, Kim, last question for you. You've obviously seen a lot of these
decentralized identity solutions. What excites you most about the Universal Chess Passport project?
Chess is a great example of how our skills,
accomplishments and participation data
can be controlled by individuals
resulting in a richer cell phone digital identity
that lowers the barrier to entry
and gives players the opportunity
to strengthen their reputation across platforms.
What a nice way to end this X-Space.
Thank you so much to everyone.
Thank you, Bruno.
Thank you, Matt Vey and World Chess.
Thank you, Evgeny.
And thank you, Kim.
I think this was a super, super interesting X-Space
and I really enjoyed the conversation.
Thank you, Mark.
Thanks, everyone. Thank you, guys. Bye. Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
