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Ontology & the Future of Decentralized Identity
Recorded: Sept. 29, 2025 Duration: 0:35:09Space Recording
Short Summary
Ontology is revolutionizing decentralized identity with innovative applications across various sectors, including supply chain, music, and automotive industries. Upcoming features like account abstraction and smart wallets promise to enhance user experience and privacy, positioning Ontology as a leader in the Web3 space.
Full Transcription
Það er að hljóða. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hello everyone, so thank you everyone for joining the X-Space today.
So I hope I'm loud and clear for everyone.
So, alright, I hope everyone can hear me.
So we're going to keep this one very relaxed,
but also packed with value. So first of all, I would like to thank everyone, the audience
who joined with us. And there's a special guest with us to share the experiences and
to focus on some important points today. So I'll get back to that. So the focus today
is ontology, obviously, and more specifically how it's shaping the future of a decentralized identity web tree.
Now, let me set the stage a little bit, right?
So we all know that there are a lot of blockchains out there.
Everyone's fighting over speed, scalability, transaction cost, and all that, right?
But ontology took a different path.
From day one, the question wasn't about like how fast we can process transactions
But how can we actually build trust protect privacy and give users control their digital identity?
So that's where the things like ont ID come in a
Decentralized identity framework that lets users own their data and move across web tree with
Privacy and security, right?
So no giant corporations owning your info, no handling over everything about yourself,
you have to just use an app. Instead, you get a self-serving identity that you can actually
control. And that's why I think Ontology's story is such an important one because as WebTree grows,
identity and trust are going
to be just as important as speed and scalability so today we're gonna dive into ontology is doing
that like where it's been applied in the real world use cases and what's coming next on their
roadmap right and i've got just the right person here to help unpack all of this so joining me
today is je Richards, Head
of Community at Ontology. So Jeff's been at the center of Ontology community, bridging
networks, bridging between the devs, the ecosystem, and all the calls to the users. He's got the
inside scoop on everything from identity use cases to partnerships to where the project
is heading. Jeff, thanks so much for being here today.
So how's it going?
Hey, yeah, thanks for having me.
Can you hear me okay?
I've got two devices going.
I'm just making sure I'm on the right one.
Yes, we can hear you loud and clear.
Absolutely perfect.
And thanks for having me.
Really excited to be here.
I love getting the chance to talk to people.
Anybody who ever tunes in when I'm talking
will know I talk too much but that's
okay so yeah looking forward to the conversation looking forward to jumping into some of the things
and and sharing some of the insights on stuff that is ready to be released almost and some
really cool stuff coming out so yeah should be good for everybody i think amazing amazing so we
are so lucky to have you and we are ready to get enlightened with the knowledge and I have some lineup for this so alright so here's how we're
gonna roll right I've got a set of questions lined up that covers the big
picture some real-world examples privacy and trust opportunities for builders and
then of course what's next for ontology we'll keep it conversation no rush just
good decision so let's start like this so So to start at the top, there are so many blockchains out there, Jeff.
But ontology has always stood out because of its focus on decentralized identity.
Jeff, in your view, what makes ontology different from other L1s or layer 1s?
And why is DID such an important piece of WebC today?
Yeah, I think you kind of touched on this earlier,
you know, on the introduction. A few years ago, maybe two, maybe three years ago,
when we were talking about different layer ones and what they had to provide,
the entire conversation was about speed of transaction and cost of transaction
and all these things. The reality is this, right? If you're going to compete in the blockchain space,
these things. The reality is this, right? If you're going to compete in the blockchain space,
you have to be quick and you have to be cheap. That's no longer a differentiator. You have to
do those things. And so you have to start thinking about what do you do that is different? And I
think for me, what Ontology has always tried to do and always put out there, it's about that
privacy stack. It's about that decentralized identity stack whether it be ont id itself and being available for people to build on whether it be onto wallet
then allowing you to access different things allowing you to create your uh did and do different
things orange protocol built on top of ont id to allow you to start thinking about reputation, which I think is going to be the biggest use case
for DID in the system.
And we can touch on that later if you want,
but I think decentralized reputation
is going to become so important.
And then linked to that as well, proof of humanity
and with the raise of AI,
that becomes really important as well.
And so I think for me,
it's all these different protocols and this stack of
identity and privacy that you can use and developers can use out of the box, ready to go,
and making it easier to deploy and build things. Now, your second part of that question is,
why is DID going to be so important? I think it's amazing that it hasn't been important so far.
It blows my mind. I've been talking about decentralized identity for like
four years. And every single year, I think this is the year it's going to become the
most important thing in Web3. I'm going to be a bit of a crypto meme in myself and say,
I honestly think this time is different. I actually do. I think as we
see more institutions come on board, as we see more regulations and legislation start to be
pushed into the crypto space, as we get more and more traditional actors in the space, then
reputation is going to be at the forefront. Identity is going to be at the forefront.
And we're going to be faced with two options.
Do we embrace centralized identity,
centralized know your customer and all the things that we don't like,
that we're used to,
where it's hack after hack after hack?
Or do we embrace a decentralized way
of doing things with decentralized identity,
a decentralized zero knowledge-based way
of doing things like KYC, AML, and all those
things. So that's Know Your Customer, anti-money laundering, and things like that. My hope is we
embrace the latter, and I think Ontology is really well-positioned to do that. And just last week,
I was speaking to a KYC provider in the very traditional finance space and talking to them
about opportunities around Know Your customer and how we could do
zero knowledge proof of know your customer. So it makes it easier and more private to do so.
That's why I think it's going to be really important. Legislations come in, regulations
come in. We need to control how we use that and make sure that privacy is protected whilst we
enter this new regulated
period for crypto because whether we like it or not we are going to see some increase in that
amazing jeff amazing so i think like i might have touched some points in the intro but
we definitely need to hear it from the pro right so everyone's here to get the idea from jeff so
that's why i think we just collected some important points in that explanation so something caught my mind was like you mentioned like I'm surprised it hasn't
it hasn't been important so far when you talk about the DID so when you think like that yeah
obviously so when in this crypto space when we are working with these blockchains we will have to
definitely think about this aspect too so jeff i think that idea
is really important and also in the latter part you just mentioned about uh like how uh we are
going to we how we have to uh go through with the regulations and how we have to be in control and
also you just mentioned about some serial knowledge proving uh incubated with that so yeah i think
that's really important and i think that's some important points that Jeff made up. Awesome. So now let's zoom in a little bit, right? So for a lot of
people, decentralized identity still sounds abstract, but where is it actually being used?
So Jeff, can you share some real world use cases where ontology's identity and data solutions are
making an impact,
whether that's in DeFi, GameFi, or even enterprise adoption, Jeff.
Yeah, and there's been a couple of really nice projects
who have trialed and ran with DID and OntoID in real ways.
In Japan, for instance, because people are,
I'm going to take a step back, actually,
people always think about identity as being linked to people. We always think about it's our identifier as a
person, as somebody who's human, and we identify who we are and what we do. But what we saw in one
use case, for instance, was it actually being used in supply chain. So the identifier actually being
applied to products for inventory control. So we know that the products are legitimate,
they're authentic, they exist,
and actually using DID to make inventory control
much more simple and much easier and things like that.
I thought that was a really interesting use case.
I really like it.
I think it's something we could see more of,
but at the moment, real world adoption, getting people outside of crypto to use
crypto native products is still a challenge. I think it's becoming less of a challenge because
this world is becoming more legitimate. It's becoming more well respected. Banks are jumping
in. Big corporations are coming in. I spoke to Humpty on Spaces last Thursday. We have
a space every Thursday. And, you know, we were talking about the fact that we're seeing lots of
these big crypto companies launch on traditional stock markets. And so that reputation for crypto
in general is improving. So I think we will see more real world things such as inventory control
and things like that. We've seen things like music platforms. Yeah, incorporate
Ont ID for logins and explore how they can use it for things like ensuring that the artist who
says they produce the music is the artist who produce the music. So that creative ownership,
making sure that people aren't stealing your creativity or taking credit for what you have,
I think is really important. We're currently exploring with different people
around things like contact apps,
like think of acts like Calendly,
where you can book an appointment with somebody.
I have a real problem with booking appointments
because there are so many people out there
who impersonate other people,
who try and scan other people,
and a combination of Ont ID and things like
Orange Protocols reputation scoring can actually work really well.
So we understand we're talking to the real people, the people we actually want to be talking to and who we are talking to.
All of these things work really well. Obviously, the famous thing we built previously as a trial was with Daimler,
Mercedes-Benz on Welcome Home app to actually have a decentralized version of your car management and so on.
I still have a huge interest in automotive solutions and think that that is a really interesting place that BID needs to come.
Because if you think about things like Teslas and most electric cars, they're smart devices now.
It's like having a mobile phone that you drive around in.
So privacy is really important in that.
I wrote an article last year about how nearly every automotive company
is failing to meet the minimum standards for privacy.
DID has a huge potential to play an important role in there as well.
So lots of different things, lots of different people we're talking to. I will touch if that's okay. I told you I speak too much, but I'll stop talking in a
second. One of the key things on this, I think that has made it difficult, particularly for real
life use case, is how complicated traditional accounts have been, traditional wallets have been.
And you'll have seen we've been pushing out a few articles.
I think we have a winner of one of the community articles listening
in the audience that we did on account abstraction.
And with us building towards releasing our smart identity,
I'm calling it, I don't know if that term is going to stick,
but the idea of a smart wallet with an account abstracted take on it with social recovery, real name. So instead of a long address,
you get something like jeff.ont.id and all these different things. So that makes it much easier to
be reusable, much easier to be transportable and composable. Once that comes out, I think it
becomes easier to use in the real world.
And I think the next time, this time next year, when I'm talking about real world use cases,
I hope there'll be many, many more as well.
Amazing. So Jeff just mentioned about some important points. But before that, I would
like to mention like Jeff is always worried, like if he's talking too much, obviously not.
I have to make sure that whatever you're
speaking is going to add so much knowledge into us so to make it simple like we were talking about
how this could be really implied in the real world adoption but because of your introduction right
here regarding that respect we just learned that it is like almost over there right like it's more
than we know for example you just mentioned about how the artists can be saved,
saved from their creations being robbed.
So those are like some examples.
And some of the most interesting things, I guess,
maybe a collaboration in the future with Tesla.
Yeah, so I think that's very important.
That would be very cool.
And I know we are already moving in the automotive solutions.
We have seen the videos in the YouTube and all. i think those are really important and i think that's
really interesting jeff thank you for sharing those ideas so yeah let's move on to the next part
now we want to talk about uh privacy it's such a hot topic in web3 we just had a mention earlier
but still like people won't trust but they don't want to give up all their personal data right so
ontology has the
ont id at the heart of this so like can you break it down for us like how does the ont id actually
work in practice and why it's uh self-souriting id is so important right now uh yeah jeff what's
your idea about this yeah and i'll take a step back on the privacy question, if that's OK, because I think it's one of the most pressing questions in the blockchain space.
I was in, where was I? I was in Prague, ETH Prague, and I was fortunate enough to see Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web.
So an absolute legend for anybody who's interested in tech.
And he was in a conversation with vitalik again a huge legend for anybody
involved in web3 so having these two giants on stage was really cool i was a little bit like a
an awestruck nerd who i just loved it it was fantastic and one of the things they were
discussing that i thought was really really relevant to what we're trying to do it ontology but relevant to the space in general is we had a problem in in tech in terms
of um centralization in technology in terms of not enough transparency in finance and transparency
in other places and you know blockchain comes along and it offers this fantastic solution so
we've got this immutable database that's transparent
and enables trustless transactions because it's all there.
It's just, you know,
and Ethereum comes along and makes smart contracts again,
allowing us to have these trustless transactions
and it's fantastic.
And everybody's high-fiving each other
and everybody's loving it.
And everybody thinks this is perfect.
And then,
of course, what happens is we realize that, yes, it is transparent, but we don't always want
transparency. And so blockchain becomes a little bit of a privacy nightmare, right? Everything is
slightly too transparent. Everything is too on display. And so we solve some of the problems.
We bring in new problems around privacy. And so
what we're doing with Ont ID, and this really falls into Orange Protocol as well, is really
starting to develop, number one, you own your identity, you own your data, right? So that means
you can restrict access to it, you can remove access to it, you don't have to leave somebody
with access to it, and all these things really matter.
That's the first step towards privacy.
It's not the final journey.
The next step is to bring in zero-knowledge proofs so that you can prove who you are without exposing all that data in the first place.
So at the moment, what you do is you say, here's all my data.
You can see everything you need to see.
But now you can no longer see it.
I'm taking it back.
The next step is I can prove yes to all
your questions you've asked me. Do I have the right to work? Do I have the right to travel? Do I have
the right to be here? Do I have the correct qualifications? Do I earn enough money for that
loan? And all these things, I can answer those just yes or no using zero knowledge proofs
without having to give you all my information without having to expose all my data
to you that is where we're moving towards ontid already allows you to own your data already allows
you to own your identity uh we've launched zero knowledge tls so that's zk tls on orange protocol
that allows already you can go on to orange protocol and you uh if you're developing an app
and you need to know something around kyc or uh is somebody human or have they done any trading
you can check against say binance you can without seeing anything in a zero knowledge way you could
look and say has jeff uh got a registered account that's kyc'd with a trading volume on binance yes
or no and the answer is just yes or no.
You don't see anything else.
You don't know how much I've traded.
You don't know my real name.
You don't know what I've done
and all these different things.
So privacy is getting better.
Ownership is already really, really good.
And I expect it to carry on improving that way.
As I say, for me, the next big battle
and the legislators are finding it difficult to get their head around.
But the next big battle is around things like know your customer.
How can we do that in a more private way?
And how can we make it so you don't have to do it all the time, every single day?
I hate paperwork.
I hate doing know your customer.
If we can do it quicker, easier without disclosing everything even better so
privacy will continue to improve but we're already so much better on privacy than we were
three years ago amazing so privacy is getting better and ownership is almost there right so
i think the whole plot of what jeff said is like too much of anything is good for nothing so in
that plot uh similarly we can say like too much of anything is good for nothing so in that plot similarly we
can say like too much of transparency is actually not good for privacy right so with ontology and
with the ontidy we have the ability to control the feed that we're giving we have the control
and the ownership of our digitalized identity so i think that's really important and also i have to mention the orange
protocol jeff just mentioned it multiple times uh for the amazing support uh working with the
ontology uh yeah so moving on to the next part but before that i think our audience has tuned in and
is excited about uh the uh knowledge that we that is being shared already and just keep on with the flow because we have
some amazing a few more subtopics to discuss and also there's another mention for the audience
so I think you're aware that there's an airdrop so if you are if you need to claim the airdrop
you need a code so the code is coming up right now so the code to claim your airdrop is did it's did so that's something we
discussed today and which we will be discussing and it is very important so i'll mention it again
so this airdrop code for our fellow listeners it's did so let's go for it okay so on that note
we can move on to the next part of our segment.
So let's shift gears a little, right?
So every blockchain needs builders, right?
Developers and partners are what, like, those are literally what expand an ecosystem.
So tell us, Jeff, like, how is Ontology engaging with the devs today?
Like, what kind of opportunities are out there for someone who wants to build in the ontology ecosystem right now?
Yeah, and we're doing what lots of people are doing now.
So I'll be absolutely honest in terms of the way development has worked in the past and things have happened, is that it's very hard to build or encourage devs for the long term right so what we want is we want partnerships with
developers who come on they build something we support them both with marketing users and tech
and financially and they build for the long term and we produce long-term sustainable projects
and what happens far too often in crypto is is comes in, they take grants and funding, they
don't always finish building, they don't always launch product.
And of course, the problem with that is it removes the funding that's available for the
legitimate builders, for the people who want to build for the long term.
So at the moment, what we're doing, the protocol we have is around retrospective funding.
So if you are building something and you think, okay, this could incorporate OntID or it could be built on the Ontology EVM. So we're not just in layer one,
of course, we do have the EVM to make it much easier for Solidity developers to develop on
and to build that out on. And so if you're building on there and you're building products,
instantly available is tech support, is marketing support, is being able to be put into contact with people
if you've got questions, if you're not sure how to do anything,
if you're not sure where to go with something.
And then if you build something and get it out,
you would get the full weight of the ontology marketing
support behind that.
We would have spaces, talks, chats, even the opportunity
to launch a node in the project's name to enable
gasless transactions or sponsorship events and things like that. And then from that point
forwards, we'd have retrospective rewards to say, okay, now you're in a position, this is a legitimate
DAP, people are using it, let's have a look to see how financially we can help you get to that next
level and to get to that growth and move forward.'s all happening uh you know i i was speaking to a
really cool project just late last week that i hope will be um launching very soon on the evm
which i i'm quite excited for hopefully that's going to happen it's crypto you never know uh
things change very quickly but hopefully that's going to happen. And then, you know, we'll be looking at that retrospectively with them based on users taking it up and things like that.
So lots of opportunities, lots of options.
If you're just starting out, speak to us about how we can support.
We can make a plan. We can put something in.
I'm always available for a conversation if you need to speak to me.
If you're already building something and you incorporate ont ID
or you want to put it on the ontology EVM,
I would recommend doing that
and then speak to me about how we can support it
both technically and financially
and with marketing and so on.
That support is there ready to go.
So yeah, my encouragement obviously is get building,
get using the ontology stuff
and speak to me to put you into contact
with the right people if you need support,
whether that's marketing, community,
or eventually financial.
Amazing, Jeff.
Thank you for sharing that.
So it's clear that the opportunities
are still available.
It's just a matter of fact,
like we have to verify whether it's legitimate or not.
And there's this process for that too.
So anyone who's interested,
you can definitely
try on this and definitely ontology is the right place for anyone uh to work with this right so if
anyone who missed the airdrop code it's did so there's the last mention of the airdrop code so
if anyone's lucky enough to uh get the code and get the reward that will be you so yeah the code
is again uh did so jeff so thank you so much for bringing out those facts.
So, we are not done yet.
We just have one last thing, something which everyone is keen about, right?
So, that would be the last segment of our experience today.
So, I hope by now everyone has collected some important knowledge, some important facts,
and also the real scenarios which are really
happening featuring Ontology. All right, so let's wrap with a look forward, right? So everyone loves
to know what's next. So that's the important thing. So Jeff, what's on the roadmap for Ontology?
Any major milestones, upgrades, partnerships the community should be keeping an eye on,
keeping an ion except for the things that you already mentioned.
except for the things that you already mentioned? Yeah, Jeff, so what's going on in that?
Yeah, Jeff. So what's going on in that?
Well, the big one I have already mentioned,
but it is the big thing coming and I'm super excited about it.
So that's what I'm going to focus on really.
And that's moving towards account abstraction and smart wallets.
This is so close to release.
I would, I hate putting dates on this.
I would guess within the next four weeks,
which is pretty soon and pretty quickly. And this is the upgrade to Ont ID's next upgrade. So
think about the opportunity to have decentralized chats, where your chat room is based on your
decentralized identity, a decentralized identity that is much more human. So you could have
Jeff at ont.id. You can then verify who I am with that. You can enter a chat room. Those chats are
perfectly private. They can't go anywhere. This is genuine private communication linked to DID.
And on top of that, you can make rooms. So you can have group chats and things like that.
Let's add simple things into there that is coming on as well on that release. And that's simplicity and crypto payments on ramping and off ramping, eventually social recovery for your
accounts, taking away the risk in terms of forgetting your pass keys and things like that.
Passwordless login, biometric login,
all these different elements like that.
A much easier way to share your identity,
a much easier way to retract how you share your identity.
Yeah, so the idea of this release
is to go towards a day-to-day usable wallet
for crypto, for Web3,
something you can make payments with really easily something
you can prove your identity with really easily something that is human readable full of biometrics
social recovery social elements and a genuine private chat that is very difficult to get hold
of modern day um yeah and and just to add to that just because it's cool, an AI marketplace, so you can get your AI agents that you can speak to in a human way, and you'll be able to get them to stake on.
You'll be able to say, Agent Bob, could you stake some on for me, please?
50 on onto this node here, and it will go away and it will do it for you or just transfer or to, you know, human codes and interactions, as opposed to difficult transactions.
I think this is a huge upgrade. I think people are going to love it.
And it's really, really close. So pretty excited about that.
Amazing, Jeff. Amazing. So I think it's really exciting stuff.
exciting stuff so i think like people will be really watching really close for that
So I think people will be watching really close for that.
and uh yeah so when coming with the roadmap i think it's pretty clear that uh
i'm sorry i think the connection just cut off yeah i think everyone can uh hear it loud and clear
so yeah i've been coming to the roadmap i think everyone was really excited for that. And I think when Ontology achieve it, it's like addressing to make everything easy for the people.
Right. So I think that's the thing. And also we will be looking forward for the integration.
So perfect. I think that's the best place to close out.
Jeff, huge thanks for joining today and sharing all the insight.
And to everyone who tuned in, really appreciate you being here with us if
you are not already make sure you're following ontology network and of course jeff as well
because uh you can keep up with the latest we'll definitely be doing a lot of conversations like
this so keep an eye out until then thanks again for hanging with us and we'll catch you at the
next time peace
