0:00 – Good afternoon.
0:07 My name is Thomas Mayfield. I am joined here today by my colleagues Fergal O
0:12 'Connor on stage and Jeremy Furster in the audience. We are here representing the
0:16 Cardano Foundation, a Swiss-based non-for -profit, and we've traveled from quite far
0:22 and wide. Jeremy has traveled from Taiwan, Fergal has traveled from Ireland, and
0:26 myself has traveled from the United Kingdom. And we have done so because what
0:30 is happening here in the state of Utah is a paradigm shift in digital identity. And
0:35 what we would like to demonstrate for you today is the art of the possible, the
0:40 potential for what some of these things we have heard of today, such as guardianship,
0:44 could look like for your citizens and how the state could leverage these
0:48 technologies. Before we start the demo, I would just like to say a few words. We
0:56 live in a world where our trust in government technology and our fellow
0:59 citizens is eroding every day. I would testify that every person in this room and
1:05 those watching online believe the protection of children is our most
1:10 important societal responsibility. It is evident that the internet is a powerful
1:15 but dangerous place. A place where we do not know unequivocally who we are
1:22 interacting with online. Is it an adult or a child? Is it a human? or a machine. It
1:30 is a genuine person or a predator. There are numerous statistics available and I
1:36 would like to highlight a few given the time constraints we have today. In 2024,
1:42 ChildLight, the Global Child Safety Institute, reported more than 300 million
1:47 children fall victim to online sexual exploitation and abuse each and every
1:54 year. Similar to the tragic story we heard this morning, there are more than 1300
1:59 reports made involving violent online groups that encourage children to harm
2:05 themselves and others. Online games have become hunting grounds for predators. Some
2:13 of the largest being Roblox, Minecraft, and Fortnite. Roblox self-reported cases
2:20 of suspected child sexual exploitation to the National Center for Missing and
2:26 Exploited Children increased dramatically between 2019 and 2024 from 675 to 24,000
2:37 cases. In the first six months of this year alone, Roblox has reported more than
2:44 it reported all of last year. In 2019, a study of more than 2,000 child Minecraft
2:53 players found that nearly 10% had been asked by another player to meet in real
2:59 life. That's almost 200 children and that was six years ago. This number has grown
3:06 exponentially. There have been numerous attempts to remedy these risks to
3:10 children. However, they do not address the core problems, how we access the internet,
3:16 digital content, and the interactions children are exposed to. Today, you will
3:22 witness for the first time in the world two technologies, key event receipt
3:26 infrastructure, commonly referred to as KERI, and authentic chained data
3:31 containers, ACDCs, being leveraged in a manner that no other technology can
3:36 achieve today. Providing open source, state-endorsed, digital identity wallet
3:43 and supporting services designed to return control back in the hands of parents and
3:50 guardians, empowering them to ensure a safe and and verifiable digital future for
3:56 their children and their children's children. What we'd like to do now is walk
4:00 you through a demonstration leveraging these technologies.
4:07 What Fergal is going to be demonstrating on the left-hand side is a representation
4:11 of the state of Utah vital records platform. What he will be doing here is
4:16 issuing a birth certificate. Now, this may be a manual process conducted by an
4:21 administrator. It could be a checkbox in an existing system that's integrated. It
4:25 could be fully automated. But the point here is that there are certain aspects of
4:31 SEDI that must be introduced by the government and others that fall into the
4:36 power of the parents. Fergal is forming a peer-to-peer channel with the government,
4:43 leveraging the mobile wallet of the child Oliver in today's demonstration. The
4:49 parent, Mary, also has established a peer -to-peer communication. and she will be
4:55 requesting the government issue a birth certificate to her child as well as a
5:01 guardianship credential. These are all ACDC technology.
5:15 So what has happened now is a guardianship credential has been issued to the parent
5:20 and a birth certificate has been issued to Oliver. server. What you can see online
5:25 here is the credential contains any amount of information, including a direct link
5:30 potentially to a file system or server. It can be fully customized based on policy.
5:37 And that is the most important aspect. This is not tech providers dictating what
5:43 the state can use. This is technology that is built based on policy and law. Now that
5:50 the birth certificate has been issued and the guardianship credential has now been
5:54 issued to Mary, the mother. And this could be a multi-signature relationship for both
6:00 parents, for example, all capable with KERI and ACDC technology. Now, Mary will
6:05 leverage the family portal. This is all open source software you are seeing here
6:11 today. This could be running in your home system like a home media center, or it
6:16 could be provided by a third party. The key difference here is these are not like
6:22 the centralized systems. The keys controlling the data reside in the SEDI
6:27 wallet in the hand of the parent. They never leave that platform. They never go
6:32 into this system you are seeing. Everything must be signed and approved at
6:38 the edge or from the wallet. So now Mary has logged into this system. You'll notice
6:43 there were no usernames, no passwords. This is known as passwordless
6:47 authentication. And now Mary is presenting her SEDI credentials to the family portal.
6:52 This will allow the portal to determine what features should be available to her.
6:57 In there, you will see a number of things appearing in the family tree. This is this
7:02 chaining characteristic that was just mentioned behind ACDC credentials. In the
7:08 SEDI wallet is not only a credential dictating the guardian relationship for
7:13 Oliver, but also the guardian relationship to Liam, Liam's father. So this would be a
7:21 power of attorney issued by a court, for example. The idea is to demonstrate that
7:25 all of this information can be contained within a chain of credentials that are
7:30 cryptographically built upon one another, similar to that scenario with the Lego
7:34 blocks just presented on screen. So now the parents are empowered to issue
7:40 credentials to delegate authority to their children, completely removed from the
7:47 state. The state has provided the credential to prove guardianship, but now
7:51 the parent has control. Now, Mary will issue a credential to Oliver and you'll
7:57 see there are three scenarios we've explored here. Social media, streaming
8:02 platforms, and gaming consoles. We will demonstrate a social media credential and
8:07 the ability to customize the attributes. What you can see here initially is a
8:13 conversational age rating. This is the ability for the parent to decide the age
8:18 in which they want their children to interact with. with. Second, you will see
8:22 a time constraint. They can set parameters around when these credentials can be used,
8:27 when these platforms can be accessed. And finally, there is a content rating that
8:32 can be set by the parent. You'll see a checkbox at the bottom that says enable
8:37 safe interactions. What this is telling the system wherever this credential is
8:43 presented, that this user can only interact with other SEDI-endorsed users.
8:50 What we're going to do now is issue this credential. But before I do so, this is
8:55 just an example. The policy will dictate the parameters of this credential, not the
9:01 tech providers. So when that is established, exactly what will go into
9:05 this credential, what are those options, then that will be implemented. They are
9:10 fully flexible. What you will see now is Mary will receive a request because
9:14 although it looks like this system is creating and issuing the credential, it
9:18 isn't. It is merely a Lego block to build, but Mary must sign with the keys that are
9:24 stored in her SEDI wallet, her identity which is contained within, in order to
9:29 execute this action. And now what you will see is the child will receive a prompt in
9:34 their phone saying their mother would like to issue them a credential and they must
9:38 also approve this credential in order to hold it and receive it. So what you see
9:43 here is not only holding and issuing, but also the ability to do decentralized
9:48 verification, which is the next step. So now that Oliver has received a social
9:56 media access credential, he can now register for a new paradigm shift in
10:01 social media that we are calling Socialbook today. You'll notice again
10:06 there is no usernames and passwords. Oliver will log in online with his
10:11 delegated authority from his mother in an ACDC credential into the Socialbook
10:16 platform. Oliver will scan this QR code you see on screen to establish a peer-to
10:23 -peer connection with SocialBook. He will input his email, but you'll notice Oliver
10:28 will not be telling the system how old he is. The state-endorsed digital identity,
10:33 which empowered the mother to create a social media access credential, will
10:38 inform the platform cryptographically how old Oliver is. Oliver will now register
10:46 for the platform and will then then log into the platform using no usernames and
10:51 passwords.
10:59 Once Oliver has logged into the platform, we will now start to explore how those
11:04 criteria and restrictions that were set by his parent can be visualized in a system.
11:10 What we have done here is we have tagged the data in this post with a metadata
11:15 label indicating the content level of which this image was. And because the
11:22 parent has set that restriction to teen, he can no longer view that image. If he
11:27 wanted to view it, he could request it. But let's move on now to the chat to
11:32 demonstrate how chat now is leveraging that age restriction. What you will see on
11:36 screen here is existing conversations that are already underway. And you will notice
11:41 below there are a number of SEDI tokens that indicate that these are users that
11:46 that have leveraged a SEDI-based credential to access and register for the
11:50 system. And you will see other users that have red tags there. These fall outside of
11:55 the constraints of the age that was set by the mother. In a scenario where Oliver
12:00 would like to talk to Justin, he must receive approval from his parents. In this
12:06 scenario, Mary, in order to do so. This is creating a shield online that parents can
12:14 control for their children children cryptographically. What we will now do is
12:19 we will move on to another example of how social media can be leveraged. We've had a
12:27 couple of conversations with social media platforms as well as game development
12:33 houses. And we were trying to establish a proof of concept leveraging decentralized
12:39 identity. And the very common feedback we received was decentralizedidentity is too
12:46 complex to integrate into gaming. Games must have centralized servers. The
12:51 identity systems must be centralized in the platform to ensure the game and user
12:55 experience is maintained. So although the concept and the idea behind a centralized
13:00 identity is powerful and they understood the value it could bring, their statement
13:06 was you simply cannot integrate this comprehensive technology. So I set this
13:11 task upon my team to do exactly that. So, what we have done is we have cloned
13:17 roadblocks. We are calling it KERI blocks. We did this in less than two weeks. Just
13:22 to give you an understanding of the timeframe here, we are not game developers
13:26 by any means. And what you will see is Oliver is now going to register and log
13:30 into this platform in the exact same way, leveraging a credential that was issued to
13:35 him by his mother in order to play this game online. And all of those constraints
13:40 and restrictions that are embedded inside the credential will also pertain to his
13:44 usage of this game platform. So, Oliver will join the system and he will begin
13:50 gameplay. And there are a number of elements here I would like to touch upon.
13:55 The level of predatory engagement that is happening in in-game chat is a significant
14:04 concern. What you have now demonstrated today on screen is the ability to have age
14:11 verification built into a game This is a complete KERI and ACDC based chat
14:18 integration into KERI blocks. All of these communications are digitally signed and
14:25 the age of the individuals that can communicate with Oliver must fall within
14:30 those constraints that were set in the credential. Another huge element to in
14:34 -game concerns is purchases. Many times parents will input their credit card
14:43 information to purchase something that time. And what has happened is children
14:50 have racked up credit card bills because that information is in the game. The
14:54 children can click on things and purchase them and mom and dad only find out once
14:58 the bill arrives. In the exact same way that Oliver had to request permission to
15:03 speak to someone who was outside of the age constraints, mom and dad also have to
15:08 approve the purchase. Again, this is a completely new paradigm shift in in-game
15:14 purchases and parental controls for individuals leveraging online systems. The
15:20 next one to two minutes of what you're about to see is the potential future for
15:26 the users that are leveraging Roblox. There are 20 to 40 million users a day
15:31 leveraging this system. There is a huge opportunity here from a commercial
15:37 perspective, but there is a huge risk that can be solved with this technology. Go
15:44 ahead. Let's see if the sound works.
15:50 Okay. Sound's not working, but that's okay.
15:55 Go ahead. Do it one more time. Okay. Secure, portable, and self-sovereign.
16:05 Using this identity, you can create your own rules and trusted circles with
16:12 cryptographic proof. Set age limits for your private space. Define your play hours
16:19 or grant access only to friends you have personally approved. In KERI blocks, you
16:27 don't just build worlds. You build the rules that govern them, creating a
16:33 provably safe and personalized gaming experience. Developed by Veridian and
16:40 integrated with NotBlocks.online project, KERI Blocks redefines how we play in a
16:48 connected world. So I leave you here with a thought. To the parents and the
16:54 guardians in the audience and viewing online today. If you could choose from
17:01 this safe, secure, friendly gaming experience for your children, or you can
17:10 take a gamble and leverage the systems that are available today, what choice
17:16 would you make? Thank you very much for your time.