Verifiable Business Cards using Hypersign Decentralised Identity Infrastructure

2023-06-29 09:55 Use-Cases Community Technology

Business cards are a popular way to exchange contact information and have been in use for decades. They typically include information about the person and their company. In the business industry, people often keep business cards on hand to give to potential leads or customers. With the evolution of technology, some businesses have now moved to digital versions, which poses other problems.

The global market for business cards, both physical and digital, is expected to reach $49.3 billion by 2026, with digital cards accounting for a significant portion of this growth. The market for digital business cards is valued at $242.3 million and is expected to grow at a rate of 11.2% from 2020 to 2027.

This explosion of exchange of personal data, especially through digital channels, comes with a cost attached to it; most social-engineering scams are usually related to some form of identity theft. Although it is difficult to determine the exact number of people who lose money due to identity theft, as not all cases are reported or detected. However, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reports; millions of cases of identity theft in the United States alone and growing annually.

Billions of dollars have been lost in scams and other means of impersonation led by sophisticated cyber criminals and can be directly attributed to Identity theft, crafted by super smart con artists trying to outsmart innocent victims.

One way to create and issue digital business cards is by using Hypersign. Hypersign offers a decentralized identity network that allows users to create and manage their own digital identities, as well as share and verify credentials such as their business information and contact details.

By issuing a verifiable business card using Hypersign’s Self Sovereign Identity - SSI technologies stack, it allows:

Users own, control, manage and update their own data on demand, eliminating the concept of outdated information on business cards.
Businesses can revoke credentials to those business cards; in the situation where an employee exits a certain company, the company can revoke the email or phone numbers or even the title from the business card.
Anyone can publicly verify the person and the business card using Hypersign, which helps curb identity theft and impersonation-related scams.

To issue a digital business card using Hypersign, you will first need to create a wallet on the platform. This can be done by visiting https://wallet-jagrat.hypersign.id/. Once your digital identity is created, you can add your business information and contact details to your digital business card and then share it with others by scanning a QR code or sharing an URL.

Using a digital business card issued through Hypersign has several advantages over traditional paper business cards. For one, it allows you to easily update and manage your business information and contact details in one location, so you don’t have to worry about printing new cards every time your information changes.

How to create one for yourself?

Step 1: Register Credentials

Visit https://wallet-jagrat.hypersign.id/ and register your credentials by accepting the credentials offer like in the image below:

In this step, you are creating a wallet on the Hypersign test Blockchain, which will store your Decentralised Identity document using email schema and help you manage it in future.

Once you click on “Accept,” you will be able to see your wallet ID, DID, Name, and a few more details.

Step 2: Fund your Wallet

In order to fund your wallet, you will need to visit Hypersign Jagrat Faucet; first, click on Profile in your newly created wallet and copy the wallet address from it.

Visit #jagrat-faucet on the Hypersign Discord server and request funds with this query "$request WALLET_ADDRESS" for the wallet address in the image above. The query would be

$request hid1fhq3q3ax3w2alcn6ue2fkzdpd9r5dgrgx3ufnw

hit enter; this will fund your wallet with test tokens.

Step 3: Making your DID public

At default, DID (decentralized Identity) created on Hypersign is private; since we want to create a digital business card using the DID, which should be publicly shareable, we need to make the DID public on Blockchain. Visit https://wallet-jagrat.hypersign.id/ and click on DIDs > Private DID > Register > Confirm.

Step 4: Create the Business Card

Visit https://wallet-jagrat.hypersign.id/ and click on Credential > “+” > Business Card > Enter details.

Enter the details in the populated fields which you wish to view/show on your business card and click on issue! Once you issue the credentials for your business card, it will be ready to be shared via a URL or Scan.

How to upload the image?

To add an image to your business card, you will need to create a URL for your JPG/JPEG image. To do so, you can visit any tool online to convert an image into a URL. Or you can visit https://imgbb.com/ > start uploading > upload the image > copy the URL generated and paste it in the browser > right-click on your image and click on > Copy Image address (paste this URL in the image field while creating your business card.

Once the business card is created to view the sharing URL, visit Visit https://wallet-jagrat.hypersign.id/ and click on Credential > Business Card > Share Credential.

Now you can flaunt your all-new e-business card in your next networking event, where you can share all relevant information with one scan or URL, and your new friend gets to save your contact with one click!

In near future, a user should be able to share certain piece of data from his/her credential, like for example, sharing say just Name or Designation or both out of his/her Verifiable Business Card. Furthermore, they also should be able to prove certain facts about them without revealing the actually data. Say, for example proving you work for company A without revealing your Employee ID. These all are possible using advance cryptographic technologies like Selective Disclosure and Zero Knowledge Proof (ZKP) on Hypersign Decentralized identity infrastructure.

Hope this blog post help you understand the importance of Verifiable Business Card (VBC) better.

See you there, where the future of identity meets the present!

About Hypersign

Hypersign is an innovative, permissionless blockchain network that manages digital identity and access rights. Rooted in the principles of Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI), Hypersign empowers individuals to take control of their data and access on the internet. It provides a scalable, interoperable, and secure verifiable data registry (VDR) that enables various use cases based on SSI. Built using the Cosmos-SDK, the Hypersign Identity Network is recognized by W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), promoting a seamless and secure identity management experience on the Internet.

Contact us today to understand the nuances of the decentralized identifier and their real-world application at meet.hypersign@gmail.com. We can help you issue blockchain-powered credentials in no time!

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