Kilt AMA with Crypto Society

5th November 2020

Admin- Hello everyone and welcome to Crypto Society’s sixth AMA with
KILT protocol.

• KILT is a blockchain protocol for issuing self-sovereign verifiable, revocable, anonymous credentials and enabling trust market business models in the Web 3.0.
• The event will feature Ingo Ruebe, Kilt Protocol’s project lead and the founder and CEO of BOTLabs, the company that develops KILT Protocol.
• How are you doing today Ingo?

Ingo- Hi. I’m doing fine. Thanks for inviting me and hello to everyone!!!

Admin- Very happy to have you here, Can you please introduce yourself and tell us a little about your background?

Ingo- Sure. I’m a computer scientist, studied in Berlin. I had my first start up in the 90s.

• After selling this I made an industry career. Last station was CTO at Burda.
• In January 2018 I gave that up and went into Blockchain fulltime. This is when I started with KILT.

Admin- Nice. quite the background sir. If you were explaining Kilt protocol to a normie friend, how might you best summarize it?

Ingo- I would say: think of your driver’s license. That’s a credential. You got it from a trusted entity and its in your possession.

• When you show it to a bouncer to get into a bar (for proofing you’re 18, the bouncer accepts it without calling up the department of motor vehicles.
• KILT brings this process into the digital world.

Admin- That is very interesting and a much needed feature in our crypto world.

• What does Kilt protocol aim to do differently than traditional legacy systems? Essentially, what’s wrong with the current system and what does Kilt Protocol aim to improve and how?

Ingo- Seems like…

• In the current system digital identity is stored centrally with FB, Google and so on. This means your digital credentials are not in your possession but in theirs.
• This means: A lot of power aggregates there. We should stop that.

Admin- Fully agree. Many of us cringe at the process of KYC each time we have to go through it.

• It seems kind of obvious but can you please explain to us why self-sovereign data is important?

Ingo- Yes. It actually seems not to be so important for many users.

• If that was the case we would see demonstrations against FB.
• But it is very important to the digital industry. When all the data is stored at a very small number of companies this create data monopolies.
• Think, if you had a bright idea for a better Uber. Would any VC give you money? probably not. They would ask: how can you prove you got more users than Uber? Sovereign data would produce a level playing field for innovation.

Admin- Great point!

• If you thought there was one fact or statement that you could give us, that may not commonly be known, to implore people to consider decentralized solutions, what might that be?

Ingo- I think many people in industry still do not understand that permissioned blockchains are just slow databases.

Admin- That is so true.

• Data is clearly big business. Some of the ways it has been used are questionable at best. What are you most passionate about in architecting this product?

Ingo- I think that’s the technology as such. It is so exciting to build this new stuff. Maybe governance is also a hobby. It’s like building your own state.

• Many things to think of and many possibilities to make terrible mistakes.

Admin- hahahaha; normally yes but you guys are doing a phenomenal job.

• Which blockchains are you utilizing and why?

Ingo- Thank you!

• We decided in October 2018 (as one of the first projects) to build on substrate and to become part of the Polkadot ecosystem.
• Reason was: Our customers wanted a fully decentralized system, but with predictable gas cost.
• Polkadot is the only technology on the planet where you build something like that on.

Admin- That’s true, Polka is taking the eco system by storm.

• What kind of applications would you envision Kilt used in?

Ingo- I can fully understand this. Its great technology and will be the first real competition to Ethereum.

• It seems KILT will be used a lot in the IoT space. Credentials for devices are desperately needed for industry 4.0.
• We also see a great demand in credentials and identity for services in the cloud environment and of course DeFi projects need our technology.

Admin- I agree. We where discussing this earlier in the group.

• Will your development company continue to build on the protocol? If so, do you have any hints about what interests you the most in terms of where you might deploy development resources?

Ingo- Next year we will work on implementing a concept called Token Curated Attesters.

• It basically opens the possibility to build companies which have digital products directly on the KILT infrastructure. This is very exciting.

Admin- That is very exciting news!!! can you share more info at this time?

Ingo- Of course. TCAs are a bit like DAOs. You build an attester company on the blockchain e.g. attesting for good restaurants.

• Your business then would be: restaurants want your attestation because many people trust your judgement.
• Anyone can invest in your company because it has its own token on the KILT chain.
• The price of the token follows a bonding curve. Early investors get more votes and can sell at a higher price. All details are in the KILT whitepaper.

Admin- This really is very exciting. There are so many possibilities with this.

• I’m sure it will be a great success.
• What are some potential new business models Kilt has the ability to bring to fruition?

Ingo- KILT is built for people or institutions which have developed trust.

• KILT enables them to monetize this trust by becoming an attester.
• This can be a simple attester, or for digital business models a TCA.

Admin- I understand. This really is a much needed service.

• What are revocable credentials and why are they important?

Ingo- Well, when I give you a physical credential, I can take it away from you again. That’s more complicated with digital ones.

• You could always keep a copy. We solve this by having the attester storing a hash of the credential on the KILT Blockchain.
• This attester can later revoke this hash and thus in-validate the credential.
• The user may keep as many copies of the worthless credential as he wants.

Admin- I see. This makes a lot of sense.

• How would you describe the utility of the Kilt Coin and how do the economics of the system work?

Ingo- KILT has 5 different utilities.

• One is gas of course. You need that to store and revoke credentials and to build complex trust structures on chain. But this attributes only 1% of the token value.
• A much bigger share goes to TCAs. As all the individual TCA Tokens can only be bought and sold for KILT Coins, this creates much demand.
• Of course there is also Proof of stake and we have a system of off-chain-services, which can only be paid in KILT.
• Additionally Attesters my choose to be paid for their services in KILT.

Admin- Thanks. This explains it well.

• How many people are currently on the Kilt Team?

Ingo- 13.

Admin- How many of them are developers?

Ingo- 7.

Admin- That’s a great sign! Tech needs lots of good dev’s on the team.

Ingo- Yes, but you also need a researcher and a legal counsel in a blockchain company.

Admin- How do you enable outside developers to build on Kilt Protocol?

Ingo- KILT Protocol offers a very good JavaScript SDK.

• As we want great adoption, we had to mask the beautiful Rust code for ‘normal’ developers. Any web developer can build applications on KILT. No blockchain know how required.

Admin- This ease of use is very important as it gives access to so many more dev’s.

• What is the near and distant roadmap?

Ingo- Early next year we aim to make the KILT Coin transferable.

• That’s a great milestone. In Summer we plan to go live with the main net, hopefully with may off-chain services.
• In fall 2021 we want to have the TCAs live.

Admin- Should Kilt use zero knowledge proof?

Ingo- We have one feature called anonymous credentials. This seems to be important in the DeFi world. We implemented this using Gabi which is a form of ZK proof.

Admin- That is very cool.

Ingo- Also got a W3F grant for it. must be cool!

Admin- That’s fantastic. W3F grants are coveted trophies.

• When Kilt is a resounding success in three years, what does it look like?

Ingo- I would imagine hundreds of successful TCAs all over the world, making their owners rich and their users happy.

Admin- Can you maybe explain/clarify how the integration of gabi in KILT functions? Or where I/we can read more about it?

• Or maybe provide a file or link where it can be read up on?

Ingo- There is a medium article on this, look for KILT anonymous credentials.

• Also the (documented) code is on github of course.

Admin- Perfect, thank you very much.

Admin- Ingo, any final thoughts or anecdotes?

Ingo- Found tech article.

https://medium.com/@KILT_Protocol/show-yourself-but-stay-hidden-45705158935

Admin- Thank you to our dear Ingo for taking your time here with us this evening to answer our questions on your very important and exciting project.

• Here are a few links for the group.
• Kilt Protocol Website https://kilt.io/
  ⚜️ Kilt Protocol Telegram https://t.me/kiltprotocol
  ⚜️ Crypto Society Chat @cryptosocietyy
  ⚜️ Crypto Society Announcements @CryptoSocietyyy