<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="auto"><blockquote type="cite"><div><br><b>Subject:</b> <b>[A VC] Feature Friday: Distributed Identity</b><br><b>Reply-To:</b> "Fred Wilson" <<a href="mailto:Fred@usv.com" target="_blank">Fred@usv.com</a>><br><br></div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div>
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<h1><a accesskey="1" href="http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/" target="_blank">A VC</a></h1>
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<p>Here are the <a href="http://www.feedblitz.com/" target="_blank">FeedBlitz</a> blog updates for <strong><a href="mailto:gregbernarda@gmail.com" target="_blank">gregbernarda@gmail.com</a></strong></p>
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<li><a href="#149b0d1ad69c1641_0">Feature Friday: Distributed Identity</a>
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<h2><a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AVc/~3/QKYsxOSfdBc/" target="_blank">Feature Friday: Distributed Identity</a><br></h2><a name="149b0d1ad69c1641_0"></a>
<h3><a name="149b0d1ad69c1641_0"></a><a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AVc/~3/QKYsxOSfdBc/" target="_blank"> </a></h3>
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<p>Last year at LeWeb I talked about four areas that we are looking at closely to make investments in. One of them is identity. I said this at the very end of my talk:</p>
<p><a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AVc/~3/QKYsxOSfdBc/" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://img.youtube.com/vi/R43OKYmGbhU/hqdefault.jpg" title="Play YouTube video"></a></p>
<p>I predicted that there would emerge a “bitcoin like protocol” for identity. And we’ve been looking for that.</p>
<p>One thing we realized along the way is that this could be built on top of bitcoin or another blockchain. And so earlier this year we made a seed investment in a startup called <a href="https://onename.io" target="_blank">OneName </a>that is building exactly that. On Wednesday of this week, <a href="http://blog.onename.io/decentralized-auth-identity-open-source/" target="_blank">OneName announced a bunch of things</a>, including our investment, and my partner Albert <a href="https://usv.com/posts/onename" target="_blank"><font color="red"><b>MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "usv.com" claiming to be</b></font> wrote about OneName at usv.com</a>.</p>
<p>Now many will say “well Facebook, Google, and Twitter handle that pretty well for me” and they would be right. But are you really comfortable with Facebook or Google operating the identity layer of the Internet? I am not. And I think over time less and less of us will be.</p>
<p>But the answer isn’t another startup controlling the identity layer of the Internet either. The answer is a distributed ledger of identity that is open and not controlled by any entity. And that sounds like an application for a blockchain if there ever was one.</p>
<p>I have cleared my identity on the blockchain and it is <a href="https://onename.io/fredwilson" target="_blank">here</a>. I have verified it on Twitter and Facebook and you can send me bitcoins through it. It’s not much today, but in some ways it is everything. Because everything can be built on this and our hope is it will.</p>
<p>To date about 20,000 people have cleared their identity on the blockchain via OneName. My hope is that number will be in the millions within the next year. If you want do do that today, <a href="https://onename.io" target="_blank">go here and get started</a>.</p>
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</div></blockquote></div></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div>Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: <a href="http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan" target="_blank">http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan</a> </div><div><br></div>P2P Foundation: <a href="http://p2pfoundation.net" target="_blank">http://p2pfoundation.net</a> - <a href="http://blog.p2pfoundation.net" target="_blank">http://blog.p2pfoundation.net</a> <br><br><a href="http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation" target="_blank"></a>Updates: <a href="http://twitter.com/mbauwens" target="_blank">http://twitter.com/mbauwens</a>; <a href="http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens" target="_blank">http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens</a><br><br>#82 on the (En)Rich list: <a href="http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/" target="_blank">http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/</a> <br></div></div>
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