Dock is launching its own mainnet on September 30, 2020. The mainnet is the culmination of years of collaboration, hard work, and testing that brings to the market a bespoke credential issuing and verification platform. Dock.io is a blockchain-based company that aims to solve digital credentials’ obstacles providing a more reliable alternative.
With the deployment of its own mainnet, Dock will enable issuers to create their own decentralized identities (DIDs) and use them or revoke them, while also providing control of the data to its rightful owner. The mainnet is completely open-source and built based on industry-leading standards such as W3C’s Verifiable Credential Data Model (VCDM), providing a trustworthy platform for all users. Dock released the world’s first W3C credential verifier in May this year, creating a one of a kind tool to authenticate digital credentials.
The mainnet will also enable issuers to revoke credentials and recipients to control, present, and display their credentials whenever they wish to. This functionality is run on a decentralized infrastructure provided by fifteen separate entities (validators) that contribute to the network by producing blocks and confirming transactions. Validators produce new blocks every three seconds and these blocks contain data and provide security to the Network, while also confirming transactions for Dock’s issuers.
The implementation of Dock’s mainnet will provide credential issuers with the possibility of creating self-sovereign identities that are portable, controlled by the recipient, and can be instantly cryptographically verified and therefore trusted.
How Does It Work
The functionality of the mainnet relies heavily on Dock’s ecosystem and the participants of the network. For example, identity owners have an on-chain decentralized identity (DID) associated with a public key that can be used to authenticate the DID or verify assertions from the DID, either on or off-chain. Issuers create the digital credentials using the Dock SDK, obtaining a public key that is reliably accessible for verification. Those two participants co-exist in the network but do not depend on one another to validate data, instead, the owner of the DID controls its personal information and can easily verify it without the intervention of third parties. Dock also implements a revocation authority that can revoke issued credentials under the request of the Issuer, which is maintained on-chain and therefore easily verifiable.
Each DID is associated with a DID Document that specifies the subject, the public keys, the authentication mechanisms usable by the subject, authorizations the subject has given to others, service endpoints to communicate with the subject, and all the information related to the DID. DIDs and their associated DID Documents are stored on the blockchain.
Through the implementation of blockchain technology, Dock aims to solve problems related to data silos and gatekeepers, untrusted and inaccurate information, incompatibilities across platforms, inefficiencies with verifying data, and lack of control and privacy for users. Dock is an open and permissionless network that enables any organization or developer to solve these problems.
For information on Dock’s mainnet launch head to https://www.dock.io/mainnet
Any organizations looking to find out more about issuing on Dock network can get in touch at marketing@dock.io
Developers looking to start building can find out more can head over to the company’s developer docs at https://docs.dock.io/build
