November 7, 2019
In the latest sign that blockchain-based digital identity is the next transformative digital technology, the Sovrin Foundation scooped the Digital Safety, Governance, and Privacy category award at the ninth annual Constellation SuperNova awards in San Francisco.
The awards recognize individuals, teams, and organizations who, in the words of R “Ray” Wang, chairman and founder of Constellation Research, push past “the limits of their culture, business model, and technology to deliver on the art of the possible.”
The nonprofit Sovrin Foundation won because of the innovative work and technology behind the Sovrin Network, a global network that gives everyone a trustworthy, lifetime controlled, easy-to-use digital identity, called “self-sovereign identity.”
Accepting the award, Heather C. Dahl, CEO of the Sovrin Foundation, said it was “fantastic recognition for years of hard work from so many brilliant and talented people who dared to imagine a better internet and a better world—and who put in enormous amounts of time and energy into turning that vision into a global network for decentralized identity.”
“They saw how technology could deliver the internet’s missing identity layer. They saw the bigger picture in blockchain. And they built it so that everyone can have a permanent, portable digital identity. That’s what’s truly transformative about Sovrin’s work on identity: it’s not for the few, it’s for everyone.”
“It’s an honor to accept this award,” said Dahl. “And it’s an honor for the Sovrin Foundation to stand among so many amazing award winners like GE Aviation and IBM Blockchain. It’s in moments like these that you really feel the power of collective ingenuity.”
In addition to winning a SuperNova, the Sovrin Foundation won the 2019 One World Identity award for Greatest Social Impact.
The Sovrin Network’s goal is to change the paradigm of identity verification online. Open source in design, and governed in a way that makes it truly independent, Sovrin is available for everyone to use and develop on. In the face of increases in data regulation and unrelenting security breaches, Sovrin’s use of distributed ledgers and cryptography delivers the privacy and security that both businesses and consumers urgently need.
The Sovrin Network is now run by more than 75 global Stewards—organizations who maintain the network’s nodes—on six continents.
In the fall of 2019, the Sovrin Foundation, in collaboration with investment firm Hard Yaka, launched the Self-Sovereign Identity Incubator (SSII) in San Francisco. The incubator is the first of its kind to nurture early-stage companies working exclusively on self-sovereign identity products and solutions. Out of over 100 applicants, five startups were selected to receive $180,000 investment and participate in 12 weeks of programming dedicated to SSI.
Further widening the SSI community, the Sovrin Foundation also offers masterclass workshops on digital identity through the Sovrin Alliance, a network bringing together everyone interested in learning about and using self-sovereign identity.
For more information, contact
Helen Garneau
VP Marketing
helen@sovrin.org
+1 801 701-1848