Icebreaker x WITNESS

The Fragmentation of Digital Identities

On the Internet, our identities are scattered across platforms. LinkedIn houses job histories and professional connections, Twitter captures thoughts and peer networks, and Instagram showcases personal moments alongside friends and followers. Each platform holds a piece of our identity and a unique slice of our social graph.

The problem is ownership: although we build and contribute to these profiles, users have limited control over the underlying data and social graphs, which remain silo’ed to the platforms that manage it.

Icebreaker: The Open Professional Network

Icebreaker is a professional networking platform that prioritizes user control and privacy through cryptographic identity verification. Unlike traditional platforms where users' data is monetized, Icebreaker allows professionals to create and manage their own "hyper networks", aggregating existing connections across platforms. This approach aims to provide a more efficient and user-centric networking experience, helping professionals navigate their extended networks with greater ease and effectiveness while maintaining control over their data and identity.

Verifiable Credentials

Icebreaker works by aggregating users' verifiable credentials, which are digital certificates or attestations containing claims about an identity such as an individual or business. By combining EAS schemas and WITNESS trustless timestamps, these verifiable credentials become cryptographically secure and tamper-evident. They can be independently verified by third parties without contacting the original issuer.

Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS): EAS empowers users to create, share and verify cryptographic statements about anything. EAS functions as an onchain registry of "schemas" or templates, allowing users to create, share and use different types of verifiable statements known as “attestations”. As an open source standard, EAS has become a schelling point for verifiable attestations such as professional endorsements, reputational claims and identity verification.

WITNESS: Trustless timestamps allow users to prove and verify the origination of any piece of information without paying onchain transaction fees per submission. It's comparable to sealing an envelope and having it notarized by a blockchain, while keeping the contents secret until choosing to reveal them. This enables users to establish the chronology of their professional achievements without requiring onchain transaction fees or public disclosure.

Together, these tools allow Icebreaker to create a robust system where professional information is not only under user control but also trustworthy and verifiable when shared.

ELI5: A Simple Example

Let's illustrate how Icebreaker and WITNESS work together:

1. Credential Creation: Alice, a software engineer, completes a project for a client, Bob. Bob wants to provide Alice with a verifiable credential to acknowledge her work. He creates a credential on Icebreaker, digitally signing it. Icebreaker then submits a unique fingerprint of this credential, in the form of a cryptographic hash, to WITNESS.

   
   

2. Timestamping via WITNESS: The WITNESS API generates a unique timestamp for Alice's credential that is anchored to multiple blockchains via WITNESS Protocol. This trustless timestamp, combined with Bob's digital signature, proves to anyone that Bob made the claim at a specific point in time.

   
   

3. Verification and Sharing: When Alice applies for a new job, she can share her attestation from Bob with potential employers through her Icebreaker profile. These employers can instantly verify the attestation's authenticity without trusting Alice, Icebreaker or WITNESS, streamlining the verification process.

The Future of Digital Identities

Icebreaker is shaping a future where professional reputation is not only portable but also verifiable and entirely under user control. Achievements, skills, and connections can now be made portable and follow users across the Internet and between applications. Users will have the power to choose what to share, when to share it, and with whom—all while ensuring the highest level of authenticity.

The future of professional networking is here, and it's decentralized, user-centric, and verifiable. 

Your digital identity is yours and now is the time to take control of it with Icebreaker.

Start generating trustless timestamps for any data with WITNESS in 30 seconds via our quick start.