Market focus
Last updated
Last updated
Because of its open-source and permissionless nature, only the community can decide what idOS will be used for. In principle, idOS can be used to store any type of data. However, to foster adoption and usage, the idOS Association core team has prioritized a clear go-to-market focus and use cases for the near term, around KYC re-usability for OpenFi.
The concept of decentralized identity has been around since projects like Ethereum came live in 2014, yet many companies attempting to bring it to life have not succeeded. We believe the 'solving decentralized identity' is to broad of a challenge, and teams should focus on addressing specific needs and collaborating together. For this reason, idOS today is specifically focusing on one critical market: KYC re-usability for OpenFi. With idOS, users can verify their identity once and use it across multiple applications and ecosystems, ensuring compliance and efficiency.
OpenFi can be summarized as 'Composable Money for Everyday Use'. It represents the natural evolution of DeFi into a composable, inclusive, and user-centric financial system for real-world use cases. Unlike legacy financial systems that are monolithic and closed, OpenFi applications collaborate on a composable way to build better products faster, and put the user in control of their funds and their data. As shown in the ecosystem map, OpenFi spans neobanks, payments, lending, stablecoins, and more, with over 170 projects already building in the space.
The potential of OpenFi lies in its ability to lower transaction costs for users - up to 10x compared to traditional systems - while enabling faster and cheaper innovation cycles for builders (composability = lower capex, opex and permissionless innovation) and increasing financial inclusion across the world. OpenFi provides programmable financial tools that empower developers, businesses, and users to create and interact with financial solutions seamlessly. With its focus on bridging crypto and fiat systems, OpenFi is set to bring blockchain technology to mainstream adoption. For further details on OpenFi, read the full article: OpenFi: Programmable Money for Everyday Use.
While there are many relevant use cases within OpenFi, idOS is mainly focusing on enable 3 specific use cases (see more details in the Example use cases section). 1. An OpenFi neobank/app or wallet integration, acting as a front-end for users to interact with multiple OpenFi financial modules (e.g. self-custodial bank account, debit card, etc.) provided by different obliged entities 2. A direct integration with an OpenFi financial module provider (e.g. self-custodial bank account, debit card, fiat on/off-ramp etc.), leveraging their existing verified users and connecting directly with their identity verification provider APIs 3. A 'web2-to-web3' integration (e.g. a CEX, fintech, institution) to bring their already verified users on-chain, allowing them to own their data and re-share it across web3 apps.
idOS serves as the backbone of OpenFi by enabling identity data reusability, extending the composable nature of DeFi to real world use cases. In the TradFi world, companies have built monolithic systems providing multiple (licensed services) under a single entity umbrella. While this approach is slow and requires a high initial investment (i.e. obtaining country-specific licenses for each service offered), it only requires user to verify their data once, to use all services.
As described above, OpenFi has the potential to disrupt traditional systems, but it must offer a degree of user experience that is similar or better. Asking users to verify their data with different providers to use different services under the same front-end is not an acceptable option for users. idOS acts as the "glue" that connects various applications allowing users to navigate the use and reshare their data across multiple OpenFi services seamlessly - from payments to lending to governance - without the need for repeated verifications.
