Interview with James Worthington from Omnitude.

What is Omnitude?

Omnitude is a Blockchain Middleware platform. It acts as a middleware layer allowing businesses to adopt blockchain quickly and efficiently

What does ‘Middleware’ mean to Omnitude?

Middleware coordinates and executes communication between multiple internal and external systems. Specifically for Omnitude, that includes multiple Blockchains as well as traditional enterprise systems.

What Blockchains will your middleware interact with?

Currently Omnitude supports and utilizes Hyperledger Fabric (data), Hyperledger Indy (self-sovereign ID), and Stellar (crypto currency) for microtransactions. More will be added as we continue to extend our platform.

What are microtransactions?

Microtransactions are currency or other value exchanges that are too small to be economically viable with existing fiat systems. It costs more to do a transaction for $0.01 than the transaction value itself. With many crypto-currencies, and Stellar in particular, the cost for a transaction is so low as to make extremely small transactions, say the equivalent of $0.0001, to be cost effective.

Why did we choose Stellar as the platform for microtransactions?

The first criteria was microtransaction capable and then cost effective for microtransactions. Several crypto currencies satisfy those criteria. Stellar is outstanding at those, but it is also the other capabilities of the Stellar platform that lead to our decision. Specifically, they have one of, if not the lowest cost per transaction. Stellar provides the capability to define and issues tokens for any asset, and doesn’t require the use of only the Stellar token. But the real clinchers were the additional capabilities for interacting with other crypto currencies AND fiat currencies. And to co-exist with the current financial systems of the world there is a Stellar capability for KYC.

What is the Omnitude ID?

Omnitude ID is collection of identity attributes that allow individuals, organizations, and devices to interact with traditional and blockchain systems in a self-sovereign manner.

What is self-sovereign ID, why is it important, and what does that mean in the Omnitude platform?

Self-sovereign id is a concept meaning that all aspects of an identity is under complete control of the ID owner, not some third party organization like a government, etc. No one can control, access, or take away a self-sovereign ID. The ramifications of this are really important to individuals AND Omnitude. Currently, the Googles and Facebooks of the world not only ‘own’ your data, but they make money from selling YOUR data. Self-sovereign ID means YOU control your data, and YOU receive any benefits IF you decide to share YOUR data.

What are some of the first uses of Omnitude ID?

Our first application, Omnitude ID for Ecommerce, allows single-sign on with any Omnitude enabled ecommerce site, and provides for payments directly from ecommerce vendors to individuals for any sharing of personal data they might authorize. This is fantastic news for both people and vendors. Currently vendors pay Google, or Facebook, or third party information brokers for inaccurate and incomplete data about you. By paying you directly, the information is much more complete and accurate, you get the benefit, and you get to decide if, when and what data you share.

Building on our Omnitude ID, we use that as the basis for additional products in the suite, including Certificates of Authenticity, Ownership, Possession, Aggregations, and Provence. These can be applied to many domains, luxury goods for example, where counterfeiting is rife and severely impacts both the primary and secondary markets, as well as Supply Chain applications, where visibility and traceability from creation to consumer are important for traditional supply chain needs, but even more so as the world also looks to insure sustainability initiatives. We are also heavily involved in utilizing Omnitude ID for Clinical Trials, as data accuracy, ownership, and provenance is critical.

The applications only barely touches the full set of possibilities for the Omnitude ID and our middleware platform to deliver the security and certainty the world needs across every industry and domain for individuals, organizations, and devices.

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