Your identity is personal, unique, and easily accessible. Whenever you present or share identifying information for verification, you’re most likely putting sensitive data at risk of being exposed or stolen.

Businesses and institutions use centralized data storage, processing, and transmission processes. Regardless of how secure their centralized systems are, organizations are at constant risk of being hacked. It just takes one entry point for identity thieves to gain access to your data. Over the past few years, we’ve seen a rise in major data breaches, and, looking at the year ahead of us, the situation is more likely to get worse before it gets better.

Peer Mountain will soon offer a means of transacting that will not only keep your data private, it will return ownership of your one-of-a-kind identity to you. More than a self-sovereign identity (SSID) platform, Peer Mountain is a decentralized marketplace of trust. In addition to putting you in control of your ID and protecting your personal information, the Peer Mountain ecosystem enables you to choose third parties to validate different facets of your identity, including:

ID validation (e.g. passport, driver’s license)

Personal attestations (e.g. diploma, diving certificate)

Subjective attestations (e.g. employment reference, qualitative review)

Validators are individuals or organizations that validate identities in Peer Mountain. These entities earn Peer Mountain Tokens ( PMTN) every time one of their validations is used in a transaction. Anyone can play this role in the Peer Mountain trust marketplace, which means anyone can get paid for their trustworthiness.

You and all other Peer Mountain users will be able to benefit from the marketplace in a practically limitless number of ways. First, you’ll need to set up your Peer Mountain profile.

Let’s start with the Peer Mountain mobile app

The Peer Mountain mobile app will enable you to verify your identity, and validate other members’ identifying information, simply, swiftly, and privately. You’ll be able to download the app for free in app stores; organizations will be able to offer the app in a variety of ways, such as QR codes or URLs in various communication channels, such as magazine ads, email newsletters, or stickers on POS terminals.

Once you download the free mobile app and spend five minutes creating your profile, you’ll choose validators in the Peer Mountain marketplace to verify your identity documents and information — again free of charge. With your Peer Mountain profile and attestations, you’ll be able to transact with businesses, institutions, NGOs, and other organizations, as well as other individuals.

Purchasing and profiting in the Peer Mountain marketplace of trust

After you create your profile, you’ll be ready to interact with other entities in the Peer Mountain marketplace, both commercially and non-commercially. As you do so, you’ll share verified identity data required to complete transactions. Peer Mountain keeps this data private, providing ID validation without sharing or exposing specific personal details such as your social security number (SSN), passport number, and credit card numbers.

Entities pay a small fee in PMTN to validators for verified ID documents and data. For example, a business that requires your SSN in order to complete a transaction with you pays an amount of PMT to the validator that verified your SSN.

Peer Mountain use case 1: ID validation