Tech Update - Sprint 51-59

Welcome to the latest (and probably biggest!) tech update. It’s been a minute since our last update. We’re now in Sprint 59 and the last update was in Sprint 50.

‍

The majority of our focus over the last few months has been on enhancements that are targeted towards specific clients we are working with, the UK DIATF (which, if you haven’t noticed, we now have!!), and a major refactoring of the code for both Identifi Me and ShareRing Pro to improve the performance and support the latest ReactNative. 

‍

We also completed another round of penetration testing from an external security company. This went quite well.

‍

Here’s what we achieved in Sprints 51 to 59. There were over 150 updates/changes/improvements in the release notes, so I will be listing the most important highlights only.

‍

If you have any questions about any of these, feel free to ask them via Discord or on Twitter. 
‍

ShareRing Business Solutions

‍

Identifi Me

‍

• A new version of Identifi Me is due in the stores this week.
• Delete Account - You now have the ability to completely delete your account, including the Vault, and any ShareRing stored information (which is only your email address).
• Add the ability to share your contact information from the Vault - this will evolve over time to provide an easy mechanism for everyday users or small businesses to ask for any verified information from someone. It can be detailed information, or anonymous, using zero knowledge (for example, a quick age verification, or maybe you need to share your verified contact information).
• Cross-app auto-login - If you have one of the ShareRing apps already installed (for example - Identifi Me) and you install another one (ie. ShareRing Pro, or a white label client app), then it’ll recognise that the Vault already exists and offer to automatically log you in. You’ll see this functionality when we release the new IM and SHR Pro versions to the stores.
• Sharing Notifications - whenever you share your information with a company, a notification will be created and stored. You can review this in future to see who you’ve shared data with and when it was shared. This is very useful for when data leaks occur, or for GDPR checks to see who has your data.
• Other personal information and socials can now be included in your vault.
• The ability to support ‘one time’ questions is now supported. This means that a company such as a hotel can ask for info (such as booking ID) that is part of the query response, but not stored in the vault at all, as it’s not needed again.
• We added a number of other ‘document types’ to the vault to support some specific client engagements.
• Provide the ability to share which doc/info to share when the user has more than one document that matches the request.

‍

VQL

• Develop enterprise version of VQL - this is still under development and testing. Some key features include - billing, multi-user access, configurable access privileges, more endpoint options (email, API, etc), more intuitive query development.
• Add company name to the query creation form (this is linked to the ‘sharing notifications’ task above, but it’s also used for billing purposes).
• Add analytics tracking to the VQL dashboard - you can now review the number and type of each response you’ve received.
• Allow the VQL query to define the deeplink app (SHR Pro, Identifi Me, or one of the customer white label apps)
• AI query development - this is in R&D, but showing some amazing promise for the automated, dynamic and ‘smart’ creation of queries for various industries and use cases.
• Updates to use a new version of Tencent’s face match API. We worked directly with the Tencent team to get this implemented and tested for international use.

‍

ShareRing Foundation - Web3

‍

DIDs

‍

A major piece of progress within our Web3 infrastructure is the support for DID’s. A lot of work has been put into this (with multiple white papers being written internally). The implementation of DID’s is a critical component to allow for the ShareRing ecosystem to become multi-chain, with the VC’s being verified and stored against ShareLedger, and the DID’s becoming ubiquitous across any chain.

‍

In a nutshell (from Wiki definition), Decentralized identifiers are a type of globally unique identifier that enables an entity to be identified in a manner that is verifiable, persistent, and does not require the use of a centralized registry.

‍

We are already in discussions with multiple projects to support the ShareRing originating DID’s on their chain for existing client engagements.

‍

NFTs and SBT’s

• Add 3rd party issued SBTs - this is completed on-chain, but requires a number of use cases to be developed in the app and also within VQL.

‍

VCT’s

• As we mentioned last time, ShareRing have migrated away from our existing model of creating ‘flat’ cryptographic signatures on the blockchain and using a merkle tree for document specific verifiable credentials. To this end, we have developed a ‘Verifiable Credential Token’ (VCT) that behaves in a similar fashion to Soulbound Tokens (SBT’s), but using the structure of a verifiable credential. As well as facilitating the creation of more transactions, it also ensures a higher level of authenticity and tamper-proofing, as well as proving the issuer with the ability to revoke a credential if they need to. The VCT also allows us to focus more on the provision of individual attributes of a user, instead of having to supply the whole document (ie passport) when proving something about yourself.
• All accounts have been migrated to be using VCT’s. This is a big step towards facilitating more on-chain transactions.
• Provide the ability to add forged/fake/revoked documents to a blacklist - this is achieved without actually storing any readable information about the document that has been blacklisted. A 1-way hash of the VC’s are stored and checked against when a new document is added for any user. If the hash matches one that’s blacklisted, then that document cannot be added.

‍

ShareRing Pro app

• AI Avatar phase 1 is ready - the release of this is pending some other updates to the ShareRing Pro app that are taking priority. We are ensuring that when the AI Avatars are ready, they’ll also have some genuine utility beyond just being a JPG in the app.

‍

Web Wallet Extension

• This is ready for release. We’ve held off while we prepare a number of other priority items.

‍

Discord Bot

• Our new Discord Bot is now on production and ready to be implemented. We will start by rolling it out to the ShareRing Discord community in conjunction with a small promo. The bot allows any community owner to set up gated roles based on age, jurisdiction, or proof of ‘human’ (to reduce bot attacks). This will be extremely useful for Discord server managers across any number of industries around the world.

‍

ShareLedger

• Another binary upgrade for ShareLedger
• Smart contract deployment for VCT’s and dVCT’s
• Smart contract completion for DiDs
  ‍