Q1: What is THEKEY? What problems does THEKEY solve?
THEKEY Project is now developing a second-generation IDV solution for the internet via BDMI technology. BDMI stands for “Blockchain based Dynamic Multi-Dimension Identification” technology. Such a solution perfectly echoes the main requirements for identifying each other in the digital world, which is ‘The Key’ for migrating people from the real world to the online world.
Q2: Why is blockchain technology applied in THEKEY project?
BDMI, as the name of it, synergistically combines Dynamic Multi-Dimension Identification (DMI) technology and blockchain technology.
The results generated from the existing IDV technologies, which have been developed and applied on the internet, could be denied and altered. Blockchain uses an asymmetric cryptographic algorithm, ensuring the data transmission and the safety in utilization, which is characterized by several features e.g. immutability, irreversibility, security etc. In particular, smart contracts are realized by programmable scripts, increasing the practicability of Blockchain. With those features, the application dilemma of identity verification technology is overcome. The results generated from BDMI will be undeniable and unalterable.
Q3: What’s your advantage compared to other IDV solutions, such as Civic?
Compared to other peers in IDV industry, who are also applying IDV into blockchain, BDMI has the following three advantages:
More reliable results — The supporting data is gathered in real time, is comprehensive, accurate and reliable. The data is also validated in advance by government agencies or other public institutions.
Lower cost — Full use of existing data sources. Avoidance of duplicate work for data collection, processing and authentication.
Better user experience — It is not necessary for individual users to install any application or upload any information.
Q4: What’s the use of TKY?
The THEKEY Ecosystem will be a decentralized autonomy community, which will consist of three components of participants, (Validator, Service Provider and Individual User) Smart Contracts and TKY Tokens. THEKEY token (“TKY Token”), as a major component of the Ecosystem, is the only method to settle smart contracts signed between the participants in THEKEY Ecosystem. Since every aspect of life is in need of identity verification, like security check, access permission, medical treatment and shopping etc. the utility of TKY token will be extremely high.
Q5: Who are the team members and what are the achievements of THEKEY team?
THEKEY team is composed of experts and professionals from IDV, blockchain technology, R&D, marketing and data modeling etc.
The Chairwoman and CEO of THEKEY, Catherine Li, has firstly introduced blockchain to DMI (Dynamic Multi-dimension Identification) technology, and has deep understanding of the industry application of blockchain.
Ken Huang, Chief Blockchain and IDV Scientist of THEKEY, is CISSP, a world known international blockchain and identity verification expert. Founder of CGI Federal Identity Management Practice, and Cyber Security Competence Center.
Along with Catherine, the team consists of another 60 members. Introduction of THEKEY Technical Team: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvsjfJPnlUM
The main achievements of the team are listed as below:
23 copyrights have been obtained, 15 patents have been accepted by SIPO (State Intellectual Property office of the P.R.C) and start attestation process.
THEKEY’s first-generation IDV solution is currently in use for mobile social insurance pay in three pilot cities, which people can receive their payment for their pension, or healthcare insurance reimbursement. The IDV solution is currently being deployed in another 41 cities, covering more than 130 million people.
Personal identity data of 210 million people in 66 cities, authenticated by the relevant government authorities, are connected on a real-time basis. This constitutes a solid foundation of IDV.
Commercial contracts signed with world-leading firms and the business model of our IDV products have already been partly proven.
Six relevant national laboratories have been set up together with government agencies, banks, insurance companies and one university.
The Most Commercial Valuable Project of the Year, 2017, All-China Women’s Federation.
Catherine, Chairwoman and CEO of THEKEY, is awarded as The Most Outstanding Women Entrepreneur in China and Ten Most Influential Chinese Women of the Year, All-China Women’s Federation, 2017.
National award — Technology Innovation Award of 2018 Chinese Government’s Information Product, China International Big Data Industry Expo 2018.
Research into Social Insurance Blockchain Applications has been jointly established by the Information Center of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the China Social Insurance Association and THEKEY.
Research into National Group Purchasing of Healthcare Resources Platform has been jointly by the China Association of Social Security, the Social Medical Insurance Bureau of Heilongjiang Province and THEKEY.
Q6: How about the existing patents acquisition of THEKEY and what is the future development planning for that?
THEKEY has already applied 15 patents for the technologies of entity recognition, terminology standardization, and intelligent Question-Answer system, which are applied for the Chinese healthcare data. 2 patents are granted and other 13 patents are under the attestation process. Entity recognition can identify 18 kinds of medical terminologies, such as disease, diagnosis, surgery, inspection, medicine and consumable material, etc. from structured or unstructured data. Based on the domestic and foreign standard system, the terminology standardization can realize the international classification and coding of five categories of terminology, including: disease, diagnosis, surgery, inspection, and medicine. Whilst the intelligent Question-Answer system can realize the Q&A as well as the retrieval of the semantic reasoning.
In the future, we will make our endeavor to acquire the patents for the technologies of semantic identification, retrieval, mining, and push, which will be applied for the healthcare big data through intensive studies. More importantly, in the aspect of identity verification, we will make our efforts to obtain the domestic and foreign patents on the related property rights portfolio for the technologies of BDMI (blockchain based dynamic multi-dimension identification), the scene data validation, and data audit, etc.
Q7: What’s your development plan of THEKEY?
THEKEY MVP/Testnet was accomplished on April 30th, significantly ahead of the schedule and at the highest quality ( https://www.thekey.vip/#/AnnouncementDetail/6a98ac0f472f6a98ac0f4731asw10705). And the mainnet will be launched on December, 2018.
Q8: What’s the future of THEKEY?
In light of the rise in e-commerce and increasingly digital lives, the need of IDV service has spilled quickly over every sector. THEKEY Ecosystem is a perfect platform using BDMI technology built on a distributed model with multi-parties attestation and fueled by TKY Token. It serves as the fundamental layers to other ecosystems, either on-chain or off-chain. The individual end users do not need to make any effort to prove who they are, such as credit card, keys or mobile phones for IDV purpose, but by simply connecting into THEKEY Ecosystem. Every aspect of life is in need of IDV based on BDMI technology i.e. security check, access permission, medical treatment and shopping, etc. Considering the huge number of mainstream users and the rise of IDV service requirements, we do believe THEKEY Ecosystem is very promising and expandable.
Q9: Why did THEKEY cooperate with NEO?
NEO provides technical support to THEKEY. The smart economy NEO put forward is comprised of Digital Asset, Smart Contract and Digital Identity, which is an entire ecosystem. Digital identity is an indispensable element of NEO smart economy. THEKEY share the consensus with this idea and is willing to provide digital identity application for NEO ecosystem, in order to co-establish the digital identity system together with NEO. We are also happy to provide more digital identity applications on NEO in the future.
Q10: Can you please explain the link between THEKEY, Ontology and NEO ID?
Since Neo is one of the early investors of THEKEY, naturally THEKEY is a partner of the Ontology network. Ontology focuses on cross chains solution but THEKEY will focuses on IDV and serve as the underlying layer of the Ontology. We will together serve the same objective, to develop bilateral or multi-lateral trust in the digital world.
NEOID is one type of protocol of NEP, THEKEY is a dapp following NEP protocal. NEOID is not in competition with THEKEY.
Q11: As it’s mentioned to use “biometric authentication and personal behavior identification, such as facial recognition, fingerprints, finger vein as well as iris” to identify users. Will you develop your own hardware to confirm the biometric data on the spot?
For BDMI we use six elements including biometrics data for ID verification. In another word, we don’t rely on biometrics data only. We have no plan in place to develop our own hardware. Right now, we use smart phone send finger print and facial data for IDV. Or if service provider has device or equipment to receive biometric data, like finger print, iris, etc., you don’t even have to bring your phone with you.
This is just one of the advantages of THEKEY — better user experience. It is not necessary for individual users to install any application or upload any information. As long as the service provider has a receiver to recognize your finger print, the IDV can be conducted.
Q12: The White Paper mentions big data being contributed to THEKEY from various Chinese government agencies encompassing several hundred million people. Could you expand upon this? How many data points per individual and the importance of this to the project?
Basically we are collecting and using 3 sets of data from various resources, not only the government, namely 1) government ID data 2) behavior data 3) scene data. Government ID data are from several different government agencies, such as social insurance agencies, public security agencies, office of civil affairs, etc. Behavior data are normally from utility companies, financial institutions, like banks, insurance company, hospitals, drug stores, internet companies, etc. Scene data are normally from service providers. In addition to the above, we also have supporting database like ontology, knowledge base, fact base, medical insurance policy and regulation database, product database, etc. If you are talking about big data, it’s not only big, it’s huge. We are dealing with PB level data every day.
Q13: What are the commercial contracts signed up between THEKEY and other big companies? How did you collaborate with them?
We have signed commercial contracts with world leading company including financial institutions, insurance companies, banks, and e-commerce companies, namely Alipay, Ant Financial, China Unicom, Ping’an Bank, China RE, Tsinghua Unigroup, Minsheng Bank, Taikang Group, etc.
They are our clients and partners.
1) For Ant financial, we help them to enter into hospitals, drug stores where IDV is needed for healthcare insurance agencies to make payment. We are also working with Ant financial, on laboratory level, to use data on improvement of personal credit products of each other.
2) Ping’an, as an insurance company, is our client. We provide them PII data for background check, claim processing as well as actuarial projection.
3) We entered into a consortium agreement with China Unicom and Tsinghua Unigroup for the commercialization and application of government data, which greatly improves THEKEY’s capability and proficiency in a variety of fields, including data processing, storage, security, cloud computing, operations and, most importantly, its ability to achieve its commercial objectives.
Q14: What about the cooperation of THEKEY with Chinese government?
THEKEY is working closely with the Chinese government. Personal identity data of 210 million people in 66 cities, authenticated by the relevant government authorities, are connected on a real-time basis. Following are several examples of the partnership/cooperation of THEKEY and the government:
Laboratory of the National Group Purchasing Organization of Healthcare Resources, jointly established by THEKEY, China Association of Social Security (CAOSS), Social Medical Insurance Bureau of Heilongjiang Province
Research into Social Insurance Blockchain Applications, jointly established by THEKEY, the Information Center of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MHRSS), and the China Social Insurance Association (CSIA)
THEKEY was invited to demonstrate “Kaifeng Human Resources and Social Security 123 Application” to over 160 leaders at Henan’s Provincial Work Conference for Human Resources and Social Security
https://neonewstoday.com/general/thekey-invited-to-demonstrate-idv-product-to-chinas-henan-province/
THEKEY Integrate Social Security Data into Guangzhou Healthcare Service
https://www.thekey.vip/#/ReportDetail/6a98ac0f472f6a98ac0f4731asw10696
THEKEY Launched the “Chengdu HR and Social Security 123” app http://asia.cointime.com/blockchain/10425.html
THEKEY: Identity Verification Pilot (Jiaxing)
https://cryptocoin.com.au/news/thekey-identification-verification-pilot-jiaxing
THEKEY DMI Deployed in Heilongjiang Province http://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/thekey-dmi-dynamic-multi-dimension-identification-deployed-in-heilongjiang-province-586455
Q15: China’s government and some major Chinese companies such as Tencent are researching and developing blockchain technology, including blockchain technology with regards to ID verification. Is there any connection here with THEKEY and how does THEKEY stand out?
It is true that some of the government institutions in China are doing research on IDV (Identity Verification), like the Ministry of Public Security and the China People’s Bank. But none of them are using BDMI (Blockchain-based Dynamic Multi-dimensional Identity) technology due to institutional and technical reasons. Firstly, they are using an EA-4 Level IDV solution which does not require dynamic, cross-checking and data audit, and therefore the IDV results are deniable.
Secondly, IDV service normally has a purpose, which is in need of PII (Personal Identity Information). Due to institutional reasons, different government agencies play different roles. For instance, the interest of the Ministry of Public Security is to capture criminals only, nothing else. Therefore, the Ministry has no motivation whatsoever to use this identification technology for purposes such as smart social insurance pay etc. BDMI is in different position right from the beginning. As indicated in our whitepaper, after proving “you are you”, we start to collect the relevant PII, like medical records, to help the service provider to achieve its purpose of initiating the IDV service, such as smart social insurance pay.
In short, we are doing and focusing on a completely different IDV solution compared to the different Chinese government agencies.
Q16: Do you expect your existing customers (from the social insurance program) to migrate to the TKY ecosystem. What incentives would they have?
Yes. In addition to enjoy the convenience brought by smart social insurance pay, they can also enjoy the convenience on IDV that can bring to every part of people’s life.
Q17: How does THEKEY’s IDV solution comply with China’s cyber security law and is it GDPR compliant?
As indicated in our White Paper we are using four different sets of data in our IDV service, namely Government ID data, behavior data, scene data and other data like medical history of the user etc., The utilization of different data are governed by different laws. Among the data we are using for BDMI only behavior data of user, normally coming from utility and internet companies, are governed by the Cyber Law as you mentioned. The government ID data, however, are governed by more strict laws like the Criminal Law (Clause 253), Social Insurance Law (Clause 81) and National Secrecy Act (Clause 4, 24 and 48). Whitest using other data like medical records of the user needs another set of laws. In addition to the above when people using big data s/he must always obey the Statistic Law.
Therefore, as we pointed out in our White Paper we need to set those laws, regulations and policies into the Smart Contract and make sure when we provide IDV service all the laws and regulations are strictly followed as the regulator expects. Currently THEKEY is closely working with the government in this regard. In fact, one of our six national laboratories is about data security assurance and the relevant law compliance.
In regard to the GDPR, as a Singapore-based company, first of all, we strictly comply with relevant provisions of the Personal Data Protection Act 2012 of Singapore. In addition, we will also follow relevant provisions applicable to the business of THEKEY in the newly enacted General Data Protection Regulation of the EU to ensure data security of our investors.
Q18: THEKEY has the intention to provide identity verification service on the blockchain. What measures are used to provide privacy on the customers’ virtual identity? Will the digital identity be stored on the public ledger?
As it’s pointed out in our White Paper ( https://www.thekey.vip/#/WhitepaperDownload)), we don’t store any PII (Personal Identity Information) either on the public leger or any devices. 1) We don’t set up our own data center, we use the government data; 2) The data never leaves the custody of the government, data can never be downloaded, and the data can never be seen by unauthorized person, while we are providing our IDV service.
For the next phase, we are going to apply database vault and database audit technology to create a security zone (SZ) or green zone. The private key and transitional PII will be processed in the SZ.
We understand the vital need to have equipment which is trusted and secure to underpin any of the work BDMI technology will be based on, and thus we look to develop exclusive hardware devices in the future.
Q19: Why did you set up THEKEY Scientific Research Fund? What type of projects or researches will be funded? How to apply for it?
THEKEY Scientific Research Fund has been officially launched on June 30th, 2018, which is founded by THEKEY BDMI International Foundation Ltd. The total funds of the first phase are 20 million US dollars. THEKEY Fund is dedicated to developments and applications of blockchain technologies in social insurance services. It will focus on social insurance data especially healthcare insurance data which is one of the major digital assets of the whole society closely related to people’s livelihood. The 2018/2019 Projects of The Racing Plan under THEKEY Fund is calling for Expression of Interests. More about THEKEY Fund, please view: https://www.thekey.vip/#/Fund
About THEKEY
THEKEY is a decentralized ecosystem of Identity Verification (IDV) tools integrating national big-data and the blockchain. THEKEY’s project team is now developing its identification verification (IDV) tool with blockchain using its proprietary Dynamic Multi-dimension Identification (BDMI) platform, uniquely using Personally Identifiable Information (PII) that has been exclusively authorized by the Chinese Government. THEKEY token (TKY) is the only method by which to settle smart contracts signed between all participants across THEKEY Ecosystem. THEKEY testnet was launched in May 2018, and its mainnet is scheduled to be released at the end of this year. TKY is currently tradable across a number of exchange platforms such as HitBTC, Bit-Z, KuCoin, Lbank, Coinrail and LATOKEN.
For more information, please visit:
Website: https://www.thekey.vip
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thekeyvip
Medium: https://medium.com/@thekeyvip
Telegram: https://t.me/THEKEYOFFICIAL
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/THEKEYOFFICIAL
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheKey-1439094662870680/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDuN2bjI7cAhoIIxJ_nTaCQ
