Equifax Wants to Help KYC DeFi and NFT Users—And Keep Their Data Private

26 October 2022

in Meta News

Reading Time: 2 mins read

Credit reporting giant Equifax, best known for one of the largest data breaches in history, will now help build a data privacy solution for Web3 projects.

The company today announced that it has entered into an agreement with privacy-focused cloud company Oasis Labs to develop an identity management and know-your-customer (KYC) product for Web3 startups, such as DeFi protocols and NFT projects.

Web3 refers to the next phase of the internet, which its proponents believe will be more decentralized, built upon blockchain networks, and make use of cryptocurrency.

But the decentralization that blockchain affords does not mean that Web3 products do not need to follow through with identity verification and KYC procedures, and Equifax and Oasis say that a KYC solution with “strong privacy protection” does not currently exist in the Web3 space.

The two companies will therefore work together to build a solution by issuing “anonymous KYC-ed credentials” to Web3 users’ wallets. Neither Equifax nor Oasis immediately responded to Decrypt’s request for further comment on its tech.

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“We are working to not only build a better, more efficient decentralized identity and on-chain KYC solution, but to help accelerate the adoption of Web3 and bring more trust to the industry,” Oasis Labs founder Professor Dawn Song said in a press release.

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Equifax made headlines in 2017 after suffering a massive data breach—revealing personally identifying details of 143 million U.S. customers. The company was ordered to pay a historic $700 million fine in order to settle enforcement actions with every U.S. state, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Consumer Protection Bureau.