Origin Protocol, the open-source blockchain platform for peer-to-peer marketplaces, took the lead in establishing the ERC 725 Alliance. The initiative aims to establish a blockchain-based identificati
Origin Protocol, the open-source blockchain platform for peer-to-peer marketplaces, took the lead in establishing the ERC 725 Alliance. The initiative aims to establish a blockchain-based identification standard across decentralized applications. Seventeen other projects have joined the effort. Origin made the announcement about a week after launching its own decentralized messaging service.
Fabian Vogelsteller, creator of the popular ERC 20 token standard and a contributor to Ethereum, designed the ERC 725 specification. The standard uses smart contracts to manage and publish user identities on the blockchain. It stores those identities as wallet addresses on Ethereum. Vogelsteller tweeted his support for the community-driven effort around the standard, noting it "works nicely and covers all the basics."
Josh Fraser, Origin's co-founder, announced the Alliance's formal launch on September 6, 2018, Thursday evening at an Origin meetup in Berlin. In an email to MiningPool, he described the moment and the reasoning behind it: "We announced the launch of the ERC725 Alliance, September 6, 2018, Thursday evening at an Origin meetup in Berlin. Fabian Vogelsteller spoke on why he created the standard, shared some insight of his original design decisions and announced the launch of the ERC725 Alliance. Many of the founding projects behind the ERC725 Alliance and supporting developers were also in attendance. We're excited to see so many other great projects working together towards making this open-standard a success." Vogelsteller used the event to explain his reasoning for creating the standard and discuss his original design choices in detail.
Major industry players including Polymath and Status committed to implementing the ERC 725 standard across their networks and platforms. Origin says it was the first marketplace DApp to build a working implementation of the standard. This puts the platform ahead of other decentralized messaging networks such as Civic, setting a benchmark for the industry.
The platform prioritizes user anonymity and privacy in its core design. Origin connects users' identities to their Ethereum wallets. This allows the ratings and reviews they earn on Origin-powered marketplaces to carry across the broader DApp ecosystem. This interoperability differs from how current systems operate. As other DApps adopt ERC 725, they gain access to the reputation histories that verified users built within Origin's network. Users' actions across multiple applications compile into a single, unified system of trusted identities and reputations. This system works without requiring a centralized authority to validate or manage the identities.
The Alliance's core mission extends these advantages beyond Origin's own marketplaces and into the wider decentralized ecosystem. As more projects adopt the standard, it becomes more valuable and gains status as an industry norm. Each new participant multiplies the usefulness for everyone already using it.
Fraser sees this adoption pattern as comparable to social networks. "ERC 725 is a bit like a social network: the more people use it, the more valuable it is to everyone," he explained. But social networks work on a different principle. With traditional social networks, users give their data to the platform operator. With ERC 725, users own and control their own information.
This model, which Origin calls self-sovereign identity, removes the redundant verification procedures that users face. Rather than proving themselves to each new service, users leverage their existing reputation record. They maintain control over what information they share and how applications use their credentials. The system prevents misrepresentation within blockchains. It ensures users interact with verified identities. It preserves user choice in how they present themselves across different platforms. This stands in contrast to identity systems that require a centralized authority to verify and validate users.
