Polygon open-sources its Web3 ID solution

Polygon Labs announced that it has open-sourced its Web3 ID solution, as indicated in a blog post from the company on March 1.

Polygon initially announced the suite of tools in March 2022 and released it over course of the year. The toolset allows developers to leverage zero-knowledge proofs (or zk-proofs) to manage user credentials and identity in a private manner.

Though the toolset was previously available in a more limited way, today’s open-source release makes the suite “fully self-service,” according to Polygon. As of today, anyone who uses the toolset can act as an issuer or holder of Web3 identities.

Notably, the toolset allows developers to use off-chain data (such as government IDs, driver’s licenses, and similar documents) for on-chain verification.

This means that Polygon’s ID tools will be useful for a wider variety of organizations and applicable in a greater number of circumstances. Polygon highlighted the fact that its ID toolset can be applied in KYC verification, e-commerce, passwordless login, portable game registrations, undercollateralized lending, and DAO administration.

The company also noted that the public release introduces four new tools aimed at ID verifiers, ID issuers, wallet builders, and developers respectively.

Polygon named nineteen projects — including the popular blockchain game The Sandbox — that are already making use of its ID toolset.

Several other crypto-related projects are working on separate decentralized identity toolkits. Those efforts include Jack Dorsey’s “Web5” project, Microsoft’s ION ID system for Bitcoin, and Circle’s Verite ID system for Ethereum.