The Role of Verifiable Credentials in Digital Identity with Riley Hughes, Trinsic – Podcast Episode 97

Let's talk about digital identity with Riley Hughes, Cofounder and CEO at Trinsic. This week, Oscar is joined by Riley Hughes, Cofounder and CEO at Trinsic and host of the Future of Identity podcast. They delve into Verifiable Credentials, including what verifiable credentials are, some examples and success stories of how these are being used and implemented, the connections between verifiable credentials and wallets and whether verifiable credentials will become interoperable. [Transcript below] "It seems like the future of identity will be much better than it is today." Riley Hughes is CEO and Co-founder of Trinsic, a reusable identity infrastructure provider. As a leader in the decentralized identity community, Riley has pioneered efforts on making emerging, privacy-preserving technologies such as identity wallets and verifiable credentials adoptable to the masses. He began his career in the decentralized identity space as the second employee hired at the Sovrin Foundation where he established and led several teams. Connect with Riley on LinkedIn. We’ll be continuing this conversation on Twitter using #LTADI – join us @ubisecure! Go to @Ubisecure on YouTube to watch the video transcript for episode 97. Podcast transcript Oscar Santolalla: This week we are discussing verifiable credentials. I am joined by Riley Hughes, the host of The Future of Identity Podcast, to explore some of the most recent success stories of verifiable credentials and how we can work to improve adoption moving forward. Stay tuned to find out more. Let’s Talk About Digital Identity, the podcast connecting identity and business. I am your host, Oscar Santolalla. Hello, and thank you for joining a new episode over Let’s Talk About Digital Identity. One term that has been in our radar for the last - I would say four or five years has been verifiable credentials. Which I will say personally, I'm feeling that is becoming in the last one, two years pretty crystallised. And we have not talked too much about this lately, so I have a very special guest who has a lot of insight - what's going on worldwide about verifiable credentials. Our guest today is Riley Hughes. He is the CEO and Co-founder of Trinsic, a reusable identity infrastructure provider. As a leader in the decentralised identity community, Riley has pioneered efforts on making emerging privacy preserving technologies - such as identity wallets and verifiable credentials - adoptable to the masses. He began his career in the decentralised identity space as the second employee hired at the Sovrin Foundation, where he established and led several teams. Hello, Riley. Riley Hughes: Hi, Oscar. Great to be here. Oscar: It's great to have this conversation with you. So very welcome. And let's talk about digital identity. And as usual, I want to hear more about our guests. So, if you can tell us about yourself, and especially your journey to this world of identity. Riley: Happy to do so. I am very fortunate to have totally fallen into this amazing industry. And it happened because while I was at college, I was seeing all those smart people around me going and getting jobs at elite places, you know, investment banks and management consulting firms, and so forth. And I thought that I wanted to kind of differentiate my resume enough that I could, maybe I could get an interview as well at one of these places. So, I thought, “What is the most, kind of, off the wall internship that I could get that would differentiate me from all of my peers?” And I ended up getting a job at the Sovrin Foundation, as you mentioned. Sovrin at that time was very early. I was, as mentioned, the second employee hired, and it was kind of a blockchain meets identity meets nonprofit, you know, meets early employee kind of a role. And so, it, sort of, fit my criteria for differentiating my resume. But it was also just really, really exciting to be part of an early organisation.