Civic is a personal identity verification service provider that applies modern cryptography, blockchain technology, and smart contracts to develop an on-demand, secure, and low-cost access to identity verification services. By providing a futureproof identity for any use case, Civic aims to build a safe and equitable future for all.
Identity is the name of Civic’s decentralized identity verification ecosystem designed to connect users, requesters, and validators worldwide. Once personal information is verified using Identity, users can reuse it across various platforms without having to constantly re-verify their identities.
Civic is implemented on Solana, a proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain. Solana brings three essential features to Civic: scalability, privacy, and proof-of-history (PoH).
Solana’s scalability will help Civic expand its ecosystem and diversity into several use cases.
The PoH source of time delivers high-speed, low latency, and inexpensive transactions, all at layer-1 without sharding. This allows Civic to make its identity tools easily accessible to mainstream consumers. Solana’s privacy protocols further help Civic build a privacy-focused framework for better compliance and regulation.
So, what is CVC? CVC is an ERC-20 standard token used to power Civic’s identity verification protocol. It's used to facilitate payments for smart contract commands and to maintain Civic’s blockchain.
TL;DR
Civic aims to develop and provide secure, on-demand, and low-cost access to identity verification services for all.
Identity is Civic’s open-source identity verification ecosystem that allows users to reuse their verified identities across various platforms.
Civic leverages Solana’s scalability, privacy, and proof-of-history to build an expansive, privacy-focused, and inexpensive identity tool framework.
Civic runs on Solana’s proof-of-stake consensus mechanism.
CVC is an ERC-20 token used to settle transactions in the Civic ecosystem.
How Civic works
Civic’s identity verification process provides users with exclusive access to and control over their personal identity information. This is achieved by using the Identity verification ecosystem that encrypts personal identity information (PII) before hashing it on the blockchain.
After verification, service providers and validators buy and sell rights to the verified information, with the user’s consent, on the Civic marketplace. Finally, Civic’s unique token behavior model helps regulate the behavior of ecosystem participants by aligning their interests with that of the ecosystem.
Off-chain verifiable credentials
Civic validates PII and allows users to store it on their mobile phones, meaning the data is never stored on Civic servers. Once PII is validated, it's hashed and anchored on-chain.
Since the output of a hash can't be immediately reversed to decode the information, it forms a safe PII verification tool. Hashes are pseudonyms and follow the requirements of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and similar regulations. These entities require secure hashing practices, which Civic complies with.
This means that by using Civic, users have exclusive access and control over their PII. If Civic were to get hacked, the user’s information could never be released because they simply don’t have it.
What is the Civic identity ecosystem?
The Civic identity ecosystem comprises three parties: users, validators, and requester/service providers. While Civic accommodates users in the front-end, validators and providers are responsible for back-end services on the network such as identity attestation and KYC confirmation.
Validators are responsible for verifying identities for the network, both on the blockchain and for the service providers. For example, if a user wants to submit PII to a service provider, they submit the relevant information to a validator registry smart contract. These smart contracts act as an escrow service for the transaction and provide validators with the identity data.
The validator cross-checks the integrity of the information by cross-referencing it with public records, financial records, or other identifying materials. After the validator confirms the information as authentic, it's hashed onto the network. A validator could be the service provider in cases where it's the user identity’s first commit to the network.
The network has open-sourced five smart contracts stipulating rules and guidelines for how requesters/service providers, validators, and users interact within the identity ecosystem. This incentivizes participants to be fair, open, transparent, and honest on the network. Civic’s token behavior model also governs ecosystem interactions.
The smart contracts include escrow smart contract, validator registry smart contract, pricing smart contract, ontology smart contract, and upgradeable proxies smart contract.
The network also open-sourced two libraries that allow people to use Javascript to interact with the Identity.com ecosystem without having to deal with the complexities of a new language.
Civic marketplace
Identity was branded as Civic’s marketplace in 2018. Smart contracts and blockchains are at the core of Identity.com as they contain the rules and guidelines for interactions within the Civic ecosystem. The marketplace allows service providers and validators to buy access or sell rights to verified identity information respectively, with the user’s consent. So how does the marketplace work?
Let’s say a credit scoring company (requester/service provider) requires access to a client’s (user) credit history and bank account information. After receiving the client’s consent, the credit scoring company will query the client’s credential wallet (wallet) for the required PII attested by a validator (IdV). The PII in this case would be the client’s credit history and bank information.
Upon the client's approval in the credential wallet, the information will be transferred to the credit scoring company that pays for the valid attestation presented. Then, the validator who issued the valid attestation gets paid. In case the wallet doesn't contain a valid attestation, a validation process occurs. This service is flexible as validators can pick and choose which information to verify as per the service provider’s request.
Token behavior model
The Civic token behavior model focuses on building trust within the ecosystem without eroding the principles of decentralization. It helps regulate and nudge the behavior of the ecosystem participants to align with the ideologies and values of the Civic network.
For validators to be active participants in the marketplace, they're required to hold a minimum amount of CVC tokens. This is done to make sure they have a stake that secures them against expected claims. Similar concepts are in place for requesters also. This makes sure that both the players are led to a Nash equilibrium every time there's a transaction in the marketplace.
The Civic token is intended to allow participants in the ecosystem to transact in ID verification services while guaranteeing network integrity. This will help reduce the overall costs of identity verification, remove inefficiencies, enhance security and privacy, and generally improve the user experience in the ecosystem.
Where is Civic (CVC) used?
What is Civic's (CVC) token utility and how does this dedicated token power the Civic ecosystem?
Primarily, the Civic token or CVC is used as a form of settlement between participants to an identity-related transaction within the Civic ecosystem. The CVC paid in a transaction is distributed between the validator and user as a reward for sharing information. A smart contract defines the proportion in which this reward is distributed between the parties. This proportion can be adjusted with the consensus of the ecosystem participants.
CVC is also used as a means of incentivizing all participants to contribute to the ecosystem. For example, third-party providers can offer their identity products and services to the ecosystem in exchange for CVC. Increased participation will enable Civic to become more expansive and cater to several use cases.
Users are rewarded CVC (depending on CVC price) for signing up for services, giving identity, or introducing a new user to the platform. Meanwhile, CVC can be used to purchase existing services directly from Civic, such as personal background checks, blockchain notary services, dark web monitoring and searches, and P2P identity services.
About Civic's founders and history
Civic was co-founded in 2015 by Vinny Lingham, a serial entrepreneur with over ten years of e-commerce experience, and Jonathan Smith. Lingham is a member of the Bitcoin Foundation and is known for being one of the sharks on Shark Tank South Africa.
Jonathan Smith, CTO of Civic, has over 15 years of experience in developing technical analytics and managing entities such as Deloitte and RBS.
Civic was originally founded to help users manage their identities and stop identity fraud before it even happens. To give consumers power and control over their personal information, Civic began redefining digital identity with its Secure Identity Platform (SIP) and ChainAuth, its authentication mechanism, in 2017.
Civic’s identity verification ecosystem steadily began to expand with new technological developments to fit several use cases. Civic launched its very own token-powered KYC and accredited investor checks, the first-ever anonymous age verifying beer vending machine, and even its very own marketplace, Identity, within a year from its launch.
Its latest project, Civic Pass is a multi-chain token protocol that's very similar to Soulbound Tokens (SBTs). Civic Pass reconciles the concepts of off-chain verifiable credentials and on-chain passes to optimize the utility of identity tokens in the right way. Civic is focused on making data control and digital identities accessible and affordable to everyone.
Civic's tokenomics
The total token supply of CVC is set at 1 billion tokens. The crowd sale, conducted in June 2017 was capped at 330 million tokens (33% of the total supply) with CVC priced at $0.10. Regarding the rest of the tokens, one third was to be given away to companies and users to accelerate network growth, with one other third to remain in the company’s inventory. This is how the remaining one-third will be vested yearly over three years.
This model was adopted to prevent a small number of buyers from dominating the landscape by buying up the majority of the tokens from a crowd sale. The founders wanted the Civic network to truly be a community-driven network. For the same reason, the network refused to offer any discounts on the token sold to anyone in pre-sale or crowd sale.
All 330 million available tokens were purchased for $33 million and were introduced into the market following the sale. The Civic token sale was a widely distributed sale with over 50,000 prospective purchasers and approximately 8,000 successful purchasers worldwide.
Currently, it has a circulating supply of 1 billion CVC tokens with a 24-hour trade volume of $28.83 million as of writing.
What is Civic’s competition?
Civic’s largest blockchain competitors are SelfKey (KEY) and THEKEY (TKY). Let’s see how Civic is different from its competitors:
Civic vs. SelfKey
Both Civic and SelfKey verify identity claims and PII, so users are enabled to verify their identity without having to share their ID documents. The verifiable claims are authenticated and hashed before storing them on the blockchain. Both projects have ERC-20 tokens that need to be staked in order to use their digital ID features.
Civic is based on Solana, which provides a high-speed, low-latency, and inexpensive transaction experience for users. SelfKey, meanwhile, is based on Ethereum and is affected by the complexities of its blockchain such as high ETH fees, scalability challenges, and reduced speed. These factors could hamper use cases and potentially turn small users away from SelfKey’s applications.
Civic raised $33 million in its ICO round, which is significantly more than SelfKey or TheKey. Also, Civic has a high market awareness when compared to SelfKey due to its robust marketing and Lingham’s leadership and influence.
Civic vs. THEKEY
TheKey is based on the NEO blockchain and caters to the identity verification needs of the Asian market. However, SelfKey and Civic expand and cater to global markets and specific industries such as financial and corporate services. As a result, some don't consider TheKey to be a direct competitor to Civic.
The primary difference between the two stems from their market focus and the demography they intend to target. What's more, while Civic is open-source and transparent, TheKey claims to have leveraged political connections in the State Intellectual Property Office of China to obtain copyrights and patents for immutable identity verification.
Civic partnerships and investors
The success of the token sale attracted diverse partners to Civic’s door, ranging from the public sector to private companies. Some of Civic’s earlier strategic partners include Augmentors, Bayonet Technologies, Bankcoin.global, BnkToTheFuture, BitGo, C.O.S.S, Doc.ai, Yola, Xapo, WikiHow, and Turo.
Civic also partnered with the non-profit Identity.com, an open-source identity ecosystem that provides decentralization protocols and tools for tissuing and verifying identity information.
Civic’s partnership with Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s biggest brewer became Civic’s first Fortune 500 partnership. This partnership led to the creation of the first-ever anonymous age-verifying beer vending machine.
It has partnered with several entities since then to develop digital identity solutions. The Civic-Rivetz partnership allowed for the creation of a built-in digital identity solution. Meanwhile, Civic partnered with Johnson Controls to provide Identity Verification for Visitor Management.
Civic has also partnered with 12 Automated Retail Partners, such as AAEON, AR Systems, Fastcorp Vending, IVM, IVS, and others to create the Civic Pay app. What's more, the Snowcrash partnership has created several opportunities in the NFT world.
In January 2022, Civic announced a further partnership with leading DeFi infrastructure company Liquid Meta Capital Holding Ltd. The purpose of the partnership was to bring trusted and secure permissioned identity services to DeFi, enabling Liquid Meta to provide capital liquidity to permissioned decentralized apps (DApps).
Civic SWOT analysis
What are Civic’s biggest strengths?
As an identity verification platform, Civic's privacy, flexibility, trustworthiness, and interoperability are its biggest strengths. It enables users to use a single pass to meet all their identification needs on-chain, off-chain, and across-chain.
By giving control of PII to its users, Civic allows users to access various services and products with unrevealing and reusable identities. Users can even link multiple wallets to a single pass using decentralized identifiers (DIDs) that can then be used with different audiences. Civic’s tokenized identity system creates a bigger and better system that protects human users while offering the best of the digital world.
What are Civic’s weakness?
Civic’s identity verification ecosystem requires:
Requesters to accept Civic validated PII from users.
Users to sign up and provide PII.
Validators to authenticate and attest the PII.
Each party is dependent on the others’ roles and willingness to participate in the ecosystem to make their earnings. If Civic struggles to acquire even one of the parties, the ecosystem becomes dysfunctional. While earning CVC tokens incentivize participation in the network, using it as the primary incentive for a steadily scaling network might not prove to be sufficient.
What opportunities does Civic offer?
Civic is committed to the idea of developing a human-centered digital identity. Its technology has progressed towards making digital identity and verification more private, decentralized, and interoperable to enable varied use cases.
Its Civic Pass is a multichain application that makes allowances for cross-chain mechanics. This includes derivative tools to help users convert the ERC standards of the pass and use it on many chains, private tokenized identities that prevent identity correlation, and use of its gateway protocol to maintain decentralization and give users pluralism of identity across chains.
Civic is focused on creating an expansive ecosystem to provide secure, on-demand, and low-cost access to identity verification to everyone by creating human-centered and futureproof identities. It allows its use cases to expand to on-chain, off-chain, and multi-chain applications.
By simplifying and reducing the costs and inefficiencies of IDV, Civic has the potential to boost several ecosystems within the blockchain space, such as DeFi, NFT projects, and DAOs.
What threats does Civic face?
Validators are tasked with verifying the authenticity of the PII submitted by the users. To achieve this, they're given access to an unencrypted version of user PII which they cross-check with government or public records before attesting them as authentic.
This means that validators bear the cost of traditional identity authentication, hoping that CVC token rewards will, at the very least, cover their costs. However, with the increasing costs of traditional ways of verifying identities, validators motivated by making profits might misuse the user's PII at their disposal.
The network will have to optimally incentivize validators to prevent them from leaking users’ PII to parties outside the Civic ecosystem. In cases where third parties are willing to pay the validator more than CVC earnings, there's no mechanism to prevent validators from taking advantage of the situation. Malicious acts of validators can cause the whole ecosystem to crumble.
Civic use cases
Combatting NFT-hungry bots on Solana
One of the most common problems faced during NFT drops is the relentless accumulation of the NFT inventory by bots to sell it on secondary markets for profit. Civic addressed this issue by introducing a new tool called uniqueness verification which helps determine user uniqueness. In other words, it verifies the human-ness of each user and also makes sure that each user uses only one wallet.
This not only helps to make the drop a fair experience among users but also prevents bots from creating a poor user experience for the human participants. By requiring NFT buyers to prove they're not bots, Civic Pass has prevented more than 1 million bots from participating across more than 275 mints.
Supporting Chainabuse
Chainabuse is a multi-chain reporting tool that allows crypto users to report illicit activity to a public forum to empower users against crypto fraud. Along with several industry leaders including Circle, Solana Foundation, The Aave Companies, Hedera, and Binance US, Civic partnered with TRM Labs to launch a community-driven scam reporting platform.
Through distributed efforts and community participation, Chainabuse brings decentralization to security protocols and mechanisms in the crypto ecosystem.
Where can I buy Civic (CVC)?
OKX is among the leading cryptocurrency exchange platforms to buy CVC. By signing up for an OKX account, you can access over 100+ instant swap options for CVC in our Convert Crypto platform with zero fees and spreads.
You can also buy CVC on OKXs Spot Trading and Margin Trading markets against the trading pair CVC/USDT.
How To Store Civic (CVC)?
You can securely store CVC in your OKX wallet and access it at any time through the OKX website or the OKX mobile app. Storing CVC on the OKX wallet is the most user-friendly option. OKX gives you complete control over your CVC holdings so you can buy, sell, or trade anytime and anywhere.
You can also use the official Civic Wallet or hardware wallets such as Ledger or Trezor.
FAQ
Is Civic private?
The Civic platform allows users to own and control their data. Civic aims to keep the data of its users private and confidential and doesn't seek to profit from the contents of that data. Its identity tokens are issued in a way that prevents identity correlation.
Finally, civic is very cautious about its pass types and issues them for broader access control such as proof of uniqueness/humanity or simple CAPTCHA-based bot resistance.
What blockchain is Civic on?
Civic was based on Ethereum from its inception in 2017 up to 2021. However, due to the explosion of use cases and high ETH fees, Civic joined the Solana ecosystem. Even though Ethereum formed a good testing ground for Civic, its high fees and slow transactions caused many consumers and applications to be squeezed out of the ecosystem.
What is Civic Pass?
Civic Pass is the flagship Civic identity management product. The online tool offers global blockchain identity verification, IP location checks for security, and permissioned DeFi access for everyone from retail investors and liquidity providers to DApp creators and institutional investors.
How high can Civic coin go?
While Civic coin has promising cryptographic technology and partnerships, all predictions for CVC price are considered speculative. Any decision to trade CVC should come from personal research. All cryptocurrencies are considered a highly volatile asset class.
How do you mine CVC?
As of January 2024, there's to be no option to mine Civic coins. But, users and validators are rewarded with Civic coins each time their data is transmitted securely through the Civic network. This is done to incentivize more people to use the platform.
