What is Litentry?

Litentry (LIT) is a decentralized identity aggregation oracle that strives to enhance the management and authentication of identities across blockchains. Constructed on the Substrate framework, it is tailored for Polkadot, EVM-based platforms, and other multi-chain ecosystems. Litentry utilizes Trusted Execution Environments (TEE), verifiable credentials, and customizable score computation to initiate a new era of digital identity. Its flagship product, the IdentityHub, aims to transform how identities are managed across blockchains. Litentry's approach to identity is user-centric, bridging both Web2 and Web3, and provides a comprehensive suite for user activity and identity data management.

How does Litentry work?

Litentry operates by enabling users to link their identities in a privacy-preserving context. It strives to give users full control over their personal data and enable them to gain social and economic value from it. The protocol can be adopted in on-chain reputation, governance, DeFi, and customized data services. Litentry's infrastructure, where identity data progresses from a disordered and scattered state to a structured state, consists of three core layers that create a verifiable, privacy-enhancing identity computation process. These layers include the source data layer, address analysis layer, and identity aggregation layer. The functionality of the Litentry protocol is divided into three main stages: linking sensitive identities, generating scores and credentials, and issuance of verifiable credentials.

What are the potential use cases for Litentry?

Litentry's identity aggregation and privatized verifiable credentials can be useful in several situations. These include airdrop whitelisting, audience selection & community insights, soulbound tokens or NFTs, Web3 native job markets, credit scores, and cross-platform reputation. For instance, the Litentry identity verification system allows crypto projects to identify and filter out low-quality engagement in an airdrop. Additionally, decentralized identities allow communities and projects to gain a better understanding of their audience and reward them for sharing their pseudonymous identity data.

What is the history of Litentry?

Litentry was founded by Hanwen Cheng, a former Software Engineer at Parity. While working on a Signer project at Parity, he realized the need for an interoperable identity system and started a side project, which eventually became Litentry. In 2019, after building his team and taking the project more seriously, Litentry began its journey: they received a grant from the Web3 Foundation, then significant funding from FBG, Candaq, Hypersphere, Signum, Altonomy, and other crypto VCs. The team also strives to be listed on major exchanges.