iTrue is giving users control of their own data back from big tech firms. Also, business and individual users can earn rewards for participating in the data economy and decentralized app marketplace. The CEO Max Tkachenko will be telling us more about the iTrue project in this interview.
1) Please tell us your name and about yourself?
I’m Max Tkachenko. I was born in Russia, although I have been living in Miami, Flordia, in the US, for the last 15 years.
I studied at Broward College in FL, and Computer Science at Harvard. After graduating, I opened my own business in the Cyber Forensics sector.
I still have my own business involving in Cyber Forensics and Investigations, which services global clients. In my experience in developing security applications for clients in the financial sector and digital payment industries, I saw the need to detect and prevent fraud by use of biometric identities, which led me and my team to start iTrue.
Prior to iTrue, I founded Genico, a digital security, AI and blockchain development company offering services to enterprises around the world. I have worked with over 280 projects with $107 million in total market capitalization.
2) What is iTrue and what services are you providing to the blockchain market?
iTrue is a Blockchain based solution focused on giving users control of their own data back from big technology firms. On the front end, we secure access to the system with facial recognition software, which means your face (we call it “Face Pass”) is the key to your data.
On the back end, all data is stored in a state-of-the-art Stone Storage solution, which is a combination of blockchain and distributed database technology. In addition, we offer an incentive system for users on our platform. Business and individual users can earn rewards for participating in the data economy and decentralized app marketplace.
iTrue is therefore an innovative platform for storage and biometric identity for the decentralized web. It’s not just a blockchain but a merge of blockchain and database. Although blockchain is immutable and data cannot be altered, our unique storage technology actually allows users to delete data upon request – which makes it compliant with GDPR and other existing data privacy rules. And nobody can read that deleted data as it is encrypted. Moreover, the iTrue system actually destroys the link to such deleted data. What remains is the record of deletion itself which is stored on our blockchain-based Stone Storage solution.
3) How does the ITrue ecosystem work and what is the technology behind the project?
At the core of iTrue’s platform is blockchain, which is the optimal way of storing data online in the future. We are tackling data security issues head on with our state-of-the-art Stone Storage solution, a distributed database that enables users to store information without the need for a centralized server, as it’s based off of blockchain distributed ledger principles.
With our Stone Storage solution, personal information is stored separately from its record of transaction and can be divided into different levels and categories. This allows users to decide which information to share with which party, putting users in complete control over sensitive information. We are taking data security to the next level by securing information using biometric technology. This means users must successfully verify their identity by scanning their face, eye iris, or other facial feature in order to access their stored data.
The iTrue token economy primarily consists of a marketplace for data and a marketplace for decentralized applications.
We have 2 models of data monetization: contact data (to get new clients) and UX data (for research purpose and insights how users interact with a product).
- In the contact data marketplace, participants can benefit as follows:
- Contractors, or entiites that collect and process data, can earn tokens or get new user data they don’t have when they insert user data they have into the platform;
- Clients, or businesses that require user data, can acquire data by paying in tokens;
- Users earn token rewards when they share their personal contact data with contractors or clients.
It should be noted that all requests for user data will require user approval, and they can also remove their personal data from the system, making iTrue fully compliant with privacy regulations like the GDPR.
- In the US data marketplace, participants can benefit this way:
- Clients, developers, or businesses that need testing of their existing or new application or system, can acquire anonymous UX data reports, which will include mimic reactions, eyes movement, fingers interaction with mouse and touch screen during testing of a product, by paying in tokens;
- Users earn token rewards when they participate in testing and share their UX data in anonymous view with clients.
Meanwhile, in the decentralized app marketplace, participants can benefit as follows:
- Developers can build apps that take advantage of the existing modules (i.e., ID verification, Biometric recognition, Personal information, etc.). They can earn tokens when users or businesses use their turnkey solutions or require customized applications. Devs can also build and share their own modules;
- Enterprises can utilize either turnkey solutions or request their own customized applications;
- Individual users can either use tokens to pay for access to unique paid apps and get rewards when they use paid or free apps.
4) What is the demand and market size of Blockchain-as-a-Service solutions and what unique benefit is iTrue bringing to this market?
iTrue wants to bring together Blockchain technology and Biometric Identity standards in order to get rid of online fraud. Both industries are growth markets on their own, and we believe addressing both BaaS and Biometrics will enable us to make these technologies more accessible to both enterprises and users.
The market for BaaS is estimated at US$ 623 million this year, which is set to grow to US$ 15.455 billion in five years. Demand for such services is distributed across industries, but the biggest demand will come from the banking, finance, and insurance industries.
In terms of biometrics, smartphone manufacturers like Apple and Samsung have popularized their own versions of biometric authentication, such as fingerprint and face ID. While this pertains to the mass appeal of such technologies, there is a bigger potential, which is in commercial and enterprise usage.
In terms of enterprise use, biometrics go beyond fingerprints. The global market for face ID was US$ 3.36 billion in 2016, and it will grow to US$6.84 billion by 2021. By 2022, it will shoot up to US$32.73 billion, according to Markets and Markets.
It goes without saying that financial services will benefit greatly from the ability to make secure identification, authentication, and transactions through biometrics. Agricultural Bank of China is promoting withdrawals by facial recognition scans nationwide. Additionally, China Construction Bank has also announced commercial facial scan payments. Moreover, Shenzhen Metro, Tencent and GRG Banking jointly released a new solution which officially marked a new era of facial recognition – it will enable seamless and secure access to transport, communications, and frictionlness payments all through biometrics.
Given that the growth in demand for BaaS will be supported by industries that relate to finance and fintech, it is only fitting that we also focus on the digital identity and security aspect. iTrue will make access to such financial and other services more convenient and secure through facial recognition.
5) Do you have any Competitors or similar use cases you will like to share with us?
We can point out two main fields that we want to disrupt: BaaS and identity verification.
In terms of BaaS, we can perhaps count blockchains that allow development of dApps as competitors, including NEO. Our main differentiator is that we have modular architecture, so we can add any new verified module. We can also support smart contracts written on any programming language, unlimited data capacity, and a robust search capability unmatched by any blockchain solution today.
In terms of identity systems, there are a handful of blockchain platforms that have also launched with their own ID verification services, such as Civic and Verime. Here, again, we can highlight our integrated privacy controls, dApp development, and face verification as our main differentiators.
6) Please tell us more about the iTrue Token and token sale Conditions?
We are currently on our private sale round. We accept investments from US$25,000 up, and we give 25% bonus during this round.
7) Do you have any major Partners or investors you will like to share with us, or any new opportunities for partners?
Events and trade shows are one of the biggest use-cases of iTrue, and we are glad to have partnered with Trade Center Europa, one of the biggest chain of shopping and entertainment centers in Russia.
We have partnered with Bancor Network, a decentralized liquidity network based in Zug, Switzerland which completed a historic Token Generation Event in June 2017.
We’re in negotiations with other e-commerce and offline business companies to launch pilot projects with help of our technologies.
8) On what stage of development is the ITrue platform, what is next on your Roadmap?
We have developed our identity verification system, initially using facial recognition in user identification and verification. In terms of the technology, we have also accomplished our hybrid data storage solution, which is a combination of blockchain and database, thus ensuring ability to even run a search engine across the decentralized storage.
We are currently working on an API to connect our platform and modules with third-party solutions.
9) Who are the experts behind this project, please tell us about your team and customer support?
Our core team has had decades of experience in building secure and encrypted solutions for financial applications. In terms of blockchain and computer vision development, we have several experts on-board:
Maxim Ankinin is chief technology officer. He has 10+ years experience in programming, creating solutions for various companies from small utilities to big business systems, modelling for computer vision and other scientists’ problem. He has worked with C/C++, Python 2/3 and various libraries (for example, OpenCV, ROOT, Boost, Qt 3/4/5 and others). He has experience with Linux (including low-level programming – writing Linux kernel modules), embedded systems (for example, MIPS 64) and GPGPU solutions. A published technology author, Maxim has a PhD degree in computer vision (satellite imagery), artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Abhishek Gangwar is our Chief Computer Vision Engineer. With a decade experience in biometrics and computer vision technology, he has been associated with Aadhaar project and worked as a researcher in Computer Vision and Machine Learning domain at India’s Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), which has around 15 branches all over India with more than 2,500 employees.
10) How Safe is iTrue, would you like to talk about your legal and security measures?
iTrue values user privacy, and thus we have built the platform with GDPR compliance at the outset.
In terms of data storage, iTrue’s Stone Storage solution utilizes a mix of blockchain transaction recording, along with encrypted database storage, to ensure a balance of security and performance.
Encrypted personal data is stored in a decentralized network with controlled access. The system gets biometric data and additional metadata related to an operation in order to generate a crypto key. The data gets encoded by the generated public key, and finally it is transferred through protected interfaces.
Confidential user data is never stored on personal devices for safety reasons, since personal devices are most likely to get hacked with the use of social engineering.
11) Do you have more information for our readers?
Apart from our iTrue whitepaper, for quick reference, you can check out our investor deck here: https://itrue.io/files/iTrueInvestorDeck.pdf.
