Decentralization: the Perfect Verifiable Trust Companion
Added to the feature of providing a Proof-of-Trust, there are many other benefits offered by Verifiable Credential usage for identifying services, particularly suitable for decentralization.
As messaging services were the first explored services by one of our founder members 2060 OÜ, it will serve as a concrete example - that you can even try on your own as it is implemented.
In a normal messaging service, such as Whatsapp or Telegram, everything is centralized and controlled by the owner of the messaging service:
Single Point of Control: These platforms are centralized—owned and operated by private companies (Meta for WhatsApp, Telegram FZ LLC for Telegram). This means users are at the mercy of corporate policies, jurisdictional laws, and potential data sharing with governments. If you want to build a chatbot, you need authorization of the owner of the messaging service, and it can lead to costs for sending messages to your users.
Proprietary Code: WhatsApp is not open-source, so you can’t independently verify what it’s doing with your data. Telegram is partially open-source, but the server-side code remains closed.
Lack of Interoperability: You can’t message someone on WhatsApp from Telegram or vice versa.
Phone Number Dependency: You need a phone number to sign up, which links your identity to your communication activity. This makes anonymity or pseudonymity difficult. It also creates a centralized attack surface for surveillance or account hijacking.
No Verifiability: You can’t prove a message was sent/received by a specific person/service unless you rely on the platform itself to attest it—which defeats the purpose of trust minimization.
Decentralized Messaging
Decentralized Social Networks
Works for centralized services too
Get/purchase a credential to appear in a Mobile App
Verifiable Credential based business models to reward all participants
The Service Directory: a fair, unbiased search index
You are indexed based on the credentials your services present.
You even can deploy your own container to run your own index