The Internet's Missing Link: How Blockchain is Rewriting Our Digital DNA

On a crisp autumn morning in 2022, Gene Indenbaum, a Long Island resident, awoke to a living nightmare: in the eyes of the financial world, he no longer existed. His once-reliable bank accounts were frozen, credit cards declined without explanation, and his entire financial life had screeched to an abrupt halt. The culprit? Deep within the labyrinth of digital bureaucracy, an algorithm—cold and indifferent—had mistakenly declared him dead.

As Indenbaum embarked on a months-long odyssey to resurrect his financial identity, thousands of miles away, a team of Danish and Swiss scientists were tirelessly working in their high-tech university labs. Unaware of Indenbaum's personal predicament, they were intimately familiar with the kind of digital identity crisis he was facing.

These scientists were putting the finishing touches on a revolutionary platform designed to prevent such Kafkaesque nightmares—a blockchain-based, self-sovereign digital identity infrastructure so robust it could withstand everything from clerical errors to nation-state cyberattacks. The platform, known as Concordium, aims to do for identity what TCP/IP did for information sharing.

This brings us to a larger realization: the internet, as revolutionary as it has been, remains incomplete. It’s a system built on the unfinished promises of digital connection.

1 The Internet's Unfinished Revolution

The two events—Indenbaum's identity crisis and the Danish-Swiss collaboration—though seemingly unrelated, represent both the promise and peril of our digital age. They are the yin and yang of a revolution that began with two letters—‘LO’—transmitted over ARPANET in 1969, a revolution that remains as unfinished as the word those letters were part of, now more than half a century later.

Imagine for a moment that you're set to make the biggest financial transaction of your life. You've scrimped, saved, and endured countless tormenting ramen dinners. Finally, you're ready to wire the down payment for your first home. But when you log into your bank account, something's wrong. A series of alerts flood your phone—unauthorized transactions, account freezes, and worse, your credentials no longer work. Your identity has been compromised, unraveling much like Indenbaum's financial life that fateful autumn morning.

This scenario is, unfortunately, an ever-growing threat in a world where our identities are fragmented across hundreds of databases, each representing a fragile link vulnerable to breaches or manipulation. It's as if we've built a global information superhighway but neglected to create a universal system for digital driver's licenses—leaving us to navigate without a unified identity framework, exposing us to privacy breaches and the risks of digital missteps and attacks.

But what if there were a way to make your digital identity as irrevocable as your DNA? What if you could carry your entire financial history, educational credentials, and medical records securely in your pocket, sharing only what you choose, when you choose—completely under your control? And what if this self-sovereign solution not only prevented identity theft but also empowered individuals on a global scale, addressing challenges from refugee crises to financial exclusion?

This is no longer science fiction. It's the promise of blockchain technology and Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI)—a system that could reshape how we manage our digital identities. Among the early pioneers of this revolution is Concordium, the platform developed by the same Danish and Swiss scientists we encountered earlier.

To understand why this matters—why it could be as transformative as the internet itself—we need to journey back to the early days of digital networking. We need to explore how the open, decentralized internet triumphed over closed systems and how its very openness became both its greatest strength and its most significant vulnerability. We need to grapple with the paradox of decentralization and see how similar forces are at play in the realm of finance today.

This is a story about technology, yes. But more importantly, it's a story about trust, identity, and the future of human interaction in the digital age. It's a story that begins with a missing piece—the identity layer of the internet that was overlooked in the rush to connect the world. And it's a story that may very well end with a solution that reshapes our digital lives as profoundly as the internet itself did.

2 The Missing Identity Layer of the Internet

In 1993, a cartoon appeared in The New Yorker that would become emblematic of the digital age. It depicted a dog sitting at a computer, saying to another dog, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." This simple illustration captured a profound truth about the nascent World Wide Web: online identity is fluid, malleable, and often unverifiable.

Fast-forward to today, and this ambiguity remains both a feature and a bug. While it allows for free expression and the democratization of information, it also facilitates fraud, cyberbullying, and the spread of misinformation.

Imagine you're at a masquerade ball. Everyone's wearing elaborate masks, and you can interact freely, but you can never be quite sure who you're talking to. Now imagine trying to conduct serious business in this environment. Sounds absurd, doesn't it? Yet this is essentially how we operate on the internet today.

Let's consider Alice, a hypothetical but all-too-real digital citizen. Alice has 127 online accounts (yes, that's actually the average for most internet users today). That's 127 usernames, 127 passwords (well, probably more like five passwords reused in various combinations), and 127 potential points of failure.

One day, Alice tries to log into her email and finds she's been locked out. Someone in a distant country has taken control of her account. Within hours, the dominoes start to fall. Her Facebook is compromised, her bank sends alarming text messages about unusual activity, while her Spotify suddenly plays nothing but Nickelback (truly a fate worse than death).

Alice's digital life has been shattered, and putting it back together will take months of frustrating phone calls, emails, and identity verifications. All because our current system of online identity is about as secure as a house with 127 doors, each with a different key hidden under a nearby rock.

The root of this problem goes back to the early days of the internet. When pioneers like Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn were designing the protocols that would become the internet's foundation, their focus was on creating a resilient network capable of surviving even a nuclear attack. Identity wasn't a primary concern. The goal was connectivity, not security.

As a result, identity on the internet has always been an afterthought—a patchwork solution built on top of a system that wasn’t designed for it. It’s like trying to put toothpaste back in the tube—nearly impossible once it’s already out.

This oversight has led to a digital world where privacy is a luxury, security is a constant battle, and trust is increasingly rare. Tech giants hoard our personal data, identity theft is a booming industry, and the very concept of truth is under siege with the rise of deep fakes and misinformation. But what if there were another way?

This is the promise of Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI), a concept that envisions individuals having full control over their digital identities. SSI represents a radical shift from the centralized models of identity management to a decentralized approach where the individual is at the center—a solution rooted in the very principles that shaped the early internet: decentralization and openness.

SSI, instead of relying on countless websites and services to manage fragments of our identity, empowers us to control our digital selves entirely, making our online identity personal digital DNA—unique, irrefutable, and wholly owned by us—addressing the very crisis that Gene Indenbaum faced. Nevertheless, to fully grasp why SSI is crucial, we need to look back at how the internet's open nature led to these identity challenges.

3 The Inevitability of Openness: Why the Internet Won

In the decades following that first ARPANET transmission back in 1969, a battle was brewing in the world of digital communications. It was about much more than just technology—it was a clash of philosophies, one that would go on to shape the future of human interaction for generations to come.

Fast-forward to 1982. While most of America was dancing to Michael Jackson’s "Thriller," a small group of DARPA employees were quietly orchestrating a revolution. On January 1st, 1983, ARPANET switched its core networking protocols to TCP/IP. It was a moment that would change the world, though few truly realized it at the time.

While this was happening, several other systems were vying for dominance. In the United States, CompuServe was gaining traction as a subscription-based information service, offering email, forums, and chat rooms to its users within its tightly controlled, proprietary ecosystem. Across the Atlantic, X.25, a connection-oriented packet-switched network protocol, was being widely adopted by telecommunications companies for their data services, creating centralized networks under the strict control of telecom giants.

Meanwhile, in France, the government was placing its bet on yet another closed system. The Minitel, a computer terminal connected to phone lines, was being rolled out to millions of homes. It offered electronic mail, online shopping, and even chat rooms—sound familiar? The French government was convinced they held the future of digital communication in the palm of their hand, all neatly contained within their national borders.

They were all wrong. By the mid-90s, the World Wide Web had exploded in popularity, while Minitel and the other incumbents were already looking like relics. But why? All of these systems offered similar services. All connected people digitally. So what made the difference?

The answer lies in a principle as old as evolution itself: adaptability wins.

The internet, built on open protocols like TCP/IP and HTTP, became a fertile ground for innovation. Anyone with a good idea could build on top of it. It was chaotic, messy, and gloriously decentralized. The French Minitel, by contrast, was a walled garden, tightly controlled by a central authority. All very neat and orderly, but ultimately doomed.

This pattern—open systems outcompeting closed ones—isn't unique to the internet. It's a recurring theme in technological and biological evolution. Linux, the open-source operating system, now powers everything from smartphones to supercomputers. Wikipedia, the crowdsourced encyclopedia, has largely replaced traditional reference works.

However, this very openness that fueled the internet's success also led to unforeseen challenges—most notably, the issue of digital identity. Because the internet was designed to be open and accessible, there was no built-in mechanism for verifying identity. Ownership? Identity? Those details were hard to pin down in this new digital frontier.

Think of a city where anyone could build a house wherever they pleased—no zoning laws, no building codes. It would be vibrant, sure, but also a bit of a mess. This is essentially what happened with the internet. In our rush to build and connect, we forgot to create a standardized way to prove who we are online. We built a global network without the crucial native identity layer.

The consequences of this oversight are everywhere. Password fatigue, data breaches, identity theft—these are all symptoms of a system where identity is bolted on as an afterthought rather than built in from the ground up.

The historical battle between open and closed systems didn't just shape our communication networks; it set the stage for today's digital identity crisis. The openness that allowed the internet to flourish is the same openness that now requires a new solution for identity—one that can preserve the benefits of decentralization while providing the security and trust we need.

But what if we could keep the openness that made the internet great while adding the identity layer it always lacked?

This is where blockchain technology and Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) enter the story. Just as TCP/IP provided the foundation for the internet’s explosive growth, platforms like Concordium are laying the groundwork for the next phase of our digital evolution.

To understand why this matters—and why the rise of platforms like Concordium may be as inevitable as the internet’s triumph over closed systems like Minitel—we need to explore the origins of blockchain, starting with its arrival in 2009 during a time of financial upheaval.

4 The Rise of Blockchain and Self-Sovereign Identity

In 2009, while the world was still reeling from the financial crisis, an anonymous figure (or group) known as Satoshi Nakamoto quietly released a whitepaper that would change everything. The paper, titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System," introduced the world to blockchain technology.

At first glance, blockchain might seem like an unlikely hero in our quest for digital identity. After all, isn't blockchain just about cryptocurrencies and speculative investments? This narrow view misses the forest for the trees.

Think of blockchain as digital Lego. Bitcoin was just the first structure built with these blocks. But once you have the blocks, you can build almost anything. And one of the most promising structures we can build is a new system of identity.

"..The economic value potential for digital ID is different in emerging versus mature economies. ?For emerging economies, the average value creation potential of digital ID is the equivalent of 6% of GDP by 2030; for mature economies, the average value creation is the equivalent of 3% of GDP by 2030.." - The Wall Street Journal

To understand why, let's return to our friend Alice from earlier. Remember her 127 online accounts? In a blockchain-based identity system, Alice wouldn't need 127 accounts. She'd have one decentralized identifier (DID), which she controls entirely. This DID would be like a master key, allowing Alice to prove who she is across the digital landscape without revealing more information than necessary.

But here's where it gets really interesting. With Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) built on blockchain, Alice's identity isn't just a username and password. It's a collection of verifiable credentials. Her university degree, her driver's license, her work history—all of these could be cryptographically signed, tamper-proof digital credentials that Alice carries with her in a digital wallet.

Imagine Alice applying for a job. Instead of filling out lengthy forms and waiting for background checks, she could instantly prove her qualifications with a few clicks. The employer could verify her credentials without Alice ever having to reveal unnecessary personal information.

Or consider voting. The integrity of elections hinges on our ability to verify voters' identities. With blockchain-based SSI, we could create a system that's simultaneously more secure and more privacy-preserving than anything we have today.

This isn't just theoretical. Estonia, often called the world's most advanced digital society, has been using blockchain-like technology in its e-residency program since 2014. Citizens can vote, pay taxes, and access government services with their digital identities. During the 2007 cyberattacks from Russia, Estonia's digital infrastructure bent but didn't break, motivating the country to implement more resilient decentralized systems by 2012.

But as with any groundbreaking technology, there’s a catch. The very features that make blockchain so powerful—its immutability and transparency—also pose significant challenges. How do you balance the need for privacy with the requirements of regulatory compliance? How do you create a system that's both decentralized and trustworthy?

This is precisely the challenge that Concordium seeks to address. By integrating identity into the blockchain's core, Concordium offers a practical solution to the identity crisis we've explored.

5 Concordium: Bridging Trust and Technology

A mid-sized international logistics company navigating the intricate web of global trade. Each transaction crosses borders—both physical and digital—entailing a labyrinth of compliance checks, regulatory standards, and identity verifications. Transactions are slow, intermediaries multiply, and the ever-present questions loom: Can we trust our partners? Are we fully compliant? How do we safeguard against fraud?

Concordium, a blockchain platform addressing one of the most pressing challenges in the digital age: merging the decentralized freedom of blockchain technology with the trust and accountability demanded by real-world applications.

What distinguishes Concordium is that identity is not an add-on—it's embedded into the very architecture of the blockchain at the base layer. While many protocols rely on third-party applications or second-layer solutions to handle identity, Concordium ensures that identity is part of the core protocol. This foundational integration creates a scalable and flexible environment, designed to grow and evolve with the demands of decentralized applications while always maintaining the integrity of user verification.

By anchoring identity into the base layer, Concordium builds a blockchain ready for the future—one that doesn't isolate secure transactions within confined zones but offers system-wide trust and compliance. This approach provides a robust framework for Web3 credentials, enabling a wide range of use cases, from secure digital identities to decentralized finance (DeFi) and beyond.

The base-layer integration allows Concordium to offer unparalleled flexibility and scalability, providing the ideal foundation for Web3 ID systems. Users can manage their identities across various applications, businesses can interact with confidence, and all parties can trust that compliance is maintained without sacrificing privacy.

Concordium's unique model blends the strengths of decentralization with the regulatory confidence of traditional systems. Users verify their identities upon registration, but this information is encrypted and remains inaccessible during regular transactions. Only in cases of legitimate legal necessity can authorized entities unseal this data, ensuring that privacy is upheld while maintaining the possibility of accountability.

This design makes Concordium a bridge between the open, decentralized world of blockchain and the legal and regulatory frameworks that businesses rely on. It's a system that enables decentralized applications to scale with trust, fostering innovation without the constant tension between freedom and compliance.

Just as TCP/IP laid the foundation for the internet's expansion, Concordium is creating the infrastructure that will allow blockchain to integrate seamlessly into the global economy. By weaving identity into the blockchain's fabric, Concordium empowers businesses and users alike to meet the evolving demands of a Web3-powered world.

Concordium's approach is like a digital sealed envelope: the contents are private, but in cases of legal necessity, authorized parties can "unseal" the envelope. This solution bridges the gap between the openness of blockchain and the regulatory needs of traditional systems, paving the way for real-world applications of Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI).

Furthermore, Concordium's vision extends beyond identity. It's about enabling a new kind of decentralized economy that operates within legal frameworks, fostering innovation while maintaining the integrity of financial systems.

This brings us to the world of finance—a domain ripe for disruption.

6 The Inevitable Transformation of Finance

In 1995, Newsweek published an article titled "The Internet? Bah!" The author, astronomer Clifford Stoll, dismissed the internet as a fad, incapable of replacing traditional means of communication and commerce. Similarly, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman famously predicted in 1998 that by 2005, it would become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy would be no greater than the fax machine's. History has obviously proven both of these gentlemen spectacularly wrong.

Today, we face similar skepticism regarding Decentralized Finance (DeFi). Traditional financial institutions, with their centuries-old practices, seem unassailable. Yet, the same forces that propelled the internet to dominance are at play in finance.

Let's set the scene: It's 2024, and we meet a young engineer at a Silicon Valley startup. Fresh from receiving his first paycheck, he decides to send a portion back home to his parents in Bangladesh. Simple enough, right? Not quite. Suddenly, moving money halfway across the world feels more like navigating a bureaucratic obstacle course than the frictionless tech utopia he thought he'd signed up for. Sending an email takes seconds, but moving money? That'll take days and come with hefty fees.

Welcome to the parallel universe of finance, where time seems to have stood still.

While the internet was busy revolutionizing how we communicate, shop, and share cat videos, the world of finance remained stubbornly anchored in the past. It's as if, while the rest of us have upgraded to smartphones, banks are still using 70s-era rotary phones.

The SWIFT network, the backbone of international banking, was founded in 1973. The system responsible for moving trillions of dollars around the globe every day is older than disco! And much like disco, it's starting to show its age.

But why has finance remained a walled garden in our increasingly open digital world? The answer lies in a word that brings joy to bankers and fuels greed, often at the expense of regulators: trust.

In the world of finance, trust is everything. And for centuries, that trust has been built on centralization and control. Banks act as trusted intermediaries, governments as guarantors. It's a system that has long worked—more or less—but it's also rife with inefficiencies and inequalities.

Consider Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi social entrepreneur who won the Nobel Peace Prize for pioneering microfinance. Yunus realized that traditional banks were failing the poor, so he developed a new system, offering small loans to those who needed them most—people like our engineer's family, often overlooked by conventional banks.

Just as our Silicon Valley engineer struggled with the inefficiencies of sending money home, millions across the globe face even greater barriers—locked out of the financial system entirely. According to the World Bank, 1.7 billion adults remain unbanked, cut off from financial services that many of us take for granted.

This is where the parallel with early computer networks becomes striking. Just as closed systems like CompuServe and Minitel served only a limited audience, today's financial system reaches only a privileged part of the global population. But here's where it gets intriguing: just as the open internet eventually triumphed over those closed networks, an open and more inclusive financial system may be on the verge of doing the same.

As the shortcomings of the traditional financial system became increasingly apparent, blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies emerged as a new frontier. When Satoshi Nakamoto released the Bitcoin whitepaper in 2008, it wasn't just a new form of digital cash. It was a radical reimagining of how financial systems could work.

Bitcoin demonstrated something revolutionary: a system where trust was embedded in code, not intermediaries. No more reliance on banks or central authorities—just cryptographic proof and consensus mechanisms.

But Bitcoin, revolutionary as it was, was just the start. The real magic happens when new systems evolve from groundbreaking ideas. Fueled by self-sovereignty, decentralization, and eliminating the need for trust, innovations have stretched far beyond Bitcoin’s original store-of-value-focused protocol, setting the stage for solving Web3’s most acute problem by providing the internet’s missing identity layer and opening the door to a true infrastructure inversion for the world of finance.

DeFi represents a shift towards open, permissionless financial services built on blockchain networks. Lending, borrowing, trading—all without traditional intermediaries. Yet, DeFi faces significant hurdles without robust identity solutions. Without a way to verify identities while preserving privacy, DeFi platforms struggle to meet regulatory requirements, limiting their ability to scale and gain mainstream acceptance.

That's where Concordium steps in. By integrating SSI into its blockchain platform, Concordium provides the necessary infrastructure for DeFi to operate within legal frameworks. By balancing privacy with compliance, it facilitates secure and compliant financial transactions, bridging the gap between the old world of finance and the new.

The skepticism facing blockchain-powered DeFi today echoes the doubts that greeted the early internet. The shift from centralized, opaque systems to open, transparent networks will face hurdles, but the trend towards decentralization appears to be gaining momentum.

DeFi and SSI have the potential to significantly reshape finance but also digital interactions more broadly by empowering individuals everywhere to fully own and control their digital lives. Let's envision how this future might look.

7 Envisioning a Future Empowered by Self-Sovereign Identity

Imagine a world where your digital identity is as secure and unique as your physical one, where you control who has access to your personal information, and where trust is established through cryptographic certainty rather than institutional authority. Now picture this: It's 2030. Sarah, a freelance graphic designer, wakes up in her apartment in Lisbon. She has a busy day ahead, starting with a new client meeting in Tokyo—virtually, of course.

Sarah opens her digital wallet, which contains her Self-Sovereign Identity. This isn't just a collection of usernames and passwords; it's a comprehensive, cryptographically secure representation of her digital self. With a few taps, she grants temporary access to her portfolio and work history to her potential client in Tokyo.

The client, impressed with Sarah's credentials (which are instantly verifiable thanks to blockchain technology), agrees to hire her. Payment terms are negotiated and locked into a smart contract. As soon as Sarah delivers the work, payment will be automatically released—no invoices, no 30-day wait, no international transfer fees.

After the meeting, Sarah decides to apply for a loan to upgrade her equipment. She doesn't fill out lengthy application forms or wait days for approval. Instead, she simply grants the lender access to relevant parts of her financial history—all stored securely in her SSI. The lender's algorithm, seeing Sarah's stellar credit history and consistent income, approves the loan instantly at a favorable rate.

For lunch, Sarah meets a friend at a new restaurant. She doesn't carry a physical wallet—her digital identity, stored on her smartphone (and backed up on the blockchain), is all she needs. The restaurant's system verifies she's of legal drinking age without Sarah having to reveal her actual birthdate.

Later, Sarah video calls her grandmother in Canada. Her grandmother, despite being tech-averse, manages her digital life with ease thanks to SSI. She no longer struggles with multiple passwords or falls victim to phishing scams. Her medical records, securely stored in her digital identity, are easily shared with doctors when needed, ensuring she always receives proper care, even when traveling.

As evening falls, Sarah checks her investment portfolio. She's not limited to stocks and bonds—her portfolio includes tokenized real estate from three different countries, as well as stakes in several DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations). Thanks to DeFi protocols, her assets are automatically balanced and optimized for returns.

Before bed, Sarah votes in an online referendum. Her digital identity ensures that her vote is counted accurately while maintaining her privacy. She doesn't worry about voter fraud or her voting record being misused—the blockchain guarantees both the integrity of the process and her anonymity.

This scenario might sound like science fiction, but every technology mentioned already exists in some form. What's missing is the integration—the connective tissue that brings these disparate technologies together into a seamless whole. That connective tissue is Self-Sovereign Identity, built on blockchain technology.

The world described here is one of radical efficiency and unprecedented personal empowerment. It's a world where identity theft becomes nearly impossible, where financial services are available to everyone, and where privacy and verification coexist harmoniously.

But it's also a world that raises new questions and challenges. How do we ensure that this technology doesn't create new forms of digital divide? How do we balance the need for privacy with the requirements of law enforcement? And how do we manage the transition from our current systems to this new paradigm?

These are not easy questions to answer. But they are questions we must grapple with, because the trend towards decentralization and digital identity is already underway. Just as the internet fundamentally reshaped our world in ways few could have predicted, the combination of blockchain, SSI, and DeFi has the potential to trigger an equally profound transformation.

Now, at the cusp of what appears to be the dawn of a new era, it's worth reflecting on how we got here and what it means to complete the digital revolution.

8 Completing the Digital Revolution

We began our journey with a story of two letters—"LO"—transmitted over ARPANET in 1969. It was an inauspicious start to what would become the most transformative technology of the 20th century. Now, as we stand on the brink of a new digital revolution, it's worth asking: what will be our "LO" moment?

Perhaps it's already happened. Maybe it was the day Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first Bitcoin block, encoding within it a Times headline about bank bailouts—a subtle nod to the system it aimed to disrupt. Or perhaps it's still to come, waiting for the moment when blockchain and Self-Sovereign Identity reach their tipping point and cascade into mainstream adoption.

Whatever that moment may be, one thing is clear: we are witnessing the completion of a vision that began with the internet. The internet gave us a way to freely share information. Blockchain and SSI promise to give us a way to freely share trust.

Think back to our friend Alice, struggling with her 127 online accounts. Now imagine a world where Alice's digital identity is as unique and irrefutable as her fingerprint, where her personal information is truly personal—controlled by her and her alone. This isn't just a technological shift; it's a fundamental reimagining of the relationship between individuals, institutions, and information.

But as we've explored, this future is not guaranteed. The path forward is fraught with challenges—technical, societal, and regulatory. Yet, if the history of the internet has taught us anything, it's that open, decentralized systems have a way of prevailing, often in ways we can't predict.

Concordium and projects like it are building much more than new technologies; they're laying the groundwork for a new kind of digital society. One where privacy and accountability coexist, where financial services are accessible to all, and where individuals have true ownership of their digital selves.

As we navigate this transition, we would do well to remember the lessons of the internet's early days. The technologists who built the internet's foundational protocols couldn't have imagined Facebook, Spotify, or even online banking. They simply created open systems that allowed for permissionless innovation. In the same way, the true potential of blockchain and SSI may lie not in the applications we can imagine today, but in the ones we can't yet envision.

We stand at a crossroads similar to the one faced by early internet pioneers. The choices we make now—about privacy, about identity, about the fundamental architecture of our digital lives—will shape the world for generations to come.

In 1995, Bill Gates described the internet as a tidal wave that would wash over the computer industry. Today, blockchain and SSI feel like a similar force—not just for tech, but for finance, governance, and identity itself.

The revolution that began with "LO" is not complete. Those two letters were meant to spell 'LOGIN,' a command to connect that was never fully realized. Today, we are still struggling with the full promise of that first digital handshake—secure, trusted identity in a networked world.

However, we now finally have the opportunity to build a global network for trust. Blockchain and SSI enable us to complete the command, turning 'LO' into the 'LOGIN' the internet always needed. It's a task as daunting as it is exhilarating, filled with challenges and ripe with potential.

As we embark on this next chapter of our digital evolution, let us approach it with the same spirit of openness, innovation, and human-centric design that made the internet a transformative force for good. For in the end, technology is just a tool. It's up to us to decide how to use it, and what kind of world we want to build with it.

The internet's missing piece—a robust, user-controlled identity layer—is finally within our grasp. As you go about your digital day, remember: every time you log into an account, make an online purchase, or prove your identity, you're interacting with a system that's on the brink of profound change. The future of digital identity is being written now, and it's being written on the blockchain.