This update has been in the making for quite some time and is intended to provide a deep dive into the evolution of Dock and our exciting vision moving forward.
Our Start and Motivation
Dock was founded with a mission to solve inefficiencies in existing data solutions: untrusted and inaccurate information, data silos and gatekeepers, incompatibilities, and lack of control for users.
Our team spent several months on R&D working with data providers, consumers and users exploring how we could best solve these problems and create a system that could scale to make an impact. After exhaustive research, the solution: standards-compliant, verifiable digital credentials.
What are digital credentials? They represent important data about an individual: work experiences, skills, certificates, degrees, course completion, learnings, achievements and more which ultimately lead to capabilities.
We believe the future of work and the global economy will be powered by digital credentials and blockchain will enable transformational automation through machine readable and universally verifiable data.
Issuing Credentials
Billions of credentials are issued annually across a wide variety of industries using a range of methods and technologies. The vast majority aren't using common web standards or blockchain, making them non-compatible with other systems and creating unnecessary silos and gatekeepers for verification processes which could otherwise be automated.
Credentials should be properly produced at their origin for maximum integrity and interoperability but there are large barriers for issuers today.
Problems Issuers Face
It's not economical or scalable for organizations to utilize blockchain today for credential issuing. We have met with some of the largest publicly traded companies in the world who have tried and after months of work find themselves with expensive, slow and unscalable solutions. Setting up infrastructure, maintenance and upgrades, needing blockchain expertise, and rapidly evolving technology and ecosystems make it nearly impossible to be economically efficient on their own.
Example Issuers
There are two categories we bundle issuers:
- Issuer: direct organization issuing a credential.
Examples: universities, employers, trade associations, governments, e-learning
- Proxy issuer: systems and products built enabling organizations to manage their issuing process, templates, recipients, etc.
Examples: credential issuing platforms, digital badge platforms, human resource systems, learning management systems, association management systems
Dock is primary focused on enabling proxy issuers and large scale issuers, providing the production layer for scale.
Solution: Dock Network
A decentralized autonomous network for high performance credential production.
In order for Dock to reach it's potential the network needs maximum participation and widespread adoption. This is achieved through a non-profit, decentralized, open network of governance and collaboration.
Dock Network will bring the best resources and brightest minds in the world together to produce the highest performing blockchain credentialing solutions at the lowest possible costs.
For organizations looking for scalable blockchain credentialing solutions, it's as simple as plugging into API's, placing orders for your credential issuing needs, and choosing the best technologies available at the lowest production costs.
Introducing: Dock Blockchain
Creating a scalable, cost-effective, user-friendly and decentralized network requires Dock to build its own blockchain. We spent the better part of a year experimenting with Ethereum and trying to create scalable solutions with seamless user experiences and it's just not possible today.
Many new technologies have come to market which we have thoroughly researched, outlined in a recent Governance Proposal (DGP-2). Building the Dock blockchain using the Substrate framework sets up the future of Dock to be interoperable with other blockchains and seamlessly integrate with the Polkadot network in the future. There are many other advantages outlined in DGP-2.
Partners and Contributors
Participation from contributors is important to decentralize governance and create widespread adoption. Dock is seeking participation from the following areas and would love to connect.
- Issuers: companies serving digital badging, digital credentials, education, workforce development, human resource systems, governments.
- Operators: blockchain capable operators interested in running implementations or building your own.
- Authority and validators: high trust operators who can help secure the network.
- Open Source Developers: we're always looking for quality folks to contribute.
Reach out to us at contribute @ dock.io
FAQ's
We've compiled a list of commonly asked questions and will continue to add and adjust with your feedback.
