Manyone aims to create secure social media with a focus on decentralisation and digital security
Vancouver-based technology venture Manyone announced on Friday that it had formed a partnership with the University College London (UCL) Centre for Blockchain Technologies (CBT).
With a focus on decentralisation and digital identity, Manyone is working with The Peer Social Foundation to produce a new distributed internet that gives users full control over their digital identity. They aim to improve digital security and productivity through private digital identities and secure networks for decentralised communication they deliver, while taking part in education and research into areas that are important to consumers, businesses and governments.
Manyone CEO and The Peer Social Foundation Executive Director, Michael Cholod, said, “As a dedicated group of decentralists, our teams look to find ways to free communication from manipulation and control by protecting individual, business or governmental digital identities. Part of that mission is to work with the most respected and knowledgeable people in the field. The team at UCL represent some of the best thinkers in the area and we’re honoured to work with them.”
The new strategic relationship will look to promote individuals’ dignity, privacy and market power in the emerging digital economy through their research into business imperatives, infrastructure, regulatory policy and end-user technology systems.
UCL CBT Founder and Executive Director, Dr Paolo Tasca, commented, “On behalf of UCL and the Centre for Blockchain Technologies, I am delighted to begin our new partnership with international industry partners Peer Social Foundation and Manyone. We are grateful for their support and recognition of the impactful research being done to meet our shared ambitions. Thanks to their generosity we will continue our proud tradition of enabling academic research with real-world application.”
The research will be directed towards empowering local communities and promoting truly consensual trust relationships by determining the approaches and requirements for systems with features that specifically support these aims.
UCL CBT Senior Research Associate, Dr Geoffrey Goodell, explained, “The funding from The Peer Social Foundation and Manyone will provide vital resource to explore and evaluate user-controlled identity management, decentralised social networks, and tokenisation as vehicle for authorisation without identification. Our partnership will support the advancement of trusted relationships in the digital economy, the empowerment of local communities for the benefit of public interest. I am excited to deepen our collaboration and share our insights.”
Manyone, which has offices in Vancouver and Stockholm, is currently in the testing phase, with the company anticipating the launch of the first decentralised secure messaging solution by the middle of this year.