Identity is a fundamental layer of the internet—and it's broken. Current Web2 solutions rely on centralized gatekeepers, and most Web3 solutions lean heavily on public, immutable data. Neither is ideal for preserving user privacy or enabling nuanced, context-aware identity.
Oasis Network is approaching this problem from a different angle: building confidential identity systems using trusted execution environments (TEEs) via the Sapphire runtime—its confidential EVM.
The key idea is that identity doesn't have to be public to be verifiable. Developers can now build systems where:
Users keep full control of their personal data
Identity logic runs privately onchain
Verification happens without exposing sensitive details
This opens up new types of decentralized applications:
Anonymous attestations (prove X without revealing Y)
Privacy-preserving sybil resistance
Zero-knowledge-style behavior without ZK complexity
Reputation systems that evolve privately
Oasis’s blog post breaks down the architecture and shows how privacy-preserving identity can be implemented entirely onchain, without sacrificing usability.
If you're working on DAO governance, DePIN, or user-authenticated dApps, this is a model worth exploring. You can use familiar Solidity tooling, integrate with existing EVM workflows, and build more responsibly by default.
Top comments (1)
When we started the cryptoAI conversation, as expected DeFi got the most attention as it evolved into DeFAI with a boost from integrating the ROFL framework. I always wondered about the other web3 use cases. This makes me happy that the untapped potential of web3 moving forward with DeAI and ROFL is in the works with DID as the latest focus. Eagerly anticipating what Plurality Network cooks up as they build the future of confidential identity systems.