Comment by jonahbenton
3 years ago
This is a good use case for the web3 ecosystem, or at least for those working on the decentralization, personal data ownership and control parts.
It should be obvious that it is important to employers to be able to verify the claims made by people who are applying to them for jobs. Claims of employment or education or credential or skill or whatever. That's what zero trust is all about, isn't it?
That need is the reason that this data is (centrally) collected and then shared. There is a massive mutual benefit incentive on the part of employers- and on the part of the SAAS providers to employers- to share data on the employees and to benefit from data of others being shared.
And yes that may be seen to violate the privacy of the people who had an employment relationship and who received money over the course of that relationship, but employer corporate persons are at least part owners of that data- of what money and what dates and so forth was paid to what human persons by them.
By what means does a web3 protocol based on verifiable credentials enable those who have requirements to perform verification while preventing centralization and preserving the rights of the humans whose data participates in these protocols?
That's the mountaintop goal. What's the path to get there?
There's no need to involve 'web3' (whatever that even means) in this.
Simple crypto is all you'd need to produce a verifiable employment record; each company has a key and signs a document conveying whatever information you want (x person employed for y years etc).
Indeed there is.
This is a mechanism design problem- a behavioral protocol problem- not a technology one. That's what web3 is about.
And downvoting my question is ridiculous.
I don't have the ability to downvote, it's locked behind reputation (not sure of the exact amount).
Show me the problem with an alternative solution, don't preach about supposed benefits.
1 reply →
I think it would depend a lot on who has the power in said product. The business model of the product.
If it's tailored towards workers, it could be as simple as a key that you, the employee, could revoke at any time, making the centralized data void. Something like rainbow.me
For the b2b model... well it could be like equifax I guess? Offer to provide that service to the business to check the data, while allowing the user to revoke it at any time, for a small fee paid in the crypto of your choice perhaps paid by the business for accessing the data.
2030 and Equifax “uses the latest blockchain data” in their composite score sold to HR customers. A blockchain-based system doesn’t have enough centralized database control to appeal to Equifax.