Tuum Tech Paving the Way Forward with Identity x MetaMask Snaps
Our Co-Founders have been working together on decentralized identities since 2018, with the formation of Tuum Technologies coming in January 2020. Our experience is vast within the DID (Decentralized Identifier), Verifiable Credentials, and data ownership spaces and we’re continually working towards establishing ourselves as a leader helping to propel the industry forward.
We’re now excited to announce the next phase of our journey, where we’ll be creating services and technology for Hedera to drive the adoption of DID interoperable identities while prioritizing key use cases from the get-go.
Learn more about our plans and where we’re headed next.
Why Are DIDs Important?
The need for globally unique identifiers that aren’t controlled by centralized authorities is not new. In the 1980s Universally Unique Identifiers, also known as GUIDs (Globally Unique Identifiers), were developed for this purpose. In the decades following their creation we’ve seen an exponential increase in our time spent online and with it a critical need for self-sovereign identity that fulfills these requirements: persistence, global resolvability, cryptographic verifiability, and decentralization.
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) are a new technology in the identity management space that leverage cryptography and public key infrastructure to enhance the user experience across the internet, making it safer, trustless, and more secure.
They serve as a tool that gives users the power to fully control their digital identity, absent of any centralized entity — this means the identity management process lets participants choose which people and what applications can view and access their data, among other things.
Identifiers allow us to establish connections with one another, execute onchain transactions, share data, communicate through messages, and more. Through these systems and actions, users can ultimately garner greater trust among their peers/community and elevate their online social reputation.
DIDs address the aforementioned critical needs through Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). Moreover, they open the door to entirely new utilities across Web3 / Web5 and play a fundamental role in online privacy and transparency.
Tuum Technologies also builds with DIDs that follow W3C standards.
MetaMask Snaps
MetaMask Snaps lets developers introduce elements of code to extend MetaMask’s functionality to create new dApps (decentralized applications) and features, expanding the platform’s capabilities and making the experience more customizable and personal. In addition, it lets developers build and plug in their own APIs to MetaMask.
Snaps were initially started in 2019 and launched in January 2022. They’re currently available through Flask and slated for official release in 1H 2023.
From a user perspective, anyone can install Snaps and select which ones they want to use. While Snaps are a relatively new concept introduced by MetaMask, they’re proving to be critical in its advancement, as it’s the very first wallet to allow this type of flexibility and extension to developers through its trusted interface.
Here are some other reasons why Snaps are useful and impactful:
- Alter MetaMask’s UI (restricted)
- Build and integrate your own APIs to MetaMask (for developers)
- Encourage Web3 innovation
- Enable the creation of new custom dApps
This sets the framework for one of Tuum Technologies’ primary goals leading into 2023 — our core focus will be to kickstart efforts by digging deeper into MetaMask’s Snaps roadmap and aligning our development efforts with theirs to launch the Identity Snap as a sought after service.
To keep track of our Identity Snap development, make sure to check out our Twitter here: https://twitter.com/TuumTech
Use Cases with MetaMask Snaps
Healthcare Patient Portal
As part of Tuum Technologies’ ongoing mission to advance decentralized identity technology, we’ll begin by leveraging MetaMask to allow users to create their own Hedera DIDs in collaboration with various ecosystem teams. This identity service will be an EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine)-compatible identity service and integrated into an existing Healthcare Patient Portal application through the MetaMask Identity Snap.
Implementing this technology will set the stage for the MetaMask Identity Snap, demonstrating its utility and capabilities while adding support for Hedera DIDs. It’s also an important step to onboarding users, as we’ll be leveraging MetaMask’s huge user base and extensible user interface to smoothly bring people aboard.
— Donald Bullers, Founder & CEO of Tuum Technologies
Extended Reality Profile
Exciting times are ahead, as healthcare patient portal DIDs will be the very first use case for our MetaMask Snap product. From there, we’ll continue to plan, build, and innovate to extend the product’s functionality.
These ongoing efforts will lay the groundwork for our team to integrate this new technology into our revised Profile consumer product, the next iteration of the platform and second use case implementation from Tuum Technologies.
Our focus will be geared toward supporting Hedera DIDs leveraging their infrastructure, moving closer to achieving our mission to allow users to truly own themselves in Web3.
About Tuum Tech
We’re a software engineering company in the decentralized internet realm aiming to develop a powerful product line allowing users to create applications to flourish in the Web3 space.
Our mission and contribution to the world is developing self-owned identities that aid in the blending of online and physical realities for all of mankind.
To learn more about our organization, visit our website and Twitter.
