Nuco has been awarded government funding through the Small Business Innovation Challenge to develop a solution improving digital identity verification.
Nuco has proposed a blockchain-enabled application to give users complete control over what they reveal.
The Small Business Innovation Challenge is delivered by the Ontario Centres of Excellence on behalf of the Ontario government. Nuco will work on a project as part of the SBIC’s Digital Identity Program, which asked SMBs to tackle digital identity in three areas: digital identity-proofing across government; digitally-enabled credentials allowing people in Ontario to access government programs; and developing a solution for up-to-date identity information for ministries to authenticate Ontarians.
While Nuco didn’t disclose the amount of funding it received, the program covers up to 100 percent of eligible project cash costs to a maximum of $1 million.
“SBIC is part of the expanding field of innovation-based procurement, in which the public sector is a first customer of innovation,” said Dr. Tom Corr, president and CEO of OCE. “Innovation-based procurement drives better experiences and value-for-money for all of us as consumers of government services while also driving the creation of high-quality jobs and economic activity in Ontario.”
Nuco proposed a blockchain-enabled application to give users complete control over what they reveal and streamlining updates to their information across all agency databases.
Current physical identification cards reveal more information than is required and are difficult to authenticate while easy to duplicate. At the same time, government agencies work in silos with their own systems, leading to redundancies. Nuco will allow different government agencies to connect and access the same distributed database, and allow updates in user data to be synchronized among all agencies in real-time.
“We’re honoured to be recognized by the Government of Ontario in our efforts to build solutions with blockchain technology,” said Matthew Spoke, CEO of Nuco. “We look forward to working with Ontario’s government and business leaders to apply innovations to build a better future.”
Nuco is currently developing an interoperable blockchain network, and recently raised $27 million in an ICO to build the network.
