Self-Owned Digital Identity: Crypto’s Missing Trust Layer

In this opinion piece, Kirill Avery argues that digital identity remains the missing infrastructure layer of the internet, exposing online interactions to fraud, surveillance, and centralized gatekeepers. While commerce and communication have migrated online, trust relies on weak, fragmented logins and age-verification tools. As AI platforms rise as new gatekeepers, lack of verification for human and AI agents risks bots and corporations controlling access and speech. Current solutions, from the EU’s zero-knowledge age checks to the UK’s facial recognition, fall short on privacy and portability. The author proposes self-owned digital identity — local cryptographic passports using zero-knowledge proofs and social graph validation — enabling portable, private verification of traits without revealing data. This self-sovereign identity model uses repeated zero-knowledge proofs to confirm uniqueness and accountability across platforms, securing both humans and AI agents, supporting DAOs and marketplaces against Sybil attacks, and forming a post-platform internet grounded in authenticity.