Trust vs. Truth: Redesigning Digital Identity for the Decentralized Web with Ingo Ruebe
April 10, 2025
In this episode of The Smart Economy Podcast, host Dylan Grabowski is joined by Ingo Ruebe, the founder of Kilt Protocol, a decentralized digital identity solution serving enterprises, governments, and consumers, to explore the critical yet often overlooked world of decentralized digital identity.
In this episode of The Smart Economy Podcast, host Dylan Grabowski is joined by Ingo Ruebe, the founder of Kilt Protocol, a decentralized digital identity solution serving enterprises, governments, and consumers.
What You’ll Learn:
- Why Web2 identity is fundamentally broken
- The difference between identity and identification
- How W3C standards are reshaping digital credentials
- Building resilient systems for defense and enterprise
- The power of owning your personal data
- Bridging traditional industries with blockchain tech
- The future of AI agent identification
And much more!
With a background as a computer scientist and former CTO of a major publishing company, Ingo has vast experience across the healthcare, media, and energy sectors. After discovering blockchain technology at South by Southwest in 2015, he founded Kilt Protocol in 2018 to address fundamental issues in Web2 identity systems. His work in developing standardized digital identity solutions through the W3C consortium and the Decentralized Identity Foundation has helped shape industry standards for digital credentials.
Episode Highlights:
- [14:50] The Fundamental Difference Between Identity and Identification
- [24:48] Blockchain's Three Key Benefits for Identity Systems
- [38:16] Social KYC: Rethinking Digital Identity Verification
- [48:18] Preparing Identity Systems for AI Agents
Previous guests include: Rusty Matveev, Chief Strategy Officer at Calaxy; Andrew Lawrence, CEO and Co-Founder of Censo; Zac Townsend, CEO and Co-Founder of Meanwhile; Jesper Johansen, CEO and Co-Founder of Northstake; Tama Churchouse, COO of Cumberland Labs; Holly Wood of Boson Protocol; Sid Powell of Maple Finance; Chad Barraford of THORChain; and many others.
Check out our three most downloaded episodes:
- Laying the Groundwork for a Billion-User Blockchain with Rich Rines, Contributor at Core DAO
- Staking the Future: From Blockchain Beginnings to Institutional Innovations with Chen Zhuling of RockX
- The Unstoppable Nature of Blockchain: A Conversation with Bonart Mati of Obligate
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