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The Equifax data breach that exposed personal information for over 145 million U.S. residents prompted many consumers and technologists to think about how and why organizations like Equifax need to retain sensitive personal data to begin with. The breach prompted similar questions for Perkins Coie partner Joe Cutler, as well as similar questions about personal data collected by banks, employers, insurance agencies and a whole host of other institutions.

Is it really necessary for you to provide a full criminal, credit and employment history to your bank just to open an account? “It really makes you wonder how much information they really need to know to provide services,” Cutler said.

Perkins Coie client the Sovrin Foundation is hoping to use blockchain to give individuals the means of verifying their own personal identifying data, potentially eschewing the need for third-party identifying organizations and allowing individuals more control over their own verifying information. Perkins Coie was recently named a Sovrin Founding Steward for the organization, meaning that the firm will be entrusted with running one of the nodes on Sovrin's self-sovereign identity (SSI) network

Cutler explained that Sovrin's SSI network works by compiling “truth claims” about an individual verified by trusted institutions—a hospital could verify when and where you were born, a university could verify your college degree, the Social Security Administration could verify your Social Security number and so forth. By storing this information on the blockchain, an individual person can essentially be the arbiter of their own personal information.

“The concept is that identity is not assigned. Identity is earned through a series of trust pathways with people we trust to verify simple claims,” Cutler explained, adding that these become more complex as they are aggregated over time.

As a Founding Steward, Perkins Coie plans to take on a few responsibilities relative to the SSI network. “Perkins Coie will serve as a steward of some information that will be used to test the protocol's functionality, and as a node, it will serve as a verifier of information when people need to submit claims for consensus verifications,” Cutler explained. Because the firm is operating as a “node” for Sovrin's SSI network, it acts much the same way a miner would for bitcoin, verifying “truth claims” using the firm's computing power.

Additionally, the firm plans to add these “truth claims” to Sovrin's blockchain protocol where possible, for example verifying information about the firm's employees and “anyone within the realm that Perkins Coie has the authority to verify on,” Cutler said.

Cutler finds it much easier to advise technology clients with a practical business knowledge of how it works. The firm's decision to accept payment in bitcoin gave the firm a firsthand sense of what complications, tax issues and downsides organizations accompany that decision. “How can you advise your clients on newfangled tech if you don't use it?” he asked.

The decision to be a Sovrin steward, in a similar vein, is a means to understand the technology in practice. “We encouraged the firm to participate in the Sovrin stewardship so that we, and they by extension, can learn how this works, so we can advocate for them in the public space,” Cutler added.

Perkins Coie has invested heavily in its blockchain practice this year, designating blockchain as one of its five “beacon practices,” launching an app to help familiarize people with legal issues related to cryptocurrency, and joining the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance alongside 10 other firms.

Cutler said the firm is investing itself across the blockchain space because of the technology's potential to change the nature of transactions far beyond simple currency exchanges.

“I think we are witnessing a quiet but real revolution. It's almost like the fourth industrial revolution, in my mind,” Cutler said of blockchain's potential to change “every kind of transaction you can think of.”

“I think that digital ledger technology is going to revolutionize the world of digital transaction,” Cutler added.