# QuarkID: Bringing South America on-chain with SSI and account Abstraction

- Channel: [Devcon](https://streameth.org/devcon)
- Date: 2025-10-07
- Duration: 19:43
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-J_IzZEnUQVY
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_IzZEnUQVY

## Description

QuarkID is a Self-Sovereign Identity protocol bringing millions of South American citizens on-chain. Citizens in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Monterrey, and Nuevo Leon, Mexico, are using government SSI deployed on ZKsync Era through the QuarkID protocol. Driver's licenses, birth certificates, and over 50 different credentials are secured by Ethereum technology in the world’s first case of governments using Ethereum’s permissionless blockchain to meet their identity needs.

## Transcript

[Music] everybody thanks so much for being here let me share with you the my name is Doo Fernandez I'm the co creator of Quark ID and let me start by showing some hard facts about what Quark ID is first is a self- sovereign identity protocol it's open source under Apache 2.0 live is a digital public good enrolled in the digital public good alliance it's was it was launched in October 21st in Buenos AA City with 3 million inhabitants and we on boarded almost 165k users in less than one month and we have 80 million users in the confirmed Pipeline and that comes from fre cities in Argentina in Mexico four subnational states both in Argentina and Mexico we're doing two pilot project with national governments in El Salvador and in Argentina and we have on boarded also two major Banks which is Bank the second biggest ret Bank in Argentina and banko sander as well as one of the biggest TCO companies in In America which is town next with more than 100 million users why did bueno city started the qu Journey our vision was first governments should pay the friction to create highways of trust because it will bring enormous value to society and that highways of trust should be open non permission and available without any government's oversight to everyone and that should give users the ability to decide how when with whom and what information to share and we did this in collaboration between governments and startups and we found we discovered that that creates a thriving web free ecosystem that we believe will be bring prosperity to to the society what were in my perspective the three key decisions that we needed to make well the first the centralized versus centralized the second open non permission versus private permission and the third open source versus proprietary and this is pretty important because governments unfortunately usually choose the downside of these options centralized private and permissioned and propietary and we believe that that sort of waves are starting to change and of course we chose the centralized openon permission and open source very briefly what's Quark ID Tex Quark ID again is a protocol which runs on top of CK syn stack which uses ethereum as a security security layer but when you are planning to deploy a system to millions of people using decentralized non- permission technology you face an evil dilema which is users use today centralized web two applications we have an which have an amazing ux and when we migrate to web free world when we we're very familiar with that ux is so terrible just claiming an nft requires you to go back and forth wallet and sment transactions is so hard so hard ux rules the game if we don't have a simple approach to ux there will be no adoption what is the evil dilemma solution that we found well we give users the choice you can download the Open Source wallet from GitHub even and and compile it yourself or you can download it from the App Store it's a non open source non- permission s to your wallet but we implemented qud technology within the government application which is running on the centralized rail Railways utilizing cking era and ethereum but it's a self custodial wallet for users which are not so used to deal with this type of Technologies our way of thinking is hey what application will use my 85y old mother when she wants to download a new application in her iPhone she calls me say hey son this application is safe that's the level of users that you need to understand that we be will be a substantial part of your user base so we need to give users the choice of having a very simple custodial solution that runs again on decentralized Railways or you can go full decentralized in crypto that's your choosing not ours and it's always the use case and I think that we as a community need to understand that people don't buy technology decision makers in governments in institutions they don't buy technology they mostly don't care about technology they buy they buy use cases that solve real world problems we need to think and that's my perspective as technology we need to think in technology as a tool as a means to an end not an end in itself from Real World decision makers if we have the use case which is pretty simple a policeman and that is happening in Buenos areis today a policeman instead of asking you for a piece of plastic shows you a QR code you scan it with your wallet and that gives the policeman the proof that you're able of driving for the decision makers for a major a governor the president of a bank or whatever 99% of the decision relies on use case of course we use ethereum as a security layer CK sync to provide CK proofs we have native account abstraction I will follow up on that because it's pretty important and users control their information not institutions but decision makers will see use case we love technology decision makers make decisions based on use case and the question is how do we get billions of people on chain today according to statistics we have almost 600 millions of people there are 8 billion people in humanity how do we solve this problem I like to think that the Quark ID mission is adoption adoption adoption this is a very famous quote but that Steve Balmer gave once in know this jamping all over the place we probably all saw that and of course he was saying developers developers developers and many of us are developers here and of course developers are crucial but when Mike Steve Balmer was saying developers developers developers his company Microsoft had 95% of the user base using Windows so then it's easy he he already had gained adoption we as a community haven't yet and we need to get there and in my perspective and this is kind of radical but we need to try and HSE the system and I don't I don't mean this in a bad way we need to find a way to gain adoption through the system not against the system and I am positive that that troyan horse that positive troyan horse is self-sign identity using account abstraction and why is that because let me go back there account of struction is crucial because each user when when she or he gets an identity minted in Quark ID they are using account obstruction and they have an account in CK sync ERA this as straightforward as that and that enables a lot of use cases and I was discussing the other day next year buos City will be piloting the chance of giving subsidies the I mean the city givs out subsidies several different things something like $35 million a year to different type of of uh of beneficiaries bu is evaluating the chance of giv subsidies using their identity wallets using a token and that is a great Advantage when you're dealing with subsidies and that is being done because of account exraction so that's a great opportunity and why are governments so so important because they provide us or they may provide us with a reverse adoption life cycle if governments can help to create the necessary Railways of trust we as an industry should help governments to achieve this goal and for me that is crucial we need to focus on that we need to understand that they are champions they are government Champions they institution Champions out there that have they share the same ethos that we share that believe in a future with self custodial basis decentralized non- permission censorship resistent and they need help from our side and we should provide their help I firmly believe that a decentralized non permission open source future is possible and I'm convinced that we need to do that with governments and with institutions and not against them and that's our goal thanks so much that was quick man I got 10 minutes left we can do a lot of Q&A we can definitely do a lot of Q&A well feel free to send all your questions here but um let me go to the first one as well um how does the open- source nature of the project impact business model and perhaps monetization for you no there's no business model for C it's an open source protocol which is being used by several governments it's not a it's not a business I see okay going through the top questions um is it possible to interoperate with other protocols yeah definitely I mean two things here of course we over here great thanks sorry so of course we have two things there first is the W fre standards which Define DS which is decentralized identifiers and verify credentials and that gives you a level of interoperability but and I happy to say to say this this is the first time in any Depon we have a specific Workshop of self- sovereign identity and all of us in the industry are meeting today this afternoon in order to precisely work on interoperability with the guys from Privado and so on and we think that there's a bright to Future in doing that all right next question why bunos Ares West start there and I can recall that you are planning to expand to Argentina Mexico and Colombia perhaps you'll talk about the country expansion plans and the different regulation challenges in each jurisdiction as well I have very I have a very particular view on regulations first why buos syus buo cidus is a is an extremely crypto-friendly City you have a great pool of talent many of the most important projects in the ethereum ecosystem and in the crypto ecosystem came out from buenosaires just to mention a few open sa namic Nami Foundation I don't know cimo and Alf and so on we have very very important projects coming out from buenosaires the Central and one of the founders of sandbox I could keep on mentioning a lot of project so buis has this amazing talent pool we are so focused in the crypto industry and when I as my former role of Secretary of innovation of the city made a call out to the startups and to the innovators in in buenosaires everyone started collaborating and we came up with this solution which I which we're really proud of okay crypto-friendly City where else besides buenos areas well I mean buenos areas is a crypto-friendly city of course and and we are working as a community very very strongly and now Milagros from from chto will share that with you we think that buenos ciris and Argentina could become one of the first if not the first crypto country we're struggling to do that when we we're sort of working to do that and of course we will need your help all right can you describe your level of partnership with other protocols maybe some strategic planning maybe other companies that you're looking to collaborate with well I mean of course and we shared that yesterday in a panel that we were with Evan and and Anthony from PR something like three to four years ago there was basically nobody speaking about identity but Privado and and disco XYZ by that time and uh our vision is there are eight billion people in the world man there's so so so much space that we should work together okay there's a question I would like to ask answer there is where are the credentials stored onchain or offchain if offchain if onchain how do you handle privacy risk no not on chain not on chain never never ever and never ever ever you can put personal information on chain the technology behind the standards of um digital identifiers and verifi credentials work this way what you have anchored on chain is a digital identifier that's the only thing which is anchored on chain credentials are minted and stored of chain so just to give you an example you have the Q you have theid of the city of Buenos Iris or any the government or or institution and you have your own the so when you want to Mint a new credential and those are anchored in our case and C case in Cara and when you need to maintain new credential you ask the issuer to give you that credential that happens on a peer-to-peer basis using a protocol which is named dcom and you where you do what what you are doing is you're signing a Json digitally signed by thisd in favor of this D and that is stored in the personal device that the users have in their hand so when you when when you need to verify that credential what you do is you check that the credential is valid that is not you that is not void and that it was signed by the issuer in favor of the holder so you rely on on chain security but the data is store of chain how does quark ID plan to maintain its technological advantage in the long in the long term well basically as any other any other open source protocol expanding our user base generated interest the amazing thing is that when you do this again reverse adoption life cycle and you start to have millions and millions and millions of users developers start to build on top of it and we have several startups and several companies building on top of the protocol and even expanding it just to give you an idea when we were involved in the this is a very small thing but it's quite nice when we did the the AL popup here in August the the passport for entering Alf was a credential mained in Quark ID and one amazing guy his name tulle he's not over here I guess did this extension of the protocol connecting it with with an Arduino device in order to open a door so when you access the Hub you scan that show your credential and the door got open which was so nice and that is I mean the community building and developing can we squeeze in a question about competition how is this project different from provido ID or polygon ID I don't know in such a detail the the stack of PR ID and how they are working now with this Co xyc because they recently merged but again we of course believe in competition and we respect each other very much and as I said before I don't think we you need to have the technology the technological Basics that you need to implement but this thing is not about technology this thing uses technology to gain adoption so what's her Focus adoption adoption and perhaps on the final question on adoption since we have a few more minutes remaining as well can Argentina's adoption by both its government and citizens serve as a model for other Latin American countries I wouldn't say serve as a model but uh when we're dealing with uh such border Innovations and the other day I was thinking isn't there a more obvious case where Innovation is needed than identity we are sending or trying to send Rockets to Mar Elon Musk is catching rockets falling out of space in midair we're discussing artificial general intelligence models if they're going to rule or not the world and when we need to identify ourselves we pick a piece of plastic and start doing like this on camera my God that's so stupid so stupid we need to change that now of course it's identity institutions can feel fear and finding some governments and big institutions as Banos sandera mro that were able of taking the first steps of course makes every other one in the in the place hey come on look take a look at those guys they did it why don't win all righty so that concludes our session can you do a quick wrap up about what you do a key takea away maybe a high level description and for the audience before we conclude the session yeah of course I mean for me the most important part is if we are going to achieve what we think is the ethos and we feel the ethos of this community of of having decentralized non- permission trust and value being exchanged over the etherum network identity is the way to go governments and institutions are the adoption path for going from 600 million to seven five six whatever billion people in the next three four to five years and Quark ID and my team is trying to achieve that or help to achieve that with all of the other players in the industry thank you so so much thank you please give a round of applause to Diego that is Fork ID bringing South America